explorer

Any suggestions where to put my hat in TQ2 that evening ??? Cheers,

When you transfer the money in to Thailand to buy a property, it needs to be declared that this money is transferred for the purpose of buying a property. The sender and receiver in Thailand needs to be the buyer of the property. This document is called a “Tor Tor Sam†or “Foreign Exchange Transaction Form†With this “Tor Tor Samâ€, you will be able to transfer the funds back home when selling the property. Cheers,

What insurance ???? Most cars rented on 2nd road and Beach road in Pattaya do not even have a proper insurance, other than sometimes the of-no-use obligatory government insurance. The only car-rental company that I know offering a decent insurance is VIA car rental opposite Royal Garden on 2nd road and of course the Hertz and Avis companies. Many 4-wheel jeeps and cars rented out from Beach road do not even have a valid number plate and road-tax sticker (years out of date), and are therefore forbidden to drive out of the Pattaya region. Cheers,

Try Swiss Food in Soi Diamond. Order the Chateau Briand, which is 500 gram of pure tenderloin. Cheers,

Yes, 25,000 Euro is a typo, meant 2,500, sorry for that. I carry a (MasterCard) CC-card with the ATM part, from the HSBC offshore Bank Isle of Jersey, with a daily withdraw limit of 2,500 Euro/by day, worldwide. I am living in Pattaya since 21 years and have a Siam Commercial Gold-Card (MasterCard) including ATM, without having a Working Permit, 3-months ago I upgraded my daily ATM limit on this card to 100,000 Baht via the online banking system from Siam Commercial. The top limit one can select on a Gold-Card (Thai or Farang) is 250,000 Baht/day. Beware that the CC-part of this G

It's not because one carries a loaded gun, that he is going to shoot someone. An ATM limit of 25,000 Euro (Approx 100,000 Baht) is very normal for European Banks (for regular customers). In Thailand, Siam Commercial Bank even offers a day-limit up to 250,000 Baht for good customers (Thai or Farang), on their Gold-Card. Even the Visa-Platinum (On invite only) has an ATM day-limit of US$ 25,000 (Approx 1,000,000 Baht) Cheers,

Not very advisable to stay there, it's in the middle of the nightlife streets (Soi Diamond, Walking Street), meaning continuously lots of noise. As walking street is closed for all traffic from 7PM to 3AM this also means the hotel is unreachable by car or taxi during this period. The hotel caters mainly to Middle-Eastern visitors who make a lot of noise in their rooms until very early in the morning. No swimming pool (yes, only a bath-tub size little pool on the roof). There are much better solutions 5 to 10 minutes walk from Soi Diamond and hundreds of better solutions 5 a

"Best Supermarket" at the Dolphin roundabout in North Pattaya also has a cigar shop with a nice selection, including cigar-cutters and even leather cigar-poaches. Prices are very reasonable. The cigar counter at "Best" is located in their liquor department. Cheers,

This depends entirely on your ATM-Card, not the machine or the Thai ATM-system. Before leaving for Thailand You have to contact your CC-company and set the daily limit for using your ATM-card in Thailand, I am using a card that can give me up to 100,000 Baht/Day. For exchanging US-dollars or TCs, there are thousands of exchange boots in every tourist center. For example, on walking street alone in Pattaya, you will find an exchange-boot and ATM-machine, nearly every 50 meter. Cheers,

Directly to Pattaya for Fun, Beach and Sun. Bangkok for culture and trafficjams. Cheers,

Book the same hotel with any online reservation site that uses secure servers, mostly the room price will also be cheaper than dealing with the hotel itself, due that they work with hotel room consolidators that buy huge blocks of hotel rooms at huge discounts. Never send your CC-details by email, fax is much safer and nothing beats secure online reservation using SSL secured servers, very easy recognizable at the url that should start with HTTPS:// instead of HTTP:// Cheers,

The new Sheraton hotel in Pattaya is scheduled to open in the first weeks of Augustus, they only had a soft opening for special and/or invited guests to train the staff, so very difficult to give any more information than what you can find on their website. The hotel is situated on it's own beach, in-between Pattaya and Jomtien and is more build as a family club resort, for Bangkok Thais and foreign visitors, with it's own restaurants and beach-activities, than the typical Sheraton hotels for independent travelers such as in Bangkok and Phuket. Hence knowing the above you will have to

You heard wrong. October is the transition month between the rainy season (June-October) and the cool season (November-February). The cool season still means daytime temperatures of average 28 to 32 degrees Celsius and night temperatures of 24 to 28 degrees Celsius, seawater around 25 degrees Celsius, which is still much hotter than any European hot summer. The months with the most rain are July, August and September. In October, you still have the chance of the occasional short but very heavy rain bursts. Rain burst overhere are really no problem as they usually consists of short

Currently, every other day there is a non-stop flight that takes exactly 1 hour and 40 minutes from Utapao to Phuket. The planes used are 70-seaters ATR72-500 turbo-props equipped with Pratt and Whitney PW127F engines. Find info here: http://www.atraircraft.com/atr72500.htm Since April 2005 the flight Pattaya (Utapao) to Phuket has become a non-stop flight, every other day, where before there was a stop-over in Samui, The new flight-code of the Utapao-Phuket flight is PG272 Currently, until 30 October 2005, Bangkok Airways has a promotion on the Pattaya-Phuket route at 1,750 baht

Thanks for the excellent and detailed trip-report Cheers,