Butch

Daft question...but thin crust or deep pan guys?. For me it's thin crust with ham, onion and mushrooms and maybe pepperoni.

Yogi's post is pretty much spot on. October is the late end of low season and a great time to visit, although it might rain for a bit, and the sois and other roads like Bukhao can get flooded (look for youtube videos of rain in pattaya). Cash not travellers cheques, and stow it away locked in your case because the staff can get access to the in room safes. Don't be afraid to tell a girl you don't like her, usually the ugly ones tend to ping the new guys as they enter the bars, the last thing you want is some troll hanging off your arm costing a fortune in LD's. Just ask her to leave, they get it all the time. Pack loperimide (although it is available from the pharmacies very cheaply - get it while you're there) and when (not if) you get the shits take 2 immediatley followed by 1 every couple of hours. keep it going until your gut gets used to it. brush teeth with bottled water, but you'll get the shits from the ice they put into your drinks or the water they dilute the draft beer with. Change to western food for a few days if you've been eating Thai. Central festival always has toilet paper in the toilets, otherwise you have to buy it out of a machine if you're in Royal Garden (I think, it's a long time since I took a shit in there). Same goes for all the 5 baht "public" toilets down the Sois. Try to keep your wits about you for the first few days at least while you get an idea of the place. You might get an ear infection if you shower a lot, this is due to microbes in the water, as a tip I always pack cotton wool and add some vaseline around it and stick it in my ears when showering , either that or earplugs. Have fun and enjoy.

A lot of the Freight companies still use Class 08's made in the 50's for shunting. EWS (or DBS as it's now known) had several in storage up in one of their depots and a few years back would refurb them and sell them on. 47's and 57's sound awesome. 66's sound like a spaceship from a 50's B movie and class 70's tend to have a very deep growl. I'm not a trainspotter, but work in close proximity to them. Back when I used to work locally, the industrial unit was next to the Railway track which was elevated, listening to the 37's and 47's pulling 1k ton up the bank was impressive, 2 massive plumes of smoke.

Get ready chaps , GOT on the 17th. I caught my fave western "unforgiven" again the other day. I keep forgetting how damn good that movie is.

Evil, just to make a slight edit to your excellent post if I may, I'll explain "tanim bala" for those unaware. "tanim bala" is the scam whereby some corrupt official plants a live bullet in your luggage, then rinse you for a fine for attempting to carry prohibited items into an airport. This is not necessarily done as you pass through security, the corrupt official might stop you as you get out of the Taxi before going in , showing his ID and stating it is for pre security purposes. This, as a rule does NOT happen at NAIA, as anyone who's ever been there will see that it's crawling with Police, and anyone pulling this kind of stunt is going to get caught by their superiors. It mostly happens at provincial and small airports where security is handled by a small group of PNP or external security. The way around this is to actually fire a lot of questions to the officer or guard before opening and allowing him access to your luggage and demanding his superior comes along and another witness. Not foolproof but it might help. Ask for ID, make a note on a piece of paper or record it on your phone. "tanim puta" (the "puta" was edited in Evils reports as "p-a" but it is actually "puta") which of course means "whore" in tagalog. Planting whores is not a revolutionary concept in the field of scamming foreigners, but it goes on and the filipino's are pretty adept at it. Again, you can use your phone to record the intitial meeting as to act as evidence, but to be honest unless you have some pretty decent contacts, getting out of it is going to be a challenge. Sorry for going a bit off topic, but I thought it relevent to anyone thinking of going out there.

I've got the pro version on my Ipad. They're also doing a new "subscription" based service which I've trialled and is the absolute nuts. Also, if you click on a plane you can get all the data on it such as when it entered service and recent routes etc. The filters are useful if you want only one airline and I often sit in my back garden here at Butch Towers and watch the planes coming over heading for Stanstead and Heathrow. Flightaware is more detailed and a different interface, neither show military aircraft though, but there is an app out there which does as well. I've been following FR24 since day one, it's come a long way since the early days. All we need now is a web link to a scanner rigged up on LHR frequencies so we can listen in on the ATC and planes coming in.

Question GP, If using one of these fares, I would you have to get your luggage from the destination airport , then check in again prior to departing to BKK, or would you go through as a Transit pax and the baggage checked through to final destination?.

Which is why I said "I was on about the Kuwait - MNL route - My bad "

Willie Walsh is the cancer that started within BA and is a shining example of terrible man managment. I think BA's decline is partly due to the attitude of the workforce, which in turn was brought on by WW's inability to manage effectively. Any workforce which strikes or even threatens action slowly erodes the credibility of the Company it represents. Once that industrial action starts, no matter how justifed , it has a direct effect upon the image and performance of that company. As you say, and probably know anyway that economy pax don't make huge profits for the airlines, thus reducing their service and using the cash and time saved to better serve the biz and first pax is what WW managed to do without considering any of the consequences. Regarding Concorde, well it's BA showing their colours again, first it was back with the Freddie Laker Skytrain, ganging up on him and with concorde, no one else is going to play with BA's toys, so we'll break them instead.

Dates?.

I was on about the Kuwait - MNL route. I never flew with them, but we recruited 3 Nurses who came in last week. Maybe should've been more specific. My bad. Gulf air used to fly their shite heaps on the MCT-Bombay route because the plane would always come back with the toilets blocked, shit on the floor and everything missing out of the seat pockets and life vests stolen (back in the 80's / 90's). Anyway, this thread is getting a bit fucking ridiculous regarding the one - upmanship with knowledge and experience. We are all in the same boat and any info is useful, appreciated and saves us money. I'll buy you both beers for that reason alone. I really don't understand the hostility, there's no need for it and accuse me of being patronsing, tell me to get fucked or whatever, but save it for the fucking playground fellas. You're better than that.

I'm not on about the BKK route, but the Kuwait - MNL one with shit equipment.

Wow, that escalated quickly. It's a pity that it turned into a bit of a barney because the information being posted by both was very useful. Aeroflot have apparently come a long way in reliability. I've told this yarn more times than is healthy but I boarded one plane in one of the smaller African countries years ago, took my seat and noticed the word "aeroflot" had been scratched out and the name of the Airline dyno taped over it. It didn't fill me with the greatest of confidence. They enoy a good reputation now and are flying modern Airbus tackle instead of some of the older Ilyushin stuff. Gulf Air in the 70's and 80's were exceptional, they traded in their old VC10's for Tristars, all the Cabin Crew were attractive Brits with the odd Indian stunner mixed in and they all enjoyed time off in Bahrain at good Hotels and plenty of free bubbly. However, the Gulf Air hotel in Ruwi / Muttrah wasn't such a fantastic gig, it was in fact a shithole. Ha. I think GF dropped the ball a bit in the late 90's Early 00's but have since had to up their game in order to compete with the other ME Carriers who all, with the exception of Kuwait Airlines offer good quality travel. Kuwait are fucking abysmal though. They run absolute shitheaps on the Asia - Kuwait routes, we recently had an arrival of Filipino nurses who the agent put on a Kuwait flight to save money, no IFE for 9 hours, the plane was hot and the food awful. Airlines change their policies frequently, they cut services for Econ pax to save cash in a very tight business. Travel in the 70's, 80's and 90's is different to what it is now. EVA back in 96 were flying 747-400 Combi's in a 3 class set up, food was great, prices very cheap (EVA Deluxe was only £75 more each way) they had half decent IFE ahead of it's time and the CC always got a round of applause when we landed in DM. Now it's a shadow of its former self, and that is in the space of 10 years. Times change, business plans change and yesterday's shit airline is todays middle of the road one. As for prices, it's always gonig to be hit and miss but any kind of strategy to give someone the edge is always welcome.

I might have been imagining it, or even read it somewhere but aren't BA about to be, or have been downgraded in their "stars" for Airline performance?. If anyone gets a minute, head over to flyertalk.com , there's not a great deal of love for BA there either!.

I always bloody forget about Chinese NY and the impact it has on flight prices, that's a damn good point. Especially these days as half of China seems to want to travel around SEA to celebrate. We got caught a couple of years ago on a Cathay fare being some 30% more because that was our week of travel. HKG was absolutely rammed solid and we couldn't even get a place to sit and eat, ideal when you've got a hungry 2 year old. Oddly it didn't occur to me at the time why it was so expensive, I just assumed it was because it was after Xmas. Another reason to hate the Chinese. Fucking smug not-able-to-understand-how-to-use-a-European-toilet-cunts.

With this , I'd expect the GC's business to improve slightly. Bullfrog, don't worry about it mate. some BM's do it deliberately, normally the same one's who are ungrateful and happy to lurk around and take info from PT but give fuckall back.

I remember when it was a shithole...Interesting series though. If anyone is into planes, there's a good youtube doco called "747 in D check" which goes into the process of the D check each airliner has to go through every so often.

The first stage of construction is usually to sink the piles in, starting at 0700 and finishing around 1800, a constant "thud thud thud" ruins a holiday. I had that a couple of years ago staying at the Sabai on Soi 1, they were putting a new construction up opposite, luckily I was in low season and managed to relocate to another part of the hotel.

Bronx Pizza, that was the place myself and Cerberus made gluttons of ourselves! - couldn't recall the name so thanks for the reminder MM!. Will definitely give the NY Pizza house a go.

Actually, where are the good Pizza places in town these days?. I recall Evil spoke of one up near Central Road I think, but I might be getting confused upon the poster, location and food type

I thought that Chaba hut had a half decent reputation as well. Good idea sinbinjack, vote with your feet mate. Yogi, it's pretty poor form of them to water down spirits, but I suppose they thought Vodka can be diluted without the customer noticing. Would this GGB happen to be on the corner of a street and name beginning with O ?. If so I only went in once, never again.

Bottom line, if a person travels abroad without adequate medical insurance they're a fucking idiot in the first place and don't deserve treatment. If they can afford the flight, they can afford the insurance. In true Thai fashion though, I agree, this is pretty unworkable.

Everything is back to normal apparently. Bottom line is that BA bollocksed it up and need to be held fully accountable, one of the busiest weekends of the year and they have a global outage. We may never know the real reason, whether it was a cyber attack or lack of redundancy measures in case of an IT failure, if it was the former then shame on them for not spending more on IT security, if the latter then shame on them for trying to skimp and save money by not having adequate measures in place. Maybe another nail in the coffin for BA.

I think if a person isn't "in the know" then leaving the ticket until last minute has a psychological barrier to it, especially if it is an important trip or a long awaited holiday. There's that feeling of completion you get when the flight is booked, and for some it's important. I recently booked and paid for 2 Cathay Pacific flights MNL-HKG-LHR Return with less than a weeks notice of travel, the tickets were about 20% cheaper than when I checked them out just over a month ago. I also went direct with the Cathay global website - which, if anyone wishes to book with Cathay, is always the best option I've found for minimal hassle and Cathay are pretty shit hot at sorting out problems if you've booked with them direct. I accrued AMEX points as well as even more FF points, putting Mrs Butch up to Marco Polo Gold level (which apparently translates as OneWorld Sapphire) while I slum it in Silver for one more trip. It's definitely worth considering late booking, as well as early, but as GP has said, the bit in between needs to be avoided. There's also a caveat though, on Cathay they have at least 5 services daily to HKG so unless there's a real fuck up, seats will be available right up until the day, but perhaps on someone like EVA who only operate one service, it might be prudent to book early than leaving it until the last minute. Thanks for the explaination of how the system works GP, I find it interesting and useful info which will definitely save me a few quid down the road.