Butch

You did so with the subtlety of a sledgehammer Mr Atlas Sir. I'm a great fan of Kipling (insert cake joke here), having been tasked with learning "if" by heart and reading "Kim" as part of my English lit course, I have a soft spot for him. Given that the choice was "A passage to India" which, IMNHO was a load of fucking crap along with "Persuasion" by Jane "boring cunt" Austen , I think I made the right one. I got a degree out of it a few years later, anyway. However, my favourite poem from his is as follows; Take up the White Man's burden, In patience to abide, To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride; By open speech and simple, An hundred times made plain To seek another's profit, And work another's gain. Take up the White Man's burden, The savage wars of peace— Fill full the mouth of Famine And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest The end for others sought, Watch sloth and heathen Folly Bring all your hopes to nought. Take up the White Man's burden, No tawdry rule of kings, But toil of serf and sweeper, The tale of common things. The ports ye shall not enter, The roads ye shall not tread, Go mark[14] them with your living, And mark them with your dead. Take up the White Man's burden And reap his old reward: The blame of those ye better, The hate of those ye guard— The cry of hosts ye humour (Ah, slowly!) toward the light:— "Why brought he us from bondage, Our loved Egyptian night?" Take up the White Man's burden, Ye dare not stoop to less— Nor call too loud on Freedom To cloke your weariness; By all ye cry or whisper, By all ye leave or do, The silent, sullen peoples Shall weigh your gods and you. Take up the White Man's burden, Have done with childish days— The lightly proferred laurel, The easy, ungrudged praise. Comes now, to search your manhood, through all the thankless years Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom, The judgment of your peers!

Best option is Melatonin. Apart from some odd dreams, it works well and also helps reduce the affects of Jet Lag. Instead of stuff with what seems to be some potentially dangerous side effects, Zopiclone is good , but related to Ambien but leaves a horrible metallic taste, Xanax or Diazepam are also useful, again, I'm not prescribing nor am I a doctor, just saying what has worked for me in the past. Here's the wiki on Zopiclone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zopiclone I've found Melatonin (puritans pride, available in LOS) is the best. It is a natural hormone anyway, whether or not that makes any difference I've no idea. Working shifts it is brilliant for helping me sleep when I hit the sack physically exhausted but mentally hyped up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatonin

Yep the 777 is great for freight, if it's configured for freight and not passengers. Freight has the advantage of not needing to be fed, put to sleep or checked in. Having paid £25 per kg +VAT + Duty for Airfreight in the past (before entering the realms of volumetric weight which is a pain in the arse) , I'm at a bit of a loss as to why I didn't jack my job in and become an Airfrieght company director!.

I read somewhere that on Long Haul flight, and for many airlines in general that they pretty much only make decent profit on the business and first class seats they sell. Economy is a "break even" affair, which is why economy on many airlines has declined with regards service and quality. Some may recall that when EVA were running the 747 400 Combi's out of Heathrow the planes were half cargo half passenger, the rear bulkhead finishing about 2/3 of the way down the cabin and upper deck was biz / first. They still had "Elite" class as it was then known (deluxe now), but to be honest the economy service then was almost equivalent to the deluxe service today. Also Elite worked out at approx £150 on the price over an economy ticket, whereas today it's more than 50%. I guess even in premier economy the profit margin just isn't there until you step up a grade. I am surprised that Thai are putting the evening service back on, albeit though with perhaps a newer and more economical plane if it's a 777. To be honest I'd have thought a full A380 on one service would be worth more than a half full A380 and a half full 777 / 747 on two, then again demand must be higher than I thought.

Had I seen Pete Docherty on WS , I'd have kicked his fucking head in. The bloke is a waste of good sperm. Saying that, I enjoyed the vid, anyone know when it was filmed and if the plod closed WS for it?

Yep you're bang on Gus, I think it's running on the 12 pm service that used to be daily, which arrives at SVB around 0600, and it seems Thai have cut the evening service out completely. Be interesting to hear about anyone's experiences after they've flown on it.

Food looks great W&R, definitely on my "to do" list next trip. Trouble is mate, with all the good food pics you keep posting it's going to take me ages to choose.

Marleyboy If you check flightradar24 and filter out everything except Thai airways, then you'll see that there are around 6 planes heading from Europe into BKK within an hour of each other at that time of the morning. There's the UK flight, one from Frankfurt (A380) one coming in from Paris, one from Moscow (I think) plus a couple of others, and they're all wide body "heavies". SVB is a busy place between 0500 and 0630. If your TG flight arriving at 0600 is behind any of these, then you've got 300 or so people ahead of you, if your flight is behind all of them, then you're effectively fucked. In that case I'd book the fastrack, money well spent at that time of the morning, time wise it'll save you the best part of 2 hours stood in line I reckon, going on previous experiences. I was fastracked on my recent trip and it made a hell of a difference. By the way, for the benefit of posters, does any know or can provide the relevant link / method to get the fastrack service?. Virtual beer to anyone who does. Cheers Butch

A few years ago they found the body of a young girl there ( who had died giving birth I think but could be wrong). I was walking past as the Pattaya news bunch were taking photo's and pointing. I often wondered when this plot was going to be developed. Someone , somewhere has got rich by selling it off. I pity the locals though, probably got 2 years of construction noise to look forward to.

To be fair to Saa, it can't be easy to understand some of the comments here. Humour and criticism perhaps doesn't translate or is perhaps misunderstood. My visit to Spankys , while not being the kind of girls I'd go for, was nonetheless interesting. The clientele there (Indians) and the well handled incident I wrote about perhaps grabbed my attention more than a regular night at a GGB would, but overall it's actually a decent bar. Fair play to any manager / owner coming here to promote their business.

Damn those beers look good. You were closed for renovations during our recent visit ,but myself and BM Gawd Elpus managed to hit the "1 more" beer bar for a few more beers. We'll definitely visit on our next trip, the place looks great!.

Thanks for the update Evil, 485 baht, that's around £9.80 or maybe $15?. That seems good value for money. Lamb is a tough dish to get right, I've found some cuts of lamb to be too fatty and when overcooked, like beef, can be tough.

There's a beach?.

Hi Saa I was inside Spankys two weeks ago, and I put a small report up about what I thought of the place and how I found it.

Ahhh...Network Rail, that bastion of reliability, excellent customer service and unfailing servitude. Not only did they manage to leave us stranded at Stratford with a 3 year old and 80 kg's of luggage, they also managed to completely absolve themselves of any blame or responsibility because it's not their fault that a train broke down ahead of us, therefore it's not their responsibility to help us with our forward journey. It's my own fault for wanting to travel by rail to Heathrow with the family, after all, it's only one train journey then onto the tube. I mean what could possibly go wrong?. Jacko, since then it's been Taxi all the way, for the sake of £60 over the price of the (extortionate) rail fares I really didn't know what was going through my mind at the time.

Lol took me a few mins but I see what you did there!.

Hi This trip we stayed at our normal joint on Soi 1, the Sabai Wing. Can't really fault the Wing, staff speak good english, they also don't permanently have their hands out for tips, the rooms are clean (but could do with a lick of paint), spacious and the pool area (of which you have 3 choices - including the ones in the Lodge) is kept clean, and all in all it represents fair value at 1150 Baht per night for a pool view room. Air con in the room is ok, and they do service them regularly as the first thing I always do is remove the mesh from behind the plastic cover and clean it in the shower. When I went to clean the one in my room it was obvious it had been recently done. Anyway, I didn't get any pics of the Hotel because the ones on the website are good enough and accurate. What I did notice was the ongoing construction along Soi 1. Over the past few years a couple of new Hotels have sprung up, although there are still some large plots of land still occupied by buildings which seem to be just waiting for a purchaser to come along and throw some Chinese Yuan at it. A couple are for sale, one seems to have had ongoing construction for the last 4 years and generally the whole Soi is beginning to resemble a building site. This is going on dead opposite the hotel entrance, a lot of labourers sleep on site and initially I was a bit concerned but there is always someone sat outside the entrance of the Wing just in case. Further down the road on the left, just after a seemingly unoccupied Thai style house is this Indian restaurant place which used to cater for tourists. It was undergoing renovation last year and they don't seem to have got much further with it. Now all 3 of these buildings that follow in the pics are next to each other on the left as you walk down toward Beach road. If they were cleared it would give rise to a massive plot of land and probably a massive hotel as well. Again, a bit futher on down on the left hand side is this abandoned Karaoke place. It sits on a fairly large plot of land but is currently occupied by a few Thai families it would seem. Judging by the amount of empty bottles littering the place I would think that they tend to enjoy a party. Anyone know the history of this place? Just up from the Karaoke joint is this abandoned building. I might be wrong in saying it was a Temple of some sort, maybe some Expat BM's could shed some light on it?. either way it has been abandoned for a good 5 or 6 years now. I've got pics of it from back in 2011 and it looks no different then than it does now. On the opposite side of the road is yet another abandoned building which seems to have had some work done, but soon stopped. Any history or knowledge about it would be appreciated. Since last year it has had some corrogated iron put around the entrance, and they're always burning some very noxious stuff there. again, a few people seem to have adopted it as their temporary home be it for security purposes or just because they can... Onto Beach road at the end of Soi 1 we see the normal chaos ... and for good measure... Here's the reason why:

Hi Chris On one hand 450 ackers one way biz upgrade seems tempting, but looking at it another way, it's also the thick end of 500 quid which might be better out to use elsewhere. As regards being worth it?, well, it certainly seems cheap on the face of it , business class tickets are normally 3 to 4 times that of econ fares. It might be worth working out the finer details, or do a search on the website to see how much a 1 way biz ticket is and how much you're saving. Your last point is interesting, and I'd be asking myself if it warrants or justifies effectively spending the cost of another return flight to upgrade one way on this occasion , bearing in mind that very often the outward flight to LOS is normally much better than the homeward (or UK bound ) one is!.

Noticed in town more changers are asking for passports or ID, but I've found the pic on my mobile is ok, some don't care and others are pretty anal about it. Kasikorn in Big c insist upon the original, photo or a copy is not acceptable, despite having been an account holder in the past, I couldn't reopen it. 51.2 at most changers, was 50.08 yesterday at Kasikorn kiosk opposite Soi1.

Just been on the receiving end of a fearsome bollocking from Mrs Butch. Apparently sending pics of myself by the pool drinking beer is not on, especially when she's shitting herself while a typhoon is hitting the village.

Streeteats is right, but if you can't source a small steel box then get a length of wire from a hardware store and either make the loops in each end yourself using a couple of small wire loop shackles, then get a good padlock and wrap it around your case and onto something fixed into the ground. Never, ever trust in room safes anywhere (have a look on youtube as to how to open them) and don't, under any circumstances trust reception staff / hotel safety boxes whatsoever while in the RP.

Just spent 2 hours working on my classic car. Dinner was a chicken breast marinated in Nando's spicy sauce. Now got to do the usual Saturday night heaps of invoices while listening to an album of choice, which tonight is : Roger Daltrey and Wilko Johnson's "going back home". Grazel when you heading out mate?.

Damn you Evil and your infernal (excellent) reviews and links! I'm going to be coming home 2 stone heavier after our trip to the USA now.

Fucking typical, we're going to be 38000 foot up in the sky while this is showing. I'm now getting it in the neck from Mrs Butch for being such an idiot.