Evil Penevil

His daughter didn't witness the actual "road rage" incident, but she did see him get punched out by the Thai guy. That must have been traumatic indeed. She's the only one for whom I feel sorry. The Brit and the Thai deserve whatever they get. I have relatives in LE in the U.S. and the U.K. and I shared the videos with them. On both sides of the Atlantic, they were amazed that the Thai cops let the two parties get close enough that one could punch the other. They said it's Policing 101 to keep them apart. The U.S.side was also amazed the Thai guy wasn't immediately put in cuffs. In t

Nothing I write is ever fake news. I hope you'd dare to say that to my face and not just from behind a cloak of invisibility on the Internet. In the 1980s. the P4P scene in Pattaya was much, much smaller than it is today. There was only a small number of go go bars , MPs, etc. Even then. Cobra Gold had little to no effect, as the number of U.S. military who had shore leave in Pattaya wasn't that large. In the early 1980s, the visits by U.S. carrier groups had the potential to have an effect on the P4P scene, but girls were bussed in from Bangkok to handle the expected extra demand.

Discussions and reviews about Cajun food tend to get complicated because much of what is called "Cajun" really isn't. Cajun cuisine was hardly known outside of Louisiana until the 1980's when it was made famous by celebrity chefs like Paul Prudhomme and Emeril Lagasse. However, what they served up in their restaurants and on their TV shows wasn't traditional Cajun food but a fusion between Creole and Cajun styles plus plenty of their own original touches. For example, blackening is a cooking technique associated with Cajun cuisine thanks to Prudhomme and his "blackened redfish," a dis

For those of you who like to plan ahead. Keep in mind, Cobra Gold has no effect on prices or the availability of girls, nor have U.S. military personnel been very noticeable the past couple of years. Evil US, Thailand plan Cobra Gold 2018 19 Oct 2017 at 04:04 Thailand and the US will launch the next Cobra Gold drill, the biggest annual multilateral military exercise in the Asia-Pacific, on Feb 13-23 next year, with 29 participating countries and more than 12,000 military personnel, according to the Royal Thai Armed Forces (RTAF) headquarters. Cobra Gold 2018 will

The Gumbo House Cajun Seafood Restaurant & Bar is a small restaurant towards the south end of Jomtien Beach Road. I'll post a map at the end of the review. It's been open since May and is operated by an American man from Louisiana and his Thai wife. According to the Gumbo House Website: "We're from Louisiana and we brought our love of Louisiana's Cajun food and our Cajun recipes with us to Thailand. We're also Thai, so, we serve Thai food for those of us who can't go a day without our famous local delicacies." As the name proclaims, it is focus

That could well be the case. I noticed a lot of tour buses stop at the Mercure a little north of the Whisper and Neto. Some of those buses are filled with Chinese visitors, others with Japanese. I've eaten at the Mercure's buffets on a number of occasions and there a quite a few Russians as well. The changing demographics of Pattaya tourism! A lot of hotels would be empty without Asian and Russian guests. Evil

According to a post in response to my thread on another board, the price will soon go up to 1,800 baht. Another poster said he was quoted a price of 1,600 baht per night for March of next year. I have no idea if these statements are accurate, but 1,800 or even 1,600 bant isn't value for money. The Whisper is a good deal at 1,200 baht, but it is understandable if the price would increase to 1,400 or 1,500 baht in high season. Anything above that just isn't worth it. From what I could observe, nearly all of the other guests were Russians. The signs and notices at The Whisper are in Russia

The mid-sized Whisper Hotel opened in June. It's located on Soi 15 between 2nd Road and Soi Bukhao, next to The Avenue Residence. It's a convenient location for Walking Street, LK Metro, Beach Road and access to the baht buses running north or south. I stayed there one night recently while some repair work was done on the building in which I live. The Whisper is rock 'n roll themed, a failed condo project that has been converted to a hotel. I had a good room and no complaints about my short stay. My 40-sqm room cost 1,200 baht for the night including breakfast. I booked it through Exped

He is a Brit who lived in Australia a long time, apparently long enough to acquire an Australian accent. Evil

All photos below are from the Internet. The man himself: Chan Hong Meng, aka Hawker Chan, is a 51-year-old chef, food-stall owner and partner in an international restaurant chain based on his Singapore Chinatown food stall. He began training as a chef at age 18 and has over 30 years experience in making his signature dish, Hong Kong soy sauce chicken and rice. He learned how to make it while training in Hong Kong during the 1980s. Over the years, he changed and perfected the original recipe. In 2009, he opened his own food stall and it quickly became popular. Long befo

Last night I had the wonton soup and the soy sauce chicken with noodles. The wonton soup was good but unremarkable. It tasted the same as many bowls of wonton I've had in Chinese restaurants that don't ever dream about a star from their local newspaper, much less the Michelin Guide. At 130 baht, I thought it was overpriced for a bowl of generic broth, five filled wontons and a few greens. I then had the soy sauce chicken with noodles at 110 baht. The pieces of chicken seemed to have more white meat and fewer bones than last time round. No complaints there.

Hawker Chan is a recently opened Chinese roast meat (siu mei) restaurant on Beach Road at the front of the Royal Garden Plaza. It's part of an international chain spun off from Singapore's Liao Fun Hong Kong Soy Sauce Chicken Rice & Noodle, a small food stall in a Chinatown hawker center (open-air food court) that won a Michelin star in 2016. Although it bills itself as "The world first hawker to be awarded one Michelin star," Liao Fan HKSSCRN was actually one of two Singapore food stalls to get the prestigious culinary award in July of last year. It propelled the stall's che

Here's an incident that was discussed widely on some Thai TV channels, with the video clips played dozens of times. It happened on Soi Korphai in Pattaya. The background: A 77-year-old British man who was on his way to pick up his 8-year-old daughter from school got into a road-rage encounter with a 28-year-old Thai man. It's still unclear to me what touched off the incident, whether it was an actual fender-bender or something else. The British man said the Thai had tried to run him off the road. The video clip, apparently from a dash cam, picks up with the Brit getting a machete ou

I had one of the October specials at GASCO, the pizza steak hoagie. It was a sizeable sandwich, certainly enough for lunch or dinner. A generous amount of sliced steak had been fried with onions and sweet peppers, mixed with pizza sauce and topped with mozzarrella and a bit of cheddar cheese. The hoagie roll was fresh and close in texture to the hoagie rolls from Amoroso's Baking Company in Philadelphia. The traditional hoagie roll is light and airy on the inside, but with a thin, firm crust. The bread soaks up the juices from the filling while the crust acts as a

I was on my way home yesterday morning at 2:26 a.m. when the downpour started. I was only five minutes from my condo and probably would have made it if I hadn't stopped to buy a kebab. I took shelter under the awning of a closed MP to see if it would be over quickly. / After 20 minutes, it was still coming down in buckets and the soi on which I live was already beginning to flood, so I bought a "Hello Kitty" umbrella for 100 baht from a passing hawker. My camera case is waterproof so that wasn't a worry. I got soaked to the skin, but at least I could walk t

I wrote about Olala Restaurant on Soi 7 in the OP of this thread. It offers Norwegian and other European dishes (German, Austrian, Italian, etc) as well as Thai food. It became a favorite of mine for its simple yet tasty fare and reasonable prices. The exact timeline is blurry for me, but it closed for refurbishment and stayed closed for what struck me as a long time. I figured it had closed for good and stopped thinking about it as a dining option. However, it did reopen quite awhile ago. Sunday night I was passing by and stopped for a light meal. I didn't bother to take an outside s

Monthly special for October: I plan on eating the pizza hoagie inhouse and taking the tuna sub home with me. Evil

The airline was Cathay Pacific. I took the non-stop from JFK to Hong Kong, then connected to Bangkok. The HKG-BKK leg (with Cathay) was supposed to land at 10.45 am, but because takeoff had been delayed in Hong Kong, it landed a few minutes past 11.00 am. I have checked luggage on most flights into LOS because I bring back stuff I donate to orphanages and other charities. Many things are cheaper in the U.S. compared to LOS. Evil

More hassles and queues at Swampy and Don Mueang. You can read about it here: "Airports congested again as internet crashes, Thais battle long lines again at immigration (Please credit and share this article with others using this link: http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/transport/1333795/airports-congested-again-as-internet-crashes. n© Post Publishing PCL. All rights reserved.)" I landed at Swampy yesterday (Sept 29) at 11.03 am and was at the Premium Lane for immigration control at 11.15 am. The ordinary IC feeder queue filled the "snake" but didn't spill out into

You'll find the barbers at Old Fashioned take their time with every customer and do a careful job. This is mostly an advantage, but if you're in a hurry and need a quick trim and shave, you're better off mentioning it to the barber. My haircut and shave usually takes about 40 minutes, the "speedy" version about 25 minutes. Evil

Sloppy Joes, now that took me back to my elementary school cafeteria! They were always a favorite of school kids in the U.S. I wonder if they are still served as a school lunch? Sloppy Joes are a variation of the "loose meat" (aka "tavern") sandwich, which was ground beef served on a bun, basically a hamburger without the beef in patty form. According to legend, a chef named Joe in Souix City, Iowa, added tomato ketchup to the ground beef while it was cooking and the Sloppy Joe was born. It's supposedly still popular in restaurants in Iowa, but I can't recall seeing it on restaurant m

The Old Fashioned Barber Shop is a relatively new barber shop on Soi Bukhao and already has quite a following. I go for a shave a couple of times a week and it is always busy. Sometimes they'll tell me to come back in 30 minutes or an hour. Their customers mostly seem to be younger Thai and farang who want complicated hair styling and cuts, but a fair number are older farang as well. The barbers (two guys and girl) are in their 20s and they do really good haircuts and shaves. I got the best haircut I've had in Pattaya at Old Fashioned. It's located across the street

A lot of the discussion about chili dogs has to do with personal preference and to a degree, the semantic difference between the words "sauce" and "topping." Some chili dogs are topped with a beef-and-onion sauce that is flavored with chili powder, while others are topped with actual chili con carne that may or may not include beans. Chili burgers are also good eating. I like the one served at the Golf Club on LK Metro. Chili con carne has a complicated and much disputed history. You can read about it here: History and Legends of Chili. Evil

Yes, I was being ironic when I said pizza is American. However, many Italian chefs and food experts say that the version of pizza served in the U.S. from the earliest days (1890s) was so fundamentally different from the original Italian Neopolitan pizza that even back then it was more Italian-inspired than Italian food. The pizza of Naples was baked in wood-fired ovens and very sparsely topped, while the U.S. version was first baken in the coal-fired ovens of Italian bakeries and had a lot of topping. Coal-fired ovens are much hotter and resulted in a shorter baking time and a slight char o

There's no one right way to do a chili dog. Many regional variations exist, some with beans in the topping, others without. It's the same with chili con carne itself. A lot of Texans claim that authentic chili con carne doesn't contain beans or ground beef, but is made from chunks of beef and no beans. However, the version with pinto or black beans is just as authentic, as both stem from one-pot cowboy and wagon train cooking. Ground beef is a 20th century substitution. Although chili con carne is thought of as a Mexican dish because of the name, it's as American as violence and cher