Evil Penevil

I sure don't eat them, but a certain Thai girl loves them. I had one raw oyster in Bangkok in 2005 and got very ill, although it could have have been something else that gave me the food poisoning. Since then, I haven't touched a raw oyster anywhere in Thailand. Evil

An update from Marine Seafood last night. Not much that I need to say, the pics pretty well speak for themselves. Evil

Sizzler isn't the type of restaurant in which I really want to eat in Pattaya. In fact, it wouldn't even rank in my top 100 choices. Not that there's anything wrong with it - I just stopped eating in American-style chain steakhouses many years ago and I find no reason to start again in Pattaya with its wide variety of restaurants. However, a certain young lady I know likes it and really wanted to go there. I'd vetoed her choice of Sizzler on several earlier occasions, so I thought I could give into her for once. It wasn't a bad meal, but certainly wasn't a memorable one. It was roughly the same as I remember from the U.S. 25 years ago, although there were some clear nods to Thai preferences, both among the main dishes and at the salad bar. While Sizzler originated in the U.S., the restaurants in Thailand are under the control of an Australian company. I'm not sure if the 40 branches are franchised to local operators, corporate owned or a combination of the two. There are 40 Sizzlers spread the length and breadth of Thailand. The one we ate in is on the 6th floor of the Central Festival Mall. There's also another Pattaya branch in the Royal Garden Plaza as well as in Choburi, Rayong and Sriracha. The two young ladies with me split an order of sirloin strip with mushroom sauce: while I had the grilled beef sirloin: We all shared a plate of the sesame shrimp as a starter: along with servings from the salad bar: It tasted fine. The beef was imported from Australia and very tender. It was cooked as ordered. Mine was medium rare, the girls' beef was medium and you could see the correct difference in pinkness between the two orders. The salad bar comes at no extra with every entre ordered. It's extensive and kept well stocked. Besides all the salad variations and ingredients you can imagine, it includes soup, pasta and fresh fruit. Because you can go back as many times as you like, the salad bar is hugely popular with the Russians. I was going to take a pic of the salad bar, but that proved impossible because of all the backs in the way. Don't stand too long in one spot at the salad bar or you're sure to get body-checked. The main dishes weren't cheap and the portions were small. However, if for health reasons you're trying to cut down on red meat and fill up on salad, it's not a bad way to go. I forgot to note the price of each dish, but the total bill came to roughly 1,500 baht, including bottomless soft drinks. When you consider the all-you-can-eat salad bar, you can consume a lot of food for the money. And if you stay away from the imported steaks, there are plenty of main dishes under 300 baht (chicken, pork, fish, chopped steak) that give great value as the salad bar is still included. There are also numerous special offers you can read about here: http://www.sizzler.co.th/en/promotion_frequency_menu.php. An even better deal is a lunch special for 175 or 199 baht that includes the salad bar. Would I go back to Sizzler? Maybe for the lunch special, but not for dinner unless I'm with someone who really wants to eat there. In terms of steak and steak alone, there are better options (Beefeater or My Way) within a few minutes' walk of Central Festival. Normally when I eat steak I don't bother about starters and just concentrate on the beef and whatever sides come with it. But if an all-you-can-eat salad bar is a big attraction to you or someone with you, then Sizzler can fit the bill. Evil

Depends on what you mean by "romantic." The Western concept of romantic dining often means candle-lit tables and settings with fancy plates, napkins and silverware, whereas people in Asia much prefer bright lighting and don't care that much about settings. But a lot of Thai girls do enjoy sunset beach-side dining and there are dozens of restaurants that give you the opportunity to eat as you watch the sun go down. You have Mum Aroi and Pupen at opposite ends of the greater Pattaya map and a whole lot in between. If money is not a big consideration, Infiniti at the Sheraton has great views and surroundings for a romantic meal. Even some of the waterside seafood restaurants on WS offer great views. Another option would be the "high up" restaurants and bars at the Pattaya Hilton. On the 34th floor you have Horizon (very expensive), while Edge on the 16th and Shore on the 14th are less expensive. A pic from Hilton's Web site of Edge: And the lobby leading to Edge: Evil

That was indeed part of it. I'd been told that while the farang food at Sailor should be avoided, the Thai food was decent enough. I planned on trying it eventually, but what prompted me into actionwas a post on another board slamming PBG. That poster, methinks also well known on this board but under a different handle, claimed the food at PBG was three times as expensive as everywhere else. When this was disputed (not by me, by another poster), he replied that fried noodles with squid at PBG cost 150 baht and only 30 baht at Sailor. I decided to compare what you got for your money at each. Not only was the portion at PBG much larger, but it also tasted much, much better. And then there's location, location, location. Here's the views when you eat at PBG: Here's what you see at Sailor (and I've chosen the more scenic views, you can see other pics from Sailor earlier in this thread. This old fellow had dozed off in a corner of the restaurant. Be thankful I blurred his face. Him drooling wasn't an appetizing sight. I wouldn't have gone to these lengths if I hadn't been challenged so heavily. No question Sailor is a cheap restaurant- good, no way. Evil

The prices at Pupen are reasonable for the meal you get. It's "big ticket" items like crab and rock lobster that have the heaviest effect, but that's true for any restaurant in Pattaya. Once, when we arrived very late at Pupen, crab and other expensive items had already been sold out. We had a steamed fish and four other dishes among three people. The total bill then, including drinks, was just under 1,000 baht. One thing that impresses me most about Pupen, Mum Aroi and similar restaurants is that most of the guests are Thais and other Asians, although Russians are indeed showing up more and more. The prevalence of Thai customers indicates both the food and prices are good. Most hole-in-the-whole Thai restaurants don't offer whole fresh crab as it's too expensive an ingredient, plus it goes bad quickly if not kept alive or on ice. Once for a special dinner for my then-TGF's family, we asked the woman who had a six-table restaurant near my condo if she could prepare crab for us. She could, but I had to give her the money in advance to buy the crab. The price she charged for the dish on the table wasn't much different than you'd have paid at Pupen. I imagine it was more expensive per kilo for her to buy two kilograms of crab at the market than Pupen's cost per kilo when buying 100 kilos of crab directly off the fishing boat. And it also depends on whether you're intending to have a dining experience or just filling your belly. There's a difference between eating as cheaply as possible and eating as well as possible at a reasonable price. Evil

I don't think the regular baht buses run to Pupen, but I'm not sure where exactly on Jomtien Beach Road the final stop is. Probably you could give the driver some extra money to take you the final stretch. Usually there is a baht bus waiting outside Pupen that you can charter to get back to Pattaya. One night, when we'd gotten there late, there weren't any baht buses when we'd chek binned. We walked about 20 minutes north along Jomtien Beach Road until we could flag down a regular BB. Evl

Busloads of Thai, other Asian and Russian tourists probably have the most to do with Pupen being full on occasion. The two giant buses I wrote about in my update disgorged a total of about 150 people. Even without the tour buses it can get pretty busy on weekends and Thai holidays. I heard it meant "live crab." The story was that back in the earliest days, when Pupen consisted of two or three fold-away tables, the old man who did the cooking kept the crabs alive in baskets in the sea. He'd haul in a basket as needed. Evil

An update on Pupen: I've been there a number of times since the OP, but the opportunity to experience a sunset didn't present itself until yesterday. It wasn't a particularly impressive sunset, but certainly a nice backdrop to a good meal. We arrived at 6:00 p.m., so there was no problem in getting a seaside table. Catching the sunset: Pupen itself was much like always. It's a good idea to get there earlier rather than later. After we'd ordered, we watched five tour buses arrive over the course of the next 90 minutes, including two giant double-decker coaches full of Thais. Arrive at Pupen at 8.30 p.m. or later and a lot of best items including crab, may have already been sold out. Here's what we ordered for a table of five: Grilled squid, one of my favorites: Tom yum goong (hot and spicy shrimp soup): Crab, fresh, succulent and very tasty: Sweet-and-sour whole fish: Prawns steamed in salt: A coconut-based seafood stew: Pork and fish ball soup: Grilled whole fish: The total cost for five people, including drinks, was 3,500 baht. About 2,800 was for the food, 600 for drinks and a 100-baht tip. The food is always good at Pupen, but to beat the tour groups, get there before 6.00 p.m. It was interesting to see the carts selling mango and sticky rice as well as dried squid outside Pupen. They seemed to be doing quite a business. Evil

I had reason to revisit the Sailor Restaurant last week to try one dish in particular: the squid with "fat" noodles for 30 baht. Here's what I got: It was a small portion, but one mouthful was enough to tell me I wouldn't eat another bite. The four pieces of squid were like chewing on a rubber band. The vegetables were wilted and soggy, as though they had been soaking in hot liquid for a long time then re-warmed in a wok. The whole portion was very oily and had an extremely salty taste. Clearly, it had been doused with nam pla (fish sauce) once too often. By comparison, here's what I got at Pattaya Beer Garden for 150 baht: The price was five times higher, but the portion was three or four times that at Sailor and tasted 10 times better. And this was the plate of squid with fat noodles I got for 100 baht at J Daeng on 2nd Road: The portion was a bit smaller than PBG, but J Daeng won by a narrow margin in the taste category. If that plate of squid with wide noodles was an indication, the Thai food at Sailor isn't much better than the farang food. Evil

The Hot Pot Buffet is located on the 6th floor of Central Festival Mall and is open between 11 a.m. and 10 p.m. ... The name pretty much says it all- it's a fixed price, all-you-can-eat Thai-style hot pot restaurant. You pick the ingredients you want from the buffet, then cook them in boiling broth in a hot pot at your table. There was a wide variety of meat, seafood and vegetables. ... The buffet includes a limited number of ingredients for Western-style salads as well as sushi and dim sum items; some prepared hot foods (pork, fish, fried rice, noodles, etc); and fresh fruit and dessert items. There are a dozen different sauces you can use to make your hot pot as spicy and pungent as you want. If you enjoy Thai hot pot but want some other dishes as well, Hot Pot Buffet isn't a bad choice. I think the hot pot at MK tastes better - probably due to higher quality raw ingredients - but there's nothing wrong with Hot Pot Buffet. And some will definitely appreciate having more choices included in the "all-in" price. For three of us, the buffet, drinks and service charge amounted to 1,012 baht. There were plenty of diners when we walked in at 5.30 p.m., but it wasn't crowded. I'd estimate that 80% of the guests were Thai or other Asians and 20% farang, mostly Russian. Evil

The two meals I had at the Sailor Restaurant were NOT good quality food. The first meal was bad, the second was inedible. I can't say anything about the Thai as I didn't try it. I certainly wasn't anticipating first-class service in a restaurant like the Sailor, but I did have expectations of decent meals. That's not what I got. I don't believe there's anyone who'd been served the plates of food I got would say it was good quality food. Maybe as part of a challenge on "Master Chef" a cook could deliberately make a dish that looks horrible but tastes good. However, in an everyday restaurant setting, that's not likely to happen. Cooks that take pride in their food wouldn't serve a dish that looked like that. The real point is, it wasn't goulash. It was stir-fry strips of tough beef in a tomato ketchup sauce. That's not goulash by any stretch of the imagination. At least in the homeless shelter in NYC, the cook used cubes of beef that had been stewed properly. I know very there are some dishes which don't photograph well, simply because they aren't attractive to look at. But that plate of food looked bad because it was bad. Evil

It's Gabor's way of saying he's incapable of writing a meaningful reply to the points I raised. Many times he simply doesn't understand what I've written. Evil

Because a restaurant is packed doesn't necessarily mean the food is good. Does anyone really think that food that looks like this tastes good? By looking at it, could anyone tell what this dish was supposed to be? I'm not sure which OP to whom you are referring - me, as the OP of the first post in the thread, or biggles, as per the quote above. But assuming it's me, what agenda could I possibly have? Evil

Fantastic pics, good job! Evil

Among the many intellectual traits you lack is a sense of perspective. I'm talking about the PAST 45 years (1969-2014), as I said in my post. Many U.S. military veterans believe P4P in Thailand reached its peak in 1969 and it's all been downhill since then. Others would say it peaked in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, or as you say, 2000. Generally the peak year coincides with the punter's first visit to Thailand. And both Pattaya and Thailand were famous as "sex tourist" destinations long before the Internet. The movie Emmmanuelle, which came out in 1974, was set in Bangkok and seen by 300 million people worldwide. All though the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, there were countless articles in North American and European men's magazines about the sex scene in Thailand. A Playboy article in the 1970s about the easiest places in the world for sex said, "if you can't get laid out of the coffee shop at the Grace Hotel, yo can't get laid anywhere on earth." There were also travel agencies in Europe and N. American that arranged cheap charter trips to Pattaya for hard-core mongers. I remember reading a brochure from one in the 1980s that advised prospective customers to "skip the temples of Bangkok and beaches of Phuket and head straight for the bars of Pattaya." The port calls of the U.S. Navy in the 1980s and 1990s helped cement Pattaya's reputation. Pictures of bar girls with "US Navy F*ck Me" painted on their buttocks were published in mainstream newspapers and magazines around the world. Pattaya's reputation didn't begin with your first trip. All those things you describe are side effects of Thailand's economic development. Basically, as the Thai economy advances, prices will rise and the cheap Charlies will be squeezed out more and more. One day we may see Gabor's name on the endangered species, the last of Pattaya's CCs, with habitat deprivation having driven him back to 42 sq m in Jomtien, alone with his bottle of Varinthip and a bowl of noodle soup. But I'm happy that I have advanced in your estimation from balloon chaser to farang LDOP deluxe. Perspective, Gabor, perspective. Since you weren't here before 2000, there are those who could say that you are the one that "knows nothing better." Evil

You've got it backwards, Gabor. The Thai economy has been advancing for the past 45 years, much to the benefit of the Thai people. Some mongers might want Thailand to revert to as wretched a state as in 1979, but no Thais would, especially not the girls who work in P4P. Evil

Yup, I remember a poster on a U.S. board moaning in 2002 about how much better Thailand had been for mongers in 1996-2001. He was urging everyone to visit other countries because the prices in BKK and Pattaya had increased and the girls no longer had good attitudes. During my first visit to Thailand in 1979, I remember guys wailing on the same note. One guy in the coffee shop of the Grace Hotel was angry because some of the girls were expecting cash payment, whereas in the past they had been content with a meal and a bed for the night. Evil

I've found that the Multi Quote button works on IE (11) but not the Quote function. So even if you're quoting only one post, try using the Multi Quote. I quoted the above post from MM that way using IE (11) on Windows 8. Not a problem for me in any case, as I don't usually use IE as my browser. Evil

I invited three of the FLB hostesses and two former hostesses (Nong and Bow) to Marine Seafood in the wee hours for a "last supper." Again, fast batch processing and low resolution so the quality of the photos is bad. Evil

Marine is an full-scale open-air restaurant and I wasn't any way suggesting it was a street eatery, aka pop-up restaurant. They are restaurants that don't have permanent facilities, but set up on the street or sidewalk, usually at night. One of my favorites is Govit Seafood that sets up on Soi 15 off Walking Street. We ate there last night. Stir-fried shrimp: Green curry with shrimp (kaeng khiao wan): And my beloved fried morning glory with garlic: There are a lot of street eateries on a stretch of Pattaya Tai at night.

Yes, I should have mentioned the hours. It opens at 5 p.m. and doesn't close until 5 a.m. or so. I have also eaten at the restaurant across the street from Marine Seafood, especially if I'm on my own. It's a good option, too. I should take some pics there as well. Evil

Marine Seafood on Soi Marine (or Soi Lucky Star) just off Walking Street has been in operation for over 20 years. It's still a decent seafood option in the WS area. It has a massive menu with just about every sort of seafood served up in dozens of variations. It's an open-air restaurant and certainly not a fancy place, but prices are reasonable compared with some of the water-front seafood restaurants on WS. I've had many, many BGs ask to go Marine. The service staff is attentive and the food came quickly. We had to wait a minute or two for the tiger prawns to cool down as they'd come straight from the barbecue. Standard disclaimer: I am aware there are better places to have seafood in Pattaya and that you can get tasty seafood dishes cheaper at some of the street eateries, but this review is about Marine Seafood. EDIT IN to add reference to Soi Lucky Star. Evil Some pics of the food from two meals this week: One of the young ladies with whom I ate last night had a cold and ordered tom yum thale (spicy mixed seafood hot and sour soup). Not only did it taste delicious, very light and fresh, but the herbs and spices in the soup are supposed to be good for colds. It sure cleared my sinuses! An even spicier squid dish: The barbecued tiger prawns were also good and the dipping sauce was again spicy, too spicy for me. Last night's portion: And a from a few days ago: The fried chicken wings were certainly tasty: I don't eat oysters in Thailand, but girls sure enjoyed them: Sweet and sour shrimp Thai style: Spicy seafood salad: Stir-fried shrimp with mushrooms: One of my favorites, fried morning glory:

I'll post some pics of her in a different thread; I'm planning to do a report on a recent trip with her to Chiang Rai. Also some pics of her in the Oriental Residence thread. And pics of her in the various "donation visit" threads. Evil