Nightmarch 3 September 2003

[PattayaPete 530]

Daeng me if it ain’t a party: The connections of the Spicy Girls ogling den (Pattayaland Soi 1) are holding a birthday party for Daeng, partner Ewan’s long-suffering trouble and strife on Wednesday, 10 September. The fun kicks off around 7:00PM with a spit on a pig and other nosh, all of which can be washed down with copious amounts of booze. Balloon chasers stay in your cardboard boxes and kennels.

 

OK, and another one: Yet another trouble and strife will be celebrating her birthday, this time Malee, Denis The Menace’s better half, in the OK Corral (Soi Skaw Beach) on Thursday, 11 September. The festivities commence around 8:30PM with a free buffet.

 

More quality tourists need to be encouraged: One of the local newspapers reported an incident involving Chinese tourists who were happily engaged in watching a slap and tickle show in the north of Fun Town when members of Pattaya’s finest raided the place. The Chinese, who had apparently parted with 1,000 baht a head to watch the sort of proceedings that result in babies, took umbrage at the intrusion of the police and began to shout abuse and throw the odd object at the men in brown.

 

The fracas also spread to members of the media who had accompanied the police and were filming and photographing proceedings. It seems these quality tourists, the very types being feted and courted by the elected representatives in their Bangkok ivory towers, are very shy when it comes to posing for the camera. I suppose it would be bad feng shui if Mrs Me Ring Wong back in Whoflungdung spotted her precious My Dong Wong engaging in a little more cultural exchange than she expected.

 

Personally, I feel the biggest blight on the landscape is the north Asian ‘quality’ tourists. First, they arrive on pre-paid package tours (therefore the bulk of their spending has been done outside Thailand) and most get around the city in huge, diesel-belching tour buses that choke the city streets and add to the traffic snarls.

 

Second, when they are released for five minutes from their air-conditioned confinement, they wander like flocks of lobotomised geese through shopping malls and around the streets, rarely stopping to purchase much more than an ice cream. Many stallholders in places like Mike Department Store are contemptuous of them because they just don’t spend any money at the grass roots level, unlike poor quality tourists from places like Europe.

 

Third, they are unlikely to be repeat visitors, although I must admit the market is huge and practically inexhaustible.  About the only ‘quality’ I can discern is that they don’t complain about two-tiered pricing, traffic delays and poor roads. After the incident related above, perhaps tour operators will have to vet these tourists for quality.

 

An arresting development: I’m told that foreigners are being offered up to 5,000 baht to pose as customers in ogling dens and take secret happy snaps of dancing damsels flaunting their most comely assets in public so that waiting peelers can then pounce on the joint and cart the criminals away and close the offending establishment for 30 days or more.

 

What intrigues me is that most foreign visitors to Pattaya come from countries where it is possible involuntarily to view more female flesh on display on the beach and sometimes in the parks and gardens of their home cities and towns in the height of summer than in a play palace where entry is voluntary. As an expat Australian, the beaches of my hometown of Sydney are a great place to observe the fine contours of the female form, although the last time I wandered near Bondi beach I kept expecting Greenpeace volunteers to turn up and start trying to push many of the sun worshippers back into the sea in the mistaken belief they were beached whales.

 

I find it incredible that any foreigner would be willing to play the role of a Judas and engage in such perfidious conduct for a mere 30 pieces of silver.

 

No need to say ‘cheese’: Recently I wrote a piece concerning a Sierra Tango boozer in Soi 6 that had, and I quote, ‘allegedly installed hidden cameras in its upstairs hide-the-salami rooms. From what I was told, the lay-back-and-think-of-somtam girls are not aware they are being Eastman-ed: ‘smile, honey, it’s another Kodak moment.’ If they were, I doubt many of the gang would be keen to continue offering their horizontal folk dancing skills in the boozer.

 

‘Given the incredible advances in photographic technology, the chances are that this is not the only place in town operating in such a fashion. The question is whether the reason for installing such devices is to merely enjoy a vicarious thrill or two, or more sinister motives such as blackmailing people who wouldn’t like it known that they are playing away from home. It’s a long way from looking through the keyhole.’

 

The dine and dash establishment in question was Gang’s Pub and the connections of the joint (prominent businessman Tom Rossetti of the Pattaya Accommodation Guide/SKAL Club and his partner Wolfgang Munda) contacted me recently to vehemently deny that they would engage in such nefarious activities.

 

The original information came to me via a person known to both Tom and Wolfgang and who had been given a guided tour of the premises where, he claimed, he was taken into their office and shown the cameras in operation. They readily admit to having security cameras installed to view what’s happening outside their premises as well as a couple scanning the interior bar area. Hardly a hanging offence.  I can only assume that the person who made the original assertion was either (a) misled, or mistakenly believed the cameras were trained on the hide-the-salami rooms or ( had a hidden agenda aimed at damaging the business of Gang’s Pub and the principals involved for personal reasons.

 

Plenty of parking for the elephants: The Old Speckled Hen might sound like Scots-speak for some form of socially disreputable disease contracted in a house of ill repute, but in fact it’s a snazzy new boozer, noshery and sleeping den situated in Soi 9, off Jomtien Beach Road. Run by the personable and intelligent Elephant Man and Pon, whose Hash House Harrier name just happens to be ‘Old Speckled Hen’ (let me say she looks nothing like a freckled chook) and for whom the establishment is thus named, it’s a nice, quiet place to relax away from the madding crowd.

 

There are a couple of rooms to rent, and not by the hour either; the menu is basic, but there’s something for everyone, and there are no ladies looking to be taken out: this is a place to bring your wife or girlfriend (or both, if you can get away with it).  They open for business at 10:30AM and plug away until late and on any Sunday, you can bring your Isaan sweetheart in and she can gorge herself on somtam free of charge.

 

For soccer followers, during the broadcast of live English Premiership soccer matches, Singha, Chang and Carlsberg draught amber nectar is just 30 baht. But unfortunately the nectar after which the boozer is named is not yet available.

 

The Elephant Man, along with a number of like-minded souls, is attempting to establish a group of motorbike enthusiasts (all-inclusive, not just Harley aficionados) who want to go on excursions (sounds a bit like school) and forays into the countryside around Pattaya with their wives and or girlfriends. Anyone interested should wander down to the Old Speckled Hen and have a chat, just ask for the sad West Ham supporter.

 

The buffalo’s off: More often than not, truth is stranger than fiction. Most of us have joked about bargirls telling their gullible foreign boyfriends tales of woe involving accidents and illnesses to sundry family members and livestock, particularly the precious water buffalo. One man related the story of how his girlfriend had mentioned that her family buffalo was feeling poorly and she needed funds to get the vet in and fix the animal. Not being the type who came down in the last baht bus, he asked to go and check out the piteous quadruped for himself. Together they travelled back to her home village where the cud-chewing, methane gas emitting bovine was indeed looking down in the mouth.

 

Satisfied, he handed over a couple of thousand baht so that the buffalo doctor could restore the family’s pride and joy to full health.

 

My e-mail address is: nightmarch@hotmail.com

Author of Pattaya "Patpong on steroids"

No reproduction without specific reference to: nightmarch@hotmail.com

[leaford 0]

Just replying to move this up to the top.  8)

[flying__pig 0]

i know what you mean by the chinese,i spent time with them in golden beach.Those i met were communist party members,there to confirm there ideas about decadent westerners.They frequent massage parlours because they are private,but mantain their houlier than thou attitude in public.just my experience.