16th August
The early morning discussion today is to let me know that there should be a ship in today and so there may be the opportunity of late work for A tonight. She says that she won't take it as I'm here, but I tell her that she should do whatever she would have done if I weren't here. The extra money is useful for her and it's not a great problem as tonight is Thursday and it's the FLB Bar Crawl.
I'd decided before I arrived in Pattaya that this was to be my 'out alone' night each week, however I have made a slight revision to this 'plan' and have decided that for now I'll miss any Soi 6 / Ban Chang outings.
So it's left that A will call me later and if she is going to be working late, she'll phone and let me know. There's no cooked breakfast for me this morning, but to be honest I'd prefer not to have a big meal first thing. A mug of lemon tea is sufficient and then A is off to work.
I catch up on reading my e-mails and send a few back to England, but I need to reconfigure my outbound SMTP server and I cannot locate the setting for AIS. I find that I can use the Vodafone mail server to my surprise, however I'm getting a number of DNS timeouts and it takes an age to get the mails sent. Also it is impossible to use Messenger as it keeps disconnecting after just a few seconds.
Instead of battling against this problem, I set off on todays constitutional which is to Carrefour on Pattaya Klang for a spot of lunch.
The walk to Pattaya Klang is shorter than that to Pattaya Tai, so tonight I shall walk to the intersection of Klang & Sukhumvit and get a baht bus heading in the direction of the town centre. I have no idea what route they take from there, but as long as I use less than 5 buses to get to Walking Street, it'll be cheaper than using a scooter.
Once in Carrefour, first I buy a copy of Pattaya Today to look through the classifieds and see if there are any secondhand PC's or bicycles for sale. (There aren't!) Then I make my way to the food hall where I buy a 100 baht voucher and eventually choose to have grilled pork and rice along with a large Coke to wash it down. A grand total of 45 spent against my card and the food is good if basic.
After eating, I come out of Carrefour and realise that the humidity has risen and the sky is beginning to darken, so it's a quick march back to the room and I get back about 10 minutes before the wind picks up and the heaven's open.
I manage to get connected on the PC and send out the last of the mails before the connection simply 'dies' again which is somewhat frustrating but I have to accept that TiT.
My plan is to get some chicken from the stall at the end of the road and bring that back to the room to have with some rice 'washed down' with a bottle of Chang. I get to the end of the Soi, but the only chicken remaining is wings. She points me off in the direction of Noi's, so I set off to find another vendor. There's a place just before Noi's where I get chicken, rice and chilli sauce for 30 baht. On the walk back, I also stop to get some fruit. A pineapple and a hand of bananas sets me back another 40 baht.
At 19:20, I set out on my trek to FLB. As I start walking down Pattaya Klang, I keep an eye out for a bus, but there are none to be found until I reach the intersection with 2nd Road. A 10 baht bus ride later and I'm at the top of Walking Street. A short walk later, I'm in the FLB and signing my boardname on the whiteboard at just turned 20:00.
I order a draught beer and say hello to several of the BM's in attendance. Aussiechic, BadBoy, Bruiser, Scumbag, Casper UK & Hairloss. The voting takes place and it's a landslide victory for Soi 3,4,5 as I suspected.
There's a decision made to pay a visit to NLD1 first as it's the reopening night and there are free drinks on offer, but when we enter, the place is packed so that idea is forgotten about. We head off to Marine Plaza and get a couple of taxi buses to take us to our first stop which is the bar complex on the corner of Soi 5 & 2nd Road. Before setting off, I had sent a text to Nok (of Trip 1 'fame') asking if she still worked at Lucky Bar on Soi 3 and whilst en-route I get a text "Who are you tell me" and then a call where I'm asked what my name is and who I am. I explain and I'm not convinced that she remembers me, but it turns out that she does indeed still work at Lucky Bar, but she's not at work tonight.
We then arrive at our destination and we spread out through the various bars in the complex. Adam has the task of visiting each bar to get pictures taken. There are several good looking girls about and it's a pleasant way to start the crawl.
Next stop is a bar that I rate as one of the smartest in Pattaya. U Too ( http://www.u-too-bar.com/ ) is an open fronted beer bar which has been furnished to a high standard and the girls are extremely well presented. As myself and BM Scumbag make our way to the bar, we pass another bar where we see BM Dimples sitting having a drink and he tells us that he's off to the party at Heaven's Above tonight.
We enter U Too and head to the seating at the front of the bar and we are shown to seats by a service girl I remember from a crawl in February, however I still find it amusing seeing her name badge. "Oil Service"
I get chatting with a couple of BM's that shall not be named as their ftriends and families do not know that they are in Pattaya. The girls here are not pushy and it is necessary to make the first move if you wish to spend some time with one, but there is some very beautiful eye candy on display and with drinks prices similar to the local bar beers, this place really takes some beating.
It's soon time to move on again and this time it's another bar complex with five or six bars for the crawl members to spread out in. I end up with MM, Aussiechic & Badboy in the Sanuk Bar at the far end of the complex where I play the dice game with one of bar ladies. She wins twice during the time that we are playing and I've bought her a couple of LD's, so my checkbin here is 290 baht including the tip.
Time to move on yet again and this time it's to the bar complex situated at the 2nd Road end of Soi 3. We start in Atlantic Bar which I'm told used to be one of the busiest bars in Pattaya, but my last couple of visits suggest that its time may have passed and although there are a few pretty girls working, there is little 'atmosphere'.
After a short stay, we move to the other end of the complex and have a drink in The Cherry Bar (not the Soi 8 Cherry Bar). At this point the two 'anonymous BM's' come over and say their goodbyes as they have decided to return to U Too bar (and I can fully understand why :D). Hammer then announces that we are to visit one more bar complex and it's to be the one at the other end of Soi 3 containing Lucky Bar.
As we arrive, the owner recognises me and tells me that Nok is not working today and I tell her that I know as I have spoken to her on the phone She treats myself and Hammer to a tequila and the remaining members of the crawl have disbursed through the bar complex and from the looks of things, I strongly suspect that a few barfines were negotiated. There is all sorts going on and I am at a loss to understand the rules in operation during a pool game that I think involved BM hairloss at the bar next to Lucky Bar.
The crawl is now over and myself and Casper UK make our way to the end of the Soi to catch a bus back to town. As he has his motorbike parked just off Walking Street and he also lives on 'the Darkside', he kindly offers me a lift home and at just after 01:00 I am home. I call A to see how she is doing and she says that she will be home in a few hours. It's too long for me to wait and I just grab a quick shower and check the cost of the night before heading off for some much needed sleep.
Costs for the past two days have been :
Mains adapter from Big C : 99 baht
Can of Coke from Big C : 12 baht
Transcend USB stick : 250 baht
Newspaper : 25 baht
Carrefour Food Hall : 100 baht (only 45 baht used)
Evening meal : 70 baht
Baht Bus : 10 baht
Bar crawl costs : 790 baht
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