Saturday 13 October 2007

Trip 4 - Day 65

October 13th

I’m awoken at 04:30 by A returning to bed and she just puts her finger on my lips indicating that I shouldn’t say anything. She cuddles up to me and whilst I know that I haven’t been forgiven, it seems that she doesn’t want to simply finish things at the present time.

When we finally awake, I ask her to telephone the landlady to get the air con sorted out. The bad news is that air con is not covered under the tenancy it seems. If we want it repaired, it’s “Up to us”, but we are given the number of a local service company and A gives them a call.

I'm running short of cash, and as it's a Saturday, the local bank isn't open, so I make a trip to Tukcom where the banks are open and cash £200 of Travellers Cheques.

The air con people arrive at 16:30 and it seems that the switching unit in the outside unit has packed up, so that’s 800 baht for the part and the clearing of the filters. Then they check the Freon levels and it seems that where it should be registering as 50 ‘somethings’, it’s only 15 ‘somethings’, so a gas recharge is required which costs an additional 900 baht. The end result is that the system works properly now and the bedroom is cooled within a matter of minutes.

We have decided that we shall eat a buffet ‘at home’ tonight, as A cannot really relax if we go out due to needing to keep an eye on Phil all the time, so A heads off to the market for all the ingredients. When she returns, we spend the next hour cutting up various bits of ‘green stuff’ that I cannot name and slicing ‘pig’ and chicken into thin slices that can be cooked with ease.

To get the charcoal burner started, A simply ‘cooks’ a few large chunks on the gas burner in the kitchen and then transfers them to the clay pot. At this point, the rain starts once again, but rather than postponing our meal, the charcoal burner is simply brought indoors and we have an indoor barbecue and I'm certainly 'Im' (full) at the end of it.

The rain continues and I decide that with a combination of this and the domestic ‘situation’, it’s probably best if I don’t go out to Valleyboy’s party at Cherry Bar tonight, so simply send a text to Hammer askinhg him to pass on my best wishes to the 'happy couple'. I also send a text to a few other guys that I know are having a get together in London tonight.

After we’ve eaten, we decide that we’ll have an early night ourselves and even though it's only 21:30, we retire to our cool bedroom which we then proceed to warm up.


Expenditure :

Air Con Repair : 1700 baht
Food for buffet : 195 baht
Coke & Ice : 60 baht

Friday 12 October 2007

Trip 4 - Day 64

October 12th


‘NEVER carry on a telephone conversation with a Thai Girl when you can’t fully understand EXACTLY what she’s asking and you’re suffering from a hangover’
After leaving Noi’s bar, I stop off at 7/11 to get a phone top up and more essentially a bottle of Red Bull. As I’m up and dressed, I don’t stay at home, but simply grab the laptop and head off to Kev’s place. The plan is to get the TR posted, update the Blogger site with some more Trip 1 content, have a swim and then head back home at around 17:00 in time to meet A.

As with just about all Pattaya ‘plans’, this one is also doomed. A calls me at 13:00 and the line is poor and I can hardly hear her. I’m unsure what she’s saying but she then shouts down the phone “You lie” and hangs up. A combination of a guilty conscience and a hangover do little to alleviate my worries, so I call her back and she says “I know you not at home”.

I make the assumption (wrongly as it turns out) that she somehow knows that I didn’t get home last night, so tell her that I was ‘mau’ last night and I sleep in bar. More shouting and she hangs up again, so I call her back and she says that she knows I’m not at home as she is there now. Of course then she seizes on the ‘sleep at bar’ comment and won’t let it go.

(Whilst I’ll avoid telling the truth sometimes, I try not to actually lie and when A starts asking very direct questions, she gets to find out that I ‘go wid lady’ last night.)

I tell her that I’ll be home in 10 minutes and we can talk.

The talk was not the most pleasurable experience of this journey to Pattaya, however it did ensure that a number of issues that hadn’t been discussed openly in the past were brought in to the open. I’m not going to go through them all here, but suffice to say we get more resolved than we did from our ‘chat’ at the weekend. The end result is that I am left in no doubt that I am NOT free to butterfly as had been intimated, however A also understands a little more why I was not ‘happy’ and I guess we both need to decide what we want to do.

The rest of the day is spent quietly and I’m unsure as to where we go from here, so I’m not pushing anything and will simply see how things develop.

That night, we go to bed early and discover that the air conditioning unit has packed up. The night is hot and sticky, so does little to help tempers and eventually A says that she cannot sleep, so she goes and shares Phil’s room (he has the use of the fan).

Expenditure :

Phone top up : 100 baht
Red Bull : 10 baht
Stall food : 95 baht
Coke & Ice : 60 baht

Thursday 11 October 2007

Trip 4 - Day 63

October 11th

The day is spent at Kev’s place updating the Blogger site. First problem to resolve is why the Google ads aren’t displaying and after spending a while trying to determine the fault, I simply remove all traces and start again from scratch. It’s not a major problem, but it takes time and then I start adding some ‘back content’. It’s strange going back to Trip 1 – Day 1 and reading the early reports and remembering those first days in Pattaya.

As I don’t have the source pictures on my PC here, I have to download them from the report; upload them to Flickr and then post the new URL location. Again it’s a time consuming task, but it needs to be done, so I just get on with it. For a bit of fun, I also include a few of my Youtube montages on the site and it is finally beginning to take shape.

By 17:30, I finally decide to call it a day and return home to SSS in readiness for the bar crawl tonight. I am in a good mood today and I am really looking forward to a good night out. Once I’m ready, there’s still time to wait before leaving for the FLB, si I decide to have a couple of quick beers at Noi’s Bar first.

I sit with Kolobos & Chef and I’m introduced to a ‘banned’ member from one of the Pattaya forums. It seems that he was considered to be a ‘troll’ and got banned after just 1 post. His board name was SusanRichardson and I remember the discussion that took place about him / her at the time. I’m joined by Na, but I manage to resist the temptation to buy her a drink. (I do get a couple of pictures of her though, however I cannot post them at the moment as I have sort of ‘mislaid’ my camera.)

I get a scooter to the end of Soi 15 for 50 baht and make my way down Walking Street to the FLB. I am too late for the voting and we are to ‘do’ Walking Street this week. First stop is Peppermint and I realise that this is a GoGo that I’ve never been to before. I am very pleasantly surprised it has to be said with several very pretty girls dancing and being more enthusiastic than many of their ‘sisters’ in the other GoGo bars. I sit with Hairloss & Casper UK and find that I’m actually enjoying a GoGo and not just thinking ‘same same’.

Next stop is Champion GoGo which I visited just once before, but I find myself chatting with another BM rather than paying great attention to the girls. There’s no time to get too settled though as we are on a schedule and the next venue is Dollhouse and then Coyotee. The beers are having the desired affect now and things are starting to get pretty hazy, however I do remember moving on to the Simon complex at the bottom of Walking Street and I think this is where the crawl finished (well I was finished anyway).

For some bizarre reason, on the scooter home, I obviously decided that I was just going to ‘go for it’ tonight and instead of returning home, I end up back at Noi’s Bar once again. Quite what I got up to there, I am not sure, but I do remember somebody knocking on the door and demanding 300 baht to avail myself of a bed for the night (Oops), which I fortunate to share with a lovely Cambodian lady that has only been working at the bar for a few days. She speaks no English, but is extremely loving. (I remember seeing her for the first time on Tuesday night when she was sitting with Mulphy.)

I awake to find this lovely curled up around me and if I failed to ‘do the deed’ last night, I sure as hell made up for it this morning with a new Pattaya ‘first’ recorded for me. After the post session shower, it’s time to finally go home. It’s quite a strange experience having the bar shutter unlocked in order to let me out at 09:15 in the morning, but hey “This is Pattaya” and strange is normal here.

I check my phone and find that I’ve got a text from Casper UK which he sent at 00:25 last night “I’ve got your camera”. (I didn’t even realise that I hadn’t got it)

Expenditure :

Scooter : 130 baht
Room & Tip : 1500 baht
Crawl : 2100 baht (process of backward counting)

(An expensive night maybe, but a bloody good one!)

Wednesday 10 October 2007

Trip 4 - Day 62

October 10th

I awake and when I look outside, the Soi is awash. The rain is relentless and I decide that there is no way I’m going anywhere whilst the weather is like this.

I spend the day sitting out the front listening to the rain pattering on the roof and as I have food in the fridge as well as Coke & Beer, I just settle down to spend the day reading and breaking off to cook up a chicken curry and for several cups of tea. Around 17:00, I speak to A who says that she misses me and I tell her that I am missing her as well, but she says that she needs to earn money.

She asks me to pass a message on to Tai at Cherry Bar, but I tell her that I won’t be going unless the rain eases up as Hammer is not taking a day off this week due to having taken 5 nights off last week and I’m not required to be on ‘duty’.

The rains persists through the early evening, so I just stick on a DVD and have a single bottle of Chang at home, followed by an early night.

Expenditure :

0 baht

Tuesday 9 October 2007

Trip 4 - Day 61

October 9th

A gets an early morning call from Mama to inform her that it’s raining heavily in Sri Racha, so A loads up with clothes for her and Phil and they don coats before they head off. The sky in Pattaya is still clear, so I decide that I’ll get an early load of washing done.

I then prepare my ‘tea & toast’ breakfast and see that there’s not a lot in the fridge at the moment, so I decide that a trip to Carrefour to stock up is necessary. It’s still before 09:00 though, so I have to wait as the store will not be open yet. I send a text to Casper UK to see whether he’ll be at Noi’s tonight for the Curry Night. He confirms that he will, so it’s agreed that I’ll meet him for a drink and to find out about his recent Cambodia trip at around 20:00.

I get the washing done and hung out to dry and then make the short trip to Carrefour where I spend 406.50 baht, however this does include buying black sacks and insect killer as well as foodstuffs. As I make my way home, it starts to rain and I just manage to get the washing in before there’s a 5 minute deluge.

After my success with the chicken drumsticks the other day, I’d bought another packet of tempura batter, so my late afternoon meal is strips of chicken breast in batter and breadcrumbs accompanied by a salad of lettuce, tomato, cucumber and onion. (My attempt at Onion Rings was not a success).

I then spend a couple of hours reading before getting ready to go out to Noi’s Bar. When I get there, it’s a good turnout with Mulphy, MM, Helicopter, Bob (of Bob’s B-B-Q), Kolobos (and many others) there. No Casper UK though. Timekeeping in Thailand is nobody’s great strength though, so I just grab a seat and a Chang (my first alcohol since Friday night) and join in the chit chat around the table. Several guys comment that the curry tonight is one of Chef’s best and then there’s a discussion about which have worked ‘best’ and surprisingly the ‘mango’ curry seems to come out top.

I am now joined at the table by Na and this a very pleasant ‘diversion’. I end up spending quite a time chatting with her and I discover that it’s her birthday next Wednesday (17th) which is the day before the crawl will ‘hit’ the darkside. She tells me that she’ll be 19 which surprises me as she’d previously told me that she was older. When questioned, she says that she thinks I like ‘”older lady, so I tell you I older”, but because she now knows that I am living with a girlfriend she can “tell you truth” (You really can’t help but love these girls).

She says that she knows I cannot pay barfine for her (however I am sorely tempted) but says that maybe when she is older it will be okay. I ask her how much older and she says that Christmas will be fine.

On the way home, I stop at the corner store and buy 3 bottles of beer for the fridge (I’ve had sufficient for tonight).


Expenditure :

Mama Allowance : 500 baht
Carrefour : 406.50 baht
Bottles of Beer : 100 baht
Noi’s Bar : 600 baht

Monday 8 October 2007

Trip 4 - Day 60

October 8th

Monday morning and it’s an early awakening as A is off to work, however I also get an early start as I need to get my TR written and uploaded along with a pictorial report on my week at Cherry Bar, so I head off to Kev’s place and when I get there, I realise that I’ve left the keys on the desk at home.

There’s no alternative but to return and whilst the distance isn’t far, it one of those things that just niggles at me and sets me in a bad mood.

On the return, I stop off to fill up with petrol as with my luck today, I’d run out in the back of beyond.

The day passes with some good progress made on the Blogger site and replying to a few comments and before I know it, it’s 17:00 and I need to head back to meet A when she gets in.

She gets Phil showered and sorted out then asks me what I want to eat. I say that I’d like something similar to the pork wontons that she’d made previously. She goes out and returns just 5 minutes later with exactly what I wanted and she has got red pork and rice for herself and Phil.

I realise that I’d forgotten to replenish the Coke supply, so a quick trip to the store on the corner rectifies this. We all then eat and settle down to watch TV, however after a while, the Thai TV bores me and I pick up my book. A then asks me if it’s okay for her to work a couple of late nights and stay in Sri Racha. It’s not really ‘up to me’ as far as I’m concerned, but as she’s suffering with the monthly ‘cramps’ and there’s the family death, she’s not the best of company at the moment and I simply agree.


Expenditure :

Petrol : 135 baht
Coke : 50 baht

Cherry Bar - October 1st / October 5th 2007

A collection of pics from the Cherry Bar
1st - 5th October 2007































The roof leaked and the first thing to be rescued? The Ladydrink & Barfine vouchers!






Hammer : "I've only got two ladyboys at Cherry Bar" (Are you sure?)





'Cherry Bar' - A suitable barfine for everyone!



One for DiscoCol


Pun does take a good photograph


The 'Cutie from next door' - Kwan

Sunday 7 October 2007

Trip 4 - Day 59

October 7th

We are awoken by the constant ringing of A’s phone. It seems that there is a family ‘crisis’ and she has to go to Sri Racha today. I ask what the problem is and she says that there has been an accident and she has to go to ‘opital’ but “if you no want me go, I stay here with you”. I say that if it’s important then off course she must go, but if she is going to be late back then she should call me. She agrees that if she’s going to back after 18:00, she will call to let me know and with that, she showers and her and Phil disappear off.

I spend a very lazy Sunday doing sweet F.A. until A arrives home just after 17:00. She’s definitely not looking too good and it seems that an ‘Aunty’ (I make little progress in determining the bloodline connection though) was returning from work at 03:00 in the morning on her scooter when she was hit by a car driven by a drunk Thai. Her 10 year old son was killed instantly and “They take Aunty to ‘opital’ for her to die there later”. It seems that she was only one Soi from home and the driver when apprehended didn’t know that he’d killed anyone. I’m told that she will be taken to Buddha on “Day 4 in the morning”, so I’m guessing that this means there will be a funeral on Thursday.

On top of this, A is now suffering a bit with her usual 4 weekly cycle and after having something to eat, she gets Phil to sleep and then heads off to bed herself.

Expenditure :

0 baht