Sunday 22nd October 2006
(The journey and the arrival in Pattaya)
It’s 5 a.m. on a cold wet England morning and there’s a knock at the door. The cab has arrived and after the weeks of waiting I’m finally on my way. Get to the coach station and then start the journey to Heathrow Airport.
No problems on the first leg of the journey from Heathrow to Muscat, apart from the flight being full and there being too many young noisy children on board. This meant that I didn’t sleep, but I was so excited that sleep may not have been possible even on a quiet flight. The transfer at Muscat was scheduled to be forty minutes, but there was already a 1.5 hour delay being advertised. No problem, it’s not the end of the world.
We actually board the plane much sooner than expected, so I thought I was going to make up most of the time, but we just sit on the plane for about 1 hour until a late running connecting flight arrives from Germany. We finally get airborne and make it to the new Bangkok airport without any other troubles.
The first thing I notice about the airport is all the signs saying “God save the King”, and everything looking very clean. I had started my journey at Heathrow Terminal 3 which simply had HSBC advertised on every ramp. What a difference.
Get through immigration and into the arrivals hall. I find my mate Kevin (kev0184) with the driver from Mr. Toom.
The drive from the airport to Pattaya is pretty good apart from some delays due to roadworks and because it was a holiday there was a lot of traffic. I get to see some of the crazy ways that people travel in this part of the world and try to picture what an English policeman would be like trying to enforce traffic regulations here. Let’s just say that they would be extremely busy trying to enforce any order on the road. Three lane highways become four or even five lane highways; pick up trucks are passed with anything up to a dozen people sitting in the back and motorbikes just weaving in and out of the traffic with no indication.
We get to our hotel (Residence Garden) and our booking is exactly as it was promised in the emails from Ib & Da. We just need to wait a short time to allow the hotel staff to prepare the room for us, so we sit down and have a bite to eat and a beer sitting by the front pool. We are then told that our room is ready, so we simply get up and go off for the obligatory “shit, shower & shave”. We are sitting in our lounge just before going out when we realise that we haven’t paid our bar bill. We’ve only been here 1 hour and mistake Number 1 has already been made.
We decide on a ‘plan’ for the afternoon. We will walk into town, take in the sights of Walking Street and Beach Road, then go on to Cherry Bar in Soi 8, then head back to Secrets for the BM meeting later that night. This we think is a good plan, as we will get to work out where things are in the City. With hindsight “DON’T MAKE PLANS!”
We walk down 2nd Road and then turn left into Soi 16 and head down to Walking Street where we turn right. We see the signs for FLB further up on the left, but when we get there ‘the stores are all closed”. However there is a beer complex on the other side of the road with a bar that was open, so we decide that we ”can get what we came for” and stop to have a couple of beers. I didn’t make a note of the bar name, but it was very quiet on a Sunday afternoon. It was good enough though. The beer was cold and we were finally here!
The bar was almost opposite the Jenny Street Bar and there were a couple of real stunners sitting at the front of the bar. I point them out to Kev who says that one of them has been looking over at us and then I inform him that “It’s Jenny Street Bar; you know the ladyboy place” We are both shocked at how feminine and damn sexy these ‘girls’ look. By now, I’ve been awake for 28 hours, am sweating profusely and already feeling a little light headed. We still press ahead with our plan and start the walk. It’s a LONG way and won’t be done again! (We have now discovered the baht bus and use this method of transport to get about all the time.)
We finally arrive at Cherry Bar around 3 p.m. and it looks as though it too is shut with no customers sitting at the bar. There are a few girls sitting in the seats at the front of the bar, so I ask if they are open. “Of course we are” comes back the reply, so we grab a couple of spots at the side of the bar and start to put back a few beers. I am now getting quite seriously drunk, and things all become a bit ‘sketchy’ from here on in, but there were other BMs involved, so from the posts of their stories, maybe I’ll find out the full story of what I got upto.
I didn’t realize quite how badly the humidity and temperature would affect me, and it was obviously not a good idea to have so many beers, but hey I was on holiday and I was in Pattaya. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and I was being attended to by Noi who was really looking after me well and kept wiping my ‘fevered brow’ and generally fussing over me.
I have never had this much care and attention from a woman, so I was in absolute heaven. I was in a good mood, had a big smile on my face, a woman who was treating me like royalty and drinking cold beer in an open fronted bar on Soi 8. Let me tell you, life felt pretty damn good.
The memory gets really mangled now, but I had somehow managed to let Noi know that I was a ‘butterfly’ on holiday and I’d arranged her BF for 2 nights. When Kev discovered that I’d done this, he decided that he’d better sort out some lovely company for himself, however the one that he really fancied was the cashier Am. He still decided that it was worthwhile trying to BF her and she agreed, but said she would not be able to leave until midnight when her replacement started work. However, a call was made and the replacement cashier arrived with wet hair and out of breath within the hour.
The girls wanted to eat. So not knowing anything about where to go, we left it them to decide. We ended up in what I now know to have been King Restaurant on Walking Street where I just asked Noi to order for me and for it to be ‘not too spicy’. I had some sort of King Prawn dish and as I eat it all I guess that it must have been okay.
The next memory is signing in on the whiteboard at FLB and the brain had somehow managed to convey that I really shouldn’t have any more beer, so I was drinking Coke now. I do remember being loud and I sent my glass flying. (Apologies to anyone that I ‘pissed off’ or angered there that night.) Our group then increased in size when Chris (chrisbrewer) came over to our group and introduced himself. He had met Tim (talen) in Secrets and come over to FLB to see if there were any other BM's about.
We then decide it would be a good idea to return to Soi 8 and upon arriving at the Cherry Bar, I saw that Adam (Hammer) was there, so I went and introduced my drunken wreck of a self to him.
Somewhere along the line, both Chris and Tim also paid BF for girls at Cherry.
Chris (+Nok), Kev (+Am) and myself (+Noi) got a baht bus back to the RG. I do not remember this journey, but I have been told that I was having a very good time. Apparently a German couple didn’t approve though and they got off the bus. (This part is from being told the story and shown the photographic proof, however I cannot validate its authenticity). That’ll teach the Germans for delaying me at Muscat!!
I had somehow survived my first day in Pattaya. I'd got a girl who was looking after me, I was merrily pissed and I'd met some new people. Time for bed.
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