OMG! - PATTAYA

10th - 12th Dec 2019

Work that out!

It is a 2½ hour bus journey south from Bangkok Ekkamai station to the seaside 'resort' of Pattaya. A reasonabably comfortable trip which cost all of 118 Baht (£3). Pattaya is a 5km long and narrow town with a sandy beach all the way down the west side. It is almost joined to the south with the town of Jomtien, another long slim town with a beach down the west side, with a harbour and cruise ship terminal between them. 

The northern end of Pattaya (where the main bus station is located) is quite upmarket with some expensive hotels and shops. As you go south it becomes progressively more depraved culminating at the southern end with 'Walking Street' (left).

...but before I go on to describe this area in detail, and I doubt if my powers of description will be up to it, I started off at an extraordinary 'museum' towards the northern end....

....this is called 'Art in Paradise', a 3D virtual reality experience. It is a large 'museum' on three floors with a $15 entry fee. It is indeed a most fascinating hi-tech adventure. You can load an App on your phone which enables you to film what look like wall-sized static scenes and they then spring into dramatic life, with you in the picture if you have someone with you to hold the phone (which I didn't but managed to conscript the odd passer-by). The results are supposed to be recorded on some 'gallery' or other. I tried this and it worked, but I can't find the recordings for some reason. Must have failed to push the correct button.

Left: This is one such scene. On the 'App' the sea  splashes and the swordfish leaps about dramatically, all in vivid 3D. Impressive, and I wish I could show you the animated results.

Right: Another scene where the elephant approaches out of the wall with a monkey running up to feed it a banana. Again, 3D and very realistic.

Left: Another example with flames raging behind the throne, a leopard comes out from behind to sit at your feet.

There were many more of these dramatic interactive displays, but you get the gist. There is a website (Art in Paradise) which I think will give you a better idea. I have never seen anything like it before! (but then I am usually the last to see such things).

As well as these there are many static scenes which you can become part of (if you can find someone to take the photos).

A few examples below:

These poor photos don't do them justice. I should have come better prepared with someone a bit more tech savvy.

















There are also examples of optical illusions such as the pic at the top and include:












Left: When close up it just looks like trees. Stand back and you see a tiger's head (or is it a lion).

Right: Stand close and it looks like just a flock of birds. Stand back and it is a woman's face.

Again, not so apparent in a photo....you have to be able to move to and fro. Other opical illusions were impossible to photo because they involved your movement.

I spent about 2 hours in this place and was constantly fascinated.

I'm going to leave it there while I have a drink and compose myself to try to describe the rest of the town and Jomtien........

NO 'ELL IN FAR EAST

7th - 9th Dec 2019

Festive entrance to a Bangkok shop. Ho Ho Ho!

As promised there is nothing much to report from this part of the world that hasn't already been covered in previous blogs. I arrived in Bangkok expecting to spend a few days with a French ex-colleague and family but unfortunately he had been recalled to Paris at short notice so I was left with five days to kill here. This blog will just be a hotchpotch of sights and events with one or two 'interesting' new ventures.

There were plenty of Christmas decorations around town. I stayed, as I had done previously, at the Narai Hotel on Silom Road. Booked in for a couple of nights through Expedia.co.uk (at the last minute) it is a very comfortable 4 star hotel and cost me about £40 per night which is a real bargain. It is near the efficient Metro (MRT) and Skytrain (BTS) stations and with plenty of shops, bars and restaurants nearby as well as the infamous Patpong streets, it is well located for amusement and to travel the city.

Bangkok traffic at rush hours can be total grid-lock. Right: There are useful signs over some of the main junctions which, if you were unfortunate enough to be travelling by car, show colour-coded areas of traffic flow (or not). Good idea...far too advanced for the UK.

Left: The tea room in the luxurious Oriental Hotel which is beside the Chao Phraya river. This place has lounges and bars named after famous authors (John Le Carre, Somerset Maugham, Joseph Conrad, amongst others) who used to frequent the place in earlier days. It is now the haunt of the Nouveau Riche and, presumably, wealthy 'celebrities'. I had a glass of wine in the riverside bar which cost about the same as night in the Narai.

Right: I called in at the British Club (near the Narai). It is a splendid place and has been in existence since 1903, always with British presidents/chairmen. It is a truly British establishment and on a par with the smarter clubs in London. As well as bedrooms, elegant bars and restaurant (serving roast beef etc.) it has a full sized swimming pool (with bar), glass backed squash courts, four tennis courts and even cricket nets. The inside sitting-room, leather armchairs occupied by slumbering gents,  even has (two day old) British newspapers to hand. It is a welcome oasis of peace, tranquility and civilised charm in what is otherwise a noisy, hectic and polluted city. Certainly worth joining if you are a Brit living in Bangkok. Behind my left shoulder in this photo is a British War Memorial. This was moved here from the elegant British Embassy when it was sold off a few years ago. I believe any Ambassadorial business is now conducted from a portacabin somewhere in the city. How the mighty have fallen! Pathetic.

I took a stroll around Lumpini Park. Several inter-connected lakes with swan-shaped pedal boats and lots of places to sit and.....sit. There are a few cafés in this park but they all seemed to be closed for some reason. I came across this gang of happy girls posing for a group photo. I was told they were on tour from the Philippines.

I was keen to visit the Royal Bangkok Sporting Club. Amongst other facilities it has a turf horse-racing track and I was keen to get in and see it. No way! Strictly members only and officious guards were on all the several gates to enforce the rule. Even my best bluffing failed to have any effect. I think I gathered that it is open to the public on Sundays when racing is on. They want their money. In the event I forgot to go on the Sunday I was there. En route I passed a small Buddhist shrine (left) by the main road. 

Small it may have been but there were lots of young people buying candles and wreaths and paying homage to the Buddha.

Left: A religious 'band' playing drums and whining string instruments plus dancers were present. They obviously take their Buddhist worshipping quite enthusiastically....even the youngsters. I believe it is all to do with 'ancestor worship' or somesuch family orientated praying, but I am no expert on this (or much else for that matter).

There are always shopgirls and boys wearing Father Christmas hats and reindeer antlers at this time of year, but this is the first time I have met a shopgirl wearing a Christmas tree. She was the one keen on taking this 'selfie'!

Of course I had to have a wander around Patpong, the market stall cum sex club area at the bottom of Silom Road (right) for old times sake. Actually it has become a pale imitation of the utterly debauched place I remember from 20 years ago. It still caters for much the same clientele but now more heavily regulated.

Some of the clubs are even quite honest about their staff.

Right: One of the ubiquitous Bangkok Tuk-Tuks. Even they have fallen victim to the eco-warriors in that their engines have been 'cleaned up' and they don't make the same characteristic 'tut-tuk' noise, or belch out that comely black smoke that they were once famous for. Of course they would still fall foul of any number of OTT 'elf 'n safety' regulations in UK. They used to be incredibly cheap but, thanks to the tourist onslaught, they are now rip-off expensive. I walk, or use the metro system.

Left: There is a lot of pavement art. This is part of a much longer work and I saw children happily hopping up and down it.

Right: An interesting piece of architecture. 

OK, that was a brief couple of days in Bangkok. Where to go next to fill in the remaining three? I had a flash of inspiration. I would go down to Pattaya, a town on the west coast to the south of Bangkok. I had heard a lot about this place previously...much of it fairly horrific but, being the intrepid explorer, I felt it needed some first-hand investigation. 

......to be continued.

CHRISTMAS. AGAIN.

5th Dec 2019

Two years ago I called it 'Chrexit', last year 'Christmiss' and this year it is 'No 'ell'. I am always keen to avoid the ghastly enforced commercial and social 'jolly' commitments surrounding the so-called 'festive' season of 'good will to all men' (no doubt considered a sexist 'unwoke' remark nowadays). Bah Humbug! Bugger it! I am going back Far East where, as most of them are not of the Christian faith, they have little idea of what Christmas is except that it is a good opportunity to have a bit of a giggle and sell lots of things to foreigners. There is always plenty of polystyrene snow with Father Christmases riding sleighs pulled by reindeer, girls in all the shops and restaurants wearing antler horns, 'We Wiss You a Merry Keesmah' playing in department stores and some elaborately decorated Christmas trees. They don't call it 'Christmas', it is always 'Merry Keesmah'. Good grief, these people have never seen snow and wouldn't know a reindeer from a rhinoceros.

I remember trying to explain to someone in Vietnam what Christmas is. By the time I had mentioned babies born of a virgin birth in a manger, Father Christmas (or Santa Claus) delivering gifts down chimneys, wise men following a star, elves at the North Pole and sodding reindeer I had not only confuser her but rather lost the plot myself.

Anyway, flying off initially to Bangkok to meet up with an amusing old French colleague and his charming Thai wife and family and then on to Việt Nam for more reunions where we will hopefully have a jolly time without much recourse to 'Merry Keesmah'. At least it is warm and the beer is cheap.

More to follow but I have covered this part of the world in tedious detail before so probably won't have much new to report. We shall see.....