I’d like to take a break from the mongering stuff and add a brief word about non-mongering tourist stuff. I HAVE NO IDEA!!! The only time I stepped on the beach was to take a few pictures the day I was leaving. Not that I was alone, I never saw anyone on the beach. Because of the gogos and discos, you pretty much never went to bed before 2am, and by the time you rolled out of bed, got changed and ate lunch, it was around 2 or 3pm. Checking your email would take another hour or so. I can’t even say that I did any shopping either. Although there were a lot of malls for clothes shopping, the only thing I bought was a few CD’s.

Although you can get MP3 compilations in Panthip Plaza in Bkk, Cd’s are still pretty cheap in Pattaya. The standard price is 100B. It’s funny, because sometimes some of the vendors will try to convince you that the going price is 150 or 200B. Just smile nicely, go to another vendor and confirm before looking at the CD’s that the price is 100B.

The most convenient way to travel around Pattaya (pronounced Pa Tee Ya) is by baht bus, which are cage enclosed pickup trucks. The going rate for a baht bus you flag down is 10B (the locals pay 5B). If you see a baht bus just sitting on the side of the road, it is considered a taxi and you should negotiate in advance how much the trip costs. One night, when it was raining very hard, Mrjoe was quoted a price of 150B to go from Walking St to Soi 13. Pissed at the gouging, he ended up running back to the hotel and got soaked. I think he said he almost took a header into this huge puddle.

Restaurants

There are a lot of places eat, and most of it is pretty good, but I can’t say that there is a lot of variety. If you want good and inexpensive Chinese or Japanese food, check out Big C. There’s a Cajun (Café New Orleans) place on 13/3 or 13/2 that has good bbq ribs and good shrimp. They have an all you can eat ribs buffet on Saturdays and Sunday afternoons for about 300B. For Mexican food, the Tequila Cantina on Soi 7 was good, but the chips were a little stale (I think because of the ever-present humidity). The Lobster Pot on Walking St had good seafood and the soup there was marvelous. Twice, I went to the Marine seafood place (an outdoor restaurant that serves very fresh seafood). It was very good and the fresh fish was extremely good as well. It was there that I actually had chicken (during the height of the chicken flu hysteria). LDS2 had ordered the dish and I took a bite before I knew what it was. By the way, I never saw anyone at the KFC while I was there.

One of the girls took me to lunch at the top floor of the Royal Garden mall. There are a bunch of fast food vendors like you’d see at your local mall’s food court. You had to prepay for a card with as much (or little credits) as you’d like and then just pay the vendors using the card. The food was very good and very cheap, but pretty much all the food selection was asian. If you don’t use up all your credits, just get a refund when you’re done.

Bathrooms

I can’t say that I did an exhaustive study, but I was very pleasantly surprised by the cleanliness of bathrooms in the LoS. The only thing you should keep in mind is that in some public places you have to pay to get in (on Walking St, the fee is 5B) or pay for the toilet paper. There are vending machines that charge 2B for the toilet paper. I’m not sure, though, how much TP you get for the 2B. Whatever the quantity, it’s still better than having to use a squat pot.

On the other hand, except for the LDS, none of the gogo bathrooms EVER had paper towels with which to dry your hands. They just had a communal towel. Or there was someone, who would give you a hot towel in exchange for a tip.