The Pattaya Otter comments on recent happenings in and around Pattaya Otter’s 60th Mrs Johnston, Mildred and Brunhilde Anna Kournikova The Princess and the Statue Hot in here 555   Otter’s 60th Yes, your Pattaya Otter has reached the grand old age of 60, and he thanks those of you that remembered the occasion and will take the charitable view of the remainder by assuming that the card was a victim of the Thailand postal service. In celebration we took the occasion to use up some of our complimentary dinner tickets from the Royal Cliff wine circle by having a birthday dinner at their Grill Room Restaurant. Beforehand the invited friends assembled at Otter towers for a pre-meal aperitif (or even a pair of dentures), and then embarked into two cars for the short journey to the hotel. Unfortunately the combination of an extremely wet evening plus the huge traffic exodus from Bangkok escaping the APEC summit, made progress extremely difficult - at one point there were four lanes of traffic coming the opposite way, leaving no space for anyone to travel in the opposite direction. But with some sterling traffic direction from Malcolm plus his umbrella, we eventually forced our way through and made it on to the hotel. The meal consisted of a set 5 course gourmet menu to which we added copious amounts of wine and an excellent repast was enjoyed by all. Although I had not mentioned it when making the booking, someone who shall remain nameless obviously leaked the nature of the occasion to the hotel management, for after the final course, a parade of waiters brought on a birthday cake plus a huge ‘Happy Birthday’ poster, not to mention a card from Ranjith the hotel manager and wine club president. Having done the dutiful cutting of this cake, and eventually eating and drinking our fill, we then decamped to downtown Pattaya, the rain having fortunately eased off,  for some assorted lowbrow entertainment, visiting several venues offering live music. with our numbers gradually falling by the wayside until only two of us remained to the wee small hours of around 5 AM. And the Pattaya Otter woke on the morning of his 61st year feeling a lot better than he deserved to be. For a fuller look at any of these pictures, just click on the appropriate image - however as they are taken from a friend’s camera, the full size is a little smaller than usual.   Mrs Johnson, Mildrid and Brunhilde Reporting on the comings and goings at Otter Towers, and I finally gave up the unequal struggle with keeping the place pristine, and employed the services of a local Mrs. Johnston. Being a Thai lady, this is of course not her real name, but I have given her this title in memory of the immortal Mrs J whom some of you may remember ‘charred’ for my grandmother for many many years. However unlike the original Mrs J who could (and did) spend a large amount of her working day, parked on the kitchen chair, arms folded, relating tales in her unique vocabulary, of her family and friends to her incomprehending employer, this lady remains mute and simply gets on with her work. Another ‘lady’ that has come to work at Otter Towers, is Mildrid, my mailing assistant. Mildrid, although marginally more vocal than Mrs J, is considerably less human, being in fact a computer generated voice that monitors my incoming mail box and when anything new arrives, announces to me that ’Master I have mail for you’ - well it’s marginally more interesting than the standard Windows ‘beep’. Mind I am thinking of replacing her with a singing barber shop quartet. The third lady in this report, does not enter my condo, as she spends her entire day at the swimming pool. I do not know her real name but as I have heard her speaking German and she has a matronly appearance, I have named her Brunhilde. She was present when I arrived just over a year ago, and was a constant presence at the condo pool from then until around last April when she departed. I found I could virtually set my watch by her as viewing from my balcony I could see her arrive at 9 AM every morning, and taking occupancy of one of the set tables there, remained for the entire day with only a short break for lunch, departing around 5 PM. So it was with a sense of world continuity that a couple of weeks ago, I saw that she had returned and once again taken up her station at the pool, where presumably she will remain until once again her home country warms up enough.   Anna Kournikova Another lady visiting Pattaya, but regrettably not Otter Towers, was the Russian tennis player, Anna Kournikova. In addition to her tennis playing, Anna is of course something of a glamour celebrity and has also been appointed by the Tourist Authority of Thailand (TAT) as one of its promotion ambassadors. However as some of you who follow the sport may know, due to a chronic back injury, Anna has been unable to play competitive tennis for most of the past year. So when her appearance at the Pattaya Volvo Women’s Tennis Masters was announced, there was a fair bit of speculation as to whether she would actually appear or not. And when she failed to arrive at the start of the 6 day tournament, many predicted that we would not see her, but eventually she did arrive in town, and although not fit enough to actually compete in the tournament, she nevertheless staged a post final exhibition match against local favourite Tamarine (Tammy) Tanasugan, winning the very friendly and light hearted match on a deciding tie break after it had ended one set all. Although not able to see her in person, your Pattaya Otter did watch the match on television, and was amused by Anna having to leave the court for a ‘skirt adjustment break’. Mind wearing what barely passed for a skirt plus a rather revealing top, I couldn’t help feeling that Anna would have been more at home on the stage of Peppermint a Go-go, and I guess a fair number of the audience would have preferred to see her there as well.     The Princess and the Statue Last but by no means least in the list of ladies getting a mention, is HRH Crown Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn who paid a one day visit to Pattaya last Friday. In preparation for this, the route she would pass through was given the spit and polish routine, especially the beach road which in addition to the obligatory flags and bunting also sprouted fresh flowers in all the beds on the promenade, plus for some inexplicable reason, plastic palm trees lit from inside (as if there weren't enough of the real thing). Part of the reason for her visit was to commemorate the original expatriate founders of modern Pattaya, namely the American servicemen who first came here during the Vietnam war, and she was introduced to a delegation of some of the original veterans, and was also shown some photographs of how Pattaya looked at that time, as well as some current views of the same scenes, which my colleague Allan by clever camera positioning managed to make look very like the original scenes - (unfortunately I do not have any copies of these at present but I may be able to include them in a future edition). It has also been suggested that to commemorate these city founders, a statue of them should be erected on the beach road, and speculation is rife about what the statue should exactly depict them doing. As they say - watch this space.   Hot in here With the arrival (we assume - rain is still possible for a few more weeks yet) of the dry season some 3 weeks ago, the wind direction has changed from the South West where it mostly came from over the previous 6 months or so, to the opposite direction, namely North East. Although the end of the rains is generally welcome, especially to those of us crazy enough to venture out on motor cycles, in the case of my condo, whose two balconies plus windows face South and West respectively, this change in wind direction has completely cut off the air flow throughout the apartment. This coupled with the fact that the sun has moved back to the South of us and therefore shines directly through my windows most of the day, has raised the heat level indoors to a rather uncomfortable level (25 degrees C I find just about right, anything over 30, which it is now, becomes a bit unbearable). However as I remember from last year, when the rains continued much later in the year, in fact right into December, in a few weeks time the humidity should drop and as the sun moves further South it will lose a little of its power, so hopefully the problem is only temporary. Of course I can reduce the temperature with the aid of the two air conditioners here, but apart from the expense of running them, I don’t feel it to be healthy to  be too cool indoors and then come out straight into the heat. So I limit myself to cooling down the bedroom for about a hour prior to bedtime, and then switching the air conditioner off immediately prior to retiring. Mind once I do emerge from the building and into the sometimes quite strong North East wind, I do cool down considerably, not least when riding the bike.   555 Nothing to do with Pattaya or even Thailand except that because our television stations show a lot more American movies and serials, I have noticed this more and more. You know that in the UK and presumably most other countries, telephone numbers consist of an area code followed by a local number. I presume this is the case in the United States as well and also that each area code there only covers a relatively small part of that vast country. Why, then in almost every film and other fictional series, does anyone giving out an area code, use the number 555 - you even see it painted on the side of taxis and police cars? Don’t believe me? Check it out next time you watch something from across the pond.     And that’s the end of Otter’s tail for this edition. Back to Top of Page