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The changing face of Pattaya.
The construction boom goes on apace especially on Thappraya Road with new condos and houses being started almost daily. View Talay Condo 2 just across Thepprasit Road is nearing completion, and in-between this and my own condo block, the small single story housing estate is being expanded all the way down to the main road.. Whether living in a single story house overlooked on both sides by 15 story condo blocks will actually prove desirable is a moot point.
Meanwhile on the other side, the circular low rise condo block at Chateau Dale is also nearing completion and adjacent to this, the new building housing Bruno’s restaurant (moving from North Pattaya) opened it’s doors on October 15th. Apart from the hopefully temporary lack of parking spaces, it should from all accounts be as equally successful as its predecessor.
And in my own complex, the vacant space next to the car park is now being filled with a number of detached villas. As with the aforementioned single story houses, the same comment about lack of privacy applies.
We also hear tales that at long last we may be getting a major supermarket in the area with a large plot of land near the beach having just been acquired by the Carrefour group, and our own potentially excellent (when they don’t run out of essential items) mini-market set to almost double in size, both of which should hopefully reduce the number of times it is necessary to take the car into Pattaya to stock-up.
 Back in Pattaya, the road reconstruction chaos continues.
Having just completed the concreting of Central Road, realisation dawned that no provision for surface drainage had been made, so the recently reopened sections were abruptly closed again whist trenches were drilled in order to lay drainage pipes.
Because this resulted in it being impossible to turn either left or right from Second Road into Central, it was decided to make all of this road temporarily one way - without any prior announcement.
I fortunately missed the first few days ensuing melee, and by the time I had to traverse it, the volume of traffic still travelling the wrong way had been reduced to a few erring cars plus of course motorcycles which in any case usually consider themselves immune from any road directions.
Personally I find this one-way system a considerable improvement, but apparently it impinges on the business of the ‘Big C’ supermarket in North Pattaya, with Baht Buses coming the other way from Naklua being reluctant to take the necessary detour to deposit shoppers there, so it is unlikely to become permanent.
The place to avoid at the moment is however the junction of Second and Central where the 5 lanes of Second Road temporarily merge together into a single bumpy track in order to cross the junction, meeting at the same time joining traffic from the right.
At peak hours the resulting jam has stretched back the best part of half a mile.
Meanwhile on the far side of the Sukumvit Highway, I am told that the long reconstruction of Siam Country Club Road is finally complete. Let’s hope so, for the detour via Soi Namplabwan (aka Soi Muslim due to the number of Mosques) has become more and more tortuous as heavy lorries gradually destroy the surface.
Social Order
Another changing face of Pattaya is the social order campaign designed in part to return Thailand to it’s traditional values.
With the approaching APEC summit meeting in Bangkok where many world leaders will be in attendance, this campaign which has been going on more or less since the coming to power of the current government a couple of years ago, has been reinvigorated.
Thus the enforcement of regulations such as the 2 am closing of bars and clubs, the prohibition of ‘lewd and indecent’ shows (official speak) in said clubs, and the raids on sellers of counterfeit goods have all been stepped up.
Personally, apart from this meaning I was unable to find a new pair of ‘Camel’ brand shorts at an affordable price, this does not bother me too much. 2 am is quite late enough for the Otter to retire, and on the few occasions he does visit go-go bars or their ilk, he finds it less uncomfortable if the dancing maidens do at least maintain some vestige of clothing.
But what does concern me is the potential effect that these restrictions may have on the tourist industry and thus on the economy as a whole of which tourism is a very significant part.
With the previously very restrictive Singapore appearing to be moving in the opposite direction with longer opening hours and greater relaxation on entertainment in general (coincidence?), there is a risk that the ‘low life tourists’ (to quote official sources who claim incorrectly such people do not spend money here) may take their hard earned dollars elsewhere.
Meanwhile the type of tourist that officialdom is encouraging, namely either the ‘family tourist’ who stays in 4 star hotels and rarely ventures beyond their gates or the bus loads of Chinese, Japanese or Korean package tours, who have already paid the cost of their stay back in their home country and are only allowed a few minutes to visit the shopping malls during which they rarely buy anything - these people do not put nearly as much money into local hands.
Another danger of increased regulation is of gradually turning Pattaya into another ‘Anytown’.
Whereas at times an improvement in the daily chaos of getting about, the abandon with which buses stop on a whim, the taking of your life in your hands in order to cross the road, the near impossibility of walking on the pavements due to all the obstructions, would be welcome, as would a greater reliability of resources such as electricity (still has a tendency to fail when it rains), and telephone lines (likewise), I would willingly prefer to continue to put up with all this rather than see Pattaya loose its character and become just another anonymous town like so many in Britain and other Western countries have become.
APEC
Speaking of the APEC summit, the imposition of order in Pattaya is nothing compared the the clean and brush-up that has been applied to Bangkok in preparation for this.
Apparently all the stray dogs and beggars have been rounded up and deposited somewhere out of sight, street traders have been banned from parts of the town that any of the visiting delegates might traverse, even the traditional garland sellers have been banished from the streets.
Meanwhile new statues have been unveiled, new banners unfurled and even new grass laid all in order to show the visitors what a clean and pristine capital they have come to.
Even one of the public parks has been spruced up, purely on the thought that because the visiting Australian Prime Minister John Howard is reported to be a keen jogger, he might like to take a morning constitutional there - most unlikely considering the heat and humidity he will be unfamiliar with..
Another unlikely event has been prepared for by holding courses in English and Etiquette for Bangkok taxi drivers with the thought that visiting delegates might wish to hire them in preference to their luxury limousines.
Frankly the thought that in-between conference debates, George W might wish to hire a taxi or Tuk-Tuk to cruise the downtown bars of Patpong seems most improbable (if it were still Bill Clinton that might be another matter).
Whilst not in anyway wishing to comment politically on the merits (or otherwise) of this vast and expensive junket, I will only add a remark from a local journalist that in past APEC meetings, the only item of agreement to emerge from all the talking was the colour of the suits for the group photograph.
Meanwhile with many roads closed or restricted to traffic during its duration, we have all been advised to avoid going anywhere near Bangkok during the conference duration - something I am more than happy to comply with.
Rains and more Rains
The rainy season continues apace, adding to the misery on the roads with the streams of water coming off the construction sites causing huge mudslides on top of what tarmac is left once the downpour has reopened all the previously filled potholes.
Old hands here state this is one of the wettest rainy seasons for many years, personally I still find it a lot drier than a typical British autumn, leastwise anywhere I used to live.
It is said that with the end of Bhuddist lent, the rains should now abate, but as this is a lunar event and as a result has happened much earlier this year, it may be that we are in for a few more weeks of it yet.
Not that it rains all the time, we had 4 dry days in a row at the time of the Buffalo races, and even when it does rain it is usually only in the form of (very) heavy showers, rather than a continuously wet day which happens very rarely. The biggest problem is the unpredictability of where and when it will rain. One part of town can be deluged whist another remains totally dry, sometimes the skies darken and lightning flashes all around but no rain materialises, other times a bright sunny day can suddenly become overcast and a heavy storm appear without warning.
I now have a selection of protection that I rarely go out without, ranging from a large golf umbrella, to a small pocket version, plus a plastic poncho like cape to be used if caught out on the motor bike, the chief detraction of which is that as it billows out in the wind, it obscures the view in my mirrors of what is about to run me down - Batman rides again!
And the plus point of all this water is that the local reservoirs are reported full which should in theory mean less water shortages in the coming year - I say in theory for given the volume of new buildings plus the enormous wastage of the creaking distribution system, I fully expect to hear of outages further ‘up my Soi’ shortly after the rains end.
Wireless Internet
I shall hopefully be uploading this version of the newsletter via my new super duper wireless Internet connection. Whilst not true broadband nor even really impressive by many other countries standards, compared to the abysmally slow, unreliable telephone connections here, it is like jumping into a Ferrari after a year in a Wartburg.
As I said, the maximum download speed of around 150 Kbs is only in theory 2 to 3 times faster than dial-up, but in practice, especially when downloading a large file, it can take up to 10 times less minutes.
The difference on viewing Internet pages is less obvious, mainly due I think to other factors such as the complexity of their code that has to be interpreted, and also the ‘narrow pipes’ that data from outside Thailand has to flow through in order to reach me here.
But on file downloads it makes a world of difference and also it is an ‘always on’ system, the cost per month being measured by amount of data downloaded rather than time consumed. So far it has always connected within seconds and remained connected without interruption for as long as I choose.
Mind it does come at a cost, the equipment (a CDMA Rx1TT card for those technically minded) was quite expensive due to having to be imported, and the monthly charge for a minimum of 300 MB per the equivalent of around £20.
But again by Thailand standards where the token ‘broadband’ system running at 128K (if you can get it at all) costs up to 3 times more, it is not unreasonable.
As I am not sure what the take-up here is and given that people in Pattaya seem content to put up with anything so long as it is cheap, I doubt that many people have yet gone for it, I am not sure if the current excellent performance will degrade if and when more people come on-line or whether (regrettably more likely) so few people take it up that the service provider loses interest in maintaining the network here.
But at the moment all I can say is that I am delighted with it.
It could only happen in Thailand.
Not content with buffalo races, the Bangkok Post reported a couple of weeks ago, a game of Elephant Polo.
And not just any old Elephant Polo, but a game of Transvestite Elephant Polo.
It wasn’t stipulated who were the transvestites, the elephants or the riders - one would assume the latter, but this being Thailand, you could never be too sure.
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