Family Money: Getting a fair share (Part 2)

By Leslie Wright

Last week we started looking at the various technical terms associated with shares and the stock market, different types of shares, and how they are traded.

Now lets look at the risks involved.

Risk and accessibility

The amount of risk an investor takes on depends on the type of company into which he invests.

If he buys shares in ‘blue chip’ companies in developed major markets, the risk should be modest and the shares can be easily disposed of in the market.

However, if an investor selects a smaller company or a company going through a poor trading period (a recovery stock), or those in smaller ‘emerging’ markets like Thailand, then the inherent risk is greater. Not only will the share price be more volatile, but there is the chance the investor cannot find anyone to buy the shares should he wish to sell.

In the past, shares were always bought and sold through a stockbroker. These professionals have a set level of charges for the services they provide.

Nowadays the High Street banking fraternity is competing with stockbrokers in providing trading services to their clients - but the level and quality of advice they provide usually falls far short of that provided by a professional stockbroker. With the banks, you largely pay your money and take your chance.

In recent years on-line trading has become available through the Internet, cutting out the various middlemen, and permitting amateur investors access to shares all over the world.

But again, you lose the professional expertise and experience of a stockbroker or financial adviser: you are out in the cold and have to fend for yourself.

Fine if you know what you’re doing and have access to the specialized information necessary to make prudent trading decisions - as opposed to the whimsical dabbling that many amateur investors delight in, until they get their fingers burned, sometimes quite badly.

Leaving your options open

Another way of trading shares is by means of options. But options are widely misunderstood by most amateur investors. They are seen by many as highly risky ‘alternative’ investments rather than simply the right to buy or sell a share in the future at a fixed price for which a relatively small premium is paid today.

If the shares move in the direction you anticipated, you exercise your option at the pre-fixed price and keep the difference between the option price and the trading price.

But since the options market is only for experienced or professional investors, and is a fairly sophisticated subject, let’s look at this interesting topic in a little more detail.

There are two types of options. A ‘call’ option is the right to buy; a ‘put’ option is the right to sell.

Many companies nowadays give their executives bonuses in the form of share options. Typically, these are call options, which simply means that our lucky executive is given the right to buy shares at some future time when the shares have increased in value, but he pays only the lower price as fixed on the option.

But options are not indefinite: they must be exercised before a certain date, or the holder loses the option, and forfeits the premium paid.

By accepting share options rather than cash, our executive is in effect betting on the success of the company he works for. This is a good thing for the firm’s management both psychologically and financially.

When our executive exercises the option, he can either take possession of the shares in the anticipation that they will increase again in value - in which case he pays only the old fixed price for them; or he can cash in his option at the now-higher price, paying (and only on paper) the old price, and keeping the difference.

He has cashed in his options and got his windfall bonus, and it cost the company only the premium for the options they gave him.

Hedging your bets

But options are not just a way of paying “cheap” bonuses to executives. They are a way investors can literally hedge their bets in the stock market.

How this works is really quite simple, although many financial commentators and ‘experts’ make it all sound horribly complicated.

If you take a long position on equities - which simply means you buy some shares in the expectation that they will increase in price - you can protect yourself against an unexpected downturn by taking out some ‘put’ options in the same market. For these options you pay only a relatively small premium.

If you guessed right and your shares increase in value, you sell them and take your profit. You then simply let your options expire, thereby forfeiting the premium you paid for the options. So your gain on the shares is reduced somewhat by the options premium you lost.

It works the other way round just as well. If you believe the markets are going to take a tumble, you can take a short position in equities - which means you place a sell order today for shares you don’t actually possess, with the intention of buying them back before the settlement date when you have to deliver them. At the same time, you take out some call options, for which again you pay a relatively small premium.

Then, if the market takes the tumble you anticipated, you close out your short position by buying the shares you already sold when the price was higher, and keep the difference as profit for yourself.

Again you let your options expire without exercising them, and forfeit the premium you paid for your call options, offsetting this loss against the profit you made on your correct guess in the market.

What’s the point, you might think? Simple. What if you guessed wrong and the markets went against you?

If you had taken a long position on equities and a war suddenly erupts somewhere which causes the markets to take a nervous tumble (as happened recently), you stand to lose money. So you simply exercise your put options. This makes you a profit because the market price of the shares now is lower than the price you had the option to sell them for.

This will mitigate the loss you have to take on your long position - the shares you actually bought - and, if you played the game correctly, wipe out the loss completely.

Similarly if you guessed that the market was going to take a tumble and you wanted to hedge your bets in case events prove you wrong, you play the same game in reverse, just to protect your back pocket and that part of your anatomy directly underneath it.

Sophisticated investors take this exercise one stage further. They protect themselves against the loss they will inevitably suffer on either their position or their options by hedging their options in another market.

Before your head starts spinning, let me explain by way of an example.

Let’s suppose you guess the US market is going to recover and you take a long position (i.e., you buy some shares) in that market. You then cover this bet with some put options, also in the US market.

To cover the put options, you also take out some call options in, say, the European stock markets.

Then, if the US market and the European stock markets move up, you gain on both your long position in equities and by exercising your European stock options. You lose the premium on your US put options, but that loss has been covered by your European stock options.

If on the other hand the US market doesn’t recover but sinks lower, you would lose money on your long position, but make money by exercising your US put options. If the European market doesn’t follow the US market (which it often doesn’t, although the UK market often does, for those critics who believe the UK is part of Europe and therefore follows the European bourses), then you will also have made money on your European call options.

Typically, this dog-leg hedging mechanism will make money in at least one of the three elements, and the chances of making an overall loss very much reduced. Indeed, the chance of making money overall is significantly increased.

This is an especially useful investment tactic in times of uncertainty, and one which some portfolio fund managers have adopted to protect their funds against undue volatility, and thus reduce the inherent risk factor.

Leslie Wright is Managing Director of Westminster Portfolio Services (Thailand) Ltd., a firm of independent financial advisors providing advice to expatriate residents of the Eastern Seaboard on personal financial planning and international investments. If you have any comments or queries on this article, or about other topics concerning investment matters, contact Leslie directly by fax on (038) 232522 or e-mail [email protected] . Further details and back articles can be accessed on his firm’s website on www.westminsterthailand.com .

Editor’s note: Leslie sometimes receives e-mails to which he is unable to respond due to the sender’s automatic return address being incorrect. If you have sent him an e-mail to which you have not received a reply, this may be why. To ensure his prompt response to your enquiry, please include your complete return e-mail address, or a contact phone/fax number.

By Mirin MacCarthy

The deputy managing director of P.M. Group Real Estate, Narong Pansrimangkorn had a fun, “sanuk maak” early life in spite of, or perhaps because of, growing up in a family of thirteen!

Born in Bangkok to Thai Chinese parents, his father had a furniture factory (and at a guess it had to be rather successful to raise all those kids). His early life within such a family also taught him to be accommodating and the value of hard work.

Today Narong is an engineer and a businessman first, with sparkling eyes and a robust Thai sense of humour (or rather sense of sanuk), over which (a little incomprehensibly to most farangs) he manages to successfully overlay a serene Buddhist calm. I just had to ask him how he achieves this, and the answer he gave was suitably enigmatic, “Buddhism is important because it teaches us to trust in the teachings and to believe in Buddhism itself. Not to take advantage of others, to share, and to think about the heart and feelings.”

Narong has now been living here and assisting the development of the Pattaya area for the last five years. Working to develop the Pattaya Park Hill Project for five days a week, commuting to Bangkok each weekend to spend some time with Achara, his accountant wife, and their student daughter.

To an outsider, that appears to be a hectic lifestyle which may not be all that compatible with serenity and calmness. An eclectic mix of work, family, sanuk and serenity, yet Narong has indeed achieved calm amongst chaos and is also attempting to bring that theme to Pattaya. P.M. Group, of which he is a co-director with one of his brothers, aims to make Pattaya Park Hill a beautiful calm oasis where their staff and clients can all share in a good life in a worthy and peaceful environment.

Narong and his brother Vatandee chose Pattaya to develop after friends advised them to buy land here. Maptaput and Laem Chabang projects were going ahead then and they guessed the area would boom and hopefully become their recipe for developmental success.

That it has, and now five yeas after their initial foray in 1995 their building projects have been progressing in leaps and bounds. The brothers’ first project of 600 units (2 bedroom houses) sold out in 1997. Their second project, which kicked off in 1998, of 100 single houses, were happily snapped up too. Remember that this was during the much hated economic crash, making it an even more memorable feat and achievement.

They are now in the middle of their third project of 53 houses. (Why 53? I guess it was because in Chinese numerology 5 + 3 = 8 which indicates good fortune!). While on a roll and not stopping, they are already planning their fourth project to start in February of next year of 100 big houses with larger surrounding areas.

So what is the background for this obviously successful property developer? Narong went to school in Bangkok and graduated from Chulalongkorn University as an electrical engineer. After that, it was 2 years with the Provincial Electrical Authority. Following his start, he then went into management with a multi year stint as a service manager for the huge conglomerate, the C.P. Group. But five years ago he left and joined one of his brothers here and between them (his brother is a civil engineer) they have formed their own very successful partnership.

While he was working with the C.P Group, he believes he was most fortunate to meet, and then marry, his wife Achara, and they now have an 18-year-old daughter.

Narong looked at me in surprised amazement when I asked him if his daughter would be following him into the family business. “No, I want her to do what she wants,” he laughed. Not quite the response you would have imagined from a father in a Thai-Chinese dynasty, but again the Buddhist overlay would explain it.

When he is not working on the weekends Narong loves spending time with his family, and gives jogging as his physical exercise. “But not too much jogging though,” he said and grinned, although he has retained a very youthful figure and appears very fit.

His plans for the future are: “To make the company stable and self sufficient, so my brother and I can retire. I also want to see my daughter finish college and settled into a job, then my wife and I can live a peaceful life in the country somewhere near Ayuddhya, not in the city.”

Success to Narong means making a positive effect in the community with all family and employees and clients taken care of, with all of them being happy and contented.

His advice to would-be businessmen is almost indicative of the man himself - “To work at what you know and absorb that all first, then learn from that experience.” Sage, but perhaps oblique words from an admirable and together man who has made success seemingly as easy as breathing.

by Mirin MacCarthy

by John D. Blyth

Why for Pleasure?

The Swiss are an astute race; they saw early on that their mountainous country could develop into a paradise for the “winter sports” enthusiast, and many of these soon saw that the view from a high place (a mountain top) could be just as enchanting in high summer as in deep snow.

The Swiss soon caught on and began building rack railways, in those times mainly steam, up the mountains that had the best views. It was quick a racket: take him (and family) up the mountain at a very high fare, invite him into a shoddy hotel for an indifferent but expensive meal, and maybe get him to stay the night, with an early call to watch the sunrise - if it’s not raining.

Many of these lines are still in business, but only a few are steam worked, of which the most notable is the Brienz Rothorn, from the shore of the Brienzersee to the top of the Rothorn.

Rigi Railway No. 7: a vertical boilered rack locomotive; the very first built by the Swiss Locomotive Works at Winterhur in 1873.

Outside Switzerland, steam on the rack is quite hard to find. Austria has three such, of which two are still owned and operated by the Federal Railways. Lakeside S. Wolfgang is the starting point for one of them there, but it is even more famous, I suppose, for still having the original “White Horse Inn” after which the famous light opera was titled.

In Spain there was a steam rack line near Barcelona, leading to a monastery (another sort of pleasure?). In Britain we still have the Snowdon Mountain Railway, again with a lakeside start in Lanberis, and worked by Swiss-built steamers very like the older Rothorn ones. Rack railways certainly existed in Italy, especially in the islands, but they were for “business” not pleasure. Last week, I mentioned the USA’s Mount Washington Cog Railway, and it hard to find more.

The Brienz - Rothorn Railway

This was not the first rack railway in Switzerland, but it is still there, still steam, and is as good an example as one can now find. Probably the Rigi, one of whose locomotives, still extant, bears the date 1873, was the first of all, and the loco was the very first of any kind built at the famous workshops at Winterthur. This is the only place in the world where you can still buy a new rack loco for your mountain railway, and the Rothorn line did just that in 1992, after a honeymoon with a diesel and finding it was no tourist attraction.

The two rack lines of the State system did the same, also another Swiss line operating out of Montreux to Rochers de Naye. In common with other locomotives on these lines, the new ones are ‘rack only’ - unlike ‘rack and adhesion’ locomotives there is no facility to run them as adhesion locos where the grades are easy.

So, just one hundred years after it’s opening, on 17 June 1992 the Rothorn line placed into service its first new steam locomotive since 1936, an interval of 56 years. The builders had not built a steam locomotive for 40 years, let alone one so essentially ‘Swiss’ as a rack locomotive.

Brienz-Rothorn No. 4: an early type, waits at Brienz to push its train up to the summit of the Rothorn, in 1963.

These locomotives are oil burners (coal is more traditional, but a second man would have been needed, and the economics would have been destroyed). Proof of what a modern steam locomotive can achieve, two men can now move 120 passengers, against the three men for 60 to 80 people with any of the older types. Great care was taken with the thermal aspects of the design; the boiler can retain heat overnight, electric pre-heating reduces the slow and expensive ‘lighting-up’ period; and the engines can be made ready for service in about ten minutes. Two mechanical braking systems are fitted with electronic controls that can stop the train automatically in an emergency.

The very latest! The new steam locomotive built at Winterhur for the Brienz-Rothorn line in 1992. The locomotive weighs 16 tonnes and can take a 17 tonne train up the mountain.

The drawing is by the late Ian Beattie, and comes from ‘Continental Modeller’ by kind permission of the Editor, Andrew Burnham. The unusual step of showing the engine on a gradient is, in fact, common practice for rack engines, on which the boiler is often placed at an angle so that when in the normal situation of working on a gradient, the boiler is in its best position, as level as possible.

As far as is known, the new locomotive has not caused the withdrawal of any of the older ones, but it may be that one of the three diesel locomotives eventually bought may have been down-graded to works trains only.

Italy - the Kessler type compound rack-and-adhesion locomotives

Next week I shall offer you a look at some notable rack-and-adhesion types which differ from those by Kessler, but these compounds were in wide use, one variant being the most numerous class of such locomotives in all history. They had four cylinders, one above the other on either side of the smoke box, the lower ones operating on the driven wheels. When working ‘adhesion only’ no steam was admitted to the upper cylinders, which were brought into operation only when the locomotive was working on a rack section. They drove a jackshaft, which took the power through gearing to the cogwheel, which engaged in the usual way with the rack rail. All the cylinders were the same size, and the effective doubling of the low-pressure cylinders was achieved by the gearing, which caused the jackshaft to revolve twice as fast as the road wheels.

Kessler’s works were at Esslingen in Germany, and a number of similar locomotives were built there for rack lines in Southern Germany. Sadly there is not room for a picture, but I hope the description is clear enough!

by Lesley Warner

I think if we were honest we would all answer ‘yes’, if we could stay young. The search for eternal youth has been going on for centuries but will we ever find it? Certainly not in time for me, or many of my readers, but we can do quite a few things to help ourselves. There is more and more faith being put in alternative health remedies and vitamins.

There are many ways to safely and naturally increase your body’s longevity. Taking herbal remedies such as alfalfa, garlic, aloe vera, dandelion, red clover and psyllium hulls is one method. Herbs naturally contain vitamins and minerals that our bodies require. Plus some herbs like dandelion, psyllium hulls and burdock root help cleanse and detoxify the body, and our bodies need to be detoxified from time to time to help prevent premature aging.

As we get older, our bodies start lacking certain vitamins and minerals necessary for our overall health, such as iron, calcium, zinc and vitamin D. Supplementing our diets with vitamins, minerals and antioxidants becomes important. Replenishing our bodies with these important nutrients helps promote longevity and is a great anti-aging regimen.

There are an infinite number of supplements, vitamins, antioxidants and herbal remedies available on the market today making supplementation easy. In addition, you can also replenish your body with necessary supplements via your diet. Eating nutritious foods rich in vitamins and minerals is just another way to improve your health.

No matter how you choose to improve your body’s overall health, whether you take supplements, herbal remedies or eat more nutrient rich foods, the only way you will promote longevity is to begin an anti-aging program and sticking to it.

It is becoming increasingly popular for many people to choose alternative treatments rather than visiting the doctor’s office. Every day, more and more people are taking control of their healthcare.

The quest for information is moving people away from traditional medicine toward finding alternative methods for treating their symptoms. Unlike 20 to 30 years ago, the public is now more comfortable visiting an acupuncturist, massage therapist, herbologist or aroma therapist to cure their ailments.

One that has always fascinated me and scared the life out of me is acupuncture, even though it’s a component of traditional Chinese medicine that is recognized all over the world for its effectiveness in treating a wide variety of ailments. It’s a healing art that is used to treat almost anything.

Acupuncture is a non-invasive, natural, holistic approach for treating many disorders and illnesses. Each area of our being; physical, mental and emotional is treated.

Treating headaches, PMS, arthritis, ulcers, insomnia, depression, and more with acupuncture steadily increases in popularity each year. In fact, going to see an acupuncturist as a “preventative” measure is also popular.

Some people have a fear of needles and imagine that acupuncture is painful. However, unlike traditional Western medicine’s needles that are thick and hollow, acupuncture needles are smooth and solid and are not much thicker than a single strand of hair. Some people may feel a slight sensation upon the insertion of the needle into precise acupuncture points, but this is brief and vanishes almost immediately. These sterile needles are only used once and then thrown away.

Typically, people are deeply relaxed during an acupuncture session, and many fall asleep. Acupuncture stimulates your body’s natural healing processes helping your body to heal itself. Traditional Chinese medicine practitioners believe that acupuncture stimulates the flow of energy forces that nourish tissues, stimulate blood flow and enhance the body’s systems.

Acupuncture can be used as a preventative measure or to help treat what ails you. Because acupuncture is not limited to any specific disorder, in theory it can be used to help treat just about everything.

by Jan Olav Aamlid - President - House of the Golden Coin
http://www.thaicoins.com

As a boy, when I first started collecting coins, I kept my collection in matchboxes glued together. I collected coins from as many different countries in the world as possible. Some of my friends collected stamps with different motifs, like sports, ships, flowers, butterflies, etc. How and what one collects is not important, the most important thing is that it gives you pleasure. It is also nice to know that through collecting coins I have learned about geography, history and other topics I would probably not have learned if I were not a coin collector.

Some days ago I was looking at my coin collection. Some time back I had bought the last Thai WWF, World Wild Life coins. One is a one hundred baht coin with the portrait of His Majesty King Rama IX on the obverse and a mature Indo-Chinese tiger on the reverse. Another is a two hundred baht coin showing two Indo-Chinese tigers resting on the reverse. There is also another two hundred baht coin with a young Asian elephant and an adult showing their feeling of love and concern.

The artwork of the three coins is outstanding, and sparked my interest enough to look for other Thai coins with animals. To find the first of these, I had to look far back in history, to the Kingdom of Dvaravati (6th to 11th Century) when coins existed that showed goats, cows and rabbits. These coins are very rare, and very few have been offered for sale.

During the Sukhothai Period (1250-1419) bullet coins, called Pod Duang, were the most common form of money in Thailand. The bullet coins had different marks, and from the Sukhothai Period there is a very rare bullet coin bearing a cow. More common are bullet coins bearing the mark of an elephant. Bullet coins with the elephant can be found in auctions/sales and from dealers for about 3,000 baht.

From the Ayutthaya Period (1350-1767), ผ baht bullet coins with the elephant can be bought for 250 to 300 baht. Sometimes the artwork on these small bullet coins is not of the highest standard, and it can be hard to recognize the animal as an elephant.

During the reign of King Nang Klao (Rama III 1824-1851) a pattern coin with an elephant was produced in England. The coin shows on the obverse the elephant with the date CS 1197 (1835), and on the reverse is the inscription Muang Thai (Thailand). The mintage was only 500 pieces. The King did not like the coin, so it was never put into circulation. It is rare to see this pattern coin on the market, and the price is about 100,000 to 125,000 baht.

King Mongkut (Rama IV 1851-1868) was the first Thai King for more than 600 years to have “flat” coins put into circulation. The first series were made in 1857 and 1858 on a hand-driven minting machine given King Mongkut by Queen Victoria of England. The series made on this machine all had an elephant on the reverse. Few coins were minted on this machine and the coins are referred to as “Royal Gift”.

In 1860 a steam-powered minting machine bought from England was installed. The first series all had the elephant on the reverse. At that time the Thai flag had the elephant as the main motif. The coins issued in 1860 were a baht, half baht, Salung, Fuang and a half fuang. All the coins were made in silver and the one baht coins have the weight of 15.33 grams, while the fuang weighs 1 gram. The baht can be found in the market for about 500 baht.

There exist coins from Thailand showing three-headed elephants, even white elephants, birds and other animals. I will write about these next week.

by Richard Bunch

From Jim Cole, Pattaya: I have a computer that I bought about two years ago. For some time now it has been unreliable and I have been getting some rather strange things occurring, these include loss of ports and cross-linked files. I have been advised that the motherboard has failed but a replacement cannot be purchased, as this design is no longer available, for it is a Socket 7. I was hoping to upgrade it, but it now seems this will not be possible and that I will largely require a new computer. This means it will cost me more than I had budgeted for and in an attempt to save some money, I was proposing to use the hard disk in a new computer but the shop told me that it would be too slow and in any event is far to small. I would welcome your assistance and advice in my decision making process.

Computer Doctor replies: In answer to your question, Socket 7 motherboards are a thing of the past and even if you were lucky enough to find one, it is not to be recommended as this is old technology and although it may get you over your immediate problem should other components fail like the processor, memory, etc., then once again the likelihood of finding these is remote. If you can it would be best to bite the bullet now. With regard to the hard disk issue, until recently IDE ones were ATA66. Now ATA100 has been launched, but the majority are still ATA66. Your present one is likely to be ATA33. In order to gain the extra performance a motherboard that supports these ATA standards is required. It also needs to be borne in mind that it is not possible to mix speeds on the same channel without degrading the performance of the higher rated device.

From Jez Hewitt, Bangkok: I have recently upgraded my IBM notebook PC by installing Windows 2000. I did a clean install and have been most impressed with the improvements and new features over Windows98. I particularly like the suspend/resume future, which makes for a quick shutdown and restart. I travel around a lot, not just in Thailand but many other countries. I regularly need to accept floppies from clients and these are quite often infected with viruses. I haven’t been able to install my Norton Antivirus and wondered what you would recommend for use with my Windows 2000 machine?

Computer Doctor replies: Personally I subscribe to McAfee Clinic, which also has the advantage of checking daily at a predetermined time for updated files, assuming you have an Internet connection. This software is available online at www.mcafee.com and costs US$29.95 and is I believe a worthwhile investment given the devastation that some of the later viruses can cause.

Send your questions or comments to the Pattaya Mail at 370/7-8 Pattaya Second Road, Pattaya City, 20260 or Fax to 038 427 596 or E-mail to [email protected] . The views and comments expressed within this column are not necessarily those of the writer or Pattaya Mail Publishing.

Richard Bunch is Managing Director of Action Computer Technologies Co., Ltd. Providing professional information technology and Internet services which includes; custom database and application development; website design, promotion and hosting; domain name registration; turnkey e-commerce solutions; computer and peripheral sales service and repairs, networks (LAN & WAN) and IT consulting. For further information, please e-mail [email protected]  or telephone/fax 038 716 816 or see our website www.act.co.th 

In a recent news story the former Hollywood ‘Madam to the Stars’, Heidi Fleiss quipped, “Call girls don’t need madams now, just modems.” So, for those people who are looking to sink money (sink being the operative word) into the Pattaya economy and have considered bars and restaurants, perhaps a better way to go might be to set up or purchase your own Internet Cafe.

The girls- and boys- that work in the entertainment industry have embraced Internet technology with a fervour matched only by captains of industry and corporate raiders. Walk past almost any existing Internet Cafe and you will see a veritable smorgasbord of talent madly tapping away at the keyboards as they send messages of undying love, devotion and bank account details into cyberspace.

The old days of waiting for the snail mail to deliver a letter replying to desperate pleas for monetary assistance are long gone. Now sob stories concerning retarded buffaloes and the much-needed hospitalization of near and dear family members can be sent in real time with the replies being almost instantaneous.

I was sitting in the Carousel ogling den (Soi Diamond) recently when one young dancing maiden appeared clasping a sheaf of papers and asked the English-speaking and reading hostess to translate the latest e-mail sent by one of her boyfriends. The e-mail included a colour photo that had been sent as an attachment. The four or so pages would have cost her around 10 baht apiece plus her time on the Net. Multiply that by the number of young lasses who have a plethora of love interests scattered across the four corners and seven seas and you have the makings of a potentially lucrative business. If you also throw in a good translation service at a nominal charge then you could be sitting on a gold mine, well on a gold diggers gold mine anyway. In fact, that’s what I would call the cafe: Gold Diggers on the Net.

For the Physical: One of the best and relatively cheapest places for the would-be Pattaya versions of Arnie has to be Chevin Gym. Situated in Soi Day-Night 3 (the soi behind the Flamingo Hotel) it currently spreads over two floors with a multitude of machines and free weights. Those who have trained in other places say it is already one of the best-equipped gyms in Pattaya and gymmaster Duncan is planning on even greater expansion. The atmosphere is friendly with very few of what Clive James called the ‘condom full of walnut’s’ brigade posing around the mirrors.

Prices are competitive with 20 visits costing just 1,200 baht for males and a paltry 700 baht for females. You can also pay by the visit, week, fortnight or month. I have to say that this is one occasion where I don’t mind a discriminatory pricing structure. Duncan’s low prices for the female of the training species are designed to attract them into his gym and it works. Sometimes it’s better than being in an ogling den, well...almost.

In the Boozers: The Viking Bar (front of Pinewood Condo, up from Soi 6) is becoming increasingly popular with the locals, serving Amstel Draft at 49 baht, Becks at 65 baht and stocking such imported exotics as Strongbow Cider and Corona Beer. The beer boozer boasts a pool table (15 baht a game) and for regulars the boss hands out a VIP card that gives you a 10% discount on your bill. He also claims he has the widest range of imported beers anywhere in Pattaya and from the stock in the fridge it’s hard to dispute.

For The Hungry: The Sana Restaurant (Soi Skaw Beach), directly opposite the Skaw Beach Hotel, boasts a menu with nothing at more than 140 baht and most dishes are priced around 110 baht. I recently had a Wiener Schnitzel (pork) dinner that consisted of salad, chips and two large pieces of crumbed pork. I can handle a feed but this one just about beat me, so if you do decide to take a look, make sure you’re hungry.

Off to Cambodia: The Land of a Zillion Landmines is becoming increasingly popular with tourists and the capital, Phnom Penh, is a bustling city, a far cry from the bombed out remnant of the Pol Pot years (1975-1979). For those who are looking for a Thai restaurant with a Pattaya flavour then try out the Nokor Phnom at 176 Mao Tse Tung Boulevard. Owned by a Thai man whose brother runs the Pran Prai 2 Restaurant (next to Star Dice Disco off Naklua Road) I’m told it features live music performed by Thai musicians and a Filipino singer. Now there’s a combination for you.

My e-mail address is: [email protected] 

Copyright 2000  Pattaya Mail Publishing Co.Ltd.
370/7-8 Pattaya Second Road, Pattaya City, Chonburi 20260, Thailand 
Tel.66-38 411 240-1, 413 240-1, Fax:66-38 427 596; e-mail: [email protected]