The sandbags have been filled, the drawbridge raised and the moat replenished with hungry crocodiles. The siege has begun. According to a straw poll it looks like this low season may be, to paraphrase the mad Iraqi, ‘the mother of all low seasons’. Then again, I seem to recall hearing exactly the same tune played by pretty much the same fiddles for most of the past four or five years and yet, over that same period, Fun Town has fairly exploded with new, if hardly unique, business ventures.

I wonder, is it so surprising that low season can really be such a struggle for so many places? Visitors to Pattaya each year number in the hundreds of thousands of males, females and some indeterminate. The problem is that the numbers of places offering entertainment now also number in the hundreds, so, based on current statistics, the average place should really only expect to cater to a clientele of four Russians and a Chechen refugee in December and January, two Englishman and a rarely sober Scotsman from February until late March, a gaggle of lost Japanese for an hour or two in April, six US Marines in May and June, an out-of-work Australian in July and a German backpacker couple with matching hairy armpits in late September. For most of the rest of the time the average bar is more likely to be visited by stray mongrels searching for the odd scrap of food dropped by the half-dozen or so bored looking bar girls.

Out of the Rumour Mill: Regular ogling den aficionados will have no doubt noticed a large number of camouflaged characters wielding walkie-talkies and wandering into most of the various chrome pole palaces around Fun Town for a quick chat with management.

It’s being rumoured that there is a power struggle taking place between the local civilian authorities in Chonburi who issue licences and such-like to the dens and the peelers who are supposed to make sure the palaces are operating within the letter of the law.

It’s also being said that the constabulary are telling den operators that shows involving body paint, lighted candles, long strands of coloured string or plastic flowers performed by birthday-suited maidens are not really suitable entertainment for the tender dispositions of most customers.

In recent times ogling dens like Far East Rock, Las Vegas and Hot and Cold (all in Soi Post Office) were ordered to close their doors while Dollhouse, Peppermint and Dream (Walking Street), to name a few, weren’t open for business for a couple of nights.

Life is a Cabaret: The Planet Rock ogling den and late night boogie barn (Pattayaland Soi 2) has been putting on a number of variety shows in recent times in an effort to provide the imbibing public with something a little different in the way of entertainment.

On Wednesday night, July 18, their rendition of Life is a Cabaret would have to go down as their best ever. It was clear right from the start that plenty of hours had been spent rehearsing the show and although it was never going to rival a Broadway spectacular, it was worthy of a curtain call for Fun Town.

The show kicked off with four dancers attired out in top hats, tails and colourful bikinis being led in lipsynching by a Toulouse-Lautrec look alike, also wearing a top hat and tails, although thankfully the rest of the apparel was more in keeping with material associated with a penguin suit.

Toulouse-Lautrec’s duet with a gobbler of the second category decked out in a monkey costume, and almost wearing a brightly coloured dress, as well as his lively exuberance in ‘singing’ the female anthem ‘Money, Money, Money’ were highlights, even though he looked to be lypsynching to the national anthem of Upper Volta rather than the tune at hand.

The show attracted a standing-room only crowd that seemed to appreciate the time and effort taken to put together the extravaganza. Liza Minelli, eat your heart out.

Elvis has left the building: Ever since his untimely death back in 1977 (do you remember where you were?), Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll, has enjoyed an unusual kind of reverence across the planet.

So, it was hardly surprising that a boozer and noshery dedicated to his memory would finally open its doors here in Fun Town. The Elvis Pub and Restaurant (Second Road, just around the corner from Soi 2) bills itself as the ‘first rock n roll and oldies pub and restaurant in Pattaya’.

The walls are festooned with framed black and white and colour photographs of Elvis, with his friends, contemporaries and world leaders. The music in the pub is, of course, simply Elvis.

I well remember in my hometown of Sydney a place called the Elvis Pizzeria down in Rushcutters Bay that did a roaring trade as a theme noshery. It was decked out in similar fashion to the Elvis Pub and also played non-stop Elvis records.

The drinks menu in the Elvis Pub features a little tipple called the ‘Elvis Drink’ at 60 baht. It’s a shooter that consists of vodka and red grapefruit juice and tastes pretty good.

If you do happen to feel like a pizza while in the Pub, Pizza Service (the original shop is in South Pattaya Road, near the Third Road traffic lights) has opened a branch right next door.

There’s also a ‘live’ Elvis show that hits the pub stage every Friday evening around 8:30 p.m. I can’t wait until Giligin’s Elvis (a genuine product of the US of A) meets his alter ego (Richard Newton) who just happens to hail from Germany. Perhaps they could do a duet of Wooden Heart.

My e-mail address is: [email protected]

Like sparkling wines, there are a variety of methods for making sweet wines. These vary from cheap and easy, to some of the most labour intensive and expensive processes in the wine making world. We are talking here about fully sweet wines, often drunk with desserts, though the French like to partner the finest foie-gras with a luscious Sauternes - perhaps the king of sweet wines.

Like so many aspects of wine making, the discovery that grapes left on the vine until they rot can produce beautiful wines, was probably yet another accident.

Botrytis is a fungus which may attack grapes, usually in the cool of late autumn. It occurs in the early morning mists which form in vineyards sited near large bodies of water. The fungus wraps itself around the grapes and spores puncture the skin, drawing off water and leaving the grape shrivelled.

If left unchecked, botrytis will kill grapes and can be a big problem to vine growers. In some unique locations (Sauternes in France, parts of Germany and Austria for example) the vineyards are sited such that they also get maximum exposure to the sun.

In good years, the warmth of the sun as it rises kills off the fungus, leaving the grapes shrivelled and unsightly, but tasting delicious: full of the sugar and glycerine which was left behind.

Vineyards for botrytis wines are harvested by hand, so that only those individual grapes affected by the “noble rot” are selected. Often the same area will be picked over several times so that grapes can be picked in ideal condition. The wine is then made using the normal method for white wines, but the high sugar and glycerine content means that the wine is sweet, luscious and full-bodied. Because grapes high in natural acidity are used (semillon, sauvignon blanc, riesling, gewurztraminer) the wine is not at all cloying. Though sweet, the best wines are balanced and full of subtle flavours that linger on the palate. Botrytis wines are always expensive and often bought by the half bottle. With the unpredictability of the harvest and the labour intensive methods used, it is perhaps easy to see where the money goes.

Some other sweet wines are produced from grapes that are over-ripened, but not rotted. This can be done by simply leaving the grapes on the vine for longer than usual, or harvesting the grapes as normal but leaving them spread out to dry on mats so that they shrivel in the sun and air. One interesting, rare and expensive form of sweet wine is the ice-wine (in German, Eiswein) of Germany, Austria and Canada. Here the grapes are left on the vine into the dead of winter - often into the New Year. On a suitably freezing cold night the grapes are harvested. Most of the water content of the grapes has turned to ice and this is expelled from the grapes leaving only the sugars and acids behind in the pulp. A wine is made from this which is very luscious and sweet.

Another group of sweet wines are sweet because fermentation is stopped at a fairly low alcohol level. At that point, there is still plenty of natural sugar that has not been consumed by the yeast, so the resulting wine is naturally sweet. Fermentation is usually stopped by filtering out the yeasts, but in some wines the fermentation is stopped by adding spirit to the tank: this is the basis of the great sweet, fortified wines such as Port and Madeira, as we shall see in the next section.

The cheapest method of making a dessert wine is simply to add sugar. In the best cases this will be natural grape sugar, in the worst, sacks of cane sugar. Although these wines are sweet - and may please some palates - they are usually lacking in balancing acidity and interesting flavours.

The term fortified indicates that the wine’s alcoholic strength has been boosted by the addition of spirit, usually a grape based spirit, like brandy. Fortified wines can be sweet or dry, depending on whether the spirit is added during or after fermentation of the base wine. The family of sweet fortified wines include Port, Madeira, Malmsey, Vermouth and Muscat de Beaumes de Venise. Again, the quality of these is only as good as their components: a good base wine and a good quality spirit.

About half way through fermentation a measure of spirit is added to the tank. This immediately raises the alcohol level. Yeast cannot survive in higher alcohol levels, so the fermentation stops and all the unfermented sugar is left in the wine. The resulting wine is both strong and sweet. It is normally transferred to oak barrels at that point for ageing.

Some of the world’s great fortified wines include:

Port - Originating from the Douro Valley of Portugal, port comes in various styles and quality levels. In particularly good years (usually two or three per decade) a “vintage” year is declared and a vintage port is released. Vintage ports are the aristocrats of the port world and often take around 30 years after release to develop into truly great wines. These should not be confused with Late Bottled Vintage (or LBV) ports: these are ports which have been matured for longer than ordinary ruby or tawny ports in the shippers’ cellars, but they are not true vintage ports of a great year. LBVs are ready to drink when they are released.

Madeira - From the island of the same name, Madeira is unique in that after being made - in much the same way as port - it is cooked. The wine is placed in very hot vats for 90 days. Once again this was an accidentally discovered technique - Madeira wines being shipped in the holds of sailing ships on long voyages were kept in very hot conditions which seemed to caramelise the wines - a flavour that people seemed to enjoy.

Vermouth - This fortified wine (usually manufactured on an industrial scale in the north of Italy) is flavoured with wormwood or other herbs. Here the overwhelming flavour comes not from the wine at all, but from the herbs used as flavouring agents.

Sherry - Sherry, from Jerez in Spain, is perhaps the greatest wine made by the post-fermentation method. In other words, unlike port, the spirit is only added after fermentation is complete. All sherry therefore, starts life as a completely dry style. Varying amounts of sweet reserve wine are added back in before bottling, according to the style of sherry being made. Another unusual feature of sherry making is the “solera” system of ageing. In the solera system, wine from many vintages is matured in the cellars in separate casks. The casks containing the oldest sherry are constantly topped up with wine from the second oldest casks. These in turn are topped up with wine from the third oldest casks, and so on until the newest casks - from the current vintage. In this way, the style of sherry can stay much the same from year to year as all sherry is a blend of several vintages.

Fortified wines typically range from around 16% to 23% of alcohol - about double the strength of ordinary wines.

Ranjith Chandrasiri is the resident manager of the Royal Cliff Grand, Royal Cliff Beach Resort, Pattaya, Thailand, [email protected]  or [email protected] 

Top Class Entertainment and Planet Rock produced top class rocking entertainment last week, unearthing an untapped wealth of talent amongst their staff members and dancers, with their Cabaret night. It was a night of top hats, canes and glitter.

Their webmaster, Australian ex-jockey David Smith and Mickey Rooney look-alike, traded in his bits, bridles and batteries to display a previously unknown talent treading the boards. His number with the gorilla being a true David and Goliath performance. It was suggested that next time he should pick on a gorilla his own size.

David Smith throws away money at the Planet Rock Cabaret

Probably the surprise of the night were the “show girls” who bumped and ground their way through such numbers as “American Pie” and “Latino Lover”. For once these were not the rather tall, surgically enhanced, “ladies” but were the girls normally seen as chrome pole huggers, who all gave well-rehearsed performances in the Corps de Ballet genre, with some of the dancers from Bubbles, Lipstick, Rodeo Girls and Planet Rock showing true Las Vegas style cabaret talents. They had become performers!

Of course, cabaret nights would not be the same without the Ladies of the Second Category, all of whom danced their way through exotic routines, wearing even more exotic costumes, a goodly percentage of which managed to slip during the numbers, revealing their surgeon’s talents. Perhaps a press stud could also be inserted at the same time as the silicone, to enable their tops to remain attached!

The dance routines were choreographed by Lek, assisted by Ms. Gop, who also played the Liza Minelli role, acting as a perfect foil for David Smith.

The One Million Dollar notes that were thrown to the crowd during the “Money makes the world go round” number were another great promotional idea, though Dr. Iain (Nite Beat, Pattaya Mail Channel) advised young David Smith after the finale not to spend all his money in the Katoey Shop.

Planet Rock has now certainly elevated itself within the chrome pole wonderland of Soi Pattayaland 2 to become a true nightclub with their best show yet. These are to be a monthly event and Pattaya is waiting to see what Mickey Rooney will do next.