Congratulations

Hi to all at Pattaya Mail,

Congratulations on a successful 8 years, and many wishes for more years to come. Thank you for keeping me up to date on news and issues in and around Pattaya.

James Monahan, a long time reader

Editor and staff;

Many congratulations on your 8th. Hope you are around for many, many years to come.

Your loyal readers in Ireland

Pattaya Mail,

I have been reading your paper since 1997. I mostly read your paper on the Internet. I’m always in touch with LOS even when I’m at home in America. Congratulations on 8 years of professionalism, keep up the great work!

Ryan Smith

Kearney, Nebraska, USA

Hello everyone @ Pattaya Mail,

Happy Eighth Birthday. Thanks.

All the best,

M. L. Pensak Ben Kridakara, Captain, RTN Ret

Editor;

Just to clarify the situation on the long running saga of the bowling green lawn mower: after receiving a letter from a disgruntled resident the owners of the bowling green immediately changed the cutting of their grass to the daytime. This was at extra cost to the bowling green as more staff were needed because certain work on the grass still has to be done at nighttime. (I hope the sound of the water sprinkling on the grass doesn’t disturb anybody too much.)

Anyway, I hope everything is ok now and I would like to thank our next door neighbour for all the free advertising his original letter has given us.

Yours Sincerely,

Kevin Springett
Joint Owner

The Bowling Green

Dear Sir,

With this letter I would like to thank all the people who showed up at our International Soccer and Boxing Charity event on Saturday 21 July. Also special thanks to our sponsors and volunteers who made all this possible. I hope everybody enjoyed the whole day, the soccer and the boxing evening.

I just feel sorry that I disappointed some people by losing my fight. I discovered in the afternoon (the same day) in the Bangkok Hospital after a week of pain in my ribs, that I had a broken rib from the fight earlier in the Best Friend Bar a few weeks ago. The doctor said I was crazy if I should fight, but I couldn’t get it over my heart to disappoint all my supporters and the children, so I did the fight anyway and did the whole 6 rounds. It was hard and very painful, but I don’t care the pain, as long we raise money for those poor children; that’s more important!

I hope everybody enjoyed the event and in October there will be another charity boxing event with a better and healthier Belgian Patrick. Hope to see you then all again.

Thanks to you all,

Patrick

Patrick’s Belgian Restaurant & Cafe

Dear Editor;

With all the recent talk about zoning for entertainment centres, could someone from city hall please explain how permission was granted to build a disco in a quiet residential area of North Pattaya?

Monkies Disco has shattered the peace for all residents and visitors. The incessant pounding and vibration can be heard and felt over a very large area, covering condos, hotels and private houses. And, just in case the councillors and police are interested, the disco stays open until 0730. So much for operating hours being enforced!

My condo was only rented, so I have managed to get out, but there will not be any relief for condo or house owners, or hotel visitors, until the authorities really practice what they preach about turning Pattaya into a resort that can be enjoyed by partygoers and people who like to relax by the sea, and get to sleep at night.

Regards,

David Johnson

Editor;

In the backwater of two earlier letters from Mr. Jan Abbink (PM15/6) and “Frequent Farang” (PM 29/6) I would like to contribute to that discussion with a little wider perspective - back to some realities.

It should now be quite clear that dual pricing in most cases is justified and fair on the factual ground that dual pricing is applied in tourist attractions and establishments especially designed (as to investments, etc.) to an arena of international tourism (as to a capacity to pay the investment-related price for the commodity-service offered). Thusly, in short - tourists (mostly westerners-”farangs”) pay the normal price and Thai nationals (and farang residents) are given the self-clear discounts.

But all this applies to mostly private enterprises especially designed for international tourists, isn’t it? Then it seems strange to me why suddenly in the last ten years or so, dual pricing (10-20 times higher prices for foreigners) has also been applied to establishments run by the state or provincial authorities - like the nature given from our creator or buildings constructed 300 years ago. Do these establishments demand the justified investment for a heavily applied two-tiered pricing? I just wonder, I’m not complaining.

To me, it seems like it’s not only a faction of farangs who are not 100% clear about when dual pricing is justified. In fact a lot of nationals seem quite confused about this as well. Some farangs, even so called “frequent farangs”, will probably never get to know how wide spread the idea really is that farangs should always pay much more. And this does not only stem from a conception of hierarchy - “the patron-client relationship’’ - or that it is an “honour to pay”. Some, maybe a fraction, of the farangs living here relatively well integrated in the Thai society, know this very well. Some farangs, even so called frequent farangs, will never get to know this - they simply don’t notice, have not been here long enough or are living quite apart or secluded lives as tourists or businessmen.

It is the idea that one group, on the presumption of every such individual’s wealth, always should pay much more that could result in a baht-bus driver’s threat and violence against a farang living here because he refuses to pay 20 baht when the regular fare is 5 baht, for instance. The producing of examples could be hundred fold. Individual and organized crimes against tourists-foreigners-farangs does actually exist even in Thailand. Sometimes it’s obvious but sometimes it’s very subtle. It is obvious from articles in Thai newspapers, it’s obvious for an experienced person in this country. But some farangs, even some “frequent farangs” and blue-eyed tourists will never know.

As to “Frequent Farang’s’’ lecturing of Mr. Abbink I think it is important for some readers to know that many farangs are brought up, educated and moulded in western matured democracies with a high and intensive “equality-climate”. So the idea of two-tiered pricing is very alien as a concept in their home countries. Very, very strange and compromising actually. Maybe it’s not always selfish complaining?

Last but not least, largely speaking, I also think that farangs living here permanently have reason to be proud of Thailand. Thai people are generally honest, pleasant, polite, humble, nice and sociable to all foreigners.

Thank you.

Sign me,

N. A. A.

Dear Editor,

One must concur with ‘Mark’ and T. Crossley (both issue 29) in that this column is an excellent forum for airing opinions. Those writers who call everyone who makes critical comment ‘moaners’ should follow the advice they are so keen to dish out and find amusement elsewhere; the ‘Kids Corner’ column perhaps?

Getting down to the nitty-gritty of what’s right and wrong with Pattaya there have been some excellent letters recently. There are clear differences in opinion on how the place could be improved but to add my own baht’s worth, what is certain is that Pattaya is not, by far, the only place that attracts sex-seekers. Isn’t a ‘holiday romance’ the desire of almost all single tourists? In Pattaya though, even for the most desperate all that achieving this usually requires is monetary payment. The consequence of this is that Pattaya undoubtedly attracts a preponderance of males who never managed to develop an ability to attract partners of their own kind by the more usual method and have extensively all their lives remained bereft of attractive, ‘playful loving’ in that quarter. This presents a problem for Pattaya because most of these men seem to have had little notion of self-improvement in the way of physical or social ‘refinement’ either.

Many Pattaya farangs are bitter and bemoan how their (sometimes ex) Thai wives and girlfriends treat them like walking ATMs or are ‘like kids’ with their ‘I want’ ways. Whatever do these men believe the girls are with them for; their personality and good looks? By any understanding of the term, the vast majority of these men are ‘sugar-daddies’ and need to wake up to the fact. They entered the game willingly and can’t expect to move the goalposts because they discover they weren’t being so clever after all.

Agree with it or not, all of the above is Pattaya’s street-level front-window to the world and which is why the seedy side of Pattaya is concentrated on in western media. ‘Presentation’ is in fact the door that Pattaya seems unable to find the key to. There are relatively few of the more regular type of tourist or traveller, never mind so-called ‘beautiful people’, for the offing crew to blend in with and as there are in other resorts.

Besides having the reputation it has, the hugely popular and lucrative package tour industry also largely bypasses Pattaya because other than for the up-market hotel/resorts, out-of-reach for many, there is little accommodation that would not result in complaints to a tour-operator catering to the mass-market. Whether it be caused by locals’ karaoke wailing, over-loud music played in open air bars (or indeed early morning lawn mowing), without drinking oneself unconscious a good night’s sleep is hard to come by in the otherwise excellent value central hotels and guest-houses. Without such rest, the other things that holidaymakers look for may not be enjoyed even though they are available.

Conclusion? For one reason or another many of Pattaya’s Thai and farang business owners have shown they are unable to regulate themselves efficiently and are their own, and more importantly the resort’s, worst enemy.

T Tighe