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Dining Out: Chrysanthemum Palace - a rare opportunity for a royal experience
Although I mentioned recently that this low season looked like being particularly grim, some operators of beer boozers, ogling dens and dine and dash establishments have told me that July was actually quite reasonable, in some cases topping their takings for months like April and May. According to the figures of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, the country had just over nine and a half million tourists during 2000, nearly 60% of them male. Of these, almost three and a half million came from Europe, North and South America and Oceania (Australia/New Zealand) and seats on flights, particularly back to Europe, are currently difficult to obtain. As far as specific nations are concerned, tourists from the United Kingdom numbered nearly 290,000 while from Germany the figure was around 237,000. The French and the Swedish were the next most prominent of the European countries with, respectively, about 147,000 and 117,000 visitors to Thailand. In case you were wondering, Bangkok Airport is ranked as the 26 th busiest in the world with Atlanta and Chicago at the top of the busy tree in terms of passenger traffic.Taking the Mickey: One thing that’s difficult to find here in Fun Town is a good bar manager. Quite a number have been running places for so long they’ve become jaded and tend to collect together in little cliques of long-term associates and regular visitors. In some ways, I can’t really blame them. After all, having to be upbeat and friendly to every punter who glides through the portals of your playhouse night after night takes a lot of effort, and over the months and years it’s easy to become jaundiced. Anyway, the Spicy Girls Too ogling den (Pattayaland Soi 1) seems to have come alive in recent weeks following the appointment of an English version of Mickey Mouse as the new talking and drinking head. I don’t quite know what kind of medication he’s taking but he generally cavorts around the chrome pole palace like a man suffering St Vitus’s Dance. Considering that during Happy Hour, from 7:30pm until 9:00pm, draught beer is just 40 baht, it’s worth dropping in just to watch the Mouse bounce around. Remember The Alamo: Towards the Beach Road end of Soi 8 is an average-sized beer boozer named The Alamo, which has attracted a pretty regular crowd of expats and regular visitors to Fun Town. In many ways it’s a similar style to the popular Coral Reef beer boozer located up the road. The original Alamo was a fortified mission in San Antonio, Texas and was the scene of a famous 13-day siege in 1836 between colonists seeking Texan independence from Mexico. Among the defenders was Davy Crockett, a man famous, among other things, for wearing a raccoon skin as a hat. I must say that any bloke silly enough to go around wearing a dead animal on his head probably deserves to get topped by a musket-toting nachos muncher. Anyway, the famous event (the battle, not Davy Crockett getting whacked) is now commemorated here in Fun Town, but what’s really weird is that although the owner is a Yank (as you’d expect), the manager is Welsh. A dose of VCD: The new trend in marketing for some ogling dens is to purchase a couple or three televisions and a VCD player and give guzzlers a taste of synchronised music. The Tim ogling den (Second Road) has had the VCD setup for a little while now and the place is well worth a visit. The music is great, the dancing maidens are a friendly lot and not too pushy when it comes to hustling lady drinks and the happy hour prices of 55 baht for the amber fluid and just 60 baht for liver wasters like gin, vodka and whisky between 8:00 and 9:00pm makes it easy on the pocket. My only real complaint is that the den is a little on the dark side, you think you’re walking into a cave and expect to be mugged at any moment by a grizzly bear. I’ll have a slice of Perry Como and the fish and chips: The Sportsman’s Grill noshery (Soi 13) does a weekly special on Monday evenings of fish and chips at the value price of 99 baht. If you decide to sit in the air-conditioned area of the munching house, you’re liable to hear background music not heard in public since about 1938. Still, it makes a change from the constant assault of techno heads and rappers with names like LL Cool J and Puff Daddy, even if the music is the sort listened to by people who keep their teeth in a glass of water beside the bed. The service in the Sportsman’s Grill (and its parent the Sportsman’s Inn in Soi 6) is efficient and friendly and it is rumoured that the nosh house will soon be undergoing extensive renovations. Update: A couple of months ago I mentioned the fact that construction was well under way at a couple of Fun Town sites that hadn’t seen the ebb and flow of business for a number of years. The first site, that of the old Green House near the corner of Second Road and Pattaya Central Road is now...wait for it...a set of beer boozers with the grand title of the Green House Center. The second site, just around the corner from Central Pattaya Road in Beach Road is now a large seafood noshery, with entertainment, called Shrimps. My e-mail address is: [email protected]
Copyright 2001 Pattaya Mail Publishing Co. Ltd. E-mail: [email protected] |
The
Dining Out team was met for dinner by the GM of the Royal Cliff Beach
Resort, Andrew Wood. To set the tone of the evening, over a bottle of
Veuve Cliquot French champagne, we discussed the menu with Andrew for this
special promotion, which by the way only goes to the 31st of this month.
It was a royal beginning.
As
we were reviewing the items in this promotion, we were given each one to
try, and next up was the Szechuan style crab claw. This was not a dissect
and eat dish, but the crab meat had already been extracted and the crab
was surrounded by prawn meat and then fried. My notes taken at the time
simply say “Spicy and wonderful.” Just believe me - it was!