Can you hear the drums Fernando? Tonight (Friday September 14) sees the relatively new Green House Center (corner of Second Road and Pattaya Central Road, opposite Tops Supermarket) present a charity concert for the Forgotten Children Foundation featuring Fabba, a group of four people who do impressions of songs made famous back in the late 1970s and early 1980s by the Swedish pop group Abba. A Thai and International buffet is available at just 150 baht per person between 7 p.m. and 10:30 p.m.

Get your motor running: While on the subject of worthwhile causes and charities, make sure you get your backside out to the third annual Jester’s Fair this Sunday, September 16 at the Siam Bayshore Resort. The people involved in organising the fair reads like a who’s who from every strata of Pattaya society. This is grass roots charity work at its finest, with all proceeds going to help those in need. There are no fat salaries being paid out and no ‘hidden’ expenses designed to skim a bit off the top before the residue is passed on. Plenty of good people have given up their precious time and expended their energy in putting together a promotion to help those less fortunate and to support a group of hard-working Good Samaritans who run the Fountain Of Life Center.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that I spotted TQ’s ‘Woody’ Underwood - the chairman and chief organiser for the Jester’s Fair - tramping down Soi 6 in the late afternoon, looking for all the world like a politician on the hustings, drumming up support for the Jester’s Fair. If that’s not hands on, I don’t know what is.

If it is true what they say about the Hash House Harriers being a drinking club with a running problem, then perhaps the Jester’s are more of a charity organisation with a motorbike problem.

Exit, stage left: The Se7en beer boozer (Second Road, next door to the Lek sleeping palace) has recently moved...all of about three metres to the left. It now boasts a larger bar area and is a good spot for the passing pedestrian traffic, such as it is, along Second Road.

When I visited, the music was of the techno variety, but after 9 p.m. the bar employs a band. The girls were reasonably friendly and the drinks prices on a par with similar establishments. Worth a quiet drink after - or before - venturing into the clutches of the Tim ogling den across the road.

The Moon’s a bit bright tonight: If ever proof was needed that there is never anything new under the sun (or the moon in this case), has anybody noticed that old 1980s trend of wearing sunglasses at night seems to be enjoying a revival here in Fun Town? The place seems to have attracted a bunch of Roy Orbison and Ray Charles look-a-likes, occupying bar stools and pretending to look...blind, I guess.

I spotted one guy with his sunglasses perched atop his melon playing pool with a girl down at the popular Hot Tuna beer boozer (Walking Street). He must have been playing really badly as he soon pushed them down to cover his eyes, making him look like a cross between Stevie Wonder and The Fly.

Keep your shirt on: I’m told that pink palaces featuring gyrating dancing boys have been told to cover up and the chrome pole fondlers are now sporting shirts and shorts rather than poncing about flexing their pecs. Tackle shows have also been canned.

Keep an Eagle eye out: One of the more popular beer boozers in Soi 7 is the Eagle Bar, situated directly opposite the laneway running down from Central Road. Happy Hour lasts from 1 p.m. until 8 p.m. with most spirits at 50 baht, soft drinks at 25 baht and beer between 35 and 45 baht. Even outside Happy Hour, the beer is just 50 baht and soft drinks 30 baht. The girls are a friendly bunch although the unusually carved wooden seating behind the bar certainly wasn’t designed with the human form in mind.

Take a compass: Next time you happen to wander into the Playpen ogling den (Soi Yamato), ask Mick to give you a blow-by-blow account of his recent off-road motorcycling experiences.

Briefly, it seems Mick, after indulging a little too heavily in the giggle sauce, found himself well off the beaten track and unable to locate Pattaya. Now we all know Fun Town is hardly small, so this gives some idea of just how far out of the city environs he had managed to travel in his amber-fluid induced state. He could see bits of it in the distance but couldn’t work out how to get back.

Assuming that if he headed towards what twinkling lights he could see he would eventually bump into something resembling Pattaya, Mick rode a little too quickly into a corner and found himself becoming more closely acquainted with the texture of the road surface than his body would have liked. He came to rest in a clump of bushes and, deciding that this was as good a place as any to take a little nap, he duly nodded off. He was nudged awake by one member of a line of Buddhist monks who were making their daily alms run. The pain in his ribs made him realise he was still part of the human race, so, looking like an escaped convict having a bad hair day, he mounted his motorbike and rode unsteadily off in search of Pattaya.