Praising a good baht bus driver

Editor;
I visited Pattaya from 3 April to 14 April, and as a frequent visitor I would like to tell you about my experience with a baht bus driver on 7 April.

My wife and I left Jan’s Bar guest house around 2:15 p.m. to go to Suksabia Villa fishing park for the afternoon. We summoned a baht bus and negotiated a fare of 70 baht. On arrival at the park we got off and I handed the driver 100 baht and he left.

After a few minutes my wife discovered she had left our video camera, Sony digital camera and her bag containing 6000 baht plus. The total value in Thai baht (was) approx. 110,000. My wife then got on a motor cycle and gave chase to the baht bus but as he had already left the scene some ten minutes before, there seemed little chance off seeing the baht bus again.

Around 4.30 p.m., (we were) sitting in Jan’s Bar writing out a list of the property lost so my wife could go to the police station to report (it) so we could claim the insurance for the goods. The baht bus driver reappeared, along with the owner off the fishing park, with the two cameras and my wife’s wallet - all in good condition. As his English was poor, all he said was you left this in the car, and handed back the cameras and wallet and turned to go back into his baht bus. My wife then went and thanked the driver and handed the driver all the cash in the wallet, around 6000 Baht.

As a long time visitor to Pattaya and also a regular reader off Pattaya Mail I know that baht bus drivers always get bad publicity, so I would be grateful if you could share my story with others as I feel the driver deserves all the credit he can get, as he has to suffer greatly due to all the bad publicity a few rogue drivers give his profession. Like everywhere in the world there is good and bad so next time be considerate to the baht bus driver as they are not all evil as reported in the press.

Joe and July White
Hong Kong

“Roller” scam

Dear Journalists,
Having been robbed of fifteen thousand baht ($600 Australian dollars) in the manner described below, rather than make a formal complaint to the police or publish a true account of the incident on the Internet, I ask that you take appropriate action.

...While in Thailand I fell victim to ‘rolling’, which art I am now informed has been perfected in Pattaya. An easy target is usually alone and tips well. Rollers often work in teams, sometimes with a male accomplice setting the prey up. One girl will extol the virtues of another in a variation of the ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine with the confidence man affirming that the girl on offer is the best in town. The stranger’s acceptance of a high price for the ‘top’ girl’s services marks him as a victim. In the course of the evening the quarry is surreptitiously fed an aphrodisiac. At the dupe’s hotel room the girl secretly applies a somniferous drug to her breasts so that the victim ingests the potion when he sucks her nipples and falls asleep whereupon he is relieved of whatever is available such as cash in a wallet. Accomplished rollers leave portion of accessible spoils so that a mark may never even know of the theft and/or is often too embarrassed to report the crime.

My ‘rollers’ were Somkid, who works at a massage parlour, her sister Fon and an expatriate Australian.

Yours sincerely,
Barry Edwards

Losing business on Songkran

Dear Editor,

Reading your newspaper in a quiet moment before I have to listen to my guests shouting at me again due to "Happy Songkran"...

This year’s festival started with a traffic jam going over a week, and the tourists are not too happy in getting stuck in the stinky local transport...

The famous shopping area really does not attract them at all. Since Saturday a week ago of course everyone is sprayed by the bargirls and silly (male) tourists, with the result that quite a few companies advise their customers not to visit Thailand during Songkran period, with the result that we cannot fill our hotels.

It would be interesting to know how many other businesses lose considerable amount of money due to this mismanaged occasion.

And now I go ahead reading your paper, looking up words in the dictionary, presently "succinct". Just wonder where they teach that sort of English.

Happy New Year!

Hotel Manager

Liking the web site

Sir,

Just wanted to let you know I think you are doing a great job on your Website, which I look forward to reading each Friday. I am a regular traveler to Pattaya (I just returned from a three week trip there), residing in San Francisco, and find your paper a great way to keep current on local events. By the way, when I am in Pattaya, I can never seem to find your paper. Where is it offered for sale, locally?

Well, keep up the good work!

Bill

Editor’s reply; Thanks for your response. Our paper comes out every Friday and can be found on most newsstands in town, as well as in most supermarkets, including Foodland and Friendship Supermarket.

MacBeast’s

Dear Barrie Kenyon,

I thank you for your article on Mac and Muttley’s which to me was so very interesting.

I liked the ‘Meat Pie a la mode,’ although distressing it was that the restaurant was in fact out of Pistachio, being one of my favourites.

The eerie piece you refer to from ‘The Beast with Five Fingers’ was actually a transcription for left hand of the Violin ‘Chaconne’ for piano.

The piece was written originally by the German composer J.S.Bach, transcribed by the German composer J. Brahms for the German pianist Clara Schumann, wife of the German composer Robert Schumann.

Clara had injured her right hand and Brahms had transcribed this Bach piece for her use in practising.

What is the most confusing to me is that in ‘The Beast with Five Fingers", the ‘Beast’ is a RIGHT hand. This would make the technical gymnastics of execution almost impossible.

Anything you could do to help would be appreciated.

A music loving gourmet

Annoyed by the festival

Dear Sir,

Having been in Pattaya over the national Songkran Holidays, I was more than annoyed by the local "Pattaya Festival". As if Pattaya wouldn’t already have a traffic problem, they closed off a part of Beach Road for a dubious festival, resulting in one BIG traffic jam. Where the jam normally extends no further than to Royal Garden, it was now way beyond Middle Road on the beach side; Soi Post office was at a stand-still, and then the cars went up Soi Yamoto against the one-way direction. All other roads leading towards the South Pattaya traffic junction were likewise clogged up - and the police were simply not able to master that chaos.

And for what?

First of all, I saw four venues of the festival: on Beach Road, on the field next to the South Pattaya junction, another still on Pattaya 3 Road closer towards Central Pattaya Road, and the last on the North Pattaya Road after passing City Hall. Is this a festival or a cancerous affair that spreads over the town? Can’t they find ONE place, where there is enough space OFF THE ROADS for a festival (if anybody thinks this can be called a festival...), with enough parking space close by, and located where it isn’t creating a traffic mess?

And how come this collection of stalls are called a "festival"? Maybe 70% of what I saw along Beach Road were just regular food stalls, including the indigenous Thai food of Dunkin Donuts and McDonalds... As if there weren’t any food stalls in Pattaya during the rest of the year... And the rest of the stalls were selling kitchenware and the likes. The only booth I didn’t find was one selling real estate, but that might have been a lapse on account of the organizers. So how come something like that is called a "festival"? In Bangkok you can find this under the various names of Food Mart or Trade Fair or maybe agricultural fair (meaning to cater stuff to the peasants, that the townspeople wouldn’t want anyway).

So in the end only two parties win: the City Council, who can claim to have organized (successfully, of course!) a Festival in 1998, and the organizing company, which will have made sure that they will make enough profit from the whole affair. The people and exhibiting groups or companies will hardly have made more money than if they stayed at their usual location, given that they will have to pay the additional expense of the booth rent. And the people of Pattaya? They got a big traffic jam and food or other articles at inflated and thus "special" prices at the "Bashing at the Beach". And who needs that anyway?

Stefan Modro
Bangkok