HEADLINES [click on headline to view story]:

Bar closures and now more problems

Smoking dens

To protect and threaten

Road works in Jomtien

Claim to be gay

Gold chain snatchings

What happened to Pattaya Beach?

Bar closures and now more problems

Dear Sirs,
Thank you for printing my letter within your media regarding closures.
I just thought I would make you aware of probably the first bars in Pattaya to be fined for smoking along with its clientele... Yes you’ve guessed it, they were on the East of town (The Darkside).
Three bars were hit last night by the BiB for smoking offences where the customers were quite merrily smoking away on the outside porches of the small bars. They were all hit with 2000 baht fines and the establishments 20,000 baht.
Is there anyone out there that can confirm that ‘outside’ designated smoking areas of bars are not allowed and subject to fines?
The Darkside is getting bleaker by the week.
Continuously disgruntled,
P O’leary

Smoking dens

Sir;
Could someone please tell me the difference between a smoker not being allowed to smoke in any enclosed premises, and those hub a buba pipes, which are smoked in certain quarters in Pattaya, indoors, outdoors, anywhere you like? It’s as though they do not exist, and everyone closes their eyes to them. As far as I am informed, it is a form of tobacco they smoke, and untaxed in Thailand. I tried to take a picture of several people smoking indoors with these tubes, and was told to, shall we say, go away or else!
If we are going to have a no smoking rule, fine, but let’s not be racist or bias about it. It should apply to everyone.
Name and address supplied

To protect and threaten

Dear Ed;
I would like to share with you and your readers what happened to my wife and I last Friday outside of Tukcom shopping plaza.
I was stopped by the boys in brown for not having a standard exhaust system on my little 110cc motorcycle. The officer insisted that my motorcycle was too noisy so I had earned myself a 1,000 baht fine. I protested that the exhaust was not too noisy as I have had a muffler welded on the end of the exhaust to reduce the noise. (In all honestly it’s no louder than any other moped on the road). He was not interested in my protests, even when a 1,000cc chopper roared past us rattling windows on the shop fronts. I protested, saying that is what you call noisy. He then complained to my Thai wife that I was speaking to him without respect and I would incur more fines if I don’t keep quite.
Realizing my protests where in vain, I parked up the motorcycle at his request and we headed off to the police station to pay the fine.
On my return, we showed him that we had paid the fine and asked if he could please now remove the large rusty chain that he had wrapped around my motorcycle. He took the receipt and then walked across the other side of the road and sat down talking to his colleagues and left us standing there for 20 minutes waiting for him to return to unchain the bike. Obviously, he was trying annoy us (which was working as we were now late to collect our son from school) and prove that he had the power to mess us about. He eventually came back across the road and reluctantly released my motorcycle. I noticed that the chain had scratched the bike on both sides of the fairing and I wasn’t a happy tourist and told him so.
He then explained to my wife that “he did not like falangs here in Pattaya” and that “they come here and they think can do whatever they like because they have big money” and also to “tell your husband, that if I see him out, I am going to hurt him”. I couldn’t believe my ears. I paid the fine and did everything he asked but because I wasn’t happy about the fact he scratched my motorcycle, he’s now going to “hurt me”. Would he have not complained if I had damaged his vehicle?
Having heard this remark, I thought it best to report the incident to his superiors, which we did. They did take note and told us they will investigate the matter and not to worry because he probably won’t be able to remember me. (That didn’t really instill me with confidence about my protection from a gun carrying, self confessed falang hating police officer.)
Nice to see the BIB sticking to their motto “To Protect and Serve”. What a joke it; should be “To Intimidate and Threaten”.
Yours anonymously,
A Falang

Road works in Jomtien

Dear Ed,
Road works are now making life almost unbearable in Jomtien especially on the road behind the beach road, but could this be the start of a subway system between Jomtien and Bangkok?
Regards,
David Jones

Claim to be gay

Editor;
The letter by Nigel Grant disgusted with pedophiles is appalling. Here’s a guy that claims to be gay when his partners are probably 18 to 22 years old and he is in his late 60s or 70s. If you were really gay you would have a partner the same age as you, not someone who is barely old enough to be your grandson. How much of your romance is true love$$$. I’m sure a boy in his late teens finds you more attractive then someone their own age. Who says money cant buy you love.
It is also unbelievable that there are no Thai pedophiles in Thailand. You have Thai murderers, rapists, drug pushers, ya ba addicts, robbers, etc. Yet in all my years of reading the Pattaya Mail, I have yet to read about a Thai being arrested for having sex with young boys?
Paduano,
Italy

Gold chain snatchings

Editor;
What with the price of gold these days such that one can wear one’s life’s savings in one easily grabbable handful around one’s neck, times are good for the low lives who continue their drug fuelled existences by relieving the odd motor-cycled victim of said savings.
Maybe there is a correlation between the type of person who continues to drive around Pattaya on the single mode of transport which contributes to some 85% of all road injuries/fatalities in Thailand/South East Asia, to the mentality which both allows the wearing of 1, 2, 5 or more baht of gold and which blanks the possibility of losing this gold to the momentary period of concentration to which said drug fuelled low lives are capable of?
Presumably the spoils of these opportune robberies are sold back to the very gold shops from which they were bought? Is it naive of me to suggest that maybe the owners of these shops should refuse to buy back gold which has obviously been stolen? Could there not be a simple system of supplying genuine buyers of gold with a certificate of authenticity on making a gold purchase, and without which, gold could not be resold back to the shops?
Cheers:
Jimmy Haigh

What happened to Pattaya Beach?

Dear Sir/Madam,
What has happened to Pattaya Beach? Filthy, lack of covered areas (umbrellas). Are administrators here mad? How to lose a lot of tourist dollars. The people visiting at the moment would go back home and advise one and all not to come here. I don’t know the politics behind it all but why doesn’t the mayor get his act together and fix it? Why isn’t the beach cleaned at low tide?
Does anyone have the answer?
Regards,
Chris Stokes (a resident)

Letters published in the Mailbag of Pattaya Mail
are also published here.