Pattaya & first bike accident

Well my friend from New York is getting married to a Thai girl this week, but last weekend was his bachelor party in Pattaya.

Thursday & Friday:

I got two of my scooter friends to ride out with me to enjoy the beach town. We took a 4.5 hour long scenic ride to get there. The roads were quite nice outside the city so we kicked back and enjoyed a more rural part of Thailand.

We got into Pattaya at dusk and stayed at a $45 hotel on the North end of town, the quiet family end. So there's a main road following the beach and off of this there are some 20 streets all loaded with hotels, restaurants, bars, massage parlours, and girls looking to make money. It was just crazy seeing so many girls. I would guess there may be 10,000+ girls out at night hoping to find a rich Westerner to take them away. At 3AM, my friend accidentally chatted up a dude over a beer, he looked like a pretty hot girl for 15 minutes till we caught on. You laugh, but you'd be suckered too, they're that scary attractive. I've come to decide now that any really hot girl is actually a guy. I had to lower my standards just to avoid being packed in the ass! Although a small town, there's an international presence here. I enjoyed some nice Russian food for dinner including crocodile which reminded me of fatty pork. I wasn't aware Russia had crocodiles, but mmmm...crocodile.

The most popular and densely crowded area is Walking Street on the South end of town. It was 8 blocks of bars loaded with tourists and Thai girls. We went and checked out a Russian stripclub which had a dozen gorgeous model types. This was the most I ever paid for a beer in my life, an $11 Corona!! We left after the first beer, but first asked 5 girls indirectly if they were whores. Only if you had a million dollars was their answer. Strange since the other 99% of girls in town would love to sleep with a Westerner. Still it was nice to see some crackers for a change.

Saturday:

Rode up to the looking point and enjoyed my first on-road bike accident. There was a sharp uphill left that I was approaching at 30KM/hr, I braked a little, leaned, and the bike slid out and went down with me. I slid only 5-10 feet as I held onto the bike and whacked the side of my helmet on the road. I got up, moved the bike, and realized the tar was exceptionally smooth and slick. The smooth tar made me wipe, but it also kept my clothes intact and scrapes to a minimum. The bike had minimal damage as I was probably going only 5 mph when I hit the ground. Guess I gotta wear a jacket even going slow around town from now on. Luckily I have another helmet to wear already.

My bachelor party friends rolled into town so I switched hotels to the party hotel. It was crazy inside, like a gaudy Guadi-esqe building. They even had an indoor Playboy Mansion style grotto that we rented out. Sorry no pics of any girls or the actual partying from this evening, bachelor party rules. Above is pic of the bachelor's room, but I have yet to find out what occured in here late night. I got pretty drunk this evening and even had to kick out a girl I picked up after hanging out for only 5 hours. I needed to sleep and recover from the booze so I could ride back to Bangkok.

Sunday:

We rolled back to Bangkok the fast way. Only 2.5 hours as most of it was highways. My bike crash had fully scabbed over.

As always check the Picasa page to see more pics.

Bangkok Auto Show

Well the Bangkok Auto Show was in town so I had to check it out. The show was kind of like a half sized American auto show but with hot models everywhere. I remember the LA Auto Show would have maybe 10 hot models, usually in the Lamborghini and other higher end booths. Over here every booth had hot models which added about 2 hours onto my usual tour through a show. Some would even dance and have routines. Everyone, including girls would gather round and take pictures of them. It was so funny to see hot models draped over a Ford Focus or a Kia.

It was interesting to see the Chinese and other non-US available brands. The Chinese SSangyong cars actually had good build quality from what I could see although they were ugly. As mentioned earlier, imported cars are just ridiculously priced here. For instance a Range Rover with a small 3 liter engine is $240,000USD and a Nissan 370Z is $175,000. The show was really crowded so there must be a lot of people getting fucked over bigtime with these prices or they're just so rich they don't care. You can get a seriously pimped out condo here or a Mercedes, makes no sense.

More pics of cars and models on the Picasa page.

Old Capital Ayutthaya

So back in the day, I don't care when, the inland city of Ayutthaya was the capital of Thailand so there are dozens of old temples in this city.

Me and my scootin buddies, Jay and Helmut, headed the 90KM North of Bangkok to enjoy some lunch and check out a temple. Although the GPS system got us lost a few times we made the journey in 2.5 hours. It was nice to get out of the city and get the bike moving up to 102KMH=63MPH which doesn't sound fast, but on a little scooter; it sure feels fast.

So I found it odd that they allow people to just climb all over the stone temple we saw and you could bring food in. I saw some litter on the temple, no respect, probably from some Western jackass. I drank a fresh coconut (crap), saw these elephant rides, and told some super hot American girl that she was.

More pics on the Picasa page.

Imported cars are expensive!

I see a lot of cars here but 80% are what are considered economy cars in the US like the Toyota Yaris and Corollas and Honda Fits and the occasional Civic.

So for shits and giggles I bought a car advertisement magazine.

Now I see why most drive these small cars.

Toyota, Isuzu, Honda, and soon Ford have plants here so their prices aren't inflated too much, just 20-30%.

The imported car prices just plain scare the crap out of me.

Here's a list of new cars and their US prices.

1995 Mercedes E320 (as in 3 body styles ago) $22000

Chevy Aveo $17000

Toyota Corolla (loaded) $30000

Jeep Wrangler $52000

Mini Cooper S $82,000

BMW 325i $100000

Lexus RX350 $173000

Nissan 350Z (not the new 370Z) $176000

Mercedes E250 (2.5 liter diesel) $155ooo. (same price as a V12 6 liter S-Class in the US)

Ferrari F430 $746000

Lambo Murcielago $1.2 Million

I'll try to ask some Thais and find out how much if any discounting occurs.

I am told the average Thai makes 2,200 a year so I believe anyone in a nice car here must be mafia or royalty.

It's so crowded here the traffic is like Manhattan at times, it makes no sense to have a car here, it is a true luxury.

Once again, more proof America is the greatest place in the world if you like to buy stuff.

So if any of you ever complain about the price of something in the US, you can go suck my balls you cheap bastard!

Thanksgiving at John's

These are the dudes I go drinking with here. My friend John had people over for a Thanksgiving primer and then we headed out to an American BBQ place. John is doing well for himself and has a big 2 bedroom/2 bath pad and a maid. He and his bro sprung for a most delicious Western spread of appetizers that I have grown to miss. Most Western foods here are 3+ times costly than back in the US. A block of Cracker Barrel cheese, Prego pasta sauce, or an Old El Paso salsa jar is like 6-7 dollars here.

Later we went to a place called American Rib Company, it was run by an old white dude. The buffet cost $35 and the food sucked. If you took an American of a certain southern ethnicity to this place, the owner would have a cap in his ass in no time. I think these dipshits actually boiled the ribs before grilling them and dousing them in crap sauce. I've made BBQ ten times better in my cheap smoker back in LA. If I wasn't so lazy I'd put this guy out of business in a week.

Next year we're just going to stay in and make a better dinner for ourselves and for a lot less. I really know why Americans are so fat, all food is tasty and cheap. I'd love a Carl's $6 burger or some Taco Bell right now.

09 Nov Scooter Show

So there was a Vespa and big scooter show today at MBK shopping mall. Me and my two scootin buds went to check it out. Some interesting bikes and a trio of hot Thai dancer girls. I took the pics and video with my iphone. Surprisingly good picture quality, but the loud music didn't turn out well. See all the pics on my Picasa page.

2009 October Gundam Expo

So one of the fanciest malls here in BKK is called Siam Paragon where they sell Gucci, Prada, and all the other expensive stuff (even Lambos and Porsches on the 3rd floor). Well they had an ad for the Gundam Expo and you know I love my robots. So the expo was actually quite small but it was free so I can't complain.

Bandai owns the Gundam franchise. Besides the TV shows and movies, they make a hundred+ of the most advanced plastic model kits in the world. They have the most advanced plastic molding machines in the world. Some of their plastic parts have multiple colors flowing into the same mold, that's uncommon but not that hard. What's crazy is how they can have a single molded piece of plastic become a multi-jointed moving arm or leg with just a few cuts. Anyway enough nerd talk.

The expo had the history of Gundam, their model kit history, and some models made by pros. So now I'm on a Gundam fix. I went and bought some smaller model kits and will get back into making models. I'll have to stream some episodes soon so I can know what all these robots do in their stories. My favorite model was this sky blue crab like robot below. It's so ridiculous looking I like it and now I'm going to have make one of them soon. Check all the pics on my Picasa page, there were some really cool models that took hundreds of hours to make.

http://picasaweb.google.com/ttakata73

Joined a gym-crazy price haggling

So I was screwing around before my Thai language class and saw this gym, California Wow, in a shopping mall. It is 4 stories and has pretty good equipment so I asked how much. The gay sales guy said the Diamond package which gets you into all 10 locations was 60,000 Baht, which is $1818USD a year!!!

I explained that in the US you can join a gym for less than a dollar a day. So I first talked him down to 4 days a week for only $163/year. How does a company get off asking $1818 when I could so talk him down to $163 in 15 minutes? He actually said some people pay the $1818! My friends said the Thai people are stupid and I'm starting to believe them.

In the end the guy upsold me to the Diamond package but for only 11,000 Baht/year and 100 Baht/year thereafeter. That's $333/the first year and then just $3 every year after and at all locations.

One thing for sure is you have to haggle here since this country is loaded with dipshits.

Supermarket checkouts

So the markets have some quirks here.

All produce must be weighed and labeled in the produce section, apparently the registers don't have weight scales. No big deal.

Checking out. Today I decided to buy some stuff to make tacos. Things were on sale so I bought multiples of everything. I had about 4 of each thing needed and the cashier scanned each object instead of just doing a single scan an punching in 4x. So although I had 5 different things, the idiot scanned 20 individual objects. This is why I am in a 2nd rate country.

Started my Thai language class

So I went to my Thai class for the first time on Saturday.

It's me, a guy from Singapore, 7 French guys, and a French girl.

7 of the 8 French smoke of course.

I wonder what the mortality rate is in France?

I guess I'll learn French too.

Turns out the building my class is in doesn't have the AC running on Saturdays so the class is freaking hot, sweating my ass off.

Otherwise it seems pretty good, the class is well laid out.

I'm looking forward to more next week.

Driver Licenses

Well after I got my visa, I went to get my drivers license.

I had to have the following:

Passport and 3 copies of the main page, visa page, and last entry stamp page.

US drivers license and 2 copies.

Letter of residency that took 2 hours and $30 to get from the US embassy.

International Drivers license (got mine from AAA for $15)

Letter of health from a clinic.

So I walked around for 2 hours going to clinics that didn't exist or the doctor wasn't in.

I finally went to a hospital and took some tests to get my health letter for $15.

Then I was off to the DMV, or Department of Land and Transport as its called here.

Fortunately foreigners have a dedicated line and don't have to wait.

So after filling out some paperwork I had to take tests for color recognition, stoplight reaction, depth perception, and peripheral vision.

Some young kid took the braking reaction test and failed miserably.

Then I saw an old guy repeatedly fail the peripheral vision test.

After the physical tests which any American would ace, I got a license to drive a car.

Then I wondered why I saw no motorcycle icon as I explained I wanted a car and bike license.

I had to take the exact same tests an fill out the same forms to get a secondary bike license.

So in this country I have 2 licenses based on what I intend to drive.

Double the paperwork and effort, masters of efficiency here.

I'm sure that old guy got his license too.