First Day in Pattaya after more than a decade!
Well, after a 15 1/2 non stop flight from JFK to Taipei and connecting from there another 3 hour flight into BKK, it was a long, long day and about 24 hours door to BKK airport. The VT 6 people had set up a taxi guy for me who found rather quickly (and immigration was breeze with no more than 3 minutes after the long walk to the immigration area. However, the poor taxi guy as we were coming down from the escalator starts fishing for his car keys and couldn't find it !
The guy was so confused and shaken and left me to go back up and look again, as it was no where in his pockets or any of the 5 pockets in his pouch / man purse! LOL.
Returns after 15 minutes, could not find it! Then he decides to back go up again and then reappears after another 20 minutes. With the key LOL either from lost and found or one of the other taxi guys behind the cordoned off area where he was standing.
Anyways, hotter than hell at about noon and car (mini van in black!) takes about 10-15 minutes for AC to begin cooling down. Making good progress on the highway to PAttaya and suddenly the traffic backs up to a crawl for the next 30 minutes! Turns out there was an accident in the opposite direction and the car in question had hit the divider wall and was burnt to a black crisp. People slowing down to watch in our direction.
Make it to Pattaya after nearly 2. 5 hours since I cleared customs! Found TT near Soi Diana as recommended here and exchanged USD for 35 baht per USD and no commission.
Check in to VT 6 was also long as there was no one in the lobby to meet me and no Tik to be fOund. Finally after about 20 minutes two of her maids show up by the elevator come to meet and take me to my condo apt. The process then took a while to get the rental phone from them (a Galaxy s 5 new) for only 500 baht for my 16 days. It had just 100 baht on it so I will have to put more dineros in it soon. Spent a lot of time with them getting to know all the stuff about the condo and equipment in the apt.
Wifi working great and apt is super. Lobby area on the 3rd floor is a mess and IMO the set up is dated. But my apt is very very good. Love the location right next to Central Festival mall. Went there and stocked up a ton of stuff from the excellent grocery store for the room and they delivered it for free if you buy a min of 1500 baht.
Ate a late lunch and showered finally and went to sleep. Woke up around 1030 pm shaved, showered again and headed off to Walking Street. My very firSt time and it was quite cool. I got a gyro from the Istanbul guy and it was frickin terrible and after less than 1/2 threw it away (sorry I am from NYC and that was plain shit).
Well, entered IBar around 1245 and really loved it! My first time of course, just wanted to watch, drink and dance by myself for the first night since I am patient guy and I like to develop a strategy for the future as I will be here for 16 nights. Also, went back and forth to insomnia upstairs. Got a 500 Baht VIP card for the 20 PC discount and also ate some CHicken Pad Thai at their NY diner which was quite OK but not as good IMO as the Pad Thai in Queens, NY!
Anyways, danced a lot and went quite crazy towards the end dancing ( lol ) since I'd had neatly 8-10 Cubas ( very light and diluted for 160 baht each ( but about 135 baht each after my 20 PC discount ), and I stayed there until 7 am! Returned and showered alone and went to bed and woke up in an hour! LOL. And maid service coming at 2 pm.
Plan to hit Soi 3 for a hours massage and extras hopefully this pm and will check out 808 and possibly 1-2 other dance clubs maybe. Don't plan to hit any gogos until day 3, until I figure out what talent there is at Ibar and the rest, as I do not care for pros. It was pretty crowded this past night and when they closed Ibar down stairs at 5 am and sent everyone up to Insomnia it was jam jam packed 100 PC and there was some fights and security had to get invovled dragging some big Russian (I think) dude out.
Anyways, I would rate the Ibar talent as mostly mid to upper 20's and early 30's in age for the girls and quality IMO was very average. YMMV. If after day 2 and 3 I don't find quality going up a lot then I think I may have to hit the gogos which is not my preferred option (but maybe the really sexy ones are in there?).
Will post again soon.