Evil Penevil

I'm not sure my memory is totally accurate on this one, but I'm confident I've got enough right to stake Gabor's life on it. The Classroom on Soi 2 opened around 1998 or so without any ownership connection to the then long-running The Classroom on Pattayaland 2. It was called Classroom 2 because it was on Soi 2, not because it was a branch of the original The Classroom, although I'm sure many visitors thought it was. Take a look at this early go go bar map from 2000 or 2001: Classroom 1 and Classroom 2, although those were never official names. Maybe because of pressure from the owners of the original Classroom, the one on Soi 2 changed its name to Classroom 2000. In 2005 or 2006, the owners of Classroom 2000 opened a coyote-style bar with live music next door and called it Honey Pot. For a few years, Honey Pot had the reputation of very hot dancers with high barfines and fees. It was torn down in 2010 to make way for an extension to the Sabai hotel. The coyote dancers moved to Classroom 2000, which was renamed Lek's Classroom. It changed names once more to Lek's A Go Go before closing for good in 2017. Anyway, that's how I remember it. I used to know Lek a little bit back in the day, enough to talk with her. At one point, she controlled quite a string of go go's and beer bars. Evil

That is always situational and depends on how heavily the hotel is booked. I do recall that I was allowed to check in early (about 10.00 a.m.) on one occasion. Evil

Another delivery meal, this time from a Japanese restaurant: Sushi: Fried pork dumplings and seaweed salad: Miso soup and spring rolls:

Lasagna in the slow cooker. It doesn't look very pretty, but it tasted great. I didn't feel like cooking the other day, so I ordered breakfast from IHOP. Pancakes, two eggs, ham, bacon, sausage and hash browns.

He sure does, especially about how little he pays for "stunners." But he's a very unappetizing subject for a restaurant thread, so I apologize for mentioning him. Evil

@Homor Citrus Suites at the corner of Soi 4 and the dogleg portion of Soi 6 gives a lot more space and comfort than an ordinary hotel room and the cost isn't much higher. Some of the one-bedroom suites have a kitchen with fridge, microwave, stove top, all utensils needed for cooking and dining and a clothes washer-dryer. It's great for a stay of a few days or longer. The girls absolutely love this type of room. It was my top choice among BKK hotels in the Nana area. Evil Some pics:

I recall reading a post five years ago by a hungry little fellow who lives in VT2A. There had been a power outage and he had been trapped in an elevator for 90 minutes. It was even worse when he was shopping at Central Festival Mall and the power failed. He was trapped on the escalator for three hours. Evil

Lonesome Dove is one of the best TV Westerns ever made.

I ate at that restaurant several times. Big plates of good food at ridiculously low prices. If at that time I had lived closer to it, I would have eaten there regularly. Evil

@ChiFlyer I realize my comment was a bit obscure, so I have clarified it in a PM. Evil

Did one of them have Hungarian as his native language? It would make my day, week, month, year, if you answer "yes." I wish your girlfriend with her restaurant! Evil

Bruno's was founded in 1996 by Bruno Forrer and Alois (aka Louis) Fassbind, both of whom had been managers for many years at the Royal Cliff Hotel. They hired the executive chef at the Royal Cliff, Fredi Schaub, to run the kitchen and later made him a partner. He took over as owner in 2003 when both Forrer and Fassbind had passed away. Yup, adapting to the Russian and Asian tour groups caused Bruno's to slip from its previous standard. Fine dining involves more than just the food on the plate; service and ambience figure in heavily as well. Bruno's became crowded and noisy and the menu was simplified to appeal to the tour groups. The food was generally decent right up to the end, but it hadn't been a real fine dining restaurant for several years before closing. Most Pattaya restaurants aren't outfitted or staffed for successful buffets or fixed-plate dinners on a large scale. At least pre-Covid, there was a huge demand for Christmas dinners, but few restaurants could rise to meet that demand. The kitchens were too small and lacked the equipment to make the amount of food needed for a Christmas buffet and then keep it warm and fresh for hours. And if the restaurant went with a fixed-plate variation, the challenge of preparing and serving three or four times the number of covers it normally did in a day was often overwhelming. The exception to the above would be some of the restaurants in the big international hotels such as the Hilton or Hard Rock (in my opinion, the best Xmas carvery buffet in town). Such hotels can manage buffets and fixed-plate dinners, but they ain't cheap. That said, there are smaller operations which do a decent Christmas dinner, but they keep the number of reservations they accept at a level they can manage. Evil

Au Revoir, Monsieur Eden Two dead, one wounded in shooting at Bangkok cold-cuts company Some of you may have met Marc (EdenPapa), the founder, operator and part-owner of Bangkok's Eden Club, a hugely popular establishment at its peak. I was surprised to read about his death in Stickman's column, as I had thought Marc had passed away several years ago. The last time I spoke with him was in January, 2007, and he was dealing with heavy-duty health problems at that time. I knew Marc quite well back in the day when I was a big fan (and customer) of the Eden Club. Every trip I made to Bangkok included several visits to Eden. I mostly chose the overnight takeaway option, but also had inhouse two-girl sessions. Marc invited me for lunch or dinner numerous times over the years we had contact. They weren't cheap restaurants, either- the New York Steakhouse at the JW Marriott, for example. He said he liked talking with me and enjoyed reading the stuff I posted on the Bangkok boards. We were both "foodies" and that gave us a topic for endless discussion. This all took place between 2002 and 2007. As Stickman says, Marc was indeed connected and certainly wasn't the kind of guy you'd want to mess with. I have to differ with Stick on one point- Marc wasn't the owner of the Eden Club. He was the originator and operator of Eden Club, but he only had a minority stake in it. He was the outward face of the Eden Club, as the majority stakeholders were passive and in at least one case, secret and hidden. There's no way of knowing for sure, but the girls working at Eden believed a family member of an extremely influential man in Thai politics was a part owner and that's why Eden was never raided by police. Marc came across as grumpy when you first encountered him, but that was a deliberate tactic of his to discourage the "looky-looky" guys from wasting his time and that of the girls. Once he decided you were there for business, he was actually quite friendly. For very practical reasons, Marc wasn't interested in having drinkers fill the 15 seats at the bar. Eden was a narrow, single shopfront with barely enough space to accommodate customers there for sex sessions, much less gawkers. Marc always emphasized that Eden was a brothel and not a drinking bar and that "Eden wasn't for everybody." Just to keep all the ducks in a row- Marc announced plans to open Eden Pattaya in August, 2006. This surprised many people, myself included, as Marc had often said he would never open any sort of business in Pattaya because the competition was too tough and the profit margins too low. He didn't think the Eden Club would work in Pattaya because the dominant customer base was wrong. In Bangkok, Eden's customers were mostly visiting businessmen and working resident ex-pats willing and able to pay premium prices. He felt there weren't enough such customers in Pattaya to make Eden a viable operation. However, a good friend of his, a Frenchman named Francis, persuaded Marc to give "Eden Pattaya" a shot. Francis lived in Pattaya and had a family with a Thai woman. He was convinced he could make Eden Pattaya a popular and profitable operation. Eden Pattaya opened in late December 2006 on the exact same model as the Bangkok Eden Club. Sadly, Francis died of a heart attack just a few days after Eden Pattaya opened. Marc had no desire to remain involved in Eden Pattaya and sold the club and hotel next door to Cerberus. It was renamed the Hell Club and later became the Devil's Den. The Eden Club had a concept that was unique in Thailand and maybe the world. The Devil's Den was the only other place to successfully use the same concept. Neither place ever had a direct competitor, although a few made short-lived tries in Bangkok and Phuket. I had never before met anyone quite like Marc and doubt I ever will. He was one of a kind, whether you consider his kind good or bad. Evil

You might want to give either ChiknCoop or TiggleBitties a try for Thanksgiving and/or Christmas dinners. Very reasonably priced for a good dinner. Coop (Mike) is a U.S. Air Force vet who does a great July 4 barbecue as well. Evil

Excellent review! I have eaten at CDA several times through the years and always had great food there, but it was a bit too far out of the way for me to become more than an occasional customer. I didn't find it expensive for the quality of the food, but I don't drink wine, so that didn't add to the cost. In any case, keep on posting restaurant reviews, @ChiFlyer! I'm certain everyone would appreciate it. Evil

What an odd comment. The incident took place in a restaurant in China (Tangshan in Hebei province) and prompted a huge response and discussion in both Chinese mainstream and social media. State-owned TV has called for severe punishment for the men involved and local officials have vowed to crack down on gangs. That has everything to do with China. Evil

Louisiana ... Beverly Grove, CA ...

Florida ...

New York ... ... and There are more, but I'll post them separately.

Let's hope this sort pf Chinese man never visits Pattaya. The men doing the beating were members of a criminal gang that uses violence to intimidate the local population. All nine men who took part in the beatings were arrested and face looooong prison terms or even the death penalty. Whatever else can be said of China, justice isn't soft there. In the U.S., there have been similar incidents and the perpetrators were immediately released without bail.

@ChiFlyer I always enjoyed your food posts on Addicts and I'm glad to see you posting here. I like your recipes, especially the mayo biscuits, as I'm a bit of a biscuit fanatic. I also found your restaurant reviews to be well-informed and balanced. Evil

Pentatonix does a great version. It irritates me, though, that they wave their hands so much.

I use Nord. It has high-speed servers in 60 countries and extra safeguard options like Double VPN; Onion over VPN and P2P, which make your computer untraceable to the most determined hackers and even NSA. That level of security is overkill for ordinary surfing or to remove geo-blocks, but is useful when transferring money from a bank account or if traveling in a country like China. Evil

Up-skirt and down-blouse photos taken and posted without the subjects' consent have been illegal in Thailand and many other countries for several years now. The chances of a photographer actually getting punished for posting them have been small in Thailand, but in the U.S., several guys have gone to jail for such photos. Filming a girl puking in the street is, however, not illegal. Under the PDPA, posting it to the Internet would be. As you say, the guy is a top-notch wanker for trying, but he wasn't doing anything illegal at the time. However, he did something very stupid and disrespectful and could certainly have regretted getting into an argument with a moto driver. Evil

I was referring to the numerous times he's posted my pic on Facebook and on other forums when he was active there. The few times I've used Gabor's image, I've done so in a satirical style or as a parody. That was allowed in the past in Thailand and still is allowed in some countries, including the U.S. It's what's called the "fair use" exception to copyright protection. However, PDPA trumps copyright laws. Copyright laws protect the right of the creator to control how the work is reproduced; data protection laws protect the privacy of individuals. PDPA no longer allows "fair use" or at least makes it more problematic. It illustrates the type of change that PDPA could bring about. The photograph can have taken and posted to the Internet with the subject's consent, but if a third party finds the photo through a Net search and reposts it without consent, it is a potential violation of PDPA. However, it's not enough that the photo has merely been reposted, the plaintiff would also have to prove that his or image was either used 1) for the poster's commercial gain; or that 2) the reposting, as opposed to the original posting, caused harm. With PDPA and similar laws, legislation is catching up with technology. The Internet has been largely unregulated since its inception. People were free to post comments and images that would have been banned from traditional media or at least punished if they did occur. But on the Internet, people were able to make billions of such posts anonymously with no accountability whatsoever. Countless photos and videos of Thai girls have been posted without their permission and in many cases to their detriment. PDPA MAY be a means of addressing the most egregious cases. I say MAY because no one knows how strictly or vigorously it will be enforced. Thailand-247 has been ahead of the curve since its start in that it has never allowed the posting of shall we say provocative pictures no matter the source. If there are no pics, there can't be complaints about them. Evil