Daily Report: Beach Analysis

I woke up today, and all of my usual accounts at work were empty, and I was pretty much fine with that, as I had put in 7 very good days over the past week, and needed a break.

The first stop of the day was the beach with Mike and Riza, where I had my usual feast: 500 baht worth of crab (about 2½ pounds, I would guess), beer, and chips. The water was perfect today... nice and cool, and as clean as you can get on the Eastern Seaboard of Thailand.

The water and beach quality really has everything to do with beach location: Currents and wind push everything in this part of the Gulf of Thailand south and east. Therefore, all the sediment in the water gets pushed south. With most of the Eastern Seaboard scalloped into wide, rounded bays, all of the shit in the water ends up deposited at the south end of the bays. The bays get shallower at that end, and thus have less water volume, which is heated more by the sun. Thus, the worst places to go to the beach are the south part of Pattaya, and Bang Saray, south of Jomtien.

Conversely, the best places to go to the beach are on the promontories at the very beginning of the bays at the north ends of Pattaya and Jomtien... where you are further out into the ocean, more distant from the runoff, and — with the southeasterly flow of wind and water — at the starting point for sediment pickup and takeaway. The water gets more deep more quickly in these areas, and thus is cooler than other beaches in the area as well. (The bonus part is that these beaches are also not very popular, crowded, or frequented by vendors.)

After the beach, it was back home for a quick clean up, and then Pui (who got all dolled up) and I were out for the evening. Our first stop was actually going to be Oasis, on Soi Buakhao, but I decided to skip it. That turned out to be a near-miss, as Stan and Mark were in there also, unbeknownst to me. Instead, we went straight to Shooters to hang around with Bob and Sam. I had some of Bob's Poker Chip hamburgers (6 of them for 180 baht), and a John Smith's Ale.

After Shooters, I went over to TQ2, where I met up with Steve ("B2"), Eric, Stan, and Mark. Shooters was hosting the most recent Mermaids dive school post-graduation party, so the place was packed to the gills... although the music requests were grating.

Regarding Russ's and Wood's recent visit to the Soi 9 monkey house, the word is that it was a disgruntled ex-employee, angry at her recent loss of opportunities to steal out of the cash register. (Not, as Bob had surmised, due to TQ2's popularity; and most certainly not, as one reader at Pattaya Secrets had suggested, due to another bar owner's jealousy.) It's all been hashed out, and Russ is back to his old tricks, keeping the party going at TQ2.

Anyway, it was a regular blow-out at TQ2, and it wasn't long before Stan declared the place overpopulated, and we headed over to Champion for a drink. All bars go through cycles with their girls, attendance, and popularity. TQ2 is at the top of it's swing, with very good looking girls, huge crowds, and immense popularity. Sad to say, Champion is taking this low season off, and is just taking a break from being the place to see and be seen. Oh well. Hopefully in the next few months, the owner, Mr. Jew, will turn things around.