Diary Patong
29.December.2005
Construction of Klong Bangla Park at Karon Beach are now finished.
A canal is leading water through the beach and out to the sea.
It look very nice, except for that this are one of two places where the beach has been digged up to let the water flow out in to the sea.
The stream is so strong that the beach is eroding away while I watch.
26.December.2005
25.December.2005
Bangla Road and the bars was packed with people on Christmas Eve. It was the biggest party so far this year, only New Year will be bigger with firecrackers and even more people in party mood!
Picture to the right is my friends in party mood at Kingdom Bar , Soi Crocodile.
Myself was drunk and just want to forget the whole night. I am very tired after too much drinking and want to relax a few days before the New Year celebration, but that is not easy with a party in the soi almost every night.
23.December.2005
Yesterday was one of many cold evenings this month with only 23C degrees all evening and night. At so cold temperatures the Thais have to wear winter cloths to stand the cold. Their teeth are shaking like the temperature was -10C.
21.December.2005
After swimming in the sea off Patong Beach today, my skin smelled very bad and water visibility was not more than 1,5 meters.
For those of you that is awaiting pictures from Phuket, you must wait a little longer. There are too much haze to take any good pictures. The sun is back in paradise but with the less perfect conditions I prefer to wait a few days.
17.December.2005
I bought a few pirate DVDs today and was so disappointed with the quality that I will never buy pirate DVDs again.
When asking for DVDs on the street we where told to go inside a tailor shop with a hidden room at the back, full of DVDs with all the latest Hollywood movies.
After been told that I could take back bad quality movies I thought there should be now problem, especially after reading on Internet that copied movies was good quality while movies filmed in the cinema was not so good.
I thought I could take back the movies that was filmed in the cinema and keep the good ones.
Only problem is that copy DVDs are not an exactly copy, but a compressed DVD with no surround soundtrack.
While the picture quality is acceptable for most people, its not for me with my new Panasonic 34" TV with super picture quality. The good DVDs are only 30% of the quality of an original DVD-9 and is very easy to see on a high quality TV like a plasma screen or my fantastic Panasonic T(tau) Giga 100Hz 34" (30,000 baht) in combination with a good DVD player (4,000 baht) and video cable (1,500 baht).
If this has not deterred you from buying pirate DVDs I can tell that 10 DVDs cost 900 baht. Renting a DVD is an option to buying, but not that easy since shops mostly rent out VCD. There are some shops with a collection of DVDs but don't expect to be able to rent all the latest movies tough. Most of the newest movies are first coming out on VCD and later on DVD. DVDs for rent are not copies and have subtitles in English, Thai and some other Asian languages.
16.December.2005
Where is the sun?
There has been very little sun in the 8 days I have stayed in Thailand. Has not yet been to the beach and is thinking about going home to Norway so I can earn some money while I wait for the sun to return to paradise.
Today there was a boat accident with a speedboat traveling to Phuket from Phi Phi after being hit by a big wave. 17 tourists and 5 Thai people had to wait 3 hours in the sea before they was rescued. No one was serious hurt after what I read in a Norwegian newspaper.
