Thailand trip report April
2019
Started trip driving from our
house at 6:30PM. Took BART from Antioch
to SFO. Arrived at my gate at 10PM in
the airport. Got a cheap flight to
Thailand. Plan is to play golf five
times and bridge five times. That is if
my body holds out. The flight is on EVA
airlines and the line was long to check in.
Managed to scrounge a cart and it was nice to push it through the line
with my golf clubs on it. Three and
half hours of processing to be at the gate.
It is all about the pleasure of international travel. I am looking into exploring more of the USA
on trains. I am reading a book about the
construction of the railroad across the USA and it is fasennating.
I was harassed on my BART
trip to SFO. At around the Daily City
stop, I young black male started tearing the seat up next to me looking for
some unidentified object. This person’s
pants were down to his knees with his underpants being highly visible. There was a see through divider behind me
where he stood, inches from me and started banging on the window and mumbling
unintelligible remarks. This went on for 10 minutes. It was loud and threatening. I remain seated and reading as best I could
my magazine. I felt threatened. He
eventually figured out that I would not respond and left. I think he wanted me to get up so he could
grab my possessions which with me in the seat. I called the police at the
airport and reported it.
At the airport, TSA gave me a
break when I told them I was 75 and I did not have to take off my belt and was
given what they call VIP service where they I did not have to go through the
regular security check. That was
nice. However, they chose my carry on to
go through. The issue was my candy bars,
and bags of nuts, which evidently requires further review after being seen on
their security x-ray screen.
The airplane is EVA from
Taiwan. I had not used it in a number of
years and it is good. We flew to Taiwan
and I switched planes to the flight to Thailand. The move went smooth and they accepted U.S.
currency so I could buy a nice snack.
At the airport in Thailand it
went very smooth regarding transportation and connections. At the airport there was no significant line
for immigration, the ATM machine worked well (300 dollar limit), luggage, golf
clubs appeared promptly and after a lengthy walk, my ride was waiting with a
sign with my name prominently displayed on it.
Bought my bottle of water and made change to pay the taxi. The ride to Pattaya continues to
improve. Only two tolls and the rest
terrific road and it was less then two hours to get to the hotel. All, very good.
The hotel is called the
Sunview place and is a fine basic hotel with the basic amenities. I move tomorrow to a nicer hotel with more
amenities including a weight room. I do
not use much.
I played duplicate bridge on
Wednesday with the group in Pattaya, which I have been playing with each time I
come here. Fortunately, my usual partner
Glen from England was not here and I got to play with Mary. Mary is also from England. We came in second with these highly
competitive players. It was the best I
have done over here and speaks to my substantial more playing time at home.
Yesterday, Thursday, I played
golf with Ron, Bliza and Ulf Larrson.
Ron and American (Army vet), Bliza from the Philippines and Ulf from
Sweden. I played terrible golf from time
zone problems and not use to the extreme heat (I am not sure you can get to
used to it). Even with the cart I was
staggering at times. We played at the
Phoenix Golf club, which is, and American style course. I did not eat at the course and was famished
when we returned to Pattaya. Golf cost
less then a hundred dollars for transport, competition, green fees, caddy, caddy
tip and cart. The course was
beautiful. It is too bad because of
sleep deprivation, heat; I did not enjoy it more. Nice caddy that tended to many details.
I turned in my laundry and
went to the local vegetarian restaurant for a Vietnam style vegy spring roll
dinner. Very good even without the
famous fish sauce.
Friday, April 12, played
bridge with Harvey today from India.
First time played in Pattaya. He
plays 6 days a week in India. He told me
his bidding system and every bid was different from Standard American, which
the club here in Pattaya mostly plays.
Many variations but the base appears to be standard American here. On top of playing with Charlie I was assigned
to operate the machine they use here which has different inputs then I use in
the clubs I play with in the U.S.A. They
here want total tricks, not six tricks plus the number made in addition to the
six. Also, the machine then died for the
total group and I had to hand write the results. In addition very large Norwegian man
pressured me to enter the data on the form in the incorrect area. Later, we were told we had entered it
incorrectly and I called him a big bully (which he is). He told me to shut up. He later apologized to me. I had told the head coordinator that for 27
years I had disciplined bullies in California Prisons and can recognize
them. He even was over heard arguing
with the head coordinator.
On the way back to my room
this evening, people threw water on me.
This is a holiday called the Songkran Festival and this is it today
April 12. I got it mostly while riding
in the baht busses. I saw tourists also
participating with large squirt guns that they bought over here. I saw big barrels of water with cups to throw
the water in front of some businesses.
Some people did not react favorably to this dousing. In this hot weather
to have cold water thrown on a person is a shock in this hot climate. Had nice meals today.
On Sunday, 14th,
played with the Colin’s golf group. Nice
people. I played with Gordon from New
Zealand, Chiba from Japan and my recent bridge partner Charlie. Charlie had not played golf in Thailand
before and was renting his clubs. I
advised him to buy a hat, drink plenty of water, play from green tees, pick up
his ball with too many strokes and stop playing all together if he got too
hot. He followed my advice and stopped
playing early because of the heat. Chiba
tried very hard and had great difficulties.
I shot one of the best rounds of my life and achieved a score of 38 on
the stable ford system, came in second and won 500 baht (16 dollars). The course is very difficult and is Rayong,
Green Valley. The course has 500-yard
white tee par 4s.
After golf I made
mistakes. I thought I could sign up for
golf at the Traveller’s Rest Sports Bar for this week and go to Central
Festival for a safe ATM withdrawal and do it safely avoiding water being thrown
on me. Even at the Sports bar there was
people dancing drinking and throwing pales of water on people. I was not excluded. Then I took a motorcycle taxi with the
provision we did not get wet. It did not
work; we were doused with lots of water.
On the way back to my hotel, I thought I could avoid the water by taking
a baht bus on Soi Buakhao. That was
particularly a bad decision even though I huddled in a seat near the front of
the bus. We were drenched
repeatedly. There were actually ambushes
set on both sides of the road with pales of cold water thrown repeatedly. Child abuse.
I have learned and observed that very large pieces of ice are put in the
barrels of water to heighten the shock.
In this hot weather it is terrible.
I played bridge on
Monday. I have played twice with an
Indian from India name Charlie who is from the Punjab area and at home wears a turban. He spent 20 years in Indian Navy and 20 years
in the Merchant Marine. He explained me
his bidding system and it was so foreign (never heard of it or read about it),
we ended up playing standard American.
We did not play well together as a result.
I played golf with the
Travellers Rest Group on Tuesday and Thursday.
We played on Emerald golf Course on Tuesday and played again on Phoenix
golf course on Thursday day the 18th of April. Emerald has significant jungle near the
fairways and I last only 9 holes without becoming over come with the heat and
wiped to many holes on the Stable ford system to be competitive. On Thursday, I started out the same way on
Phoenix Golf Course and some how adapted and started playing OK gold. Won 120 baht for birding a par 3. I have met some very nice people while
playing golf. John from New Zealand is
very nice. Ron Hulen and Mike Sisney
from California are fun to play golf with.
Bridge on Wednesday I ended
up playing as a one person team with dummies and still matched scores with half
the field. Terrific. I took a picture of the bridge players. They all hid their faces. I wonder if they are hiding from an agency or
from someone.
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Friday, April19, I made a big
mistake. Evidently bridge was cancelled
and I did not know it. I went to the
other end of town and was blasted heavily with water thrown by pedestrians and
gangs of people in trucks driving around.
I knew I was in trouble when I told the motorcycle taxi driver no water
and he drove up facing a water point and let the water throwers drench us
both. Not nice I told him. On the way back from the bridge center I was
hit so hard with cold water that it knocked out my left hearing aid. Fortunately I was able to grab it. I tried to
walk back to the room and dogged back and forth crossing the street to avoid
having a white paste put on me and water thrown on me. By this time I was a thoroughly we mess. I dogged on water point and thought I was
successful when some white male tourist chased me 40 yards and threw ice water
on me. My PTSD got the better of me and
I gave him the finger. Mr. Jewell would not be happy with that. I lost control. This is all part of the Songkran Festival. This has been going on since early this
morning. I plan to hide in the room
until after 5PM when I need to pick up my laundry for tomorrow’s final golf
game.
Saturday was a shopping day
and also worked on reading the Mueller report.
Got up to page 70. Bought
miscellaneous items. Took a picture of a
long line of men drinking beer watching the passer bys on the streets. This is a big activity here in Pattaya where
people sit drinking alcohol while watching passer bys. Actually, I had not realized how much people
drink alcohol beverages on a daily basis until I started coming here. Or is it the people who are attracted to
coming here. I followed this up on Sunday,
bought a large beer and sat looking out at the traffic at the intersection of
Soi Buakaow, Soi Diana and Soi Lengkee.
I took a video of this which I will post on line.
Today, Saturday played my
last round of golf with Colin’s Bar Group.
Colin is from England. He drove
us to the golf course in his van. We
played Rayon Green Valley again. This
time I did not play as well. I will
blame the heat and at times I had trouble hitting the ball. Shot 27 using the Stable ford system. Got to play with Maurey and John from
Australia and had a nice conversation with a young person from Finland in the
van going to the golf course.
I have organized to leave
early in the morning for a two-hour drive to Bangkok and then many hours of
flight and BART back in California. I
have had enough of the heat, hotels until my next trip.
