The much re-developed Love Club bar on central Soi 6 is taking shape as something new.

An impressive new sign proclaims that the bar will be called Amsterdamaged.

Presumably inspired the famed Amsterdam red light windows, the bar has installed cubicles in the window for girls (hopefully) to either sit in or dance in.

Should be a bit different and the bar looks as if it will be quite smart.

Cigar Bob or ST4Me on the Pattaya forums was a well known and well liked character in Pattaya's nightlife scene. He seemed to know every bar owner in town and most nightlife regulars as well.

He passed away peacefully in his sleep.

His sterling work in scouting out news and talent for his Afterdark magazine will surely live on as a fitting legacy.

Goodbye Bob and thank you.

After twelve years, Amari's Henri J. Beans Pub and Restaurant at the northern end of Beach Road is closing in its present form, and will re-open as a new modernized venue, known as The Tavern.

The managing directors of the big Amari Hotel Resort have decided that it was time to give the original building a facelift, and alter the setting from the original 1950's American theme to the style of an Old English Pub.

Re-modeling will entail replacing a lot of the wooden structures with glass panels, the addition of a pool table and the fitting of some of the latest TV / Video entertainment equipment. This will include more LCD / TV screens that will be bigger and better, plus video projectors for large screen viewing of mainly world sports events.

The long running Tex / Mex food dishes will give way to good old traditional English Pub fare, and the kitchen is being re-designed to speed up both cooking and food delivery. As well as these improvements, a pizza oven is to be installed.

Amari's Filipino band and its singers will return again after renovations have been completed, late in April. As will, no doubt, the high beer prices.

Illusion, the bells and whistles show bar on Soi 14 has gone dark.

The bar went dark previously in December last year but sort of recovered after a few days.

For those that like totally unerotic pussy trick shows, then you could try Byblos, Hot Girls, Play Girls & Tramps instead

So now there are 80 bars in the Pattaya area offering girls dancing in bikinis or less.

Last month Shark & Tiger A-GoGos upped their drinks prices as if they were the top bar in Pattaya. Soft drinks, bottled beers and lady drinks were all in the 130-135 Baht range.

One month on the bar has done a bit of a U turn on the policy and returned to more typical levels.

I'd like to report that this was down to customer pressure, but at 130 Baht for a coke, I never went in to look.

Any way the bars have introduced a 70 Baht happy hour for nearly all customer drinks until 9:30. After that bottled beers have reduced to 120 Baht.

Hopefully the expensive drinks experiment hasn't spoilt what were once pretty good bars.

Pattaya contributor, Lee Mansfield, died in a road accident on Soi Kow Noi in the East of Pattaya. The Briton, riding a motorbike, was struck by a car.

Lee was the owner of the popular Noi's Bar on the same soi.

He also made a contribution to Pattaya nightlife as a founder and operator of the well read Pattaya-Live forum.

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, police from the Immigration office based in Jomtien entered the Roxy go-go bar on Walking Street and arrested Jason Hill, a British national on a charge of working without the correct documentation.

He was brought to Pattaya Police Station where he was interviewed and allegedly accepted the charge.

Pattaya International Music Festival 2010 will be held from 19-21 March 2010. It is a very popular event combined with the closure of Beach Road usually causes gridlock.

Pattaya City will close the road along the beach from 4pm until 2am for the 3 days of the festiva.

Contingency plans will be in operation to divert the traffic away from the 7 main venues.

6 music stages will be situated along the Pattaya Beach Road, as follows:

• the empty space in front of Soi 4;
• in front of Hard Rock Pattaya Hotel;
• Central Pattaya Road intersection, beside the beach;
• in front of the Central Festival Department store;
• in front of Royal Garden Plaza Department Store;
• on the old pier beside the tourism public relations centre;

There is also a stage at Bali Hai Pier.

No Staying Powers

I decided to check out Powers, the new go-go bar above Champion A Go-Go on Walking Street. There's an upper window where a couple of coyote dancers provide some entertainment. There's a long stair case to the upper floor and there's a pool table at the top of the stairs. The main bar area is a large room that has several small stages. There is comfortable white leather seating, some bar stools and a collection of girls that looked a little disappointing. Surprisingly, there's nowhere to put your drink next to the sofas.

My request for a draught beer seemed to cause some confusion. The first girl didn't understand what I had asked for, so a second girl came over and took my order. She returned a moment later, to tell me they had run out of draught beer.

This didn't seem like a good way to start the evening and as there was nothing else to keep me there, I decided to leave and take may thirst elsewhere.

I will return in a week or two. Hopefully, the staff are more organised by that stage.

Dammed Good at Beavers

I negotiated the various impromptu entertainments that make Walking Street so enjoyable at night and headed for the nearest go-go bar for some refreshment. This happened to be Beavers, so I stepped inside.

Beavers is one of the few table dancing clubs that seems to work in my experience. I usually have some fun there, so I thought this might be a good place to refuel before continuing my evenings exploration.

There were about a dozen girls, two or three good looking girls, and about 7 or 8 customers. The uniform is an attractive red satin outfit, with a short pleated skirt and a bikini top, rather clumsy platform boots and knee length white stockings. The girls wore no panties but none were topless.

Then I saw there was one girl who was really hot. She had just started her rotation. I watched as she danced at each table, a couple of other girls approached me to chat, but I was so distracted by this beauty, that they soon realised their efforts were in vain.

I wanted to talk to this girl. I tried to make eye contact with her. I waited my turn, she stepped onto my table. The guy on the other side of the table, got her attention and was having fun interacting with her, he gave her money three times in the space of one song! I didn't get much chance to interact with her. The song ended, and I held out a hand to help her switch tables.

I switched tables and moved to her table, to sit closer. I was being watched, one guy gave me a thumbs up. I decided to try a different approach. Instead of reaching out to her, I would try to get her to come to me. I looked up at her, and talked to her. She couldn't hear what I was saying, so she bent down, to hear what I was saying.

She stopped dancing, we chatted for a few minutes, I soon realised there was a connection here. This girl could hold a conversation! I was fascinated.

I offered to buy her a drink. When it came she downed it in one gulp (tequila) then asked if she could join me (YEESSSS !!). At this point the other guys looked on, with interest. She turned to one of them and rebuked him. You forgot me!, she said. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

She came and sat next to me. We chatted and chatted, she told me how she used to work in a beer bar, and was very shy. Now she felt quite uninhibited and was proud of her magnificent body. She lifted up her skirt and proudly revealed her shaven pleasure passage, a bald beaver!

I was suddenly aware that the other men in the room were watching our little t?e-?t?e. Suddenly one of the guys got up and walked over towards us. He smiled and shook my hand, as if to say, I wanted this girl but I see you have her attention. He turned and walked out of the bar.

I was really interested in this girl. I asked if I could bar fine her. She said it was too late tonight (it was after 1:30 am). She explained that her 16 month old son lived with her and she had to be back by 3 am, so her sister could go home.

Wow, I was disappointed and impressed at the same time. Here's a Thai girl go-go dancer who hasn't taken the easy route and dumped her child on her parents. I know it's not easy for these girls when they're separated from their kids, but it seems to be a standard procedure for most of them. This girl had decided her child was important enough to arrange for a child minder to baby-sit her son every day, when she went to work, so she could always be with him. This was turning out to be one very interesting girl.

She promised to arrange for her sister to stay over the next night, so I could bar fine her. I await this evening's events with great anticipation!

Draft Beer Bt 55, Lady drinks Bt 120, Bar Fine Bt 600.

After a long absence Drunks and Dare a-Licks bar is returning but at a new location.

It will open in a couple of weeks just off Theprasit on Soi 10 at the location that was previously the Rose & Thistle.

Drunks and Dare a-Licks was previously located just off Jomtien Beach Road on Soi 9. The bar is now Poppies.

Club Mirage seems to have turned out to be just a Mirage after all.

The Soi Diamond GoGo was dark and padlocked on 11th March 2010. It had opened up under the present management in October 2009, but never really got up to speed.

By way of balance, Powers Club A-GoGo is set to open today. It is located above Champion A-GoGo and has stairs directly up from Walking Street.

So if all things go to plan, there are still 81 dancing bars in Pattaya where girls wear bikinis or less.

Just up the road from Powers, Goodfella's has entered the dancing market and now boasts Mafia Girl coyote dancers. I'm not sure that this is particularly clever marketing, as it rather associates with extortion rackets and the likes. And the prices are indeed at the top end of the Walking Street scale.

The old Blue Lagoon A-GoGo at the back of the Beach Road beer bar complex near Royal Garden is also set to enter the coyote trade. It has erected signs accordingly. The lights were on when I passed, but nobody was at home.

There is a talk on the Pattaya forums that Pattaya's supply of draught Guinness seems set to dry up.

It seems that an arrangement to import Guinness from Malaysia at an artificially low price is set to end.

So the Thai distributors will cease to handle Guinness. There has been a but of stockpiling going on so the effects may be forestalled at least until after St Patrick's Day.

Alternative supplies are likely to be significantly more expensive.

Already the effects on Pattaya's Irish bars is being felt as Gamebird 2 on Soi 15 has dropped it's Irish theme and has been reborn as Sapphire Club. (But maybe more to do with a total lack of customers rather than the price of a pint of Guinness)

Scientists are to study whether loud music makes people drink more alcohol. Dr Lorenzo Stafford, of the University of Portsmouth psychology department, is to carry out the research, which follows a previous study that showed people drank at a faster rate when loud music was playing.

That study involved observing drinkers in bars, but Dr Stafford's research will be carried out in more controlled laboratory conditions, with the results due in the summer.

He said: Anyone who tunes into classical music stations while stuck in traffic knows music can alter mood, but not much is known about music's ability to change our judgment of alcoholic beverages, which is particularly important in young drinkers regularly exposed to high-volume music.

Monday 8th March is International Women's Day.

I'm not quite sure how this should be celebrated in Pattaya though.

Perhaps to make a special effort to help the girls get good barfine income for the day. Perhaps the more politically correct may abstain from barfines for the day.

I wonder if the authorities may also make a special effort to go on a raiding party. Perhaps to 'rescue' a few girls and look good for the world's press.

Bar raids are getting much more serious as police evoke Human Trafficking statutes.

This gives the Immigration Bureau the authority to conduct raids which were previously conducted by Pattaya Police from Soi 9 who were looking for charging people with the much lesser offense of prostitution in the same situation.

So far, two go go bars on Walking Street, several karaoke bars and massage parlors and even a restaurant have all been closed and the owners and managers arrested for staff offering sexual services to customers. The charges are Human Trafficking and they were arrested by Chonburi Immigration.

Tourist Police have proceeded to conduct a sweep of Pattaya's Walking Street early on Tuesday morning, the target was to arrest any street sellers that where operating in the area.

A team of 30 police officers descended on Walking Street with the intent on purging the area of illegal street sellers.

After several hours of investigation, officers managed to detain a total of 32 suspects, including 14 flower sellers, 2 illegal animal sellers, 1 seller without any form of identification and 9 Burmese ladies soliciting prostitution.

Suspects were arrested and taken to the Pattaya Police Station where most were fined 500 baht and released.

Police also raided Illusion Club on Soi 14. No word as yet on the outcome.

The new Powers Club is now set for opening on  Tuesday 9th March. This is a new Walking Street GoGo above Champion. Previously the bar was Maya Karaoke and before that, it was last seen as a back up venue for Champion when the main location was closed by the police.

The much discussed shift of Peppermint from upstairs to downstairs may have begun a slow process. The idea is that Marine Disco want to expand into the current space used by Peppermint. Space will be cleared for a new Peppermint amongst the beer bars below. So when building work starts at the closed Top 10 bar then one assumes that this is part of the grand relocation plan.

Meanwhile there is discussion on Pattaya forums that the re-development of Sisterz A-GoGo (now owned by the Happy Peppermint group) will complete ready for reopening in April. The resultant bar will be named The Cave.