Moved Back To Uk Recently.....Arrrgghhh!Stay where you are...trust me

I am in the UK now, for 2 months, after being in Thailand on and off for 8 years. I can't wait to get back to Thailand and stay away from the UK for probably another 4 years... After which it will hopefully have started to pick up again by my next visit. When I see guys I went to school with who are the same age as me (50+) and look 10 years older than me, lumbered with a moaning, fat and ugly wife, while I have a 24-year-old gorgeous slim Thai girlfriend, and to see the miserable expressions on everyone's faces in the UK (even at Christmas) staring at me (as if I was from a different planet), as I walk down the street laughing with my Thai girlfriend, not to mention the appalling cost of living here (35 pounds or over 1,500 Thai baht for Thai food which my girlfriend said was inedible), boarded up shops, yobs fighting and shouting in the street drunk every night, broken glass and smashed phone boxes on almost every corner, I just can't wait to get back to |Udon Thani. Thailand seems like the First World compared to the Third World of the UK.

The annual monkey buffet festival at Pra Prang Sam Yot temple in Thailand

A long-tailed macaque eats fruit and vegetables during the annual monkey buffet festival at the Pra Prang Sam Yot temple in Lopburi

The Monkey Buffet Festival is held annually in Thailand to promote tourism. In 2007, the festival included giving fruits and vegetables to the local monkey population of 2,000 in Lopburi province north of Bangkok.
The festival was described as one of the strangest festivals by London's The Guardian newspaper along with Spain's baby-jumping festival. A photograph from the Monkey Buffet Festival at Pra Prang Sam Yot temple in Lopburi Province shows a monkey trying to get at fresh fruit and vegetable captured in blocks of ice.

A long-tailed macaque licks an ice block with fruits encased in it. The festival is held every year on the last Sunday of November to promote tourism in Lopburi

Bangkok losing its sex appeal

A bar girl waits for business in Bangkok's Patpong - a place that's lost its attraction for this reporter. Picture: Getty

The bright lights of Patpong in Bangkok, Thailand.

BANGKOK'S Patpong red-light district is fast losing its appeal.

It used to be a tourist hot spot - a place where you could be shocked, and awed, as you wandered the parallel side streets in the area celebrated for its sex trade, found between Silom and Surawongse roads.

The strip joints and bars offering girlie shows flank the night market where you can buy a knock-off Gucci bag or a Polo shirt on your way home from watching one of the shows.

At one time this was all done with a sense of theatre. And a sense of fun. It was a "must see" part of the Bangkok culture for visitors to Thailand.

But it is definitely losing its lustre.

I was in Patpong on the weekend and yes I did end up at one of those girlie bars after being dragged there on a hen's night.

OK, dragged may be too strong a word - I admit I went along willingly in a group of five women and two guys.

What we saw though was not "fun", it was not even bad theatre.

The undercurrent in the bar felt nasty, with the girls angrily demanding money after every show.

It was like we had been sucked into a freak show and we were now part of the performance.

We were all uncomfortable and the women on stage looked bored out of their minds.

There were more women guests in the bar than men, something that surprised me. Most people had one quick drink, and left.

We were approached seconds after we set foot on the pavement and asked if we wanted to go to the girlie bar.

Our tour leader, a Bangkok veteran, negotiated the entry fee deal right there on the street before we entered the venue.

This, we later discovered, was essential if you didn't want to get ripped off.

For 300 baht (about $10) each we were allowed in, given front row seats and one beer each.

Three young South African backpackers paid 2700 baht each for the same thing.

They entered the bar without negotiating a price first. As soon as they sat down, they were swamped by six bikini-clad women who hassled them for money. The young South African girls handed over the money out of fear, they felt they had no choice.

It was an expensive lesson to learn for travellers on a budget.

The plan was to spend an hour at the show but left after 25 minutes. The bride decided that she would actually rather look for a bargain at the night market.

Sadly, the vendors here were also nasty. The idea of markets, I thought, was to bargain.

But the prices were double that of other Bangkok markets and there was no sense of them wanting to bargain.

It is certainly not a shopper's paradise. The vendors just laughed when you offered a price.

For a tourist mecca there was not a lot of people around and nothing much was being bought and sold.

There was also little happening in the bars down Silom road.

They had one or two white males holding court with Thai girls pretending to hang on every word.

Business was not booming.

Bangkok will always have Patpong.

Despite what anyone thinks of the morals of a place like this, it will continue to exist.

It is a part of the fabric of the city.

Its days of prospering however may be over.

I would never go back.

Today's Bangkok has so much more to offer tourists.

Patpong is now an oddity rather than a attraction.