Author Archives: schatzi

Guest Friendly Hotels in Pattaya

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Pattaya is a city with multiple personalities. For some it is a place to learn about Thai culture, for many it is a shopping paradise, for families it offers a host of activities that everyone can enjoy and for a millions of single men, it’s a nightclub centre and a place to meet some of Thailand’s most beautiful women.

You can meet Thai girls at bars, go-go bars, at the beach or just about anywhere in this friendly town. The question that guys often ask is where do I find a guest friendly hotel. If I want to invite my new friend back to my hotel, does the hotel welcome an extra guest, is it “girl friendly” or will I be charged a “joiner fee”?

5 Star Hotels

While many people think of Pattaya as Asia’s most vibrant nightlife centre, this is just one part of the tourist activities in Pattaya. Judging by hotel bookings, the lion’s share of hotel revenue is from older couples and families. Hotels target their business at one or more of these tourist groups, so you’ll find that the 5 star hotels and family oriented hotels like the larger resort hotels are generally not guest friendly. There’s one notable exception, Pattaya’s top rated hotel, the Rabbit Resort on Dongtan beach offers hospitality to all visitors, including their friends.

Walking Street Hotels

If you’re looking for a guest friendly hotel you’ll find that virtually all of the hotels, guesthouses and apartments close to the night life areas are guest friendly. In the Walking Street area you’ll find a good choice of popular and highly rated hotels.

On Soi Diamond, the street with more than a dozen go-go bars, there’s Diamond Beach Hotel, Galaxy Suites and Green View Serviced Apartments. Just nearby on Soi 14, there’s the Grand Hotel, with 80 rooms in a choice of styles, and Jasmine Hotel with 62 rooms, recently refurnished and a new indoor swimming pool, one of the highest rated Pattaya hotels on Trip Advisor. On Walking Street itself, there’s the Walking Street Guesthouse just above Sweethearts Go-Go and P.72 Hotel, with the street level bar that opens onto Walking Street. A great place to sit and watch the activities on Walking Street before going out for the evening.

Soi Buakhao Area Hotels

The Soi Buakhao area is another popular nightclub area. Here you’ll find an interesting mix of guest friendly hotels and guesthouses for visitors and apartments for Thais who work in the nightclubs and bars.

On Soi Buakhao itself, you’ll find Katesiree House, Laguna Buakhao House with Thai style furniture, Target Regency Guesthouse, and Rabbi’s Elephant Guesthouse which is also a meeting place for the Pattaya Golf Society.

Just off Soi Buakhao on Soi LK Metro mingled with the go-go bars, coyote bars and beer bars you find a bunch of guest-friendly hotels and guesthouses. If you like to hang out with aliens you’ll love Armageddon Guesthouse and Bar, and there’s Irish Rovers Guesthouse and Kilkenny Hotel with an Irish flavour. Close by you’ll find the popular Stags Head Guesthouse, and in the corner of the street, there’s Pasadena Lodge with a choice of 20 beautifully furnished rooms, in 4 different room styles.

Just across the road there’s Soi Chaiyapoon, famous for Crazy Daves café that serves breakfast 24 hours/day and Neeroys late night restaurant that offers fish ‘n chips and English style curries. Guest friendly guesthouses don’t get much friendlier than Canterbury Tales Café that has a bookstore and restaurant on the ground floor. Just further down the street, near the popular Maggie May’s bar there’s Chaiyapoon Inn & Restaurant.

For a more comprehensive guide to Guest Friendly hotels in the Pattaya area, and a guide to the city’s nightlife, check out my website at www.pattaya-discover.com.

Foods to Avoid With IBS

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IBS is a digestive condition that affects many people’s lives, but with the right diet it can be helped. People just need to educate themselves about the foods to avoid with IBS. This article is expert qualified nutritionist advice about the types of foods to avoid with IBS.

Expert Advice on Foods to Avoid With IBS

People who suffer from IBS may find it debilitating and affect their daily lifestyle. If you have IBS the single best thing you can do is learn about foods to avoid with IBS.

Chronic IBS suffers sometimes need to live different lifestyles and can’t do a number of activities that others take for granted. Most so it can make people with chronic IBS to avoid certain social environments and activities through fear of having a bad reaction and not being able to keep their issue a personal secret. This can unfortunately cause them to feel socially outcast and shy away from certain social environments and certain hobbies or things like that.

The following information is for people who suffer from IBS or IBS pain and want to manage their condition through educating themselves about foods to avoid with IBS and making healthy food choices which will help manage and control IBS and allow them to live normal, stress and fear free lives where they do not need to feel left out and not let the condition rule their life.

Education is the key to finding an IBS solution
Educating yourself about the right foods and the wrong foods is the key to managing your IBS symptoms and IBS pain. The problem with IBS is that it won’t just go away if you ignore the problem. So you have to face the issue, educate yourself and treat yourself in the correct way. This is the only true way to ensure that you can enjoy your life and live without the shackles of IBS.

Stress and IBS
IBS can be triggered by foods but unfortunately it can also be triggered by stress and emotions.
This is why educating yourself about the foods that will and will not cause you issues is the key to managing IBS pain. If you are confident about your food choices, then you will not be stress and as a result you will avoid the two most common causes.

Foods to Avoid With IBS

Alcohol
Alcohol in general can cause digestive issues for some, but when combined with carbonation/ bubbles (such as beer and champagne) it can double or triple the effect.

It is worth trialing a few different types of alcohol and seeing what effect it has on you. Some people may find some types of alcoholic drinks perfectly fine, while others cause a lot of issues. It is best to try to stick to ‘cleaner’ alcoholic options that are low in added sugars and are free from gluten, preservatives, sulfates and other common processing inclusions. Spirits without carbonated mixes are usually a pretty good option – but once again it is a bit of trial and error until you find something that suits you.

Gluten
Gluten is a major allergen and many people’s digestive systems cannot handle this ingredient. Unfortunately our bodies were not designed to digest gluten as throughout our human evolutionary period gluten was nonexistent.

It is not until recent years that gluten was brought into the human diet and due to its ease of storage, low-cost, high production ease and ease for transport it because a major staple in the human diet. Foods like breads, pasta, cake, pastries and so on all contain gluten. Gluten is the major protein that comes from grains such as barely, wheat and rye. Even people without IBS can have major issues with gluten in the diet and cause things such as eczema and chronic sinus. So look to cut this out of the diet and you’ll immediately feel much better. Also ensure to read food labels and look out for the code names of gluten such as ‘modified food starch’. Gluten is used in a lot of processed foods so be sure to check label and shop at places that are known for holding a wide range of gluten-free foods – like local health food shops or online.
Rice and corn flour is a great alternative to wheat flour and other high gluten grains.

Soy
Soy is one of the top 8 irritants for digestive health. Soy based products and processed food containing soy should be avoided.

Sugar alternatives/ sweeteners
Sugar free alternatives when broken down in your digestive system cause gas, wind and bloating in most people even if they don’t have IBS. So it is obvious that these ingredient and foods should be avoided for people who suffer from IBS. Avoid at all cost. Natural alternatives like stevia pure leaf extract might be a good alternative for some who need to have a sweetener, but still use in moderation.

Sugar
Foods to high in sugar (particularly highly processed white table sugar) can cause issues as well. Avoid processed highly refined sugar foods like pastries, white breads, sugars and so on.

Fats
Foods that is overly high in fat cause havoc with your digestive system. This is not to say that all fats are bad and fats should be avoided at all costs. Healthy fats such as Omega 3 are vital to good health and a healthy digestive system. Including oily fish such as salmon is one of the best ways to do this. Other alternatives are including healthy grains like flax seeds (or also called linseeds) and chia seeds (very high in protein also). These high omega 3 grains do not give that fishy smell or reflux that some people can get from fish oil capsules.

For more information and a more complete list click on the following link for foods to avoid with IBS

Luxury Destination Weddings and Honeymoons

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“Lying on a starlit terrace in Marrakech, beautiful and damned, (…) assembled as if for eternity where the curtain of the past seemed to lift before an extraordinary future” – Yves Saint Laurent

The honeymoon, whilst traditionally revolving around a beach holiday is becoming more adventurous and elaborate- especially when it is combined with a destination wedding. Exotic locations, elaborate stagins, once-in-a-lifetime settings… Destination weddings talked about for many years(or generations) to come – from weddings in remote Bhutanese dzongs accessible by an hour-long trek officiated by Bhutanese monks and attended by people from nearby villages to glorious weddings in Ottoman yalis and palaces with the picturesque Bosphorus as a backdrop.

Scouting for the most inspired settings- dramatic cliff-side chapels with glass bottoms, a hundred Maasai warriors serenading the guests with the magical Ngorongoro Crater as a backdrop or the re-enactment of a courtship ritual on horseback in Kyrgyzstan. Every detail- from the food to the wedding decorations, the photography to the entertainment are of utmost importance when planning a destination wedding. Arranging for a destination wedding can be potentially more stressful than co-ordinating a local wedding, given a combination of unfamiliarity with the location, the time difference between the destination and where you’re based as well as sourcing for suppliers. Hiring a wedding co-ordinator specializing in overseas weddings will help mitigate the challenges with co-ordinating a destination wedding. With a wedding co-ordinator lending their destination expertise(which involves scouting for the best locations and suppliers), working with you towards your goals and letting you understand what to expect, a dream destination wedding becomes a feasible reality.

Friends and family who’d come to share in the joy of the couple will encounter a similarly meticulous attention to detail that are the hallmarks of luxury travel – from individual dietary preferences to customized tours pre- and post-event, decadent parties and stylish cocktail receptions- Talitha Getty-inspired togs optional.

How to Kickstart a Great Culture

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How do you like Mondays?

It’s a great litmus test for the state of your culture at work. (It’s also linked to a great book on culture called Great Mondays by Josh Levine who I interviewed on the podcast.

We can love our work, love our purpose, but if the people stuff in culture drives us nuts, it’s an uphill battle.

It’s a complex issue, but thankfully it has some simple solutions. The starting point is knowing what we want in the culture. We build on it from there in our policies, our procedures, and our commitments to one another.

My Canberra Amplifiers group is focused on culture this week in their quarterly one day immersion. Culture is one of those ‘important but not urgent’ topics that, if neglected, can derail a business. In Amplifiers, we make room for the ‘important and not urgent’ to get progress and take action on the things that matter most, like culture.

One of the exercises is to write a manifesto. A manifesto is a public declaration of intentions and beliefs. For culture, it’s about how you intend to operate. I was inspired to include this after an interview with Charlene Li on her latest book, The Disruption Mindset (episode to be released soon on the podcast). Part of the success in innovative companies is the establishment of a Manifesto to guide their purpose and focus. She cited Gretchen Rubin’s writings as tremendous examples of great manifestos. Read them here.

This is a great exercise to do with your team. What do you believe in? How do you want to operate? When it comes to culture, I called this developing your Culture Compass in my book, Loyalty – stop unwanted staff turnover, build engagement, and build lifelong advocates. The Manifesto sharpens the Culture Compass into a snappy creed.

Here is an example from one I have been developing for myself:

  • How you do one thing is how you do everything.
  • Be kind.
  • Enough is the key to happiness.
  • Nature is the best tonic.
  • Play!

Here’s one I’ve been drafting to share with the team to develop our manifesto:

  • Feedback helps our garden grow.
  • Treat every client as an honoured guest.
  • If you can make it better, do it.
  • Will it make the boat go faster?
  • ‘Fess up, don’t fester.
  • Share the wins.
  • Honour each other.

Do you have a culture manifesto? Share it in the comments!

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