Viking Bar Blog

We had to close our pub for 2 days due to a religious holiday. Since one of the day falls on Full Moon Party day, the party was shifted to the day immediately after the holidays.

We took advantage of this 2 days holiday and extended it by one day and took the staff to Hatyai for a short holiday. We have just got ourselves a new pickup truck, hence we thought it would be great to get all together for a drive down south of Thailand.

The journey started early on 29th July. We took the first Seatran ferry at 6am. All of us were quite tired especially the staff as they had been working till 2am in the morning. So, we took a 1.5 hour nap in the ferry. Once we reached the mainland, we started our journey down south.

John was officially appointed the driver as my driving license has expired. The rest of us continued to have our nap in the vehicle as he drove. We stopped for lunch at my favourite restaurant just before Phatthalung. The last time I ate there was almost 2 years ago and the food is still as good and reasonably priced.

We reached Hatyai around 2pm and checked into our hotel. Normally I would stay in Siam Hotel or Hotel Asian. This time around we stayed in Diamond Plaza Hotel because it has a swimming pool. We thought that it would be good for the staff if they got tired of shopping or walking around the town. In the end, no one even saw the swimming pool!!!

The first night, all of us went for a Cabaret show. The setup is extremely different from that in Koh Samui. The stage is professionally setup and most of the songs are in Chinese. The reason for this is because most of the tourists in Hatyai is from Malaysia and Singapore.

The next day, we decided to drive up north a little to a small town called Songkhla. This is a seaside town and it is about half an hour from Hatyai. We drove to the seaside looking for a dragon (which has its head, middle portion and tail) all in totally different sections. It was quite fun hunting for all the three parts. Of course, we also did not miss the famous mermaid statue. We found an ancient pagoda and had to take a elevator up the hill to see it. The view from that hill was fantastic.

On the third day, we had to start our travel back to Samui. Like all holidays, it was very short but we enjoyed it. Our journey back was rather interesting. We were about 2 hours from the ferry point when traffic came to stand still at the single lane road. Many other vehicles started to turn around to go by other roads but since we only know of this road, we decided to stay on it. After almost 45 minutes waiting, we were given the clearance to move. Well, it seems that the delay was caused by the Thailand Prince paying a visit to that area. Luckily we started leaving Hatyai early hoping that we could catch an early ferry back to Samui. In the end, we still ended up with our original booked 6pm ferry.

For more pictures, goto to the photo gallery in our website http://www.vikingbar.net .

We are going through another phase of upgrades again. This time, we have pushed our ladies toilet right to the end of the bar and have created another toilet (which consists of both a urinal and a toilet bowl). We are still considering whether to add another urinal in the new ‘ladies’ toilet. What do you think?

We are also creating a new alcove where our Viking Bar sign used to be – hence, there would be more space now especially for big groups.

The renovation is quite an exhausting exercise for us. John has to work during the day to ‘manage’ the workers. Otherwise, we probably end up with something totally different from what we wanted!!

And poor me, have to work during the nights!! Well, the job is taking longer than it is supposed to. Again, what job does not in Thailand! Tomorrow never comes over here!

But no worries, we are still open daily – from 5pm to 2am for business.

In the next post, I hope to be able to show some pictures of the newly renovated Viking Bar – for those of you who are unable to visit us for a period of time.

We have added 4 new drinks to our current list:

a. Our house white wine

b. Glenmorangie Malt Scotch Whisky

c. Martell Cognac

d. Smirnoff Premium Ice

And, we now have peanuts as well for those who wish to have a little tit bit while drinking.

Our day time staff has decided to ‘migrate’ to Sweden with her boyfriend. So, she has left us. Unfortunately this leaves us with a blank as to the day time hours.

Hence, effective 6th March this year, we have readjusted our opening times to 6.30pm for now. Two of our night shift staffs excluding the managers takes turns in handling the additional 1.5 hours each day.

How long will this be ? Well, it is very hard to say for now. Guess we have to give it some time to see how well received these opening hours are with customers.

I have decided to change the name of the blog to Viking Bar because the previous title does not reflect what I write in this blog.

Most of the entries are mainly attributed to what happens in Viking Bar, hence, it would be more appropriate to call this blog Viking Bar.