The UK’s most expensive hotel’s get made over
Could Bath be the most elegant location in Europe? It’s certainly one of the priciest. A survey earlier this year found that hotel rooms in Bath are the most expensive in the UK, coming in at an impressive £110-a-night average — £3 more than London. But it’s not just Bath where you’ll find expensive digs –- it’s the whole of the UK, where rates went up 17% on last year. So what do you get for your money in Bath? A number of hotels have stepped up to the challenge to justify their hefty price tags. The 31-room Royal Hotel was recently completely refurbished and spruced up, with dinner, bed and breakfast now coming in at a modest £60 a night up to £120 a night for a four-poster room. At the other end of the spectrum is the Macdonald Bath Spa Hotel –- the city’s most famous accommodation. The recent refurbishment has done nothing to dent the prices and a night in this five-star property will set you back at least £134 a night up to £548 a night for the Imperial Suite. While Bath may be pricey, it’s not quite hip yet –- The Sanderson in London had the honor of being the only UK hotel named in the world’s top 10 hip hotels last year.
Jake Needham: The Serious Writer
The Singapore Strait Times describes him as “Asia’s most stylish and atmospheric writer of crime fiction”; The Edge (Singapore) says his writing has “No clichés, no BS. Thrillers written with a wry sense of irony in the mean-streets, fast-car, tough-talk tradition of Elmore Leonard.”; He describes his own writing as “Really hard work. Not for readers, I hope, but for me.”
Hailing from Angleton County, Texas, 56-year-old Jake Needham is the author of four novels and twelve screenplays. Jake practiced law for more than twenty years, working in Washington and Hong Kong, as well as spending time as a journalist in America and abroad. For more than fifteen years now Jake has lived in Thailand with his wife, herself a columnist for the Bangkok Post.
The first thing Jake points out is that nobody really calls him Jake: “Actually, my full name is Jake Raymond Needham but my friends and family generally call me Raymond or Ray. I stopped putting my middle name on books and screenplays when I discovered about fifteen years ago that screenwriters who used three names on their scripts were invariably assholes.” Forever sharp and real with his words, you could never accuse Jake of biting his tongue.
In 1999 Jake shot to fame with the release of his debut novel The Big Mango, a book that appears to have been the result of boredom: “I didn’t set out to achieve anything with it,” he says. “I had just written an original screenplay and done revisions for three other screenplays, and six straight months of movies was driving me around the bend. So I told my wife I thought I might see if I could write a novel. It was either that or take up golf.”
Jake donated all the profits from The Big Mango to an orphanage that he and his wife had been supporting. Jake’s time in Thailand is often reflected in his novels. The Laundry Man was a fast-paced thriller set against the shady backdrop of life in Thailand and Southeast Asia.
“I live here part of the year for family reasons,” says Jake, “and therefore Thailand sometimes ends up in my books and screenplays. That’s really about all there is to it. To tell the truth, I’m not all that fond of Bangkok. I just happen to be here sometimes. I imagine that guys who live and write books set in, say, Minneapolis must feel much the same way that I do with regard to their personal geography.”
Openly admitting that he never intended to become a write (“It just happened”), Jake recalls how in the late 1980s he stumbled upon running a modest television production company in Los Angeles. From there he backed into screenwriting and after writing a number of screenplays he sat down and started writing novels. “None of this was the result of any coherent plan,” he says.
Jake is quick to debunk the myth that the life of the author is all glitz and glamour. He paints a rather morbid image of his time sat at is computer: “Writing is not fun,” he explains. “It is brutally hard manual labor. As John Gregory Donne put it, it is laying pipe. You stick your butt in a chair one day after another, and you write about two thousand words on every single flipping one of them. At the end of sixty days, you have the first draft of a novel. Then you do exactly the same thing all over again and in another sixty days you have the second draft of a novel. You spend a third sixty days polishing that draft and then it might finally be ready to show to somebody and find out if it is any good at all. That adds up to six months of painful, solitary, isolated work without even knowing whether, at the end of it all, if you will have anything to show for it.”
Jake explains a little about what makes a good writer: “Every real writer,” he says, “has the same strong point: The discipline to produce regular, reliable work, day after day. We all have different weak points. Me, I can’t write sex. Wouldn’t even want to try. Can you imagine living in Bangkok and not being able to write sex? Blows the mind, so to speak, doesn’t it?”
You might think that good writing is the result of inspiration, but Jake points out that, for him at least, this couldn’t be further from the truth: “Inspiration is a word that makes me uneasy,” he says. Perhaps two decades in law have helped shaped his meticulous approach to work. “I don’t see good writing as coming from inspiration,” he continues. “It comes from unwavering discipline and very hard work. That might not sound particularly romantic, but there you are.”
Though it’s not an easy life, Jake’s years of hard work have paid off. The Big Mango, Jake’s biggest selling book to date, has been bought by Hollywood studios and is in the process of development. “I was in New York for most of October last year working on the screenplay for The Big Mango. Jim Gandolfini owns the rights and hired me to adapt the book into a film, but since he was doing the last season of ‘The Sopranos’ we had to wait for him for shooting. Revisions to the screenplay for The Big Mango kept me busy until January, but right behind that I was under contract to do rewrites on two other screenplays for which I wasn’t the original author. Rewrite jobs pay embarrassingly large amounts of money, but frankly they are seldom a whole lot of fun.” Jake does, however, admit that the film version of The Big Mango is still very much in the distant horizon.
On the subject of books, Jake is decidedly vague about whose he enjoys to read: “I have enjoyed so many different books over the years,” he explains. “There are a very long list of guys I like to read, although I don’t have any particular reason to look up to any of them in either a personal or even professional sense, and the first one to come to mind today would probably be the last one to come to mind tomorrow. How about, oh, let’s say Ross Thomas, one of America’s most undeservedly forgotten writers of popular crime fiction.”
With over 65,000 copies of his books in circulation, Jake Raymond Needham has become something of a household name, with his novels being printed in four languages and primarily distributed in non-English speaking countries. Interestingly, Jake continues to hold his stance of not allowing his books to be published in North America or Europe. This comes from his personal website: “I am continuing my long time policy of not allowing the marketing and distribution of any of my books in either North America or Europe. The resources required to do that effectively are far greater than those available to my publisher or, for that matter, to any other publisher in Asia. It comes down to this: I would rather my books were not distributed at all outside of Asia than watch them labor for attention against the promotional might the international publishing giants wield in their own home markets.”
For more information on Jake Needham and his novels, visit www.jakeneedham.com.
What’s up with Bangkok, Thailand?
Bangkok has become a cliché amongst travelers the world over. It has become famous for all the wrong reasons (sex, tuk tuks and stray dogs), and as such, visitors to this strange and unique place never get to see what Bangkok is really about.
If you ever felt like ditching the safe haven of our beloved Sheffield for somewhere a little more peculiar, there are few places more apt than Bangkok. The first real shock is the heat, which can be difficult to get used to taking into account Sheffield’s tendency to be dull and dreary. The second thing to notice is the bizarre amount of dogs (and we aren’t talking about ugly girls here) that are all over Bangkok. No less than 300,000 of the pesky mutts line the streets and get up to such shenanigans as trying to get on buses, walking into shops and attacking innocent passers by.
Thailand is the self-proclaimed ‘land of smiles.’ The Thais are some of the most friendly, inviting people you could ever meet. The Thai psyche, however, is incredibly complex and image is central. If everything is seemingly OK on the outside, then whatever is happening on the inside is apparently irrelevant. This logic is occasionally difficult to deal with and often results in problems never really getting solved. However, when you get to know the people on a personal level, they will open up to you instantly. The Thais can fall in love in the space of a day and can become quite obsessive. They are incredibly welcoming though, and will talk to you for no reason at all, even if they do not speak any English.
If there is one thing Bangkok is renowned for, it is shopping. The city is moving increasingly away from the image of ‘cheap and fake’ and replacing it with ‘new and exciting lifestyle choices.’ This translates into vast numbers of huge, elaborate shopping malls. Whereas Sheffield has Meadowhall, which can be difficult to deal with at the best of times, Bangkok has a multitude of Meadowhalls, enlarged and super sized to cater for every consumer need known to man. The chaos of the whole shopping phenomenon is something quite tiring, comparable only to the chaos of the surrounding traffic. What is striking about Bangkok is that there is little serenity. There are people everywhere and there are things being built on top of other things that are being built on top of even more things. The only places of real calm are the temples.
Bangkok nightlife can be a little monotonous if you’re looking in the wrong places. A night out on Khaosan Road (the backpackers’ haven) is akin to a night out at Kingdom or The Leadmill. It is lager fuelled, with occasional novelty hats, short skirts and a lot of shouting. Whilst on Khaosan Road, it is inevitable that the offer of a ride to Patpong will be given by one of the many scandalous tuk tuk drivers. Patpong is what it is. There are lady boys, sex shows, hookers and a lot of bars. Depending on your outlook on life, places such as Patpong, Nana and Soi Cowboy (the seedier spots) can be innocent fun and immeasurably good for just watching the oddities of Bangkok nightlife. The sex industry in Bangkok is something you have to see to believe because it is so vast and flamboyant.
Away from the tourist traps, however, are the real gems of Bangkok nightlife. The problems occur with the early closing times, with most places (including the bigger nightclubs) kicking out at 1 or 2 am. This law was first imposed in 2001 (and since modified) and has caused a stir amongst the clubbing communities ever since. Some places do stay open all hours, however, but these are the places that pay off the police so they can be a bit hit and miss.
Ratchada Soi 4 is a place most tourists fail to pick up on. This is how the Thais do clubbing and it is a lot of fun. Whiskey is ordered by the bottle (not Sangsom, nobody wants to be seen drinking that) and everybody drinks and dances to the latest commercial hip hop.
One curiosity is the Thai understanding of ‘pub.’ Thai ‘pubs’ are enormous, warehouse like buildings where every night, thousands of people dance around tables to young performers covering the most popular Thai songs with comedic skits, which I am assured are funny. The only downside of these pubs is the inevitable covers of This Love by Maroon 5 and Zombie by The Cranberries, the two most popular songs embraced from Western culture. Nobody is sure why.
RCA is another strip of simmering nightclubs and bars, but here is where the real clubbing begins. As well as the usual hip hop sounds and dancing around tables madness, there are more and more top DJs such as DJ Fresh, Carl Cox and Lil Louie Vega. passing through every month.
Towards the more sophisticated end of Bangkok nightlife are the places like Glow, Q Bar, Bed Supperclub and Titanium in the Sukhumvit area, where people go to be seen. If you like looking at gorgeous models who will never give you the time of day, Bar Koi on Sukhumvit 20 is worth a visit for the exquisite food and glamorous company. These places are in a similar vein to Crystal or Ruby Lounge.
Bangkok is an incredibly strange place and it usually scares off travelers after just a few days of aimlessness on Khaosan Road. Take the time to get beneath the surface though and you find one of the most interesting and entertaining cities in the world.
Phuket still a top place for a holiday
There’s no doubt that Phuket flights have never been cheaper. For a number of reasons, flights to Phuket in Thailand now cost less than they ever have before. If you’re thinking about where to go on your next holiday, you might want to consider giving Phuket a shot.
There are flights to Phuket available from a vast array of countries. Phuket has its own international airport, so you can fly to Phuket from as far afield as Europe, Australia, Great Britain and so on.
So why would you want to book a flight to Phuket in the first place? Well, the island is home to some of Thailand’s most famous and most scenic beaches. Phuket has it going on when it comes to beauty.
Then there’s the Phuket restaurant scene, which features some of the best eateries in the region. However, one of Phuket’s main draws for a lot of people is the active nightlife.
Nightlife in Phuket takes on many forms. Not for the fainthearted, nightlife in Patong is loud, raucous and in your face. There are lots of beer bars and other naughty nightlife venues in Patong.
Phuket has more going for it than bar girls though. There are live music clubs, dance clubs, jazz bars and a whole lot more besides.
The best thing about Phuket is the vibe. The whole island is just so laidback and chilled that you can’t fail to have a good time. Phuket is a reasonably large island with more than a dozen beaches just gagging to be explored.
If we haven’t persuaded you to go right ahead and book your Phuket flights, do a little more research into the island and you should be tempted in no time. Phuket really is the jewel in Thailand’s crown.