Also around the area I’ve seen spray-painted graffiti with the same wording or ‘King BNE’.

I also noticed exactly the same stickers around Japan in Osaka and Tokyo and it finally piqued my curiosity enough to Google it. It seems that this graffiti began in San Francisco in 2006 and has certainly hit Bangkok and Tokyo and apparently New York too.

Although nothing’s been proven, the most popular belief online is that it’s the work of a prolific graffiti artist called Benet, who is wanted by San Fransisco council with a $25,000 reward on his head. Benert apparently travels a lot although I can’t imagine him enjoying his holidays much if he’s spending his time sticking his signature to everything he passes. The cost alone of printing must exceed most modest people’s travel budgets.

There is also the 1-image website BNE One that is registered to a Japanese person who’s being fingered as the culprit.

The internet is full of discussions about this BNE phenomenon and I even found somebody selling the unused stickers on EBay from a guy purporting to be a friend of a friend of a friend. His stickers come with a warning that the glue is so strong that it’s nearly impossible to remove.

Some seriously doubt that BNE is acting alone. It must have taken considerable effort to make his mark in just our area of Bangkok, and there are reports that’s it’s infected many more areas too. To be able to make a similar impact overseas too suggests perhaps a loosely organized group.

I’m curious to know what will happen when they find the perpetrator. He’s supposedly costing San Fransisco about $1.2m every month in cleanup work and could be potentially prosecuted in every place he’s ever left his mark.

They won’t show up as a recent post, nor in the RSS feed, so here’s a link to them:

Tinglish

Group Weekend in Pattaya

Michael Learns to Rock Concert

Party at our Place

Bangkok Symphony Orchestra Play ‘Music of the Night’

Bjorn Borg and John Mcenroe In Bangkok

My First 10k Fun Run

I’ll go through older articles to add tags to them which should make the site a bit easier to navigate round.

I’m also removing older posts that don’t really add much to the site and I’ve noticed a lot of old photos no longer work. I’ll sort that out over the week.

Toon gave us the photos from her camera and we’ve uploaded a selection of them.

Click here to view them.

Tik and I celebrated her birthday at Red Sky Restaurant last night.

Red Sky is located on the 55th floor of Central World Plaza, and is part of the Centara Grand Hotel there.

The restaurant spans a large indoor area and a spacious outdoor area with a comprehensive view of the city. We both prefer it to the alternatives Sirocco (great but expensive), and Vertigo (Way too crowded, and not especially good value).

Tik is a member of The Central World Gold Card program which, for an annual fee, she’s able to get some really outstanding promotions. Last night she her meal free on the proviso that I paid full price and our total bill came to less than 3,000 baht for 2 courses and cocktails.

We had the largest, tastiest scallops I’ve ever eaten, kobe steak, salmon and soup.

We’re getting some unusually cold weather in Thailand right now so the roof was a little chilly. I ate with my coat still on but it certainly didn’t upset the meal.

Service was lightning fast between ordering and receiving our food. As a rare bonus for Thailand, our meals were delivered at the same time.

As we waited for our bill we walked down to the inappropriately named ’55′ restaurant on the 54th floor. This also looked great, offering a larger menu, a 550 baht cheeseboard and a wine room that requires the waiter to strap himself into a harness and to get lifted by wire to the appropriate bottle.

Tik and I are huge fans of Central World Plaza, as a shopping mall it’s actually enjoyable (even for me). It’s got all the style and elegance of it’s neighbor and arch-rival ‘Paragon Center’ without the crowds. It’s got great cinemas, huge and comfortable book shops and it offers everything we ever need for a weekend in Bangkok when we’re lazy to plan anything.

As of today we’re in for some big changes. I’ve renamed the site to reflect that Pavion.net is now a blog for both Tik and I.

We’ll update the header and some of the pages shortly.

We’ll both be jointly responsible for updating the site from now on so expect a bit more action.

Westerns in Thailand call this language ‘Tinglish’ (an amusing combination of poor English and poor Thai, mushed together) and it’s surprisingly common here, even in expensive condominiums, restaurants and hotels.

The two notices I scanned though were the most extreme example I’ve ever come across though where it’s impossible to guess the meaning in any way, nor comprehend how words such as abundantly, mischievous and migrates ended up being used.

I really should make more effort photographing Tinglish signs and signs where cultural interpretations have been completely overlooked.

Aside from numerous mundane spelling errors, the following have amused me …

Comming Soon – A massive billboard announcing the opening of the Ritz Hotel in Bangkok.

Puke Massage – A massage venue in Siam Square.

For Your Inconvenience we have closed this section – Apology sign at Central Rama III.

Chawley Blowns – Menu of ‘Charley Browns’ restaurant.