'Cakage fee' pops corks at BoLan

The Bangkok restaurant BoLan slips it in at the end of your meal if you force the staff to cut your cake for you.
A group of pals had a birthday party there recently and the bill was almost Bt60,000. When the birthday cake arrived they prodded the waiter to get busy dividing it up. Don’t know if the cake was a surprise, but the “cakage fee” sure was: an extra Bt800 for cutting the cake on the premises!
Evidently this is a known hazard at restaurants in the US and Australia, but some of these particular patrons had graduated from hospitality courses overseas and had never heard of it.
We just spent Bt60,000 on the meal, they pointed out, how about a break? Nuh-uh, they were told – a bit harsh considering that BoLan even had to get the cake from elsewhere.
So the group did what any sensible patrons would do – they paid the bill for the meal and took the cake out in the parking lot to slice up.
Then they posted their cautionary tale on Facebook.

Rap mystery
Raptor – former teen idols Joni Anwar and Louis Scott – had a great concert at Royal Paragon Hall on the weekend (see Page 3B), complete with a few surprises. It was perhaps also surprising they kept them a secret so long.
Cameras were banned at Friday’s rehearsal and the guest list was limited to former RS entertainers, the press and the gang from Cool 93 radio, the organiser.
But 94 Easy DJ Sakuntala “Ton Hom” Tienpairoj showed up too, and her radio work is with GMM Grammy, RS’ rival. Partway through, Ton Hom was escorted to the door.
Why? Rivalry, she implied. But then someone claimed on Pantip.com to have seen her taking pictures at the event with her mobile phone. Impossible, Ton Hom retorted – they’d taken her mobile away at the door.
The story blew up good, but we still haven’t seen any illegal pictures!