Days in the Life of a Pattaya Hotel Owner

Everyone always wants to talk to me. Why, I have no idea. I am not the most sociable of people. I have never been comfortable with people I do not know. Whilst at work, I put on a front and hide behind a mask of servitude. I can smile, be charming, act interested and concerned — often all at the same time — while endeavouring to avoid stooping to the cringe-making level of Uriah Heap’s “ever so ‘umble” sneering. All of this, though, does not mean I have the slightest interest in what the vast majority of people are saying to me. I am just passing the time and hoping the conversation will cease as soon as humanly possible. ‘Please Shut Up!’ is what I am really saying. It is just you cannot hear me as the words are not being released into the public domain, well, up to this moment in time that is.

I presently have a customer here who could bore for England and would be assured to bring home the gold if boring were to become an Olympic sport. After witnessing recent sporting performances by various national teams from my homeland, it appears that boring should be adopted as a sport — at least we would have some chance of success. This is more than can be said as regards our pampered and overpaid football players, egotistical cricketers and bedraggled rugby players.

Even in individual sports, Great Britain offers few talents that are able to leave the rest of the world in their wake. A few good golfers yes, but light years away from Tiger Woods. Andy Murray is our sole tennis hope and he will, undoubtedly and understandably, struggle to live up to the almost impossible levels of expectation placed on his shoulders by an entire nation. The days of Linford Christie, Seb Coe, Steve Ovett and Steve Cramm are long gone in athletics. And with the Olympics in Beijing only a year away, more glorious failure is sure to ensue.

So Mr. Jack Smith, it is time to put on your string vest over your shirt … which you wear fashionably unbuttoned from chest down thus revealing your huge stomach. Pull up those tasteful Bermuda shorts which go so well with your white socks and black lace-up shoes and show us all what you are made of … aside from the vast amounts of which you are, of course, already showing us.

I arrived at the hotel after Jack had finished eating. He was enjoying his second cup of coffee and staring vacantly out of the window — just another customer. My receptionist informed me that this gentleman had made a reservation for next week and already paid a holding deposit to secure a room. I went over to him and introduced myself. Hardly had I finished my short welcoming speech before he launched into a story about his Thai ‘girlfriend’.

She was not a bar girl — they never are. She had received several thousand baht from him whilst he had been back home in England and he had transferred money to her bank account three times in the ten days he had been here on this particular visit. All in all, over a six month period, he had given this girl, his fiancé as she was now being described, over two hundred thousand baht. I will not bother you with various currency exchange rates, it is sufficient merely to understand that, if she worked in a hotel as he claimed, this would equate to almost three years salary.

For her part the fiancé had failed to meet him at the airport as arranged. She had moved from her Pattaya apartment — for which he had paid the rent to the end of this year — and was now apparently at home in her village, the location of which she would not tell him. She had spoken to him on the phone but only to tell him to send more money. She could not to see him; it was not the right time. There were problems in the family she had to deal with. Her mother was sick and she needed to take her to hospital and buy medicines. She had been in a motorbike accident and had to have the bike repaired, without it she could not get out to buy food for her mother. The house she was building was still not finished and the contractors employed had taken her money and disappeared. The list of problems was sufficient material to keep a soap opera going for a year or more.

I got every last detail in his unwavering monotone voice and I was close to falling asleep where I stood. I have heard this all before. I have heard this all one hundred times before. Why was he telling me this? He does not know me and the last time I looked it said ‘Hotel’ on the sign outside our building not ‘Therapists for the terminally stupid’. Perhaps there was a little voice inside his head telling him that I wanted to hear his story. Well Jack, let me tell you fair and square, let me make this perfectly clear ‘The little voice is bloody wrong!’ It is wrong by a long way. I have absolutely no interest in your tale of woe. I suggest, ever so ‘umbly of course, that you, accompanied by your little voice, go jump off a cliff.