Days in the Life of a Pattaya Hotel Owner

I arrived at Don Muang airport in Bangkok at 4:00 on Friday afternoon and got a taxi from the rank outside. I boarded my taxi and asked the driver to take me to The Landmark Hotel. He scratched his head, but I believed I had explained the location sufficiently well and assumed he had understood where we were going. I sat back, closed my eyes and relaxed for the 20-minute drive into the centre of Bangkok. I looked forward to arriving at my favourite hotel, with the thought made even better by knowing that one of the two nights was complimentary. I was looking forward to seeing Peter later in the evening and my failings of the last seven days were pushed to the back of my mind. I was awoken by my driver “We here mister.” I looked at the street scene outside the taxi and recognized nothing, this was not Sukhumvit Road and we were most certainly not at The Landmark. “Where are we?” I enquired with a mixture of shock and disbelief and no little head shaking.

“Landmark mister, you say you want go Landmark.”

“Yes I want to go to The Landmark but this is not it.”

“Yes this Landmark.”

“A landmark of some description it may well be, but I can assure you this is most certainly not the bloody Landmark.”

“Yes is mister.”

“No isn’t. I have stayed at The Landmark on more than twenty occasions and this most certainly is not it.”

“Yes is mister, look.”

I followed the direction of his pointed finger where I could clearly see a shop premises, above the shop was also very clearly written “Landmark Tailors.”

I had never mentioned a tailors shop, I had quite clearly told the driver The Landmark Hotel. How on earth could he confuse a five-star hotel with a back street tailors shop? After a further discussion the driver, none too pleased it should be said, navigated his way out of a maze of narrow side streets and surprisingly exited onto Sukhumvit Road. I was able to guide him from this point to the hotel using the back roads I had become accustomed to having to take in order to circumnavigate central Bangkok’s infamous one-way system. This is a one-way system which sees vehicles travelling in all directions on both sides of the road but I will leave this lunacy for another day — or for you to discover yourselves. As I prepared to pay the fare the driver asked me for 600 baht. The meter read 350 baht and the notice at the airport taxi rank made it clear that each passenger has to pay an additional fifty baht over the meter charge, as a tip for the driver. Although I was not inclined to offer this man any tip I felt contractually obligated and duly told him the fare should actually be 400 baht, the exact amount I was now handing to him.

“But tip me, you give me 250 baht tip okay?” was what he had the temerity to say.

“No actually I am giving you 50-baht tip as it says at the airport and count yourself very fortunate to even get that. I would add that a tip is something given at the discretion of the customer and not at the demand of service provider.”

I exited the taxi and walked into the hotel leaving the driver scowling in my wake.

I had a shower after unpacking and tended to the day’s emails. At least now I had internet access in my room and although it is not cheap, the money is irrelevant when compared to the convenience of this amenity. The emails completed I watched the news for an hour or so and then got dressed to go out. As Peter was expected around 11:00 in the evening, I considered going out at 8:30 for a couple of hours just about right. I would not have too much to drink and therefore be mellow and sober when he arrived. I headed off to my favourite haunt, Nana Plaza, where I enjoyed a few beers and some innocent flirting with the girls in my preferred Go-Go establishment. The mamasan at this bar knows me well and although I will always buy her a drink she is aware that, other than some joking around, my interest in the girls ends there. Two or three girls were playing around and making all of the suggestions that were I single would have been music to my ears. I am a battle scarred veteran on Thailand so well aware that comments such as “you are so hansum man” and “you have good heart” and so forth mean absolutely nothing although does not prevent me from enjoying the experiences for what they are — harmless fun.

I kept to my schedule, for the first time this past week, and returned to the hotel to await Peter’s arrival. It was not quite 10:30, so I decided to give Mrs. Boss a ring and let her know all was well. I was met with a rather frosty response, which took me aback, and she asked, where I had been. I told her I had just popped out for a couple of drinks and that was I now back at the hotel awaiting Peter’s arrival. “Where you have drink?” she enquired, the frostiness still very much in evidence. The tone of her voice suggested to me that telling her I had just spent a couple of hours in a Go-Go bar was probably not the answer that I should be giving. “Only to the Huntsman’s pub in the basement.” I lied. It was a little lie, I had not been doing anything I should not have been doing and were money an issue then the difference in prices between the hotel pub and a Go-Go were non-existent. “You are liar, you go to Go-Go, you speak with many lady.” I was frozen to the spot, I was unable to move so gripped by fear and panic was I. My wife’s ability to know where I am every second of the day when in Pattaya is legendary but in Bangkok she does not have the same network of spies. She has most certainly not been able to work out how to track me by using her phone, I was certain of that, and even were I wrong it would not tell her I was in a Go-Go talking with “many lady.”

I continued to perpetrate my lie and became indignant as to why she was questioning me. I was on the back foot though and I really did not know where I was being led, other than to be totally convinced it was along some dark path that I really did not want to be travelling down. The conversation continued and was quickly spiraling out of my control — not that it was ever under my control. Snippets of my conversations with the “many lady” were now being leaked into the conversation and they were 100 percent accurate. I was now flapping around in the manner that my fish had been a few months earlier after the tank had exploded, however, in my case there was nobody on hand to save my life. I changed tack, I started to introduce partial truths but they were hurled back at me with more and more accurate descriptions of my conversations over the previous two hours. Eventually I was told “You go now, next time you go to Go-Go though I suggest you lock your phone.” The call with Mrs. Boss concluded I checked my phone for “made calls” and there to my horror saw that a call to Mrs. Boss lasting nearly ninety minutes had been made covering almost the entire period of my stay in the Go-Go. Every single word, every laugh, every innuendo, every “hansum man”, every “you come with me short time” every bloody word had been broadcast back directly to my wife!

Now you can forget all about Black Marks and Brownie Points. This system carefully explained in Riff-Raffles is completely flushed down the toilet when one’s level of indiscretion reaches this point. Lacy white knickers may tell a story by their very existence, but they cannot actually talk. People, on the other hand can talk and words can and will damn you. I was most truly damned as well as being well and truly f*&$#@.

After a couple of nights sitting and chatting and drinking with Peter, the time came to return to Pattaya and for me to face the music. I knew I was going to take some very heavy blows and braced myself for them. They were, as I expected, thrown with all the might I know Mrs. Boss possesses and trying to defend myself, let alone fighting back, was simply not an option. I stressed, whenever Mrs. Boss stopped to draw breath, which was not too often, that I had told her a little white lie merely to avoid being involved in some unnecessary argument, which of course would have been mild by comparison to what I was now embroiled in. I ventured to use the tool that proved my guilt to prove my innocence. I suggested that as she had heard every word spoken she would no doubt have heard me comprehensively refusing all offers of companionship. I failed to make even the merest dent in the onslaught and endured several days of the silent treatment that aggrieved women administer on such occasions. Quite why women believe not talking to their partner is a form of punishment I have no idea — my experience has been such that were I given the silent treatment for, say, the next 20 years I would be counting it is a blessing.

I am sure I will recover and normality will one day soon return to my domestic life. I know once again that, in terms of a crime, mine was really only a minor misdemeanour and one committed with reasonable intent. Had I disappeared “short time” with one of the floosies from the Go-Go bar and been so indiscreet as to have broadcast such an event back to Mrs. Boss via my mobile phone then I would not have stood around waiting for her to kill me, I would have readily picked up a gun and shot my own head clean off my shoulders. However, I had merely consumed a couple of beers in a Go-Go bar, flirted with ‘many lady’ but nothing, absolutely nothing, more than that. I accept that this is not my first offence and therefore I am due some punishment, which I will accept, but worse than anything that can be thrown at me by my spouse is the knowledge of what a complete and utter jackass I was to allow such a situation to occur in the first place.