Livid in Pattaya, Part I
Go on, ask me. Ask me if I am angry. No, I am not angry. See…no problem at all. However, whilst not angry, I am fucking livid. I am off my head with lividity. I am drinking from the cup of lividness and I am altogether totally bloody lividacious. If some of these words do not exist in the dictionary then…well…bugger the dictionary! Because at this moment if you come within one mile of me you will likely be requiring a trip to Pattaya International Hospital for major surgery.
I have to put up with a lot of things here in Pattaya. Many of them are small, minor and probably totally inconsequential. However, they serve to irritate me and pull away at my remaining strands of sanity like a cat toying with its prey. You can struggle, you can endeavour to escape and occasionally you will have that momentary feeling that you may just make it — that feeling is, alas, short lived. As you struggle to your remaining, yet trembling, limbs and ready yourself for a dash back to freedom the paw wallops down on you and starts tearing away at you again, sapping your strength more and more as new wounds open. You endure a slow and very painful death before your last breath sends your limp body on its voyage of presentation to the feline’s master. That is how I normally feel in Pattaya. I do get up from the knocks. I wobble a bit at first, but soon the strength returns to my legs and I continue to fight on. I take more and more beatings and go through the same routine whilst knowing that one day I will not have sufficient strength to continue. I will, at that time, become just another statistic — another farang Pattaya has successfully pawed to death.
The reason for my present ill mood stems from the adjacent property to Jasmine Mansion. We had considered either renting or buying this building ourselves and doubling the size of the hotel but soon dismissed the idea. With land ready for development here and in the northeast of the country, we would be taking on far too much. In addition, if a twenty-three room establishment has an almost constant series of disasters then owning a forty-six room hotel just does not bear much thinking about. We therefore had to sit and wait to see who our new neighbours would be. We found out one Saturday morning at 8:00AM when the drilling works commenced. A deafening noise that sent vibrations though our building and inevitably woke all of our guests, most of whom had likely only recently returned to the hotel after their night out. A brisk walk next door to investigate saw various builders chiseling away at bricks and one standing drilling out a concrete staircase — this was no small scale alteration in progress. A few words from Mrs. Boss saw the cessation of the drilling works, which the contractors agreed not to recommence until after midday.
The fact that the new leaseholders were undertaking major structural works was not the issue. Yes, of course, we would have preferred they weren’t engaged in such activities but you cannot have everything you want. The real problem was that they had not considered it necessary to come in and talk to Mrs. Boss or I, explain what they were going to be doing, how long it was likely to take and try to schedule their works to cause the least possible disturbance to our business. Surely that would be the reasonable and decent thing to do and get you off on a good footing with your new neighbours.
We spent the day fielding questions and complaints from our guests related to the building works. We answered the best we could, but we had little information and no way of soothing their ire. We explained that the contractors had agreed not to commence the noisier elements of work until midday and hopefully these disturbances would only last a day or two. Unfortunately, being Thai, the builders promptly forgot what they had agreed the day before and yet again commenced drilling in the early morning. The abuse hurled at them by Mrs. Boss was sufficient not only to secure a temporary end to the drilling but also to bring a debut appearance from our new neighbour.
In he strolled and walking directly into my office, almost brushing Mrs. Boss away as he did so — not a wise move and not one that endeared someone who, in absentia, had become a figure of hate. “You got a problem mate?” was his opening remark and I quickly forgot about any pleasantries such as an extended arm accompanied by “Hello. I am Kevin and you are?” Not only did his manner suggest pleasantries were not going to be on today’s agenda but his name was already irrelevant as from this moment forward he would referred to by me as Dick(head). Wonderful, another one of those moronic Englishmen that plague my life here in Pattaya and he was going to be my neighbour. Whilst I readied my response, Mrs. Boss was already on a roll and pointing her finger in his face whilst telling him he could not make the level of noise being created. Of course, we are not dealing with a rounded civilized human being here, no I am not referring to Mrs. Boss, and he stood and shouted back at her. A five-minute argument ensued before I was able to separate the protagonists and immediately escorted Mrs. Boss out of the office so that I could be alone with Dick(head).
I explained that both my wife and I were very upset by the disturbance and more aggrieved by the fact that he had not had the courtesy to inform us of these works in advance. On top of this, his builders started an extraordinary noise in the early morning next door to a full hotel — did he consider this would be something we may not notice? He accepted that, perhaps, he should have spoken to us sooner but as far as he was concerned the work had to be done and that was all there was to it. After several minutes of patiently endeavouring to explain the situation, I managed to secure an agreement that the jackhammering, drilling and general demolition works would not be commenced until 1:00PM.
The very next day, several hours before the agreed time, the jackhammer was in action again with its deafening noise and vibrations that shook our entire building. Mrs. Boss headed off to confront the builders and I was forced to leave this with her as I had an appointment elsewhere. I returned to the hotel in the early evening, met up with some friends and readied myself for our pool match to be played later that night. Only moments following my arrival Dick(head) appeared in the hotel requesting to speak with me. He was unhappy that my wife had told his builders that they could not do any drilling and had rather missed the point that they had, so far as I understood it, only been requested to keep to the times agreed. I had told him these works had already cost us almost 100,000 baht in cancelled bookings, early departures, reduced café income and gestures aimed at keeping our existing guests with us. I still cannot work out the relevance of his response which was to say, “Well these works are costing me money.” Well, yes, I had presumed as much, however, they were works organized by him and for his long term benefit related to whatever business he was going to be operating — the works had absolutely no benefit to me whatsoever! At this point, of course, I concluded that further discussions with such a man were pointless in the extreme and walked away.
