Days in the Life of a Pattaya Hotel Owner

Continuing my escapades in Hua Hin, the room maid’s intrusion got me up. After a quick shower, I took my somewhat banging head out to see how Kevin was faring. No better it turned out — in fact he was in a worse state than me. He had been up for a while, but felt nauseous and wanted to do nothing but return to his bed. I suggested a walk Hua Hin’s lovely beach might do us both some good, but first I wanted to check my email so we arranged to meet up in the lobby in 30 minutes. Again, I could not connect to the Internet and exactly the same messages were appearing that had been evident the night before.

When we met in the lobby Kevin confirmed that he too had been unable to access the Internet. It was now likely that a more significant problem than earlier imagined was in existence. As we waited for the reception area to clear, Kevin started telling me about a film he had been watching — on a channel I knew I did not have access to. It soon became clear that the television in my room required retuning, as I was only able to connect to four or five channels whilst Kevin advised there were at least twice that number available. When the reception area cleared we spoke with the manager, a smiling Indian gentleman, and told him of the problem with the WiFi. “Okay then bring computer to lobby, should work fine here,” was his reply, which seemed vaguely familiar to what the portly female receptionist had suggested the night before. However, before we were able to discuss the WiFi situation and my faulty television further, the lobby again filled up with people checking in and out. We decided we would address the problem later since Kevin was starting to look as though he really needed to get some fresh air!

We stopped at a restaurant on our way to the beach where Kevin endeavoured the feat of drinking water whilst I opted for the low calorie repast of a club sandwich, fries and Coca-Cola. The club sandwich contained onion, a fried egg, onion, lettuce and more onion! To be fair to the maker, they had been very liberal with the onion. However, had I wanted a fried egg and onion sandwich it is likely I would have asked for one! The French fries were good though. They saved the day — or at least saved me from getting myself into a pointless argument I would never win — and it was important that for the first time in almost 30 hours I had put some food into my system.

We continued onwards down to the beach, which I have to say was delightful. The beach in Pattaya is covered with deck chairs from one end to the other. It is also covered with salespeople who will actually wake you up to enquire as to whether you want a lighter, tattoo, ice cream, deep fried prawns, a kite, silk sarong or any of the other rubbish they are hawking. Here the salespeople were limited to the occasional ice cream vendor, a few sarong sellers and the (almost compulsory) beach massage ladies. Not only were these sales people fewer in number, they also appeared to be considerably less obtrusive and were not waking sleeping holidaymakers from their slumbers to offer them their wares.

In Hua Hin the beach area is approximately 1/3 deckchairs, sun beds and restaurants with the remainder just being left natural for people to walk along or lay on the sand. There are no jet skis, no inflatable banana boats, no motor boats offering to take you nowhere for a lot of money, no paragliding, none of those things that plague the beaches and pollute the waters of Pattaya. The beach of Hua Hin got a huge thumbs up from me, and we relaxed in our deck-chairs for a couple of hours and enjoyed the most wonderful difference between Hua Hin and Pattaya — the peace and quiet of the place. As we returned to the hotel it dawned on me that farang men have farang wives and girlfriends. They go on holiday as couples, they sit on the beach and in restaurants together and they do not seem to find it necessary to be drunk every minute of every day. I realized now that I have spent far too long in Pattaya and its unreal existence. Note to self — leave Pattaya as soon as possible!

Back at the hotel, another failed attempt to get the Internet working was making me a little more agitated. Added to this we had now been here 24 hours and done absolutely no work. I decided to visit the now quieter reception and see if I could make some headway past the “bring your computer to the lobby” suggestion. The manager was still on duty, although his primary duty appeared to be catching forty winks in the chair. I woke him and explained my problems with both the WiFi which had now not been working for over 24 hours and the lack of a full set of television channels.

“Yes,” was his reply.

“I am sorry, but what do you mean by YES?”

“Must be problem with connection, we get that sometime.”

“What, the WiFi does not work for days on end?”

“Yes.”

“Bring computer to lobby and try here though?”

“No, I want to use the computer in my room and to access the WiFi from there. That is part of your service isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Well can you do something about it?”

“I tell you best thing, remind me in morning that will be better.”

And with that he closed his eyes and went back to sleep!