Days in the Life of a Pattaya Hotel Owner

Why things always happen in multiples is a mystery to me…but they most certainly do…especially in Pattaya. No sooner had we avoided having our first non-paying guest at Jasmine Mansion by the skin of our teeth than we were in that same scenario all over again. (This is Thailand!)

An elderly man from Newcastle, England had arrived mid-evening a week ago and had claimed he had no money or credit cards or passport or clothes. He informed our reception staff that all of his possessions were in his house and his Thai wife had thrown him out after gaining proof of his most recent infidelity. He needed a place to stay and would be able to get some money the next day and wanted to pay for a month whilst he tried to sort his life out. Our staff took it upon themselves to take pity on him and gave him a room without first telephoning Mrs. Boss or me — to get would be a resounding negative response in answer to any question, regardless how laced it may be with a sympathetic tale. Why staff take a kindly approach to customers with no money or proof of identity over the safe route that ends up as a kindly approach to those that pay them is a mystery to me and, of course, it is me that ends up having to try and deal with the mess they have created.

Neil stood there in his swimming shorts, his bare, wrinkled and heavily tattooed torso covered with pearly beads of sweat. He was a small old man (likely in his late 60s), had a grin the likes of which is normally only found on the clinically insane, and bared several missing teeth. My immediate thought was to knock out a few more teeth, but I desisted.

“Hi mate, how ya doing bonny lad?” he asked, having been introduced to me as our non-paying guest. “Fine, thanks,” I replied before asking him what the situation was that led him to spend a night in our hotel with nothing save his charm? I had ignored the bonny lad reference and hoped I would not be spending enough time in his company for him to realise that both words were wholly inappropriate when directed at me. “Well bonny lad, I will be off tomorrow to get me money from Chonburi and pay you up then, is that okay bonny lad?” Ignoring the bonny lad reference was becoming more difficult but still I managed to and, instead, focused on the task in hand.

My conversation with Neil was as pointless as my neighbours complaining about unscented livestock a few weeks ago. He talked incessantly, none of what he said made any sense, he was odious and I just wanted to punch him and throw him out of the hotel. I desisted and gave him until the following day to come up with the money and his passport. I shouldn’t have done this. I should have thrown him out, but he had already managed to rack up a credit on his account of over 2,000 baht from food and drink he (and his new girlfriend) had consumed in the 12 hours they had been here. I thought the gamble of an extra 24 hours was worthwhile.

Of course, the trouble with gambling is that sometimes you lose and sometimes you lose heavily. On this given Sunday I was not at the hotel but instead occupied my day by taking the boys out. A telephone call to the hotel had only yielded a response that Mr. Neil had not paid yet and they could not help but tell me another 2,000 baht had been added to his account for food and drink. They even had the bloody temerity to ask me if he could rent a DVD player — for fucks sake why not just give him the deeds for the fucking hotel — I was in a bit of a mood with this call as you may have guessed.

Monday saw me spending most of the day endeavouring to speak with Mr. Neil who was noticeable only by his absence. I went to his room, where it appeared he had either left the premises naked (not a thought I really wanted to entertain) or had somehow found money to buy another t-shirt and pair of shorts. A very old t-shirt and pair of shorts were the only things in his room save for his girlfriend’s small makeup purse. His account now stood at well over 5,000-baht plus the room bill, which was now close to 2,000 baht. In no time at all, this bloody little man had eaten and drank his way to a bill the size of which he had either run away from or simply was not going to pay.

Around 7:00PM, Mr. Neil, returned to the hotel. I was off my chair and out of my office at a pace that I had thought was beyond me these days and standing in front of the odious Mr. Neil asking him what the payment situation was. “No problem bonny lad, I am off to Chonburi tomorrow and everything will be sorted out then. You’ll have to excuse me now though as I wanna sit down and have some food.”

I was momentarily caught off guard and let Mr. Neil walk away before my composure returned and I said, “What do you mean tomorrow? You told my staff on Friday that you would pay on Saturday. On Saturday you told me you would pay Sunday. It is now Monday night. You have a bill of over 7,000 baht which you now want to increase and are telling me you will pay tomorrow. Why didn’t you get this money today and settle your account?” “The taxi driver didn’t show up bonny lad,” was his rather weak and completely pointless response. The conversation continued for a further few minutes and ended with my explaining that he could not have any food, his girlfriend could not have any food, and my instructing the receptionist to go to his room and take everything out of the mini-bar because he could damn well not drink it dry again tonight. At least I was now only giving him another night in the hotel without all the extra cost and effort of feeding and watering him!

Tuesday followed similar lines to Monday. No Mr. Neil in sight, the same clothes still in his room and, of course, no payment. However, the day deviated from Monday in that Mr. Neil did not turn up in the evening and in fact did not turn up at all. He had gone and left a bill — now in excess of 10,000 baht — unpaid. To say I was unhappy with the situation would, perhaps, be considered a rather large understatement. I dreaded telling Mrs. Boss, knowing the reaction I was sure to receive but tell her I must! I plucked up the courage later that night and stood back a couple of paces to avoid her hitting me to make up for her frustration and not being able to get hold of Mr. Neil. “Oh well, these things happen,” she said in a calm and lucid manner. “What the….” I thought as this was not the reaction to being conned out of 10,000 baht I had expected. Nonetheless I enjoyed the new, calm Mrs. Boss. What could we do about after all? We knew his name, but that was likely an alias he had made up. We had no passport copy or other formal identification and absolutely no idea where he had gone. It was therefore just a matter of us biting the bullet, although I had expected the bullet to be bitten considerably harder than had been the case.

A few days later I had been out with Mark for a few games of pool and a chat. I returned to the mansion, where I was staying that night having told Mrs. Boss not to bother waiting around for me. I was not home late, around 9:00PM I believe, but was not ready for bed. Actually, in truth, I was probably ready for bed, but my drink-soaked brain was dictating to me the need for just one more, then, perhaps, one more after that. I sat drinking a nicely chilled Bacardi Breezer and watching the world pass by. I was doing my favourite thing: people watching. It is true to say that watching people, in particular the scantily clad ladies, is by far more interesting here than anywhere else I have been on this planet. I have often thought that watching people here in Pattaya to be infinitely more interesting than watching various beasts amble around the Serengeti — needless to say the wildest most dangerous animal one would encounter in the Serengeti is a cuddly ball of fluff when compared with the damage a Thai bar girl could do you!

My relaxing evening was disturbed by a slight altercation with a motorcyclist deciding to park his bike in front of our hotel and then head towards the, recently opened, next door bar. I called him back and explained, politely I had thought, that the parking here was reserved for our hotel customers and requested, therefore, that he move his motorbike elsewhere. No doubt fuelled by drink he started calling me names, none of which I have not been called a thousand times before, and reluctantly moved his transportation to outside the bar he was visiting. I could not, and never can, understand why you would park outside of one place and walk into another when the other also has perfectly good and available parking facilities. My mood had worsened following this incident, but I endeavoured to settle back into something approaching my earlier mood.

It was only a few minutes later that Mrs. Boss’ car, complete with Mrs. Boss, arrived on the scene and parked opposite the hotel. Evidently one of the staff had seen my altercation with the motorcyclist and called Mrs. Boss to suggest it may be better if she collected me and took me home. Mrs. Boss was still in her recent calm mood and told me we would go back to the house once I had finished my drink and then went inside to talk with the staff for a few moments. It was then when I looked up I saw the odious, idiotic, cheating, lying scumbag, Mr. Neil, boldly walking down the opposite side of the road. Staggering would likely be a more accurate description of his movement than walking but nonetheless there he was, as bold as brass, walking past our hotel. Not only that he looked over at me, waved and yelled out, “Okay bonny lad!” I was up out of my seat and shouting at him to get over to my side of the road before I came and dragged him over. Quite inexplicably, instead of endeavouring to beat a retreat, he willingly ambled over and sat down at the same table I had been seated at and sporting the bloody inane grin that seemed to be a permanent fixture on his face.

“Where the fuck have you gone and, more importantly, where’s my fucking money?” I yelled at him — my earlier altercation having obviously already sufficiently warmed my blood for battle.

“Well bonny lad…” he started, but I cut him short.

“First of all you fucking prick, do not call me bonny lad once more or I will not be accountable for my actions. Now where is my fucking money?”

Mr. Neil then started to go through his excuses, but I was not having that and I was not going to listen to another moment of his gibberish. I called to Mrs. Boss and told her to get the police here now — I wanted them to take Mr. Neil away and now!

I told Mr. Neil to sit down and shut his mouth. It was clear to him the police would be here shortly and I was expecting him to make some half-hearted attempt to run away, so I explained that if he so much as twitched a muscle I would knock him senseless and enjoy the experience. He sat, quiet as a dormouse, and did not even utter a single “bonny lad” in the 15 minutes we waited for the boys in brown to show up. The police were immediately spoken to by Mrs. Boss and given all of the unpaid bills in Mr. Neil’s name. They then asked him to accompany them to the local police station and the two officers then rode off on their motorbike with Mr. Neil sat sandwiched between them.

We heard later in the week that Mr. Neil had given his correct name. He had also done the same thing at eight other hotels in the previous couple of years and been shipped back to England on several occasions. He had no money, he had no way of getting money and we needed to write 10,000 baht off as a bad debt. I was no longer concerned about the money; I had mentally written that off well before re-encountering Mr. Neil. However, what irked me was the fact that the authorities had not only admitted to having given him a flight home on previous occasions, but had actually let him back into the country so he could commit the same crime again and again. If this pea-brained idiot can manipulate the system so easily then terrorists must be laughing aloud at international travel security allegedly in place globally.

If, by any chance, you ever get to read this Mr. Neil, just a personal word from me to you: fuck you!