The Fool is Back

By Neil Hutchison

The study of human stupidity is not a new science but it certainly makes fascinating reading. An interesting thing about the human race is that if there is a way to screw up, someone will eventually stumble upon it. Enter the fool.

By the author of the Pattaya best seller Money Number One and the updated Money Still Number One, this the sequel to A Fool in Paradise, adding a further 32 stories to the colourful tapestry that is Pattaya, Thailand. In the opinion of many people including the author, Pattaya is the most wonderful place on the planet. As with A fool in Paradise, the stories are all true or based on true events.

'A Brief History of Pattaya' takes a lighthearted look at what the history books don't tell you whereas 'Miss Goodbar' offers advice to foreign men on how to choose, woo and cohabit with their Thai dream girl.

'Boys at Play' is the unofficial, unauthorized and unholy account of one holiday of lifetime. When you take six mischievous Aussie mates, add ten days of unsupervised freedom and put them together in South East Asia's number one party town, you get a true adventure of unbelievable proportions; full of fun, laughter, love, sex and tragedy. Why tragedy? Because none of them could ever speak about it, except amongst themselves. Apart from one photograph, this remains the only record of their tale.

So pull up a chair, take your shoes off and relax. For your reading pleasure, The Fool is Back!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Proglen
• Release date: Jun 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9786169082576

Neil Hutchison

Born of poor but humble parents in the former British colony of Australia, Neil was educated at an all-boys Grammar School, which kind of explains his adult infatuation with women. His early career was unremarkable, and it just went downhill from there. It wasn’t until he hit rock bottom, standing alone in the pouring rain on a congested Manila street trying to attract the attention of a suicidal jeepney driver, that fortune smiled and led him to Thailand where he found the most interesting people, the best food and the most beautiful women he had ever seen. What followed was a long, slow and sometimes costly learning experience which, even after a decade, is still a work in progress.

Book preview

Contents

1 - Introduction

2 - A Brief History of Pattaya

3 - Welcome to Thailand

4 - New Kid in Town

5 - Back in the Saddle

6 - Squeezing the Lemon

7 - Wedding Bells in Pattaya

8 - Flipping Out

9 - Knuckle Deep

10 - Invitation Only

11 - Pattaya Bashing

12 - Dressing the Part

13 - Lying Eyes

14 - The Bar in the Girl

15 - Yes Lek, there is a Santa Claus

16 - Boys at Play

17 - Wanted – A Nice Girl

18 - I Don’t Understand

19 - Communication 101

20 - Wandering Star

21 - Miss Goodbar

22 - Daddy’s Girl

23 - The Three-letter Pattaya Dictionary

24 - Kill or Cure

25 - Doorknob

26 - Love Triangle

27 - Bar Sitting

28 - House Hunting

29 - Miss Communication

30 - Low Class Tourist

31 - South of the Border

32 - Save One for Me

Introduction

"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm."

Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Let me take you back about forty years or so. It happened that a small Thai fishing village, due to its proximity to an American air base, became the R&R centre for American troops deployed

in Vietnam. As is the case elsewhere in the world, the sudden influx of men with time on their hands, stirring in their loins and money in their pockets, turned the small village into a Mecca for business people and girls eager to share the visitor’s heavy financial burden. As more facilities sprang up, bars opened, more tourists came and the cycle began. Add to this the fact that the place was only a few hours drive from Bangkok and those wishing to escape the congestion of that large city joined in. The place grew to accommodate the migrant workers and tourists and everyone was happy.

The road system from Bangkok was continually upgraded to shorten the driving time to around two hours and the places of accommodation multiplied to house the influx of people. Because it was not a large city to begin with, the population boom comprised mainly itinerant and migrant workers from all across Thailand who came in search of employment. Much of the tourist’s money was spent in small restaurants, food stalls, local transport operators, small clothing outlets, souvenir shops and bars. The owners of these businesses, in turn, spent their money in similar places but, more importantly, sent money to their friends and relatives back in the poorer areas of Thailand. People throughout Thailand benefited from the financial bounty provided by this thriving tourist centre.

So what is so special about Pattaya that currently attracts over four million visitors per year? Is it the beaches? Is it the scenery? There are better beaches and scenery elsewhere in the country. Is it the hotels? Let’s face it, anywhere in the world, a hotel is a hotel and a room is a room. Is it the tourist attractions or sites of religious or historical significance? All of the attractions in and around Pattaya are duplicated throughout Thailand. Is it the golf courses? A true golf fanatic would not need to stay in the resort town itself to avail himself of the many golf courses in the surrounding areas.

One attraction which distinguishes Pattaya from the rest and makes it special is the entertainment scene. Sure, Bangkok has thriving entertainment areas - Nana, Patpong, Soi Cowboy etc - but these are compact and scattered throughout the city. Combined, they would come nowhere near the size of Pattaya’s bar district. This alone makes Pattaya exciting, different and worth visiting.

But the place also attracts many long-term visitors and retirees who adapt very quickly. If you happen to be a ‘square peg’ at home, it makes no difference here. In a world full of ‘round holes’, this town has a surplus of ‘square holes’ into which you will fit. I didn’t mean that to be funny. Nobody really cares who you are, where you come from or what you did in a past life. You can re-invent yourself as many times as you like or tell the tallest tales you can dream up. It does not matter. No-one will believe you anyway and neither will they care.

The guy decided to move to Pattaya but, being cautious, asked his expat friend, Living in Pattaya, what are the pros and cons?

Expressionless, his friend replied, A somewhat broad but accurate description of the population.

This is the sequel to A Fool in Paradise. Sequels have a reputation of rarely living up to the standard of the original but in the case of The Fool is Back, new and interesting stories keep pouring out of Pattaya so, as long as readers remain interested in the human condition, the enjoyment should not wane. That being the case, as a reader there are some things you should be aware of before continuing. I have a few confessions to make.

I am not a professional writer, something which should become blatantly obvious after reading a few paragraphs. I am a professional underachiever - a label that was applied to me when I was six years old and the only aspiration I have lived up to ever since. Roger Beaumont, who is a professional writer, wrote in his hilarious book What’s Your Name I’m Fine Thank You that, He spends his life finding new ways to avoid success by setting himself low personal standards and then failing to achieve them. I don’t know Roger personally but that statement could be the opening paragraph of my CV.

I write the way I speak – including the spelling mistakes. I don’t use big words because I don’t know any. For the most part, I write about events that have already happened, either to me or to some other poor sod. I have absolutely no imagination - I can’t make this shit up! The good thing is that writing about daily events in Pattaya is better than making it up. Truth here is stranger than fiction – and much harder to find.

Readers of A Fool in Paradise will have noticed that I am opinionated and tend to generalize. Rightly or wrongly, I have an opinion on every subject and will express that opinion any time I’m asked for it. Unlike many people, my opinions are not set in stone so, if they are proven to be unfounded, I will gladly revise them.

Occasionally I may say something in one story that seems to contradict something I wrote elsewhere. Can’t be helped. I’m nothing if not inconsistent. But aren’t we all to some extent? A person may love to eat fish but one day decide he doesn’t want to eat fish. It doesn’t mean he’s changed his mind, merely his mood.

Generalization is another habit I have fallen into because it is convenient and neat. I like to group people into tidy little baskets and tag each one with a generic statement. These people are morons, those are nice, others are this and they are that. Before dismissing this practice outright, you should be aware that I am not the only one doing it. Statisticians do it all the time. 86% of Americans agree that rapists should be publicly castrated, makes a great banner headline until you read the fine print and find that the researchers only interviewed one hundred people. Eighty-six of those agreed and fourteen could not understand the question.

The only way to produce accurate statistics about a group of people is to ask everybody, the entire population. This is clearly not practical, so pollsters assess as large a sample as possible then extrapolate the results to cover the entire population. Basically, they generalize. The point is that you are certain to find exceptions to every statement I make about the bar girls and people of Pattaya because my conclusions are all simplifications based on random samples.

In case you hadn’t already guessed, I’m also an amateur psychologist. I enjoy trying to work out why people do the things they do and form opinions based on my observations. Often I am way off track and draw the wrong conclusion, in which case, I will freely admit to it.

Having thus qualified my position, welcome to Pattaya, the city that can be either heaven or hell and can fluctuate between both by the minute. Welcome to the city that makes a few, breaks many but has a lasting effect on everyone who experiences it. It is still the only place on the planet I call home and so, for the foreseeable future, I will remain a fool in paradise…

A Brief History of Pattaya

This is my first attempt at serious writing so please bear with me. It began because I discovered that Pattaya is full of history and I am full of it. Most people don’t realize the significant role Pattaya has played in the development of our modern world and many pivotal events that changed history began right here.

It was in 1066 when Pat, a young lad from the lost Mongolian tribe of Yah, sailed his flimsy craft into Pattaya Bay to avoid a cyclone off the Bermuda coast. Like the rest of his clan, as a navigator he made a good yak salesman. He beached his vessel, walked across the virgin golden sand, stood atop a grassy knoll and proclaimed, What a great place for a bar! Thus Pattaya was born. Unfortunately for the founding father, he had been in such a hurry to get ashore that he neglected to anchor his boat and it was washed out to sea. He lived out the rest of his life as a lonely castaway but before his death, managed to carve his name into a coconut tree. The words: "Pat Yah."

Two centuries passed before humans once again set foot in Pattaya. Unlike the seafaring Mongols, the next lot arrived overland and were the ancestors of the present inhabitants. They left southern China because of a disagreement with Kublai Khan and when the advance party arrived, one keen observer found the coconut tree with the inscription carved by the young Pat. Putting two and two together, he realized this must be the name of the beautiful place they had stumbled upon and with minor spelling alterations, the names lives on today.

While Chris Columbus was busy fooling around in the Atlantic, a significant but little known event occurred on the other side of the world. The Great Pattaya Famine of 1492 struck without warning and decimated the local population. As with all great famines, this was closely followed by the Great Locust Plague of 1493 when the swarming insects devoured what little food remained in the village. The Head Man issued a decree to his people: Eat the grasshoppers! Those three little words (actually two little words and one big word) were to change the face of Pattaya and eventually the whole country. As one local chef was later to report, The most difficult part was getting them to stay in the wok.

While Indian clerics roamed the rest of what is now Burma and Thailand, going door-to-door offering a free copy of the Karma Sutra with every stone monument built, the European invasion of Pattaya began in September 1666. With the rat plague of London over and the Great Fire at its peak, many Brits decided enough was enough and left in search of a place not rat-infested or burning. The ever suspicious Germans followed, if only to keep an eye on what the sneaky Pommies were up to.

The first shipload of English adventurers was sailing up the Gulf of Thailand on its way to Bangkok when the captain overheard one of the passengers, who was looking out towards the land mass, reiterate the sentiments first expressed some six hundred years earlier: What a great place for a bar! The captain quickly hung a right and anchored off what is now Ko Larn Island. The German ship in pursuit anchored off Naklua.

The friendly locals welcomed the visitors with smiles and palm leaves laden with fried grasshoppers which they sold to the insect- deprived foreigners at ten times the local price. Records are a bit hazy about what happened during those first few months of the foreign cohabitation but one thing is for certain. A discovery of monumental proportions took place while the English were building the first bar near the beach. Bored while waiting for the local work crew to turn up, they began kicking a coconut around on the sand. Eventually, one sailor hung a fishing net over a fallen tree and they took turns at kicking the coconut into the net. The Germans looking on decided to get in on the act and challenged the English crew.

Sure enough, a fight broke out so the Germans cut down a tree some hundred metres down the beach, built a more stable structure and slung their own fishing net over it. Unfortunately, the tree they used was the nesting place of the last recorded breeding pair of the Siam Red Speckled Owl. For any ornithologists interested, the German sailors reported they tasted like chicken.

After lunch, the respective ship’s Captains got together and devised a set of rules. As a result, the first international soccer match was played out on the beach at the northern end of Pattaya Bay. The game lasted three hours and resulted in four deaths and a nil-all draw. The rest, as they say, is history.

Contrary to popular theory, it was in December 1941 in Pattaya that General Douglas McArthur stumbled onto a stage, grabbed the karaoke microphone and, leaning against a chrome pole, uttered his famous words, I shall return. As it happened, he didn’t, but left several large bar bills in his wake. Apparently Doug was good at running up large bar tabs around Asia and promising to return and pay them. The only time he did actually keep his promise was years later in the Philippines but only after he made sure that American bombers had reduced to rubble every bar in Manila where he owed money. In fact, Pattaya was lucky because in 1942 he ordered American Super Fortresses to blow the living hell out of a couple of bars in Bangkok for the same reason.

In the early 60’s young Somchai, who had always been a disappointment to his parents, went off to pan for gold. His father desperately wanted him to get a ‘real’ job but the lad was determined to strike it rich without having to actually work for a living. In two years, he had collected not even a speck of the precious metal and it looked like he would finally have to bow to his father’s wishes. Then he noticed something shiny in his pan. It was not gold, but did look expensive. He collected flakes of the black crystals and eventually found a large seam of it nearby. Enough, he concluded, to make him very rich if it was indeed precious. His father thought it may be tin or zinc, both of which were found in the country, but an assay proved it to be neither. It was chromite, the ore mineral of chromium. Dejected, his parents told Somchai to give up his prospecting. What possible good is chromium? his mother lamented.

But Somchai persisted and expanded his chromite mine, stockpiling large quantities of the ore. His parents lost heart and explained his behaviour to their neighbours saying that he was dropped on his head as a baby. What are you going to do with all this chrome? the neighbours would ask. Then, in the 1980’s, Somchai’s faith was rewarded when a local use for his chrome was discovered. Demand was high and his stockpile endless. His parents were forced to retract their ‘baby-dropping’ yarn when Somchai became the first Thai multi- millionaire on the Eastern seaboard.

As recently as 1970, an American residing in Pattaya began hearing voices. Not uncommon, I hear you say, but in this case it was the same voice over and over again. He even gave up drinking for six weeks in case alcohol was the problem but still the voice persisted.

"If you build it, they will come."

And build it he did – the first McDonalds restaurant in South East Asia. And come they did. Reminiscent of the Great Locust Plague of 1493, once word got out thousands of Americans flooded into Pattaya to have their photograph taken in various suggestive poses with the statue of a geek dressed in a clown suit.

And if you believe all that, I have a unique business opportunity for you. Contact me via e-mail and bring cash only. While I await your arrival, may I wish a Happy New Year to all my avid readers. Both of you are invited for cocktails at my place at 6:00pm. The som dtum and cheese whiz platter is already out and the lao kao is on ice so don’t be late.

Welcome to Thailand

The sign above your head as you step off the plane at Bangkok’s Don Muang Airport says it all: Your First Impression Starts Here. Great little catchphrase but thankfully for Thailand some

of us stay long enough to overcome our ‘first impression’of the country.

I arrived from Manila for a seven-day trip to meet a business associate from Germany. It was my first trip to Thailand and although I was a seasoned traveller, it was exciting if not a little daunting. Two days earlier, on the recommendation of my brother, I called the Nana Hotel and booked two nights. I even called again just before leaving the house in Manila and reconfirmed the booking. My brother had lived in Bangkok for some years and told me the Nana was clean, comfortable, well known and easy to find. He also hinted that there was some exciting, local culture very close by I may be interested in but he did not elaborate.

The plane arrived at 7:00pm and I found my way through the Immigration counters, descended the escalator and, having only carry- on luggage with me, passed through customs and was outside by 7:20pm. This is where mild panic took control. I had just come from Manila airport where, once you leave the terminal building, you cannot go back inside. This is designed to keep the riff-raff out. Manila airport also has taxi booths inside where you can pre-pay a taxi at a reasonable rate to save you dealing with the thousands of touts outside who will invariably rip you off. I wanted to see if this airport was the same but all I saw was a sea of faces standing the other side of the rails. Some were holding up signs for arriving passengers. One of the signs was intriguing. It simply read Kind Regards.

I stopped to ponder my next move. Standing beside me was another guy seemingly doing the same thing. He was carrying a Downtown Duty Free bag, which immediately identified him as Australian, so I said G’day. He responded likewise and we started a conversation. He was off a plane from Sydney that arrived at the same time as mine and it was also his first trip to Thailand. He was looking into the mass of ‘greeters’ for a sign bearing his name. He said he had booked a room in the city and the hotel was sending a car to pick him up. That was when I realized I had made a mistake by not telling the Nana Hotel to do the same for me. Next time.

Gradually the stream of people walking out from customs turned to a trickle and the people holding up signs were all gone except one – the guy wishing us ‘Kind Regards’. My Aussie mate was becoming tired of waiting and told me he was going to find a phone to call the hotel and complain. I wished him luck as he walked off. Then I heard a voice behind me.

From one of the hotel and tour booking booths, a lovely Thai lady asked me where I was staying. Knowing she was only touting and not wanting to appear stupid, I replied that I had already booked a hotel, thank you. She asked me which one. I replied the Nana. She then said she would call the Nana to see if there was a problem. I replied that it was not necessary as I would catch a taxi there soon. She answered No problem and asked me for my name. Foolishly, I told her.

Just then my Aussie friend returned to tell me that the hotel manager said they had sent a guy to pick him up. The manager said the guy was definitely there and was holding a sign with his name on it. We both surveyed the scene but could not see anybody holding up a sign with a name on it. My mate was getting angry. Lying bastard, he swore. I’m going to call him back!

The lady in the booth called me over. Nana Hotel not have booking for you and hotel full tonight, she said. That’s impossible. I reconfirmed four hours ago.

Ok, I check again but man tell me hotel full. No have room. She dialed again.

After some concerned telephone conversation, she handed me the receiver saying I could check. Since I could not speak a word of Thai, I declined. What to do now? No hotel, strange place, tired, pissed off. The lady then came to my rescue.

"We can take you to good hotel. Not far from Nana. Only 1,500 baht for one night. Have taxi now."

I had no idea if 1,500 baht was expensive or not but was in no mood to argue. I went to a nearby ATM, withdrew some local currency and returned to pay her the money. After she handed me the receipt, a man approached, took