The Sex Tourist

By Eddie Low

Essentially comic, essentially written as an entertainment, this is an account of six months living in off-season Pattaya.

New affairs: ‘her big secret was her clam. Her major organs were presumably pickled in alcohol and marinated in nicotine and tar, yet her slot was a little oyster fresh from the sea, succulent and clean. I don’t think I’d come across a nicer one. It was heroically clean in such an adulterated body and deserved a revisit.’

An old love: ‘Loo (that’s her name) was standing outside a bar on soi 6. She was an ethereal little figure, light-skinned, tiny and long-legged, balancing on high heels, smoking a menthol cigarette and taking an intelligent survey of the soi. She was a Lalique ballerina in high heels. She was wearing extravagant eyelashes, white shorts and a chemise of some sort. She was a delicate egg seeking a soft palm to be cupped in and held safe. She was a resolute, clever, honest soul. She was a wisp of nothing, a dust devil.’

Local encounters: ‘An electric guitar man came up the lane. He was working through all the sois and lanes. He had an amplifier strapped to his back and sounded great. He was freestyling molam music, playing fast-fingered. Molam is played on country stages throughout Thailand. There’s a rock band where someone plays a mouth organ resembling a miniature Barcelona cathedral, there are gutsy, bawdy singers with clear diction and there are dancers. The singers are singing about love, sex, buffaloes and crazy friends, I suppose. Most foreigners aren’t into molam unless their Thai friends get them hooked. I liked it. It wasn’t sickening pap. It had guts.’

And the Cambodian gypsy: ‘I took a five-hundred baht note out of my pocket and walked back to her. She was sitting on the kerb. The top buttons of her thick woodcutters shirt were open and a baby boy was suckling inside. She looked up at me, disengaged her child and as she did so I couldn’t help noticing a squirt of milk pumping from her nipple. She stood up, buttoned her shirt with one hand and held the child to her hip with the other. She didn’t want to take my money, she wanted to go with me.’

‘Both very funny and poignantly sad.’ Jonny Questor, Pattaya-Addicts.com member

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eddie Low
• Release date: Feb 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463980200

Book preview

Chapter One

Mike from Beach Properties was taking me to see a two-bedroom apartment on a six-month lease. The building was called Ruamchock (a short name by Thai standards). He was driving me in his company Toyota Corolla and we’d just rendezvoused at his office in Jomtien. Mike is always smartly turned out – ironed shirt, polished shoes, neat hair – just like a young man working in Swindon High Street. I am in flip flops and a T-shirt. I’m fifty, still have my hair but it’s turned salt and pepper. Mike has been showing me places all week and I’ve grown jealous of him. While most of us shell out money to live in Pattaya he is earning a salary and living here. On the other hand I am not sure his heart is fully in it. He still has a foot in the UK it seems to me. He’s not made the switch, undergone the cell-change which follows a prolonged affair with a Thai. He’s not gone native. At least half the time he is hankering after milk-white English girls with big tits and bums rather than the local brown cookies and sweet peas. It doesn’t help that his boss is also English and they drink in a British pub round the corner from their office, a place not unlike a working-class estate pub. It serves roast beef and premiership football. Here, if they ignore the bargirls at the pool table trying to catch their attention, they could be in the UK.

So I met Mike at the office and to start with he couldn’t find the keys. One of the office girls had to find them. There are a few of these office girls keeping the place running, all in heels and trim dresses; one has a dab of Indian blood, another a dab of Middle-Eastern. I sense they resent this Brit who arrives last in the morning, forgets his diary appointments, can never find the right keys and goes out to the pub with the boss. While exhibiting the indulgence of elder sisters to a younger brother, I imagine they plot his downfall, and the downfall of all foreigners generally.

We drove up Thappraya Road in this ordinary city car which felt like a kind of imposter on the streets of Pattaya, which are, after all, the grounds for an Asian Las Vegas of Sex which would seem to require more exhibitionism on the part of the visitor. Our prim little Toyota ambled past the colossal Grande Caribbean Condo Resort construction and turned into Pratamnak. Mike had lived in the Ruamchock building once himself, the year before, he told me, and he loved the place. ‘The girls in the office are fantastically efficient too,’ he said, grinning as he drove, ‘just wait.’ I’d lived in the Pratamnak peninsular once before and was quite willing to live there again.

In a quiet, sun-drunk lane about a block from the sea we drove in a gate. There was an old Thai in a security guard uniform waving us through. We drove under the building to park. The building was six-storeys high, an offset oblong in shape. There were a few dual-cabs parked up, some jeeps and two lines of motorbikes and mopeds. A few young Thais were doing some work on a garden wall. Out in the sun was a swimming pool, white sun-loungers and tropical gardening enclosed by a perimeter wall with high leafy jungle behind it.

We went in the office in the carpark. There were two Thai girls hard at work behind desks and we stood waiting. I began to feel we were presenting ourselves before a desk sergeant at a police station for minor offences against decency, or something. The senior of the two was Yoni. She was stunning. She wore a print dress and her hair had the lustre and lift of a dye-box picture. Tick, her assistant, wasn’t bad either. Yoni finally looked up, swivelled the office book around for Mike to sign, releasing him the lobby keys.

We went into the lobby and took the elevator. Mike looked jittery. I realised when he lived here he had wanted to fuck Yoni badly. Even now his dick was probably at half-mast. ‘Did you ever fuck her?’ I asked.

‘Nope, I was too busted.’

I could guess why. Yoni had a mental tally of all the go-go girls Mike slept with because the procedure was the same in all condos. Any go-go girl a foreigner brought in at night had to surrender her ID card to the security guard. When the security guard knocked off at dawn he would drop such ID cards in the office. Arriving for work at nine, Yoni and Tick would take down the ID card details in their book to comply with police regulations for overnight stayers, along with a note of the room number. So Mike was busted every time. The last ceremony was when the go-go girls showed up in the office for their cards, tottering in on high-heels then walking out to get a motorbike jockey in the lane.

‘Was it so many girls?’ I asked.

‘No, but even so. The thing is, I never knew, could a girl like Yoni be fucked?’

‘You mean, are girls like her too middle-class, too respectable? I don’t know. That’s a thorny question.’

‘Maybe you can try to fuck her.’

‘I think I’ll have the same problem as you.’

We reached the fourth floor, got out the lift and walked along a wide, open-ended corridor (these old apartment buildings are roomy). Mike worked his keys in a door and we went in.

The living room was full of light from sea-facing windows and there were french doors to a balcony. Mike slid open the doors and we went out to some white plastic sun loungers around a table and a view of the sea. There were the AC boxes out here too, mounted on the ceiling. The lane down below was a nice little neighbourhood a block from the sea where now, at high noon, nothing stirred in the intense light. There were smart white apartment buildings of various designs. Between them the sea winked blue and the sky was a great luminous canvas of blue. Interrupting this intense Mediterranean-like tableau a cockerel crowed with a great screech.

‘Odd time for a cock-a-doodle-do,’ I said.

‘There’s a patch of empty woodland with a squatter camp round the corner,’ said Mike. ‘I used to figure everyone was on acid there, including the cockerels.’

We went in, Mike doing his estate agent thing and showing the two double bedrooms. (Why do Thais have double-beds the size of train platforms? Well, perhaps it’s a matter of priorities and Thais know theirs.) We sat down at two fabric sofas in the living room. Colonial-style fans revolved pleasantly overhead. Mike began to reminisce about his three months here, in an almost identical apartment on the sixth floor. After a weary day of estate-agenting he’d come in, take a beer out to the balcony and watch the sunset. He missed that. It was hard to beat.

Was there a Thai go-go girl perched on his lap as he watched this sunset? I didn’t ask. Maybe he sat there dreaming of Yoni, fingering the internal telephone, debating whether he should call her up and invite her for a drink.

‘I’ll go for it,’ I said. ‘It’s more than I wanted to pay but sign me up anyway.’

This was the last conversation with another Englishman I was to have for six months.

Chapter Two

I have no wife or children. My career in banking finished after I was made redundant for the second time, which I took as a heavy hint that the derivatives business in which I was working had terminally lost its bloom after the financial crisis. The final six years of it were in Hong Kong. Then I called myself a writer but my first novel bombed, a literary agent in Hong Kong calling it over earnest and first novel-esque. Now I went about saying I was in transition, in a slow period of life adjustment between finishing one career in banking and feeling out another. I had some money, ‘fuck you’ money I think Kurt Vonnegut calls it somewhere in one of his novels. I didn’t have to please anybody and could say fuck you to anyone who tried to tell me what to do. Maybe my situation was really a formula for easing into retirement, and also one for late poverty, eventual reclusion, suicide in twenty years’ time – except I was too cheerful a guy for that.

I have always done all right in Pattaya. It’s a tough town but on balance I do ok. I like the place and come often. Things never worked out for me in the UK with British girls. My first girlfriend was Thai many years ago and that rewired me.

After signing a contract with Mike I showed my face at the reception desk of the hotel I was staying at to let them know I’d be checking out in a week. A young Russian guy managed the hotel. ‘How’s the rouble today?’ I asked. Sanctions were pressing on Russia because of its recent annexation of Crimea and the rouble had lost value badly.

‘No one wants it,’ he said.

‘Without Russians the whole Pattaya economy will go to pot.’

I told him I would be off in a week.

‘Going home to England?’

‘No, moving to an apartment.’

‘Well, come and stay again.’

I think he was joking. The hotel is hidden away in a cheaply made building in an empty lane further down Jomtien than most people ever go. The hotel has the air of being half-closed and on the verge of insolvency. All day the lobby is deserted. I’d booked from Hong Kong because this was the cheapest hotel listed and because the name was amusing: Shakespeare Inn.

Now I had a week to kill in Shakespeare Inn.

Breakfast was inclusive and served on a patio on the lane (at a pinch Shakespearean in having a wooden balustrade and plank flooring). We were in shade here at nine am while the middle of the lane was already roiling in sunshine. I was by now the second-longest stayer and the longest stayer was a corpulent old man who shared the same table every morning with a talkative Thai lady of much his vintage. I speculated that he was the original proprietor of Shakespeare Inn and had allowed the Russians to buy him out on condition he retained a room – and breakfast – for life. A young Thai brought us plates of egg, bacon, cold baked beans and frankfurter sausages and every morning this long-stayer ate the entirety of his breakfast then the entirety of hers. Tea and coffee could be fetched inside from a buffet table which existed in semi-darkness in the wood-panelled lounge. In the middle of this lounge the cook’s motorbike was not so much parked as on display. That was retirement, I supposed. As a travelling businessman one could expect first-class flights and five-star hotels. Now, it was the cook’s probably stolen motorbike between oneself (the shuffling retiree) and one’s morning cup of coffee. Still, I liked Shakespeare Inn somehow.

I was getting around on an old Honda Wave with magenta paintwork, handlebars worn smooth, which I’d hired from a woman down the lane. I went over to negotiate a monthly rate. I liked this lady. She was strongly made, in no way good looking, with a mannish moon-cratered face slick with face cream. She maintained the mopeds well, priced reasonably and didn’t ask for a deposit. Every day she sat at her desk. The mopeds were parked down a ramp at her feet while behind her the derelict building shell waited for the next economic boom. I went up the ramp and sat down with her. We talked and there was no difficulty about agreeing a monthly price. I handed over some money, she wrote out a receipt.

Her husband was around and we shook hands. He was a fresh, working-class man from Leeds, deeply tanned, retired. We chatted for a moment. He owned a boat with some other people, went yachting every day and they took part in race series.

I shook hands and left. The husband could have done better in the looks department, I reflected, as I walked along the shady side of the lane, but he seemed to have a setup that worked for him: a stable wife who paid her way. Why not? No doubt if he wished to play away he could, in foreign ports as well as here in Pattaya.

I passed a massage shop where the women out front were eating and paying no attention to passers-by. Passers-by meant mainly Russian families on their way to the beach from the various small hotels, parents strong and fat, children slim, gangly and beautiful, eager for the beach.

I took lunch at a corner restaurant which got the light and breeze of the seaside. It was part of a Russian guesthouse. Most of the seating was outside under permanent awnings. The guests were Russians and the menu had a Russian front page. I watched a slim Thai waitress work the tables. She was my type: a flyweight bed-jockey with long legs and a flat bum. I thought about talking to her. Maybe she was all I needed. I didn’t need to go further than this crumbling corner of Jomtien Beach. I could marry this girl and ask to yacht with the Leeds man. Maybe I could buy a stake in the guesthouse and partner the Russians. After all, I was unencumbered, free to go in any direction. She waited my table, took my order, served my food but otherwise I couldn’t get a look out of her. She just ploughed along working. Maybe she had someone already. Maybe the boss watching behind the bar was a tough egg. Maybe she thought I was twenty years too old for her. Maybe she hated foreigners, every one of them, and would sooner come to the aid of a dog hit in the road than a foreigner.

I thought about her for a couple of hours in my room. The chambermaid had made the room up. I took a siesta in fresh sheets.

Then I sat at the window. There was a pretty bougainvillea whose nodding flowers touched the window. The view beyond was a block of undeveloped land that coaches used for parking. An unpleasant little ceremony always took place, as, without fail every single disembarking Thai day-tripper threw his or her rubbish in the verge. The verges were knee deep. It was an ugly spectacle.

I did my best to trawl porn with a sporadic wi-fi signal.

At dusk I took a stroll. The sun was slipping under the sea. The deck-chair businesses were packing up. Traffic was slipping past on the beach road. Cooking carts lined up on the kerb. I felt anonymous among the Russians and Thais and I liked the feeling. I had six months of Pattaya ahead.

Chapter Three

I moved in. I went down to the office. The assistant, Tick, was there.

‘What are you doing in Thailand?’ she asked.

‘I’m writing a book. Have you worked here long?’

‘Two years. Yoni and me are working part time on an MBA programme.’

‘There’s a college around here?’

‘Yes, at . . .’ Tick said an unintelligible name.

Yoni came in and sat down behind her desk. She was wearing a skirt suit and a blouse and the hem trembled over her brassiere like a harp string. ‘You want wi-fi?’ she said.

‘Yes, please.’

‘You want Sophon Cable TV, one hundred channel?’

‘Yes, let’s have it.’

‘You want cleaner? Weekly or fortnight?’

‘Fortnight.’

‘OK, we set up for you.’

‘Thanks.’

Yoni picked up the phone, dropped her head, a raven wave of hair collected on her shoulder, she put her ear to the receiver. Already she was at work.

‘What book you write?’ asked Tick.

‘Adventure story.’

I left the office, went in the lobby, pressed the lift button. The lift arrived. One of the odd-job boys appeared and got in the lift with me. He smiled. He was lean, raffishly handsome, missing some teeth. He followed me along the corridor. I unlocked my door. He began to poke at a fuse box in the wall. I stopped and watched him.

‘Modem you room,’ he said.

‘I heard you were efficient here.’

He smiled uncomprehendingly.

I went in my new apartment, shut the door, propelled my flip-flops under the chair. The floor of the hallway was long and white, cool underfoot. The floor of the living room was big and white, furnished with the dining table one end and with the sofas the other. I took a beer out of the fridge, slid open the doors of the balcony and went out. The sun was winking on the sea like it had before between the fine apartment buildings. I drank the beer.

What were the steps to get Yoni? Taking both girls out to lunch; living a clean life here, doing something useful, volunteering at a charity or something; being friendly and helpful. Being romantic and