More Money than Sense

After living in Pattaya for perhaps longer than is truly healthy I have come to the startling conclusion that a number of the foreign males who stumble into this place as tourists possess the IQ of a wilted cactus.

            One of my reasons for coming to this earth-shattering judgement of my fellow man are the incredible number of stories regarding robberies of said male tourists along Beach Road very late at night and in the early hours of the morning, basically between about 1:00am and a few minutes before sparrow fart, as reported by the local fish-and-chips wrappers.

            It’s not so much that a lot of these characters (who, I might add, seem to come from all parts of the globe) are being mugged, but it’s the locations, circumstances and, more importantly, amounts of cash and valuables being heisted that make me come to the conclusion there are a lot of very stupid people allowed to freely roam the byways of Pattaya without medical supervision.

            Let me illustrate what I mean with a couple of examples. A person from the United States was reported to have been sauntering along Beach Road at around 5:30am- that’s either very early in the morning or extremely late at night depending on your view of the world- when he said he was approached by one female and two persons who purported to be female but were, to all intents, purposes, and anatomical construction, male.

            The man was offered oral stimulation of the night tools and decided to accept. The four then repaired to the cool sands of the beach whereupon certain acts not normally performed by strangers upon each other in public, and sometimes even in private, commenced. Unfortunately, the man found his companions seemed more interested in groping and mauling his pockets rather than his tumescent member. Realising he was being robbed rather than rubbed, he ceased all physical activity and as his three companions also concluded he’d tumbled to their game, they tried to flee the scene. The man managed to prevent one of the ladyboys from escaping and carted the light-fingered filcher down to the Soi 9 nick.

            According to the press report, the thieves had made off with the man’s passport, ATM card and 10,000 baht in cash. Now I ask you, who the hell goes wandering around Beach Road an hour or so before vampire dust with enough wedge to keep the average bargirl in clover for a week or so?

Then comes a story about an Englishman taking shelter from the rain in the car-park of a condominium complex in Soi 13, off Beach Road, at 6:00am. He noticed two ladyboys also sheltering. This pair came over and whispered in his ear an offer of intimate companionship back at his hotel room. He declined the offer and decided the rain was a better option than hanging around, but he hadn’t gone far when he realised he was lighter in the pocket to the tune of 50,000 baht. No wonder the pair targeted him, the bulge in his strides must have shone like a lighthouse beacon in a Force Nine gale.

            Alright, I’ll come clean. Really, I’m simply jealous and eaten up with envy over the sums of money these people can seem to afford to lose. As an impecunious freelance journalist (editors please note) I can rarely afford to leave the confines of the rat-infested stormwater drain that serves as my humble abode with more than the price of a bottle of lao khao and a bowl of noodles in my pocket. Consequently, I can wander aimlessly down Beach Road at any time of the day or night without ever raising more than an inquisitive eyebrow, and even this is usually from a stray dog or a passing refuse collector.