Pattaya

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Of course, there is always that part of me that is fatally attracted to ’seediness’ and all of the consequences that it brings; dimly lit basement bars where business types conduct their clandestine affairs beneath a thin cloud of cigarette smoke, narrow doorways guarded by shifty looking men, and hookers parading up and down the streets in skirts that barely cover their ample arses. Hotels that operate above brothels where rooms are already inhabited by thin lizards and cockroaches and the hum that permeates the air; a blend of the speakers of a distant, or not so distant, sound system, the turning engines of kerb-crawlers and a conversational monotone that includes everything from drunken boastings to the patois mantras of hawkers and street peddlers. Pattaya has long since surpassed this stage. To be seedy, something must be vague, or hinted-at. In the same way that the female form becomes more erotic and desirable when veiled in some flimsy lingerie, the seediness of a city becomes more esoteric and attractive when it’s depravities are only suggested; where you must, perhaps, make a bit of an effort to discover them. In Pattaya, the seediness finds you and it is altogether more obvious and cheap for my tastes. In fact, it is a vile and despicable place where katoeys roam the esplanade and dealers of all dealings lurk in doorways to accost you as you walk past them. Everything is obtainable and convenient. Even worse, the proto-human, shaven-headed British ‘lout’ has, it seems, discovered Pattaya. He is quite easy to spot; he will be wearing jeans or some football shorts and will be bare chested because his football t-shirt will be tucked in the back of his belt. He will strut around, this simian abortion, dragging his knuckles on the ground and bumping into people on purpose in order to assert his masculinity and territorial rights. Later, when so pissed he can barely stand, he will revert to his beastial id and urinate outside his door.

Yes, it is a shithole, Pattaya. No doubt. If I had my way, I would have gone straight through it last night and not stopped until I reached Ban Phe (which is the point at which one must catch the boat to Koh Samet), but by the time I got through customs at Bangkok, it was well past 7pm and the last boat would have departed to the island by then. So, I broke up the journey by spending a night in dirty stinking Pattaya where fat bastards from Germany parade their barely pubescant ‘girlfriends’ around like cheap saurkraut. It is a goddam joke, and by the time you see it for the millionth time, it leaves you feeling slightly jaded and pessimistic for the entirity of the human race, not just the Ayran one. It fucking stinks, Pattaya, I’m telling you. I checked into a shitty hotel on a shitty road, next door to one of the shittiest restaurants (menu all in German) in all of shitty Pattaya, drank some beer in a bar, ate sme food, faught off about a hundred different whores (man, woman, child, and those inbetween) and went to bed with a headache that continued throughout the night and was still over my eyebrows this morning, as I awoke to the tranquil and serene sounds of a JCB on the piece of wasteland (that I had’nt noticed the night before in the darkness) adjacent to the hotel, moving large pieces of metal about for no apparent reason. I checked-out at 8am (something I don’t believe I have ever done before in my life) and took the first transport out of the city I could find.

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