Dear Pattaya Mail,

I want to say thank you for inviting me to the wonderful celebrations of your 7th Anniversary. It was a magnificent evening and it was good to meet so many friends in such a convivial and joyful atmosphere.

May each subsequent anniversary represent but half the life expectancy of the Pattaya Mail!

Good luck in the future and, whatever other changes you may make as you continue to develop the newspaper, please keep to your high standards of honestly examining the issues without fear or favour, naming names and challenging for answers. The economic and political bullies of Pattaya society, like all bullies, rely on silence and fear for their survival. The more you can publish details and cast light into the darkened corners, the faster will Pattaya be cleaned up. Your impact has been profound thus far.

With all best wishes,

Head of Recruitment
Dulwich International College, Bangkok Office

Editor,

In reference to the recent letter to your publication from John P., I would like to remind Mr. P that there is a group of foreign and Thai volunteers here in Pattaya called PAWS (Pattaya Animal Welfare Society). These good people worked in conjunction with local Thai veterinarians and their assistants to stage a very successful Vaccination Clinic at Mike’s Department Store car park in August. On that day, Thai vets and the PAWS volunteers processed over a hundred dogs, cats, and other animals, including spaying bitches and annual rabies vaccinations for each animal.

I wasn’t shocked at the letter’s solution. And much of what Mr. P. wrote is true enough. Stray animal population control was neglected by city authorities as Pattaya grew into a large metropolitan center. It is now a monumental problem. However, the authorities must appropriate a budget and acquire the manpower and training to create a plan and execute it. That could be a long time coming.

Since the city officials do not take a hard line on stray animals, and a licensing policy has never been introduced, people who are interested in helping with this problem as individuals can contact PAWS and offer their services and ideas.

Meanwhile, it would be good to remember that ancient saying: Even the longest journey begins with a single step.

Dear Sir,

The Grapevine “Tailpiece” on 25th August suggested that once you had activated your non-immigrant visa, you didn’t need to wait 90 days before applying for its extension.

However, if you make premature application, you will likely be politely requested to come back a day or two before your 90 days expire.

This practice applies to all extensions and is why a date for your return is stamped in the passport. It’s simply standard procedure designed to smoothly process your application.

Should the designated date be inconvenient - e.g. you have planned to be abroad (don’t forget your re-entry permit), you will find the immigration officers helpful, but be prepared for a bureaucratic run-around to get the necessary authority.

This is from my personal experience and that of farang friends, the most recent example having occurred two weeks ago. It seems you get the extension in two parts, the first one being sufficient time to check your documents, and the second making up the balance of twelve months from the date the non-immigrant visa was activated (should your documentation be satisfactory).

I am aware that not all immigration offices follow the same procedure.

Best Wishes,

Sirs,

It was in 1967 that as a seventeen-year-old I went on my first package tour holiday to Majorca. Two months after the holiday was over I was back in Majorca again and where I remained based for three years. Pretty much the same story as those 90% of ‘successful’ persons referred to in the article on Mr Malhotra’s address to the Lions Club. Why did I and others who did the same choose to return to Majorca and stay? I reckon researching the question in the way Mr Malhotra did for his address would have produced more or less the same results. Whether or not they in fact provide for an accurate picture is, I suspect, another matter.

The first item engaged in the extract from Khun Peter’s address was that of there being no uniformity to farangs. This is very true of course but not only due to ‘Farang’ not being a country. Most ‘western’ countries have very wide cultural diversities even within their own borders. Whether or not this is a good thing is another and far more complex question. As regards this initial item, though, it might have been opportune to let it be known to a predominately Thai audience that in the ‘west’, any slang word that is merely a racially differentiating adjective is usually regarded as racial abuse, whether it is intended as such or not. Many ‘farangs’ think along the lines that although there might be distinguishable differences in appearance, we all in fact belong to the same biological species and are merely travelling similar paths through this life.

Many farangs would argue with another item addressed, that there is relative ‘freedom’ here as compared to their country of origin as was suggested. In some ways perhaps, but make that point to anyone who has been unfortunate enough to be involved in a road accident, whether or not it was their fault! Make it to anyone who has fallen ill! Try making it to any of the unfortunates who’ve lost their life savings as a consequence of restrictions that don’t seem to apply across the board. Corruption here was more than adequately addressed by Mr Malhotra. Many farangs also believe that the authorities in their countries of origin should give a lot less freedom to abusers of lax laws.

‘There is more to do here than probably anywhere else in the world’ was yet another item. A welcome ‘plug’ but I think not accurate! Those pastimes that were mentioned in the extract, though a boon, may all be enjoyed in many places and to just as high a standard. This also applies to climate, relative currency value, beaches and cultural heritage. Notwithstanding that there are many Thais wanting to go to say England, major resorts in Spain and Greece for instance have all these things to offer and are the obvious example candidates.

‘Test of Self’ was an item mentioned. Wherever I have spent any length of time I have noticed a marked similarity in the relative ex-pat and ‘regular visitor’ community. There is a tendency amongst them to conjure up some sort of ‘mystique’ about the indigenous population. This of course provides for a degree of self-satisfaction in marking us ex-pats as being exceptional in some way by being able to live amongst locals with ‘strange’ habits. The truth is that there is no real ‘test of self’ for anyone being able to speak a degree of English and as most Thais and farangs in Pattaya seem able to do. I rather think the ‘test’ applies the other way around and for the locals who need to learn a foreign language if they are to benefit from our input to the economy.

The aforementioned items were proffered as reasons why farangs might be attracted to Pattaya. Whilst I understand why they were probably items raised by the relative interviewees I find it difficult to believe they provide the true answer to the reasons why those people either come here often or indeed have settled here. May I suggest that the common link that might apply is ‘comfort’? The persons concerned arrived here at a particular point in their lives and when personal circumstances provided for ‘comfort’ being provided and just as it did for those who have first gone to and then returned to anywhere else. Certainly the aforementioned benefits might contribute to such comfort but perhaps only to a peripheral extent. The over-riding factor that provides for comfort is, I suggest, ‘company’. Doesn’t therein lie Pattaya’s greatest asset and advantage? Can there be anywhere else in the world that it is more difficult to feel lonely and particularly for the types who are attracted here?

There is absolutely no offence intended when I suggest that the farang ‘Club Pattaya’ crowd are never going to be described as ‘the beautiful people’... The working girls of Pattaya might be forgiven for thinking that all farangs are born at age forty, overweight by genetics and most commonly of all, come from countries that don’t birth females... I suggest that for one reason or another, the regular visitors to Pattaya that predominate are ‘uncomfortable’ with the women of their respective home countries. This principle also applies to the gay community here of course and as was rightly pointed out. The truest words spoken during Mr Malhotra’s address, and words which should be well noted at City Hall, is that take away the bar-girls and watch the place become a ghost town.

As a point of interest on the ‘image’ aspect, I was talking to a couple of farang females who had ventured into one of the go-gos in Pattayaland Soi 2. They later joined me for a drink in my ‘local’. They were both polite, middle-class, well-spoken and all-round ‘nice’ girls. Were they offended by the beer-bar scene, etc? No, but they were offended by staff at the up-market central hotel they were staying at telling them in front of other guests that the girls could not sunbathe ‘topless’. The other guests concerned were farang families with children and who also thought the rule absolutely ridiculous. As a further point to be noted by some haughty officials, in Greece it is very much frowned upon for the local girls to so disrobe on the beach. Those same girls will, though, with their families happily sun themselves next to both men and women who are sunbathing not just topless but nude. Indeed, on some islands in that very strictly religious country it is often difficult to find a beach that does not have some nude sun-worshippers, even though it is, strictly speaking, illegal.

My assertion that Pattaya provides a shining example to the countries whose very societal restrictions and attitudes provide for seedy crime and thuggery to prevail is not some over-enthusiastic statement made whilst in an exuberant mood. It is a considered and very firm belief.

It was in 1997, thirty years after my first venture abroad that I first arrived in Pattaya. With luck I shall be here for some time yet methinks.