HEADLINES [click on headline to view story]:

Re necessity trumps integrity

Ban motorbikes from beach walk promenade

New Year resolutions

Steve Donovan Golf Memorial

Go-go girls are fun to talk to

A poem about smoking

Re necessity trumps integrity

Editor;
In answer to TC’s response last week, I agree with a lot of what he says, and I do understand that not only is he right about people needing a dependent faithful husband but also having the financial backing to fall back on. What I have noticed is that, even though Isaan is supposed to be a poor area, the girls usually do very nicely out of a short matrimonial romance in Thailand and yes, if you are worried about the fact that you might lose your house and land (if your Thai wife divorces you) well then you should have put it into a Thai Limited Company name to safe guard it.
Now TC’s comment about love at first site, well that was and is my own personal circumstances and that happened nearly 23 years ago. I think I am still the happiest man in the world, to spend every day with my beautiful Thai wife and help her run her many businesses. She has spent the last 22 years in the UK and has run 14 catering businesses and she is 46 but doesn’t look a day older than when I first met her in a Bangkok Bank all those years ago. Her family have been very good to the both of us, providing us with a house near Don Muang for a wedding present, a farm in Hang Dong near Chiang Mai and even helping us with a deposit for our home here in the UK and paying for a swimming pool to be built.
I may have found the fairy at the bottom of the garden, but I prefer to call her my little princess. I didn’t have a lot of money when I met my wife, but now through our hard work together (and mostly hers, due to her talent) we have several homes in Thailand and she gets recognised all over, by visiting schools everyday here in the UK, putting on a Thai Cultural Educational Show (she has just won the O2x Awards for North West Female Entrepreneur of the Year - look up Soodsawat Rigg) and then returns to her own Thai cookery school of an evening to tutor 14 people every night till 10 p.m. before prepping till 2 a.m. for the Cultural show that she will put on the next day again.
She has been to over 1000 schools and performed her unique Cultural Cooking show now for more than 100,000 people in the last 3 years, and runs this business as a not for profit community interest company. She now hopefully intends to raise money and train ex bar workers who want to go into the hotel & catering industry in Pattaya.
I am happy with my lot and I thank God that my encounter at the bank all those years ago and the feeling of WOW what a girl (I’m in love!) is still in my heart to this day. I hope other falangs can be as happy as me and hopefully fortunate as we both are.
Yours,
John & Soodsawat (Ooy) Rigg

Ban motorbikes from beach walk promenade

Editor;
Open Letter to Pattaya City Hall: Why are Thai males on motorbikes allowed to recklessly drive up and down the beach walk promenade where tourists and locals are walking along the beach? These are the kinds of things that reduce tourists numbers.
Lawrence Remington,
Bangkok

New Year resolutions

Aloha Pattaya Mail;
Through out the years you have allowed the Pollution Solution Group to express opinions that they have had, and now we are happy to say that Pattaya City Hall is assisting us in our efforts to make Jomtien and Pattaya a safer, cleaner place for us all to live or visit.
We want to wish your great paper and all of your readers a wonderful holiday along with health, long-life, inner-wealth and happiness.
Now is the time of the year for people to make New Year resolutions and we along with Pattaya City Hall have some suggestions.
First, we would like to thank all of the smokers that do not leave their toxic cigarette ends (butts) behind, that take up to 12 years to decompose, leaving dangers (poison) for unknowing babies, wildlife and waterways to ingest.
The Pollution Solution Group have helped 3 different mothers on Jomtien Beach take toxic butts out of their choking baby’s throat. They were just sitting on the beach, playing and they pulled out of the sand these dirty, toxic, killer, cigarette ends that can and have killed children, wildlife and contaminate our waterways.
Some Thai and farangs both need to wake up and quit sharing their killer habit with the rest of us. We know it’s a hard habit to quit but for the sake of the voiceless, please quit giving poison to them. Killing yourself is one thing, killing others is another. The earth is not your ash tray and we don’t want our children playing in one. We are also talking to baht bus drivers, motorbike taxis and police to start setting examples by also not flicking or leaving behind cigarette ends (butts) that get flicked into our streets, wash, blow or get swept into our storm drains and then end up in our ocean, killing much of our sea life and sometimes drifting back to shore where children can find them.
It’s really a no-brainier, if you smoke, please “keep your butts to yourself”.
KOTO

Steve Donovan Golf Memorial

Dear Sir;
I would very much appreciate if you would print the enclosed letter in your next edition. Despite the excellent work and planning the organisers put in to running the Steve Donovan Golf Memorial in aid of an excellent charity it was very badly supported. Perhaps if you printed this, next year some people would change their attitude and support it and so make the effort worthwhile and raise extra funds for the charity. I would also like to thank you for the excellent report you carried in your paper this week.
Yours,
Joe McArdle

Go-go girls are fun to talk to

Editor;
Re: “Been there, done that”, Mailbag, Dec. 4th issue. I would imagine that just about anyone that has lived in Thailand for any given length of time thinks that they have Thai women and Thai people in general figured out.
I agreed with much of what TC said in his letter, but there are two things I totally disagree with. It is not a fallacy that showing flesh is Thai culture. It is fact and anyone who has lived in the provinces for any length of time will attest to that. Trying to get a glimpse of thigh or cleavage is pretty much impossible. What is peer pressure but community standards and thus “culture”?
Additionally, to say that Bangkok and Pattaya are more representative of Thailand than the remainder of Thailand is straining the limits of credibility. You might just as well say that Hollywood is representative of America. Bangkok and Pattaya are not much more than bastardizations of Hollywood.
Lastly, TC states that when Isaan girls get away from the peer pressure of their home cities, their “true self” comes out. Now that I agree with, but only in the case of go-go dancers. Try to remember that the vast majority of bar girls are not go-go dancers and when you meet one that is better looking than anyone on stage, which happens often, if you ask them why they are not dancing to make a lot more money, they will tell you that they just can’t do it. Maybe their “true self” just hasn’t been released yet.
Sorry TC, but we just don’t agree. Go-go girls are a breed unto themselves just as they are in the United States, Europe or anywhere else. My best guess is that it is a desperate need for attention and if it isn’t, and a girl has taken the job out of financial desperation, then it doesn’t take long for the other girls to “brainwash” her.
Go-go girls are fun to talk to. If a man is smart, he will leave it at that. If he does meet a “nice” one, then I can practically guarantee you that she has been at it for less than six months.
John Arnone
Yasothon

A poem about smoking

Dear Editor,
I wondered if you might care to publish a poem for a change?
Never is man more like an ape
Than with a cigarette doth gape.
That noxious, twirling smoke he breathes
And generously to everyone bequeaths.
Never does man look more insane
Than when an oral fire he doth maintain.
Ignoring all the wise advice
He continues with this filthy vice.
Oblivious of the harm it poses
Why wan’t it banned by Moses?
Why, because Mo never thought
That man to smoke would e’er be taught.
M.N.

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