The Bar Girl and the Dodgy ATM

Just a short email about the time I was in Thailand for the first time and events that occurred later. A little background before I start. In 2012, I had a working holiday visa for Australia. My friend from university in Glasgow lived in Pattaya, and he said, “Why not come over to visit for a week in transit to Australia?” So I did and like every new fish in the sea, I was amazed by everything that I’d seen in Pattaya. I remember thinking how so cheap everything was compared to back home, and at the time the exchange rate was 50 baht to one pound. I had not done any research or did not know how it all worked with regards to female company and new friends, but had an excellent time anyway. I stayed in Thailand for nine days before heading off to Australia to look for work.

I had been looking forward to going to Australia, but after visiting Thailand I just wanted to get back even though I spent around 500 pounds (which equates to 70,000 to 75,000 baht). When I was in Pattaya, I met a girl who worked in my hotel and she spent several nights with me. She had not asked me for anything. It was kind of like a real girlfriend experience, although for a short period.

Fast forward four months. I struggled to find work in Australia as there were so many backpackers bidding for the same jobs that I was going for. Being raised on a farm, I wanted to do real farm work not fruit picking like most of the other backpackers. Eventually I found a job on a cotton farm and worked there for three months. While working for those three months, I managed to save most of my money which totaled ten thousand Australian dollars. And of course, all I could think about now that I’d replenished my funds was to return to Pattaya.

Eventually the day came. I booked a return flight Brisbane to Bangkok and back and headed straight to Pattaya on arrival. I was intending to have a real good time in Pattaya and spend all of my Australian dollars that I had saved while working.

Meeting May

I wasn’t in Pattaya for very long when I met a girl I liked called May. I was a little shy and naive back then, and looking back now I realized May played on this. I am a little angry with myself that I missed the signs and I was quite foolish. Like on the first night that I met May, I bought her lots of lady drinks just to be able to have her sit and speak with me. Then at the end of the night, some guy came along on a scooter May jumped on the back and they rolled off into the sunset. But me being Mr. Newbie and very naive, I overlooked this and went back to her bar to see her on the following night.

May’s bar was located in Jomtien in the Rompo beer bars area I’m sure many of your viewers are familiar with this area of Pattaya.

Anyway, time to cut through the chase and tell you what happened. I eventually managed to take May out of the bar and spend the evening in my hotel room having drinks. I liked May’s company so much that one night became a week, and then a week became two weeks. I was compensating her for her time at 1,000 baht a day. At the end of the month, May asked me for some more money to buy some gifts for her daughter who was three years old. I was spending a fortune, but I was blind and ignorant not giving it too much thought. I just wanted to spend time with May, and I hated the thought of her returning to her bar and talking with lots of other men.

However, after six months or so, I started to come to my senses and realize May was playing me like a fiddle. My one month in Pattaya turned into three months, but eventually I had to return to work. When I left Pattaya, I paid 6,000 baht to May and supposedly she was not going to work in the bar while I was working in Australia. She told me that she would go back to her village.

The 7 Eleven Job That Wasn’t

May and I kept in touch with text messages and Facebook, and May told me that she did not want to return to work in the bar. She went on to tell me that she had found a job working in 7 Eleven near her hometown Buriram. I thought that was great, and I felt more at ease knowing that she was working for 7 Eleven and not in a beer bar talking to lots of men.

After about a week, I asked her how her new job was going. May told me that another girl didn’t like her at the shop and would be mean to her, so she didn’t want to work there anymore. I said, “Well, whatever makes you happy but you have to work, as you can’t rely on continued handouts from me.” I was still sending May 10,000 baht every month, which I thought was pretty generous. May was never happy, telling me that her friends’ boyfriends were sending them 20,000 baht and 30,000 baht a month but she was only getting 10. It was all a scam, and like I keep saying, I was very naive back then.

May told me that she wanted to go back to Pattaya and find work in a restaurant. I thought it was a good idea as long as she wasn’t working as long as she was working a straight job. I knew the restaurant as we had eaten there when I was in Pattaya. So apparently May had started working in the restaurant and, like any job, received her salary at the end of the month.

On the day that she supposedly received her salary, I got a frantic call from her in Australia. She was in hysterics, crying. I asked her what had happened. She told me that a bad man had robbed her on a motorbike when she had been walking home from work. She said her ID card, along with everything else including her first month’s salary, had been stolen. She was sobbing the whole time, and of course I believed her. May’s first predictable question was, “Can you send me some money, tilak? Because I have worked so hard all month and now I have nothing.” I transferred 20,000 baht to her. I was suspicious at this point but still chose to believe her, thinking to myself she wouldn’t scam me after all I’ve done for her, would she? How wrong I was.

The Secret Trip to Bangkok

So it was time for me to return to Thailand again, having saved up another 10,000 Australian dollars. This time I had booked a flight but told May that I was arriving two days after my real arrival day. I also told her that I would meet her in Pattaya. My plan was to have some fun by myself in Bangkok and had booked into the Novotel on Sukhumvit Soi 4 close to Nana Plaza. I wanted to have a real blowout, drink a lot, and meet up with a new girl. And that’s exactly what happened but with a sting in the tail.

I started off my night around 8:00 p.m. in Nana Plaza and just sat at the bar in the middle of the plaza on the ground floor. Most of the girls in this bar seemed to be quite a bit older, so I just chilled out with several cold beers. After a couple of hours, I headed out of Nana Plaza and turned right. I went into a bar that was only a couple of minutes’ walk on the same side of the road. It was a good sized bar and had a live band. (He’s definitely talking about Stumble Inn that’s the one between Big Dogs and… whatever that one’s called.)

I got talking to a member of staff as I was sitting alone and offered to buy her a drink so that I had some company. I could feel myself getting very drunk and decided to slow it down for a bit by drinking some water. I also remember that I hadn’t drank in Australia for three months. The staff girl I was drinking with said her friend was coming over and could she sit at our table. I said, “Yes, no problem.” Her friend sat down, and she was an absolute stunner. I had made up my mind that this lady would be joining me in my room for drinks later. I think she was a freelancer, but me being Mr. Stupid presumed that she was a normal Thai girl and was simply a friend of the waitress back in the bar.

The Drink That Made Him Sick

I was so impressed with myself managing to hook up with this stunning girl. In the room, she was polite and got some drinks for us from the minibar as it was so hot outside in the open air bar. She had a shower and I had a shower, then we shared our drinks. I was now very drunk. The shower did help a bit, but I was still so very drunk, and sharing a drink with this very good looking girl was about as much as I could manage. However that said, I thought I would try some aerobics. I felt instantly sick. This had never happened to me before. I had to rush to the toilet to be violently sick. I was sick for at least five minutes.

The next thing I heard the door slam. Yep the girl had left. I remember taking out 10,000 baht that night, but when I checked my wallet, only had 4,000 baht. I couldn’t remember had she taken some money? Had I spent the money? I really wasn’t sure. Nothing was missing from my room my iPad was still where I’d left it. I also couldn’t understand why I was so violently sick at the most crucial time of the night. Then it hit me did this girl slip something into my drink that made me so sick? Remember, nothing like this had ever happened before. That’s the only thing I could think of. But then again, she could have robbed me before she left as I was stuck in the toilet being so sick. I really don’t know what the answer is, Peter, but it was certainly a self inflicted incident.

The story with May continues. Let me know if you want me to continue and send you a follow up story as there is a pharmacy scam also involved with May.

Story Two The Dodgy ATM A Lesson That Cost a Vacation

“Hi Peter, this is a true story of my first two visits to Pattaya.”

I first visited Pattaya during December of 2017, and it was also my first time visiting Thailand. After hearing about the town by the beach that they all call “Sin City” from fellow travelers during my many backpacking trips around the world, I booked into the Hole in One guest house for a month and was eager to see what Pattaya was all about. I was absolutely stunned by the amount of women in Pattaya. I had a fabulous time going into all the many bars and hanging out around the popular drinking hot spots. I had a girl in my guest house room for drinks within an hour of arriving having picked her up at the first bar I visited on Soi Buakhao, on the corner of Soi Made in Thailand.

Anyway, one late afternoon about a week later, after getting a bite to eat at the Robin’s Nest restaurant, I wanted to explore LK Metro for a night out but was too lazy to walk the 200 yards back to my guest house to retrieve a few thousand baht I had stashed in my safe. So I used a cashpoint machine outside Family Mart on Soi Diana to withdraw 4,000 baht for the night then hid my bank card inside a zip pocket of my wallet.

I had a good evening where I met a very pleasant girl in the Billabong Bar and took her down to the Pattaya Beer Garden for a nice relaxing meal. We sat on the balcony section overlooking the beautiful Pattaya Bay with the lights flickering on the water amongst the many anchored boats. On arriving back at my guest house and while the girl was in the bathroom, I put my bank card in the safe as I wouldn’t be needing it for quite a while. I already had 20,000 baht cash in the safe.

The Horror Discovery

A few days later, while I was sitting on my bed watching the TV, I decided to check my online bank account as I regularly do. To my horror, I discovered that 1,790 pounds had disappeared from my account inside the last two days. “What the heck is this?” I said to myself, beginning to panic. I looked at the transactions and found lots of withdrawals to a company called Facebook Advertising Services. I’d never heard of them. The transactions were for £6.50, £13, £20, £32.50, £90, £120, £170, £250 ever increasing every couple of hours.

“What is going on here?” I screamed to myself. I haven’t used my bank card for anything. I was now in panic mode and scrambled to put £40 credit on my phone so I could ring my bank in England. As I am on the phone listening to an automated message from my bank saying “you’re in a queue and please wait for an operator to become available,” I looked at my laptop and another £300 had gone out of my account. “Please God, hurry up and answer I’m being cleaned out here,” I said to myself.

I’m always very conscious about the whereabouts and the use of my bank card on my travels. Then the light bulb came on and the alarm bells rang out loudly in my head. The only place I had used my card since arriving in Pattaya was at the cash machine in Soi Diana. That has to be a dodgy cash machine.

A few minutes later, a human being answered the phone. After explaining everything, he said he would have to report it to the bank’s fraud department for investigation, cancelled my card immediately but because I was in Thailand and they couldn’t send me a new card to my guest house in Thailand, they would send it only to my registered address in England. Right there, my vacation was over. I had to return to England. He advised me to only use cash machines that were attached to an actual bank in the future. Lesson learned.

The Following Year

The following year, in December 2018, I returned to Pattaya as I had unfinished business to accomplish. I booked into a different hotel called Selena Place off South Pattaya Road for a month. During that month, I had met and made many friends expats and travelers while having a blast of a time all over Pattaya, especially after discovering the famous Soi 6.

I was sitting in a cafe on Walking Street having a coffee with a popular YouTube vlogger called Cheap Charlie, who was soon to be heading off to Ibar but that wasn’t my scene, and I said I was going to head up to Soi Diamond. “Oh really I know what you’re going up there for,” he said. “What do you mean?” I asked. He replied, “There is only one reason why you’re heading up there if you know what’s in Soi Diamond, then you know.”

As I’m walking up Soi Diamond, I stopped off at an unusual small bar complex in the center called the Carousel Bar, with a revolving seating area around the bar that very slowly spins around. “I’ve got to have a beer here,” I thought, experiencing a weird sensation of constant 360 degree views of all the activity in the soi. A beautiful lady by the name of Boone served me a bottle of Singha Light. While sitting on the shelf on the inside of the revolving bar, I could see she had a very artistic tattoo on her leg. When I asked her about the tattoo, she lifted her skirt up further to show me an unbelievably detailed tattoo of a snake rolling up her lovely leg. Lots of flirting happened between the two of us as I was spinning around, getting a bit disorientated by the sensation and the sensational tattoo of an essential woman try saying that when you’ve had a few drinks.

I kept her in my mind for a later day as I had other plans for this night. I walked up about another 50 yards further up the soi until I came across the place that the late Kevin in Thailand recommended to me upon our meeting at the Hideaway Bar with a sign reading: “No photos, no filming, no weapons. Have a good time.” Welcome to the Windmill Club a go go. Well, that place was something else. I’ll leave it to your imagination what goes on in there, but it was definitely full on. I went home a very happy man that night and vowed to return.

The next morning, I planned to revisit the Carousel Bar later that night, but unfortunately Boone didn’t turn out to be my companion because that morning I got lucky with a hotel housekeeper I had been flirting with for some time.

Hope you enjoyed this story, Peter, and I will return to Pattaya for more fun when we are allowed. All the best regards, Andrew.

Story Three The Waitress Hong Kong and the Pregnancy Scam (1990s)

I was on a business trip to Bangkok my first time there. My colleagues who’d visited before took me to a couple of the rougher entertainment venues in Patpong 2. Never sit in the front row, if you know what I mean. We were working, though, and there was no overnight action. There might have been the odd lady drink. It was the early 1990s, and the BTS construction meant a 90 minute taxi ride to the office at least two hours to Don Mueang airport. Happy days. My alarm was set for 5:30 every weekday, and I went for breakfast at 6:30 a.m. This wasn’t an easy job it was three weeks of very challenging work.

A couple of days before we left, we were eating in a restaurant near Siam, and our waitress named Win started talking to me. Not “you handsome man” or anything like that. Her English was very good, and it seemed that her uncle was Australian she spent a couple of years in Melbourne. She knew the suburbs well, so she couldn’t have been lying. She was extremely good looking.

I asked her if she’d like to go to dinner after she finished work, as she couldn’t stop or talk for long because she was a real waitress and she was working now. But she agreed to meet up for dinner after work. We went to the Intercontinental where there was a band and a floor show. There was no funny business that night. I gave her a couple of hundred baht so that she could take a taxi back to Thonburi and not a bus at that time of night. After all, I was the one who kept her out so late this was my idea, not hers.

I went back to her restaurant on the night before I flew home, and we agreed to stay in touch. It transpired that Win worked in an office during the day and at the restaurant at night. The office job was legitimate because she had a business card, and I usually called her on that landline number going through reception. It was a large company. We also communicated through faxes. It was therefore quite unlikely that she was a bar girl unless she juggled three jobs.

Hong Kong

My next business trip was to Hong Kong a few weeks later, and I had an idea. Why not fly her over? She could stay in my hotel and go sightseeing, sit by the pool, use the spa, and do anything else that took her fancy. My business expenses would look after food, transport, and incidentals. I should point out that I was in a long and strong relationship at the time at home. But let’s just say my girlfriend couldn’t keep up with me. We were both 28, and I was pretty athletic. That said, I didn’t have any intentions of that nature with Win. It was probably the seven year itch.

So I asked Win if she would like to come to Hong Kong for a holiday, and she was very excited. I booked and paid for her flights and her visa. I picked Win up from Kai Tak airport (remember, it was 1990) and took her to the hotel. She wanted to catch up for lost time from night one and made me feel 18 again and 80 afterwards. She was slim but had stretch marks. I had only ever encountered them once before, and this surprised me as she’d not mentioned any children. She also tried to hide them from me fair enough.

She stayed for almost a week. I gave her about 70 US dollars a day because Hong Kong can be very expensive, and I wanted her to enjoy herself while I was at the office. Considering that I was living it up for free anyway, this was no imposition. She only had to buy lunch breakfast and dinner were catered for. I was able to show her around Hong Kong when I finished work each day. She didn’t ask for extra money to go shopping and pointed out that clothes were less expensive back in Thailand. Anyway, she was very emotional and promised to remain in touch. I was flying for work a great deal at the time and didn’t have another trip to Bangkok planned for another six months. Could not fly up there for a holiday because of my girlfriend in Melbourne she might be crazy, but she’s not stupid.

The Bombshell

A month later, Win told me that her mother was ill. You never saw that one coming, did you? She needed the equivalent of 350 US dollars. That is not an extraordinary sum, and given that I knew her financial situation working two jobs not an extraordinary emergency. After all, she’d just taken a week off work for the Hong Kong trip. I didn’t quibble and simply sent it. She was very grateful, and I hope that her mother was too.

Another month later and then the bombshell. She is pregnant. If you have been following this story so far, you’ll see the problem here. It certainly wasn’t me for two good reasons. I’m confident you can guess both of them. I didn’t want to bring back any unwanted “duty free” from that Hong Kong trip to give to my girlfriend. I had been very careful to not give Win my phone number, and after I’d blocked her office number from my work phone and fax, that was it. Thank God for the days of no social media or mobile phones.

This is something I’d bear in mind were I to play around out there in the future. Create new accounts completely divorced from your real identity. Perhaps even use an old Nokia for her and not a smartphone. If she’d been more plausible with her second request for funds, I might have kept supporting her. Having a mistress back in Melbourne would have been far more dangerous and expensive than getting up to mischief abroad. I could have afforded to keep her on the boil, as it were, until I returned. But the pregnancy story had destroyed my trust in her.

I’ve never visited that restaurant again. Ignoring Win made me feel quite guilty for a while. She definitely wasn’t into the bar work at least when I knew her and might have had legitimate reasons for asking for a bit of help. Perhaps she thought that I would ditch my girlfriend for her. It’s complicated to explain, but this would have been awkward. My family would have been horrified. Perhaps she had several farangs as patrons. I wish her well. I’d have a much worse conscience had it not been for the attempted pregnancy scam. Hearing the stories from other men, I got off lightly. It was fun and worth every penny. I’ve never played away from home after that.