Thread: Pattaya Hotel Owners daily diary

^ no way - i missed that one!

mental

^

Here's the link:

Mr. Stupid | Riff-Raffles: Beyond the Book!

If you go back through the archives you'll find even more good anecdotes.

Hi All,

Another few new stories will be appearing on my blog this week so please be sure to visit whenever you get the opportunity.

For those who may be interested the book, Riff-Raffles, is due to be released 25th May and will be available from Asia Books and other leading bookstores across Thailand priced at B395.

The book will also be available from our hotel, Jasmine Mansion on Soi Baukaow in Central Pattaya or on-line via the publishers web site,Bangkok Books.

I am running a small competition on the Blog this week if any of you get a chance to check it out. The first five correct entries will be sent a signed copy of my book, Riff-Raffles.

The book sales are going very well and I have sold over 50 copies from the hotel alone this last couple of weeks.

The Blog is also gaining in popularity with viewing numbers increasing week by week. It appears a picture of my University bound step-daughter, included as part of a story on her, has gained a significant following, particularly in the USA, and viewing numbers doubled last week!

All the best,
Kevin

“spot the chick with a dick” contest

I am pretty good at that, so I think I will win that one easy

I would imagine that a hotel owner would come across a Mr Stupid at least once a month!

Hi y'all,

I have had a busy couple of months so somewhat out of touch with the web forums recently. The book, Riff-Raffles, got a great review in The Nation last Sunday (29th) and several very positve reviews on various forums which has been very pleasing. The blog is also starting to generate considerable traffic and way above what was anticipated so it is good news all round.

I am presently writing Riff-Raffles II and am half-way through, with anticipated completion by end of this year - I am only reliant on people making a fool of themselves regularly and living in Pattaya there is no shortage of material!

If any of you have read Riff-Raffles then please let me know what you thought - the feedback is invaluable and I am looking for honest opinions not platitudes.

So what happened to Jack? Did teerak finally meet up with him Kevin?

Read the book on the plane on my way to work couple of weeks ago. And injoyed it from start to finish.
Well done I might come and stay at your hotel one day and wind you up a bit

Enter his inner sanctum and tell him some fibs for his next book?

RIFF-RAFFLES

BY KEVIN MEACHER

Published by Bangkok Press

Available at leading bookshops

Reviewed by James Eckardt

The Nation

Here you are, an overweight, middle-aged Brit with a Thai wife, two sons and a packet socked away from London real-estate deals. What better than to spend your golden years supine in a hammock, basking in the sun in Pattaya? Simply turning an apartment block you own into Jasmine Mansions, a 23-room boutique hotel. Haw! Haw! Haw!

The laughs are already coming. Hiring incompetent staff? Dealing with shady contractors? Coping with lunatic guests? Basil Fawlty, welcome to Pattaya. Kevin Meacher has written a hilarious account of his tribulations as owner of the "Riff-Raffles" hotel. Bug-eyed bewilderment, sputtering rage, babbling confusion, spastic slapstick - Meacher goes through the whole gamut as he runs full-tilt into the brick wall of the Thai way of doing things.

"The biggest problem for me was that there didn't appear to be any sense of urgency," he writes in an early diary entry on Christmas Day, 2004. Construction dead lines for two new floors had been cavalierly ignored. Meacher arrives on site to find work at a complete standstill.

"Our building was being used as temporary accommodation for the workmen, there were hammocks hung from the ceilings, there were dirty clothes everywhere, there were cooking pots across the floor and the entire building was full of plastic bags... One couple was actually 'on the job', albeit not the job I was expecting them to be on!"

Meacher plunges into heavy construction work, while his wife Sujinda (a steely eyed Thai version of Sybil Fawlty) handles the staff on the first four floors. The place is packed with displaced tourists following the tsunami. When the maids quit, the couple turn to changing sheets themselves.

"I am especially fond of finding used condoms under the sheets, that really sets me up nicely for the day, I can tell you," Meacher writes. Meanwhile, the couple go looking for a temporary home and are astonished by the astronomical rents. "Such were the ridiculous demands made, I had been thinking that perhaps whilst asleep someone had tattooed COMPLETE TOSSER across my forehead."

Back at the hotel, two drunken louts in their underpants, merrily shrieking obscenities, have tossed out a pair of glass balcony doors to the pavement four floors below. Just a normal day.

After three months on the job, Meacher reflects: "The behaviour of farangs, unfortunate ly the English in particular, borders on the barbaric... The Thai people here are also driving me around the bend.

Their work ethic is non-existent and they live in a bubble." And off Meacher goes on a rant about his sublimely oblivious staff. He'll tell someone to do something, the employee will nod and do the opposite. Leading to a towering temper tantrum, to tears and a disappearing act. "The other character trait guaranteed to have me climbing up the wall is the commonly seen inane grin,"

Meacher writes. "This grin appears whenever you suggest to someone that they have made a mistake… It is as though they are mocking you!"

As you can imagine, Meacher eventually begins to loosen up and roll with the punches. "I have changed and, I believe, changed for the better," he writes in his introduction. "I have become more tolerant and I have started to understand a new and very different culture."

But what fun it is to watch him learn!

He also makes some physical progress. With all the work he puts in painting and decorating the hotel rooms, plus healthy Thai food, he finds that he has dropped from 100 to 80 kilos. The hard work has also won him brownie points from fire-breathing Sybil. He explains the points/marks system:

"Brownie points are awarded for exemplary behaviour, however they have a relatively short shelf-life. They need to be used almost immediately...

"Black marks are accrued for whatever your partner considers to be unacceptable behaviour. They have a long shelf life and in some cases can last a lifetime. Black marks are rarely ever removed from your record..."

Sujinda awards Meacher a night on the town. He is playing pool with a bar girl when he makes a brilliant shot and she throws her arms around him in delight, which is the exact moment that his wife walks into the bar. Back home, he faces a torrent of abuse.

His wife demands that he empty this pockets so she can see what's left of his money. Then:

"I looked at the pile of coins, crumpled notes of various denominations, my cigarettes, my lighter and my handkerchief. I then screamed, although no sound was emit ted, as I saw, perched on the top of this pile, my death warrant ... a pair of lacy white panties."

He has no idea how the bar girl managed this or why, but the panties are literally as well as metaphorically thrown in his face forever more. Eternal black mark!

Bangkok's Independent Newspaper

I wish to invite you to join the Miss Riff-Raffles competition which we will be running at riff-raffles.com over the High Season between 1st November, 2007 and 31st March, 2008. I want to make it perfectly clear that I am NOT asking the readers of this forum to daub make-up over their faces and don a bikini – it is a respectable Blog I am endeavouring to run after all!

Full details of the competition can be viewed on the Blog, however, the rules are simple. Find a lady, take a picture with her holding a copy of Riff-Raffles and then send the picture to the Blog – the exact address for the pictures can be found on the Blog. You can send as many pictures as you wish but only one of each girl. This can be your wife, your girlfriend or just a girl you meet whilst out on the town. Visitors to the Blog will then be able to vote on who they think should become Miss Riff-Raffles.

Please note that no nude or topless pictures will be posted – the girls can be dressed as sexily as they wish but must be clothed!

We are presently running a preliminary competition up to 1st November featuring some of the girls pictured by the Blog Administrator on his recent visit to Pattaya. Shortly you will be able to vote for the ladies who appear in this. The winner of this preliminary event will automatically be entered into the main competition.

At the moment I am in discussions with a leading Pattaya media group, several clothing retailers and one of the area’s top restaurants. Once these negotiations have been satisfactorily concluded I will be able to reveal more information on the competition prizes. I am hoping to be able to offer a substantial clothing voucher from a brand name retailer for the winning lady and also offer dinner for two, plus a bottle of good quality wine, to the sender of the picture of the eventual winner. It is also hoped that the media group concerned will help promote the event as well as carry pictures of the winners in their publication.

There will be five runners-up prizes of a signed first edition of the sequel to Riff-Riffles which I expect to be published around March 2008.

I hope that many of you will either submit pictures or join in the voting of what we hope will be a fun competition.