Basil Fawlty comes to Pattaya

Published on July 29, 2007

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 an 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 deadlines 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, unfortunately 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 emitted, 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!

James Eckardt's eighth book, "Singapore Girl", published by Monsoon Books, is on

sale at Kinokuniya, Bookazine and Asia Books.