Trouble In Paradise

Trouble in paradise ..literally. This place is awesome but the girls are fucking crazy! In a recent entry, I mentioned how I moved in with one of the local showgirls. I’d like to say that it seemed like a good idea at the time but it didn’t. I pretty much knew this was coming, hence the title of the entry - “living with a showgirl, a recipe for drama?” Well, it took a little over 2 weeks but last night that “recipe” manifested itself into a big plate of bullshit.

I’ll backtrack a little. The girl I was staying with goes back and fourth from Pattaya to Issan quite frequently as she has to take her dad to the hospital in her hometown. It’s the typical Thai sob-story. The girl is a “victim of circumstance” as she’s forced to provide for her family via sketchy, unconventional methods (use your imagination) since working at the local 7-11 doesn’t pay near enough.

She has this guy and apparently he thinks that he’s her boyfriend. He sends her money all the time and in return, he gets about 10 minutes of generic (what you eat? how was your day?) conversation via collect call from her every night. Meanwhile, there’s usually some guy in the bed next to her that’s told to “be quiet” until she’s off the phone. Sounds like a good investment on his part, doesn’t it?

Anyway, it was the 18th of September and she was talking to her “boyfriend”. A brief break in the conversation arose and she pounced on the opportunity to ask the ever-so-sly question - “can you send me money?” A question that - judging by her collection of western union branded apparel - has been asked many times. However, this time he shot down her request. After all, he had just sent her 10,000 baht (about 300 US) a week before. Once he denied the request, the call ended pretty quick. I mean, how dare he not send her money. Who does this guy think he is? *sarcasm*

Here’s where it gets embarrassing, for me! Once he refused to send her the cash, I knew I was the next target since she had planned to rent a car and go to her home the next day. I snuck out onto the balcony to get some air and I psyched myself up to shoot her down. “Fuck that shit, I’m not giving her any money” .. I told myself. I went back in and about an hour past before the speech started.

“I only have 1 dad” “ I have many friends here but nobody will help me” .. “I think you know what I’m going to ask”. “NOOOO!” I said (as rehearsed on the balcony). Surprisingly, she was very accepting of my refusal. I laid on the bed pissed off that she would put me in that situation and she started to get ready to go out. While she was pulling a low-cut shirt over her silicone “money makers”, she started coughing uncontrollably.

So, here this girl was ..tired, sick and about to go wonder the streets to find a “customer” for the night so she could take her sick dad to the hospital the following day. Maybe I’m too nice or maybe I’m just stupid - but it got to me. As she was about to leave, I walked to the front door, grabbed her, told her to take off her shoes and go back to bed. The next morning I found myself at the ATM pulling out 15,000 baht (almost 500US) for her dads hospital bills.

As I handed her the stack of 1000 baht bills, I emphasised the fact that this was nothing more than a loan and that I expected to be fully compensated for the money. “I’ll pay you back, I promise” she said. I had a bad feeling about it right from the start and I know now that I should have trusted my initial instinct (as you always should).

So here I am today, on October 2nd and I still haven’t seen 20 baht of the 15,000 that I lent to her. And to make matters worse, this chick storms around the small apartment bitching about every little thing. Forget Quinton Jackson, this girl is the real “Rampage”. Last night I was sick of getting bitched at for seemingly breathing so I basically told her that I just wanted my money so I could bounce. After all, this is Pattaya. A city where a man doesn’t have to put up with the bitching and nagging. It’s much easier to switch-up-girls than it is to get into dragged out arguments over stupid shit.

When I requested the cash, all hell broke loose. Apparently, by her logic, requesting money that’s owed to you is out of line and that “I only care about myself”. Was this girl fucking serious? We argued back and fourth and what happened next made me convinced that this girl has some psychological issues that would rival even “Fon” in a “win a straight-jacket” competition.

She took the remote control for the television, said “now your money is all I think about”, smacked the remote against her forehead about 3 times, then whipped it against the wall. She then proceeded to run to the bathroom and sit in the bathtub for about 2 hours. I mean, that’s a normal stress reliever, isn’t it? Having a nice long bath, I’m sure it’s very relaxing. Only in this case, the tub remained empty and she remained fully clothed.

Needless today, as soon as the rental office opened today, I found my own room. I got my new key and went back to pack up my shit. As I was doing so, we got into another argument over the money and for a second, she tried to pull the “I’m not paying you back” routine.

Can’t Hustle A Hustler

Sure it was stupid to lend her my money but I’m not dumb enough to do so without getting any sort of reassurance that I’ll get it back. When she tried to test the waters by saying she wasn’t going to pay me back, I gave her a few options. Let me rephrase, I gave her 1 option and a few reasons why she should take it.

The Option
Pay me back in 1 week.

The Reasons
1) I had the foresight to predict this situation so I pulled her “boyfriends” number out of her cell phone while she was in the shower. You know, the same “boyfriend” that sends her money all the time. I told her that if I didn’t get my money, I’d call him up and tell him everything. Not only that, I have all sorts of photos that she sent me (taken by another man) that I could always forward to him if he needed proof.

2) I just used this one as a scare tactic, I wouldn’t actually do it. On Saturday night she stumbled into the room all drunk and high. The next day she asked me to urinate into an empty water bottle in case the police came to her bar to randomly make the girls take a drug test. Thailand is different from the States or Canada in the sense that you don’t have to have possession of the drugs to get charged for drug use. The cops can just randomly make you take a urine test as they see fit and if you get busted, the penalties can be pretty serious (if you don’t have money to pay your way out of it). Anyway, I told her that if she didn’t pay me then I would call the cops, tell them that she jacked my money and spent it on drugs. Thus, she would be tested and as she believes, she’d get busted. Truth is, ecstasy is only detectable for 4-6 days after usage but I highly doubt she’ll think to hit up Google for that information.

3) I made sure to get her admitting that she owes me the money through SMS (text message) conversation. I have the whole conversation saved so at least I’ll have some sort of “proof” that the money was indeed a loan.

So, what’s the morale of the story?

As a wise man once said..

Don’t lend $500 dollars of your hard earned money to a drug-addicted prostitute.

So, leave some comments and let me know if you think I’ll get the money back or not. We’ll make it a little poll. And of course, I’ll keep you updated..

Coming Soon

In about a week or so, there’s a fight night here in Pattaya and the fight card features about 3-4 cast members of the Contender Asia. I’ll be going with Rosalie (the owner of Scorpion Gym) as she’s fighting on the card as well. Hopefully I’ll get some cool footage and perhaps a couple of exclusive interviews with the fighters.

Stay Tuned..

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Crazy Pattaya!

I arrived in Pattaya about 2 nights ago and I’ve honestly never seen anything like this. I don’t even know where to begin when describing it. I guess I can start by saying that the main attraction here is not Muay Thai and if it is, there’s certainly a lot of retired 50 year olds training to knock Fedor off his thrown. While Pattaya hosts some of the best Muay Thai gyms in the world, all it takes is one look around and the main attraction here becomes quite evident - it’s sex! Sex sells and I suppose Pattaya is cashing in. The girls come to Pattaya from all over the country; the majority of which are from Issan, which is one of Thailand’s poorest regions. The average family income in Issan is about $800 US dollars. Since the Thai government isn’t structured in a way that the elderly are taken care of when they’re unable to work, the burden of being a provider is placed on the children - particularly the daughters.

And so they come here to Pattaya where they can earn upwards of $2000-$3000 a month depending on where they work and how “active” they are. The girls are also quite good at tricking guys into falling in love with them and collecting “sponsor” money. Sponsor money is when the guy returns to his home country and sends the girl money on a monthly basis to keep her from working in the bars. Some of these girls can have multiple sponsors at once all while secretly still working in the bars without their sponsors knowing.

Of course, there are exceptions. A lot of these girls are great, honest people that have just been dealt a bad hand in life and they’re just doing what they can to provide for their loved ones. I’ve asked them how they feel about things and they usually respond with “what I can do?”. And unfortunately, they’re right. The average factory worker in Thailand makes about 192 baht a day. To put that into perspective, that’s less than 1 dollar an hour based on a 7 hour workday. Sort of tough to take care of yourself and your loved ones on so little.

Anyway, now that I’m through with that little Thai economy lesson, I can finally talk about the training (hence, this is the “Thailand Training Journal”). I went to Scorpion Gym today and was put through my first Thai Boxing workout since I’ve been here. It’s funny, I trained my ass of for this. I’d run every single night in addition to my weight training workouts. Two-a-days for about a month straight and I couldn’t even complete 3-3 minute rounds on the pads.

I’m pretty sure it was the heat that was effecting me so much. It’ll probably take me a while to get acclimatized to it but after about 5-10 days, I should be alright. Here’s a video tour I took of the Scorpion camp…

It’s a nice gym but it’s f*cking hard to find! I went around asking motorbike taxi drivers to take me and the first 14 or so had no idea where it was. It was pretty frustrating actually. On a side note, they have an awesome pro-shop (perhaps the best I’ve seen at a gym in Thailand) and the prices are really good. I bought myself a pair of 14oz fairtex gloves for 1400 baht, which is approximately 43 dollars.

Tomorrow I’ll be going to the infamous Sityodtong gym. Hopefully it’s infamous with the Thai taxi drivers as well so I can actually get to it!

Might as well finish up this entry with a random video. Filmed this on “walking street”. I haven’t dated a white girl since um.. about grade 5 and although this an unfair comparison, this is how I see things in my eyes.

I present to you..