Essays

Go-go bars as a cultural asset, dentists, chicken’s feet, soapy massage, trousers, being struck by lightning, tattoos, luck, breast enhancements, beards and being a foreigner—these are just some of the aspects of living in Pattaya, Thailand’s most exciting city, that come within range of this lively and revealing book.

Originally published in the leading fortnightly Pattaya Today, each chapter takes a light-hearted but incisive look at the quirky side of living in a city that is unusual even by Thai standards. Local characters come and go, but none receives closer attention than the author’s long-suffering wife whose innocence provides the perfect balance for her husband’s merciless wit.

For those who want to know what it’s really like living in paradise, or for those fellow residents who want to compare notes with another foreigner filled with wonderment, joy and occasional confusion, this Thailand classic is the perfect primer.

Who could doubt the importance in the publishing calendar of the release of the second volume in what could easily become an endless series of Funtown observations? Outsiders may call the essays collected in this book no more than the blatherings of a demented lay-about, but those who have reason to visit Pattaya for their holidays or the sense to make it their permanent home know differently.

For those with a genuine interest in all things Pattayan, this book is the only guide they need, apart from the other one. Khun Pobaan’s precise and sometimes painful observations of life are the only true public record of the unique form of civilisation to be found on the Thai eastern seaboard. Each essay is cleverly planned to take as long to read as it takes the average reader to drink a bottle of cold Leo beer, so the book is not designed to be finished in one sitting.

You get the picture. For those with a borderline masochistic need to know what life is like in Thailand's Extreme City, The Pobaan Papers is an omnibus of the other two books.