Gosh. No posts on my blog for over a year. Now it is resurrected in a slightly different form: New for 2020 it's...a sonnet a month. This will last for as long as I can manage. To kick things off and set the tone for what might follow, here's one about belching cows.

To Burp is Human; to Eructate, Bovine
To dairy cows the news comes with a thud,
Providing much for them to ruminate:
For ages they have blithely chewed the cud,
Yet now we lay our problems at their gate.
While human halitosis can spell death
To moments of romance when love is near,
At least when we exhale our torrid breath
It’s not death for the actual atmosphere.
Across our verdant meadows cows may range,
Dispensing methane as they puff and wheeze,
Yet we can’t sense the climate or its change
In air-conned delis where we buy our cheese.
Bucolic pleasures, vital to our past,
When claimed by hordes of humans cannot last.

One of the perennial topics of conversation among the old expat codgers who do such a good job of propping up the bars of Pattaya is being ripped off. No-one likes to be taken for a ride.

Do Westerners get charged more for things than locals? Do they cheat us because we’re rich and stupid? Do they short-change us? Do they inflate their prices for the slightly larger, paler customer, reserving the discounts for his somewhat smaller, browner equivalent?

Discuss. Then have another beer and discuss again.

The topic can provide nutritious conversational fodder between bottles of ice-cold San Miguel Light. The theory is quite reasonable: you would perhaps expect such practice to be commonplace. But the experience is otherwise. Actually, the old codgers admit, it doesn’t happen that often.

‘Funnily enough, it doesn’t. Another San Mig, please. Manao krap.’

When I send Mrs Pobaan, a brownish and somewhat diminutive person, into a place of business to check the price I have just been quoted, she invariably comes out with the same figure. What’s sauce for the gander is sauce for my little goose, if you will excuse the romantic flimflam.

Mathematical skills not being very finely honed in these parts, you’re as likely to be long-changed as you are to be slipped too few banknotes. The codgers shake their heads in wonderment and take another swig.

I am surprised by how often I am offered a discount on a purchase even after I have agreed the higher price. In our local pet shop, the chap always rounds up the change he gives me. Perhaps I look as if my need is greater than his.

In Pattaya, the street vendor, the market-stall holder and the shop keeper are fair-minded, honest folk who play clean. They may be at the narrower end of the economic wedge, but they want to improve their lot by honest means.

That agreed, the codgers then turn their attention to a practice that Westerners here hate with a universal passion: official dual pricing. Enter one of Thailand’s magnificent national parks, or queue for tickets for what’s known as a ‘visitor attraction’, and you will often find that there are two prices for admission. The price for foreigners can be ten times that for locals. At national park ticket offices they try to conceal this fact by quoting the local price in Thai numerals—figures which are rarely used in other contexts—which foreigners are not meant to understand. You want to keep the lambs calm as they queue for the slaughter.

Expats hate this duality; many Pattaya residents of my acqaintance refuse to go to venues which espouse the practice, on principle. To the Pobaan mind, if the asset in question belongs to the nation—eg, a national park—then there is an argument for offering a discount to a Thai national. After all, he does own the place.

But this argument cannot be made to apply to commercial enterprises such as privately-owned parks and gardens, where dual pricing, the codgers agree, is much closer to racism. Whites ฿300; browns ฿40, simple as that. Some places allow foreign residents in at the local price, on presentation of a local driving licence for example. In these cases the practice is not racist so much as ripping off the tourists. And who cares about them?

A recent experience reminds me that the other glaring example of sharp practice in Thailand is provided by our private hospitals. While you are safe from exploitation by people at the leaner end of the economic scale, at the richer end you are likely to lose your shirt. Hospitals here are the killing fields of financial exploitation. Enter one of those glass-walled medical atria and you are unlikely to leave until your wallet has been anaesthetised, slit open and emptied before being neatly sewn up as you are delivered in a wheelchair back to your car.

Kuhn Pobaan, as regular disciples of this column will be aware, is the very picture of health, but I have had recourse, in the last few years, to yield once or twice to the surgeon’s knife. We’re not talking triple bypasses here; not even roundabouts.

For the first one, I attended Hospital 1 (I won’t name it in case they sue me for libel), a well known Pattaya establishment. Having agreed the price for the op, I was given an invoice which showed a considerably higher figure.

‘Extras,’ I was told.

I quickly exited Hospital 1 and had the operation done at Hospital 2. I’m not being taken for a mug. Fast-forward a couple of years and we get to last week, when again I need some minor medical attention. I go back to Hospital 2 and agree a price for the intervention with the doctor.

‘Does that include extras?’ I enquire, being now an experienced patient.

‘Yes, everything; maximum price,’ the smiling physician replies.

We agree a time for the surgery. I am escorted to the cashier’s window. The bill comes to considerably more than the agreed sum.

‘Extras,’ the fierce cashier informs me.

I get on the phone to the doctor. ‘You said no extras,’ I complain.

‘Oh, that’s the hospital for you,’ he explains.

I walk out. It’s the principle of the thing. Who likes being cheated by a bunch of rich medics, desperate to pocket your cash and depart for the golf course?

Does anyone know a good hospital where, as at a squid stall in the market or a pork barbecue on the street, they won’t try to rip me off?

A bit of culture this month - a sonnet about a monkey. The photo was taken at a hotel in Lopburi which is adorned by enormous simian statues. Anyway, here's the sonnet.

A pocketful of genes is all it took,
A few lines from the chapters of a book,
A stroke of fortune that we can’t take back,
To make me man and you a mere macaque.
Yet we are so alike in some respects,
Your hands are just like mine, as are your eyes.
Your gaze is steady as your mind reflects
On why you lost, and I received the prize.
The jungle was your home but now the street
Provides you with an easy place to eat.
Are you alright with being what you are?
Do I think that my species went too far?
Which is content, the monkey or the man?
Define ‘content’, if anybody can.

I am indebted to my friends Michel Gauthier and Ben Charlier for the following translation of that poem. Michel did the main translation and Ben the subsequent editing. It's not easy to translate verse and I'd be interested to have your comments on the results.

Il a suffi d’une pincée de gènes,
D’un traité, de quelques lignes à peine,
D’un hasard en somme que rien n’inverse,
Pour que moi je sois un homme et toi, toi.
Qui nous regarde nous voit semblables,
Tes mains, tes yeux sont aux miens pareils.
Ton regard est calme mais ton esprit médite
Ta perte et pourquoi moi j’ai eu le prix.
La jungle était ton gîte, puis ma rue
T’es devenue une demeure hospitalière.
Es-tu heureux de ton sort de macaque ?
Crois-tu les hommes aventurés trop loin ?
Qui de nous est content, le singe ou l’homme ?
Dis-moi si tu peux, que veut-dire content.

Now here's a challenge. Below is another sonnet on a Thai theme. If there are any linguists out there who would like to have a crack at translating it into the language of their choice, I'll post their efforts next month. We'll keep the zoological theme; this one is called 'Elephant' - in Thai, chang.

They named two islands after you, my friend,
A brand of lager and a pier for boats.
Albino babies you must always lend
The king, though young white mice or even goats
Would strain royal budgets less than elephants.
Dear Chang, my friend, great processor of plants,
Your power when shifting tons of teak with ease
Impresses more when I see how you strip
The finest morsel with just trunk and lip.
Though making you play football is to tease
A noble beast who’s way above all that,
You make the circus ring your habitat.
The question, like your presence in the room,
Is whether tricks can save you, Chang, from doom.

There are more where that came from, in fact I'm working up to a slim volume packed to bursting with sonnets about Thailand. Start saving now. More news as it comes in...

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of his faculties, when vacationing in Pattaya, will take a walk on Walking Street.

The Pobaans happen to have a vacationer staying with them right now. As is my habit with visitors from other lands, I give our guest my standard lecture on the history and economy of Pattaya, my intention being to orientate him in the cultural milieu, to help him latch on to the zeitgeist and allow him to make sense of observations which otherwise might lead to confusion. Why, for example, when meeting a mutual friend for a drink and conversation last week, did we find our party unexpectedly expanded to four persons, the interloper being an attractive lady none of us had laid eyes on before? Each of my friends thought she was with me, while I knew she wanted to be with any one of us, it didn’t really matter. It took an obvious shortage of drink to pare our group back down to three.

As such things go, the lecture is brief, but no less useful for all that. Actually, if you’re interested, it wouldn’t take a moment to run though it for you here.

Oh you’d like that? All right then. The lecture is normally delivered in two sections with a break in between for informal discussion and the serving of tea and biscuits. Perhaps you could ensure such refreshments are available where you are before we proceed.

Quiet please.

The History and Economy of Pattaya.
Part 1. The History of Pattaya
Town with beach + GIs = Fleshpots.

Two sugars for you? I’m afraid we have no Hobnobs; a chocolate digestive perhaps? If we could now return to the auditorium...

Part 2. The Economy of Pattaya
Fleshpots + Tourists = Cashflow.

Please leave by the doors clearly marked ‘Exit’.

After the lecture I suggest to our guest that, for the practical work, we take a walk on Walking Street one evening.

‘I don’t think so.’

Our visitor is a single man. By all accounts he has red blood in his veins and can stand upright, at least at the start of an evening, so has all the characteristics usual in the sort of human who would usually jump at the chance of a stroll on Pattaya’s most famous thoroughfare.

‘I’m quite content as I am.’

Mr Pobaan’s mouth drops open like the doors of a roll-on roll-off ferry. How can being quite content as you are be an argument against experiencing the wonders of Walking Street? Would the same chap decline a free visit to Easter Island, the Taj Mahal, Sydney Opera House, the Pyramids, Machu Picchu, the Great Wall of China or the Sir John Soane Museum on the same grounds? These are sites that represent significant levels of achievement by our species. They transcend contentment by expanding the mind and elevating the soul.

Just like Walking Street.

‘No, I’m fine.’

He’s beginning to remind me of Father Stone, that famously boring character in an episode of Father Ted, whose main script line was ‘I’m fine’ repeated so many times that you began to hope it wasn’t true.

I clearly need to go further, so in desperation I snatch a quote from the archway through which people pass to enter Walking Street from the Beach Road end: ‘But Walking Street is the Passion of Colourful Paradise,’ I say, trying to hide the embarrassment I feel in reciting these tragic words.

Our guest sees right through that. ‘All the same,’ he says, ‘I’d rather not bother.’

After a few more days of teasing him with the experiential possibilities being missed, he eventually capitulates and we cadge a lift to Bali Hai, with a view to wandering north along Pattaya’s most notable traffic-free avenue.

We play a game of pool in one of those cavernous bar areas where small groups of girls scream at you to come to their little pens. They remind me of gangs of schoolgirls at a netball match.

Grasping the nettle, we then proceed to Baccara where we sit at the bar and drink a beer. The feet of the dancing girls come quite close to our bottles, but my friend doesn’t flinch. I’m sure he can see the platform soles because he moves his bottle a couple of times to prevent an accident, but he doesn’t look up at the rest of the dancers.

‘There’s another stage upstairs,’ I point out. ‘It has a glass floor so you can see up their skirts.’

‘Really?’

We finish our beer more quickly than is strictly healthy and return to the street. Next stop is the Iron Bar. This is a big barn of a place, which doesn’t make for an intimate atmosphere, but it does allow for some trapeze work by skilled performers. One of these combines soaping herself with swinging about on chains attached to the ceiling. There are times when she is passing overhead that suds fall from her person and fall on my friend.

He doesn’t seem impressed. A glistening, naked woman is looping the loop a metre or two above his head and he’s not impressed.

‘She must get quite clean by the end of the evening,’ he remarks.

I realise that the evening calls for desperate measures, so we repair to the Windmill. How could anyone fail to be impressed by the enthusiastic staff in this justifiably-renowned Pattaya watering hole? The girls put on a good show and I occasionally have to remind myself of my duties as a guide. But the ice in the heart of my friend refuses to melt.

‘They look bored,’ at last he announces, though I think he is projecting his own feelings on to him. I give up and we walk out.

As we make our way back home, I ask about his reaction to the best that our funny little town has to offer.

‘I just wish I were fifty years younger,’ he says, quite meaningfully, I think.

Veteran readers of these trivial bits of drivel will readily recall the construction of the pond at Khao Talo Towers, which a few years back transformed an innocent patch of grass into a lush aquatic ecosystem to the delight of every thirsty, and indeed hungry, bird in the neighbourhood. Well, it’s still there and is now inhabited by two large terrapins, innumerable fish and a meringue.

A meringue?

That’s what it looks like. One of those ones you buy in pairs and put whipped cream in between that then oozes out down your chin.

Made of egg white.

Got it now?

Let’s move on with the story.

I say to Mrs Pobaan, ‘There’s something floating in the pond that looks like a meringue. Do you know what it is?’

From what you know of the angel in my Angel Delight, you’re probably not that confident that Mrs Pobaan is the right person to turn to with such a technical question. Mrs Pobaan has been known to become indignant when she has screwed a 12-volt bulb into a 220-volt socket and got nothing but a dull pop. She seems determined to repeat the exercise with another 12-volt bulb when I explain to her that this is sure to result in a similar outcome. No amount of classwork on the essential nature of the volt can dissuade her from such actions. In the end, the solution we reach is that Around Here, Mr Pobaan Does The Electrics while Mrs Pobaan Makes The Moo Krapao.

Someone that doesn’t know an amp from a watt is unlikely, you’re thinking, to be able to explain the appearance of a meringue in a pond, but I have more faith in the value of experience gained in one field of human endeavour when applied to another. Mrs Pobaan, you see, is a jungle girl, the Mowgli of South Thailand. If there was a choice between a liana and walking to the end of the street, she’d swing there. A gnarled tree trunk v. a staircase? She’d shin it. By all accounts she was brought up in the jungle in conditions of some poverty. Consequently, she knows how to extract nourishment and water from the least promising of environments.

When we walk in Thailand’s mighty national parks, as we occasionally do, it is not uncommon for her to identify one parched-looking tree as a good source of drinking water, if you know where to cut it; or another dangerously poisonous-looking bunch of berries as great for elevenses. I defer absolutely to her judgement in matters of venom. If she tells me not to touch a certain centipede or to steer clear of the back end of such-and-such a toad, then steer clear I surely will, lest it project some vile liquid into my eyes. A jungle girl survives on applied knowledge of this type and Mrs Pobaan’s continuing presence among us is testament to her wily understanding of the perils to be encountered in the natural world here in the tropics.

Thus, having made my enquiry, I am expecting chapter and verse on the meringue, in particular, perhaps, its culinary possibilities.

‘A frog,’ she says.

‘A frog?’

‘Eggs.’

‘Eggs? Where?’

‘Inside.’

‘So where’s the frog?’

‘Gone.’

‘How did it make the meringue?’

She shrugs. That’s the kind of thing a jungle girl doesn’t need to know.

‘How could a frog get out of the pond?’

Mrs Pobaan looks nonplussed. In retrospect I realise that this is because the two of us have in our minds different characterisations of a frog. I’m thinking of a big, green, lumbering European frog that couldn’t climb out of our pond if you gave it a marble staircase. Mrs Pobaan is thinking of a lithe, lissom Asian frog with sticky feet, which can leap from leaf to leaf like a small glossy Tinkerbell and could spring effortlessly from the pond like a bejewelled amphibian freerunner.

‘No problem,’ she avers, ‘for a frog.’

‘What will happen to the meringue?’

‘The turtles are gonna eat the eggs for sure. Wouldn’t you?’

I’m not that sure that I would, though a thought rushes through my mind that the jungle girl in Mrs Pobaan is only waiting for a second meringue to appear before slapping the two together around a filling of whipped cream.

How to save the eggs from certain oblivion? I have to think fast. Adopt them; it’s their only chance.

I place the meringue in a glass bowl on the dining table. In there I can see its underside and, after a day or two, I notice tiny creatures dropping down from the fluffy white billows like a squadron of paratroopers falling from a cloud.

Tadpoles. The Pobaans hug each other like proud grandparents.

The days pass. Now, tadpoles are diffident creatures who don’t readily share their emotions, but the skittish way they swim around their little world makes me think they’re reasonably happy.

After a couple of weeks, they grow legs back and front, absorb their tails and, before you know it, they’re little frogs.

‘What are we going to do with all these frogs?’ I ask lamely, realising that I have taken on duties for which I am not equipped. Somehow I have become involved in the natural world of the tropics, but on the wrong side. I am used to being the victim of its various appetites. I have been eaten by its leeches and mosquitoes, stung by its bees, threatened by its monkeys and lacerated by its thorny bamboos, but never before have I been placed in the position of life-giving nourisher to its infant members. I feel empowered, yet humbled by my responsibility.

Where should I deposit my young charges? What receptive glade should I seek for their release? How can I ease their transition from the comfort of captivity back to the savage natural world? What further aid can I offer my froggy offspring to increase their chances of survival when they leave my care?

But nature is ruthless, life in the jungle is tough and jungle girls are not sentimental.

‘Stick ‘em back in the pond,’ says Mrs Pobaan. ‘They were beginning to stink out the dining room anyway.’

You’re not supposed to lust after a nun, but they have to make an exception for Audrey Hepburn because she was so gorgeous. Besides, she was only dressed up as a nun; underneath she was still Audrey Hepburn, and that's what mattered most.

They also have to make an exception for my teerak Mrs Pobaan because she has gone to Lopburi to be a nun and, although she’ll be a nun, I’ll still be her husband so it’s practically my job to continue to lust after her. Anything less would be weird. Strictly speaking, she’s going to be a lady monk, but it would take a keen observer to tell the difference.

‘How long will you be gone?’ I ask gently as my beloved prepares to depart.

Mrs Pobaan is notoriously bad at formulating meaningful plans that stick. This is a failing she shares with all known members of her family. There’s some gene which their chromosomes all harbour—the Total Disorganisation Gene is its technical term. We might be spending the evening with Mrs Pobaan’s family, underneath her mother’s house, where everyone sits. There may be an earnest discussion about what we’re doing tomorrow. It is decided that the matriarch, plus daughters 3 and 5 (that’s Mrs Pobaan by her maiden name), son 2, grandchildren 4 and 6 and Mr Pobaan will all travel by pickup to Chumphon to buy provisions from Tesco. We will leave at 8am sharp. I go to bed with this prospect in mind. At 8am the next morning I am showered and dressed and ready to embark.

The place is dead.

‘When are we leaving?’ I ask a passing family member.

‘Where to?’

‘Chumphon. Tesco. Provisions.’

‘Oh, Ma decided not to go so you’re taking a couple of nephews to the waterfall instead.’

‘Now?’

‘No, about 10 o’clock. Is that alright?’

‘Sure. I think I’ll go back to bed for a couple of hours.’

With this as a typical family occurrence, I am not expecting an accurate prediction about the trip to the nunnery, but nothing prepares me for the response I actually get: ‘I’ll be away for four or six days,’ the cream in my meringue replies.

‘Four or six? You’re sure it won’t be five?’ I quip wittily, testing my wife’s command of arithmetic.

‘No, it can’t be five because I have to go for an odd number. Four or six.’

My mouth drops open. I’m like a hippo expecting small birds to pick at my teeth. ‘Four and six are even numbers,’ I point out warily.

‘No, you don’t count the first day. Four is three days and six is five. Odd numbers. See?’

Well, explained like that of course I see. Who wouldn’t?

‘What exactly do you nuns get up to at the wat?’ I ask, mildly expecting it to be all pillow fights in the dorm, midnight feasts and a lot of talk about Line, handbags and silicone, those three abiding passions of the distaff contingent. ‘How do you spend your time?’

‘We’re gonna get up at three o’clock in the morning, play till six; then feed the monks and clean the temple until 12. At 12, we play till three in the afternoon, shower, wash clothes until six, then play again from six to ten. Sleep on a mat. The next day, same.’

I knew it. These nunneries are basically holiday camps in which women can get away from their husbands and other worldly phenomena, and have a good time.

‘There seems to be a lot of playing. What kinds of games do you play? Volleyball or just Facebook?’

‘Not playing, praying,’ my lady monk responds indignantly. How could you think playing?’

‘No, I was thinking about something else.’ Lady monks. Praying. Of course. Stupid me.

I drop her off at the Mo Chit bus, which leaves from outside Wat Chai in South Pattaya. We’re so early that proper male monks are still plying the streets, picking their way carefully, in bare feet, through the vegetable waste discarded from the market. They don’t appear to be very happy, but then I suppose they’re trained to look like that. As I leave, Mrs Pobaan calls out, ‘Don’t forget to eat food.’

‘Food? Right. Got it.’ To my wife I am a small helpless child who has to be reminded to breathe. It’s her life’s vocation.

On the Friday, I receive a call from some zonked-out zombie. I take her through some simple security questions before acknowledging that the caller is Mrs Pobaan. She’s coming back on Sunday.

‘Right. I love you.’

‘[Grunt.] I’m not allowed to talk about that.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m a lady monk.’

‘Of course. I love you anyway.’

‘[Grunt.]’

‘I miss your plump, soft breasts. I miss…’

She hangs up. Apparently, you can’t say ‘breasts’ to a nun. Even Audrey Hepburn would have drawn the line at breasts.

With another two days of fending for myself to go, on Saturday I lunch at the Tropical bar on Soi Khao Noi with a number of gentleman friends. My phone rings. It’s Mrs Pobaan, the sweet chilli sauce on my spring roll and the starch in my wimple.

‘Please come to pick me up now.’

‘Now? Where are you?’

‘In South Pattaya, at Wat Chai.’

‘Well, actually I can’t. I don’t have the car and anyway I’ve had two pints of cider.’

‘I’ll have to get a taxi.’

‘You said you were coming home tomorrow.’

‘Yes, well.’

‘You’ve only been gone for five days. Take off the first one that doesn’t count, and that leaves four which is an even number. I’m pleased you’ve come home – don’t get me wrong – but aren’t you supposed to be a nun for an odd number of days? Will your merit still work if you bend the rules like that?’

‘I got so tired from not sleeping and all the playing, that I decided to come home. I’m going to count the first day, so that makes five days which is an odd number, so no problem.’

‘Playing? You mean praying?’

‘Yeah, whatever.’

There’s no building so incongruous in Pattaya as the Sanctuary of Truth.

‘Conga what?’

Incongruous. It means out of place.

‘It’s a nice place to visit though.’

Mrs Pobaan is right, it is a nice place, an extraordinary place, a haven for contemplation. Which makes it all the more strange that it should be located in Funtown, an ugly mass of urban sprawl not known for the quality of its architecture or the purity of its buildings’ purpose.

The Sanctuary of Truth, to the Pobaan mind, is a structure of breath-taking ambition. It resembles a temple perhaps, or a cathedral, though this is a building without priests or services. On the many occasions that I have been there it has been largely without a congregation, too, suggesting that the place is among Pattaya’s most secret treasures.

It’s amazing to have something like this, in a tourist town as popular as Pattaya and so often to find it so nearly empty. What proportion of tourists or even residents ever comes here?

‘Oh, lots of tourists,’ says Mrs Pobaan. ‘You often see people there.’

Well, some, granted, but as a proportion of the throngs who pile off the coaches at Bali Hai to follow their guides down Walking Street? A few percent at most, and yet the Sanctuary of Truth is a stunning achievement that could hold its own in any city in the world, and here it is in humble Pattaya.

The building is made of teak or some similar giant hardwood. It is roughly conical in shape, supported by a square of four wings, and soars to a high peak held up by massive timber columns. Throughout, the wood is carved with human and animal figures from tiny dancers to a massive triple-headed elephant, our old friend Erawan. The effect from afar is of a structure that is reaching up, stretching up to pierce the sky. A visitor from Mars might think that the Sanctuary is not so much a building as a vehicle of some kind, poised for take-off.

On my many visits there, I am always struck by the building’s location. After a short walk through trees it suddenly appears, down there on a headland projecting out into the sea off the old fishing village of Naklua. This must surely be the most valuable piece of real estate in contemporary Greater Pattaya, surrounded on three sides by waves, cooled by a constant sea-breeze. Imagine the value of this plot to a hotel group.

Visit the Sanctuary of Truth when the sky is blue or has the merest wisps of cloud. Gaze up at the wooden volcano itself, the white fortress walls that enclose the site and the blue beyond. You can’t help pondering what the ‘truth’ thing in its name is all about.

The whole edifice is surely religious in intent, though not narrowly denominational. If it’s Buddhist, then it borrows most strongly from the Indian tendency. The imagery is predominantly Hindu, revealing the origins of Buddhism in what is now Nepal. Despite the intricate carvings, the Sanctuary is relatively plain, unpainted and, inside, uncluttered. There are none of the dragons, ancestors or vivid paintwork familiar in Chinese Buddhist buildings. Mr Pobaan is not known for his religiosity, but in this case it doesn’t matter. No-one here is selling me any kind of bunkum. The building just stands there, on the coast, without advertisement or statement. Its agenda is whatever you want to make it. The only clue, which is yours to ignore, is the name.

‘What do you mean “out of place” anyway?’

Well, the Sanctuary is conceptual, it’s entirely to do with the mind and the spirit. Its function, as far as it has one, is to inspire us in any way we want, perhaps to consider the higher things of life, like peace and understanding. I take ‘truth’ as short-hand for the importance of these things.

‘Seems like a good place for that.’

People don’t come to Pattaya for peace and understanding; they come for a blowjob.

‘Sssh! Don’t say that word in here.’

Why not?

‘Buddha.’

I read from the brochure: ‘Materialistic pleasure is a superficial physical and external joy. True happiness is found in intrinsic spiritual pleasure.’

That’s a challenge to the very idea of Pattaya, which was founded, if ‘founded’ is the right word, on the commercialisation of (lowers voice) sex. People come to Pattaya to make or spend money, to dispense or receive materialistic pleasure. I expect to find neon lights in Funtown and loud music and girls running across the street in dressing gowns and ladyboys telling me I’m handsome, but not a building that has no connection with physical gratification and absolutely no profit motive.

‘The tickets aren’t cheap.’

But they’re still building the place. Because it’s officially a building site, everyone has to wear a hard hat. Despite working on the sanctuary since 1981, there is still an army of joiners and wood-carvers in residence. They have to be paid. They have to buy the wood. In places they’re doing new work, marking out and chipping away at the few plain surfaces remaining, but in others they’re already repairing and replacing bits which have weathered or decayed. The place will clearly never be finished.

It’s hard to work this place out. Maybe the clue is in the name. Maybe the Sanctuary is not as out of place in Pattaya as it seems. After all, it’s in places like Pattaya that truth needs a sanctuary.

‘Why?’

You mean why a sanctuary?

‘Yes.’

Do you know what sanctuary means?

‘Of course, dummy. Every Thai knows that much English. Don’t be crazy. Like sanctuary much, kawp khun maak.’

No, teerak, that’s ‘thank you very much’, with a th. I stick my tongue between my teeth and blow: th. A sanctuary is a place of safety, a place where you can go for shelter or protection. I’m thinking that truth probably needs a refuge in Pattaya more than in most places and so building this magnificent edifice here isn’t so incongruous after all.

‘No?’ Mrs Pobaan looks relieved that I have reached a point of resolution. ‘Where do we give the hard hats back?’

If someone with a clip-board and a serious expression stopped you in the street and asked you to imagine you were standing on a ladder, you’d probably scream and dash into the nearest 7-Eleven, pretending that you needed new batteries for your electric toothbrush.

That’s what I’d do, anyway. But if you did do that, when you peeped through the window to see if it was safe to go outside, you might see some other hapless citizen talking quite willingly to the guy with the clip-board. Some people must talk to them; after all, they interview a thousand folk in each of 155 countries across the world every year.

Did you guess who they are? No, not Jehovah’s Witnesses, it’s the United Nations. To be exact they’re conducting a survey, as they do every year, to find out how happy we all are. They publish the results in the World Happiness Report. It all started because the UN decided that happiness might be a better measure of national success, or well-being, than wealth as measured by GDP, which is what everyone normally frets about.

The 2017 report has just been published and Norway won.

The point of the ladder thing is that there are ten rungs on the ladder, the top one of which represents the best possible life you can imagine, and the bottom the worst such life. The question is: where are you standing right now?

‘I’m in front of 7-Eleven.’

‘No, sir. Where on the ladder, metaphorically speaking.’

‘Oh, I get it. Let me think. The fifth rung.’

Most people say the fifth rung. If you look at the data there’s a peak at five for most countries. That means things are so-so; can’t complain. I don’t have a yacht with gold taps and I’m not married to Keira Knightley, but on the other hand I’m not in hospital with two broken legs having just been run over by three kids on a Suzuki Smash. That’s basically what standing on rung five means.

In Norway, more people seem to imagine they’re married to Keira Knightley than in any other country, and they can jump out of the way of snowmobiles, so they rank as the happiest folk in the world. By chance, Mrs Pobaan and I actually found ourselves in Norway a couple of months ago and, while outbursts of jollity in the street seemed relatively rare we did detect a general atmosphere of ‘we Norwegians are pretty good at arranging our lives; there’s not much we want that we don’t already have’.

Except of course the sun in winter, water that’s actually a liquid and alcoholic drinks that humans can afford to buy. In Norway you’re not even allowed to buy proper wine in a supermarket in case it drives you mad and you go walking outside without wearing a sleeping bag. Wine connoisseurs have to go to a government shop that’s hardly ever open and makes you feel like a criminal dipsomaniac for just looking through the window. Still, this doesn’t seem to stop Norwegians imagining themselves pretty high up the ladder—half way between the seventh and eighth rungs, actually.

In Thailand, we’re not quite that excitable. We get to see the sun all year round, and have cheap booze, but we don’t let these advantages go to our heads. When we get stopped in the street we say we’re on the sixth rung, headed for the seventh. That makes Thailand the 32nd happiest country in the world, one place behind the French, who have always been hard to please, and way ahead of all our immediate neighbours: the Malaysians are 42nd, Vietnamese 94th, Myanmarians 114th while the Cambodians, who I always thought were quite a cheerful bunch, are sulking at a miserable 129th. Have none of them been to Angkor Wat?

To the Pobaan mind, 32nd out of 155 is a very creditable score. Frankly, we wouldn’t want to be among the top ten countries where a high score for ‘happiness’ comes perilously close to ‘smugness’. And we wouldn’t want to be as morose as our geographical neighbours who remain so grumpy despite having the same climate, resources and so on as us. Just to rub it in, Thailand is actually getting happier. Over the last decade or so, the Land of Smiles has been the 19th fastest climber up the contentment scale. By the way, as if to validate the whole survey process, Greece has been one of the quickest fallers into despondency over the same period. So there you go.

What is it that makes Thais so happy about their lot? Luckily, the UN probes deeper into the national psyche than simply asking about ladders. On most of their measures of what explains the Happiness score, in 2016 we ranked somewhere above the middle—for ‘Healthy Life Expectancy’, ‘GDP Per Person’ and ‘Social Support’, we were placed between 31st and 67th.

It’s the next two measures that make the difference.

First ‘Trust’. The UN uses this measure to mean the perceived absence of corruption—the assumption being that corruption is a source of national unhappiness. So, how far do we trust those in authority in Thailand? Care to guess?

Yes, everyone gets a point. On the Trust measure, Thailand came 146th out of the 157 nations that took part that year. We are clearly hacked off with those in power having their noses in the trough and their fingers in the till and would be a lot happier if they behaved properly.

So, with three measures in the top half and one at rock-bottom, what is it that puts the smile in the Land of Smiles? This will make you glow with pride, yet I doubt if you can guess it.

The final UN measure is…da daah… ‘Generosity’.

When Thais think about their lives, what makes them happiest is the generosity of their fellow man. On the Generosity scale, Thailand comes second in the whole world, with only Myanmar society considered more giving. It’s generosity that makes Thailand such a happy place.

This blog has been brought to you without charge, as a gift from Khun Pobaan to a grateful public. Don’t let the country down—pass it on.

This way for the Pobaan Tour.

Oh, you already have a ticket. Please wait while the rest of the group assembles.

Now listen up. Welcome, everyone. This evening’s walking tour begins here at Bali Hai, the romantically named but malodorous main place-for-tying-up-boats in and out of Pattaya—more a pier with extensions than a harbour. Pattaya has no ambition to rival Hongkong or Sydney, or indeed any other coastal town you may have heard of. Here, it’s just squid boats, the odd speedboat and ferries to Ko Larn.

That is not to say we are not proud of our town. Up there to your right observe our prominent PATTAYA City sign, which may remind you of the one on the hill above Hollywood, CA, except their letters don’t light up and change colour as ours do. But we’re that kind of city.

On our left, observe the majestic sweep of the waterfront as it arcs round to join Pattaya beach. Really, it’s the waterback, since what you’re looking at are the rears of the ocean-side businesses along Walking Street.

Out in the bay, marvel at that unusual ship, actually a restaurant. Illuminated from stem to stern with LEDs, controlled no doubt by some clever microchip that sends waves of changing colour down its length. What’s that you say? It looks like a disgruntled cuttlefish lying in wait? Yes, I’ve often thought the same myself. Notice its name picked out in blue neon Chinese characters, suggesting that its prey consists of groups of indiscriminate diners from that great country.

Now, I shall lead on with this old car aerial to which I have cleverly attached a small teddy bear to help you locate me in a crowd. You’ve seen other groups with small teddy bears? I appreciate the potential for confusion. My advice is to get to know my teddy bear, and don’t get lost. Once separated from our group, you could be kidnapped and sold into… well, I’ll just say anything could happen. And in Pattaya, anything means anything.

Let’s go.

The first point of interest here on the left is an establishment called ‘Crazy Russian Girls’. Standing outside I spy four girls who may well be Russian and, quite possibly, crazy, though I doubt whether they’d turn away a mad Ukrainian if she looked the part. It seems strange to come all the way to Asia only to seek the company of Cossack women no matter what their mental condition but perhaps visitors from the Motherland are more comfortable when the tariff is recited in their native tongue.

No, sir, we won’t be stopping here. Home-grown entertainment is less expensive. But I see you are keen to experience bars of that kind. Let us hasten to a go-go, the jewel in the crown of the Pattaya night-time scene and, rendered precisely as it is here, very much a Thai invention, along with kick-boxing, Red Bull and fighting fish.

Well, yes, madam, some have cited the exploitation of women amongst the go-go’s less savoury characteristics, but how can you express an opinion on the topic unless you have seen for yourself? I see your husband agrees.

There’s copious choice, but shall we try this one? No, I do not receive a commission. I chose this one in the spirit of encouraging creative bar names. If you look up to the fascia you will note it is called The Pheromone Club. Subtlety is not a Funtown quality.

Everybody settled? Close enough to the stage? Good. Give your drinks order to the lady in the ironed shirt. No, not that one, sir, that’s a bikini.

Notice the young women on the stage, the ‘dancers’, are wearing the same, except for those who have dispensed with the top. I am told these less modest performers are paid more. Or possibly they’re feeling the heat. Notice they take the precaution of looping their bras over their shoulders, the more convenient to recover them quickly should the wrong policeman come through the door.

Why wrong? I mean one who doesn’t have an investment in the bar.

Perhaps you have seen enough? Dancer No 195? Being your guide, I don’t generally have time to notice what’s happening on stage, but I agree she is a beautiful young woman. Silicone? Yes, there’s too much of it about. To the Pobaan mind authenticity is more attractive than magnitude. No, I didn’t mean you, madam. Yes, sir, I agree that No 195 is entirely natural, but we must be moving on. Pobaan Tours operates a dynamic one-drink policy and we have another bar to sample.

We’re just waiting for you, sir.

Before we go into this next bar I should warn you that the performers here wear a lot less than in the last place. You’d prefer not, madam? Well, talk it over with your husband and perhaps we’ll see you inside.

Now, gather round. Have a look in the dark corners where the fun is less raucous than here in the middle of the bar. It is in such out-of-the-way nooks that these hopeful country girls get close to finding a Western husband. Close tonight; tomorrow night, who knows? Yes it is like a David Attenborough nature film isn’t it, sir? I’ve often thought that myself. Don’t look now but over there you’ll see a white haired Asian gentleman, so doddery he could be on day release from a twilight home. I said don’t look now. Too late. Luckily he hasn’t noticed.

A girl is sitting on his lap, as naked as the pink piglets she has often seen born in her Isaan village. She is bouncing gently on his lap, perhaps to keep him alive by stimulating his circulatory system.

Here, ladies and gentlemen, at the climax of our tour, is proof of a cultural phenomenon, if proof be needed, of the infiltration of the mobile device into every aspect of our lives. See, oblivious to the pretty naked girl gyrating rhythmically on his lap, the old man is transfixed by his smart phone, which he is holding against her back.

Messaging his wife? Calling for a taxi? We’ll never know.

And that concludes our tour. Oh, you’d like us to leave you here, sir? And you, sir? Well, ladies, if you like to follow my teddy bear back to the coach.

This afternoon Mrs Pobaan and I take a leisurely stroll, down from the giddy heights of Khao Talo Towers to the cool plains of lower Banglamung. It’s so peaceful in the country. We amble along a rural lane, cars whizzing past so fast and close we can feel the slipstream from their wing mirrors. That’s OK. Just because I’m not in a hurry doesn’t mean other people don’t have places to go and important people to meet.

The road is featureless. It is lined by walls topped out in broken glass or by rubbish-strewn scrubland. A pack of seven dogs lines up behind us to bark us out of their patch. Suddenly a long stretch of wall is broken by an entrance. We come to the centre of the break and look in. It’s like Xanadu.

Between a pair of massive entrance towers the drive leads down to a high building topped by a sharply pitched roof. Below there’s a wide loggia with white curtains wafting in the breeze. We can make out chairs set out as for evening cocktails. In the middle of the wide entrance is a gate lodge, deserted. On one side, a small skinny man dressed in black is calmly sweeping leaves.

‘Can we take a look?’

‘Sure, no problem.’

We advance down the hill. The chairs in the open area are not arranged to receive cocktail drinkers after all. On closer inspection, they’re all higgledy-piggledy. Some are piled on others. The cushions are faded and ripped. There are dead leaves on the floor. The bar is deserted. Small tables are stacked, upside-down on each other. The place hasn’t been used for quite a while.

‘It looks like it used to be a restaurant,’ says Mrs Pobaan.

‘Or a bar,’ I suggest, thinking of the ice-cold beers that must have been served to the ghosts who now occupy these chairs.

‘What was this place, a hotel?’

‘I have no idea. Let’s have a look.’

On a table are dusty Perspex boxes, each containing a white architect’s model of a house. You can have this style, or this. This can be your dream home. Just pay the deposit.

Beyond the loggia a number of raised pathways cross a system of formal ponds in which are healthy looking lilies and, by the look of the swirling surface, large fish. The paths lead to a wide open area in which there is a huge pale blue swimming pool.

‘Look at the size of that!’

It must be thirty metres long; clean blue water but with fallen leaves floating about. I think it must be abandoned, but there’s a current running from the side.

‘The pumps are still on. Someone must live here.’

We forge on, tracking paths that wend through two-storey buildings with large dark windows. We peer inside. Furniture pushed aside, curtains pulled down and carpets strewn with debris. We find a toilet block; gentlemen and ladies both once catered for. Now their signs have fallen from the walls; gentlemen and ladies lying on the floor. There’s no water in the elegant taps. Someone has chucked stuff in the loos.

Around the pool are salas, covered areas each with a table and a few chairs, but no people. We stop at one. There are no plates on the table, no wine glasses, no tea service, no book turned face-down to keep the place of the reader. The people for whom this place was designed have not just gone in for a dip, they have not been called away by nature. They were never here.

We press on through the vast complex of buildings, expecting to hear a peal of laughter or a chatter of conversation. It’s silent. Behind, roads wind around scrub-land expectantly, designed to deliver people to the houses that were never built. But look, there is one house, an impressive two-storey building with a steeply angled roof behind thick white walls. In front of the two-car garage are two cars from the executive section of the salesman’s brochure. Next door we see the beginnings of a similar dwelling—walls and roof beams, but no glass in the windows and no tiles to keep out the monsoon.

‘They only built one house,’ says Mrs Pobaan.

‘One and a half.’

‘No-one’s working on that one.’

‘No.’

For a visitor from somewhere else this place would be extraordinary, hard to comprehend, an architectural freak-show. Yet here in Pattaya I have to report that, despite the other-worldliness of the place, it’s not that unusual. If you drive around the outer suburbs of Funtown, you quite often encounter the same phenomenon—an impressive boundary wall, the entrance buildings of a palace and, just inside, a show home to moisten the taste buds of anyone seeking the good life, with money to spend on the ultimate residence, the family home, the retirement refuge, the bachelor pad.

Usually, the windows are smashed, the door is broken down and the place shows all the signs of unauthorised use. People have had picnics, built fires and despoiled the place with their various wastes. And that’s it. The place is left for nature to reclaim. There are weeds between the paving stones and mould on the walls. A bird screams out of the lounge as you enter.

I’m not a property developer and I don’t know how the business works, but I cannot imagine that it’s good business to invest what must be large sums in the infrastructure of a new village without some plan for how the thing will be funded to completion. These places seem to me to be built entirely on spec without the marketing that’s required to draw residents in to get them finished.

As we leave we stop to talk to the groundsman who is still sweeping leaves from the unused driveway. He has a tattoo of an Apache on his arm.

‘What is this place?’ asks Mrs Pobaan.

‘A village,’ he says.

‘But there are no houses.’

‘There’s one,’ he says, pointing. ‘Someone’s renting it at the moment.’

‘But what of the restaurant and bar, the swimming pool and salas, the tables and chairs, the empty building plots with no houses?’

‘No-one came,’ he says.