I used to assume there was at least some basic level of intelligence and cognitive function required to make it all the way to Pattaya from a foreign land. After all, you have to book an international flight, get yourself through airport security, board the correct plane, deal with immigration at the other end, and then somehow manage ground transport from Bangkok to your final Puh-Tai-Ya destination. That seems like a sequence of tasks that would require at least a halfway functioning brain. For a long time I genuinely believed there had to be some minimum IQ requirement hiding somewhere in that process. But after watching the endless parade of characters starring in Instagram clips of fights, group brawls, and crime in general who manage to arrive there every single week, I have started to revise that theory quite dramatically. The place attracts an astonishing collection of knuckle draggers, fugitives, drunks, oxygen thieves, mugs, muppets, industrial strength bell ends, and every other variety of wandering idiot from the UK, Europe, the US, India, Russia, the Middle East, and anywhere else that sells airline tickets. Some of these blokes look like they struggle to operate the zipper on their suitcase or even put on an airplane neck pillow correctly, yet somehow they have successfully navigated international travel and landed themselves on Soi Buakhao with a cold beer in their hand and a well-ridden slapper on their knee. So maybe the real requirements are much simpler than we thought. A passport helps. A credit card also helps. A prescription for Viagra probably does not hurt. The ability to shout “well hello beautiful” every fifteen seconds in a bar is clearly essential. A heroic tolerance for beer before 10 AM is useful. The confidence to chat up a ladyboy without realizing it is a cock in a frock seems almost mandatory. And above all, the unshakeable belief that every girl half their age (or less) who smiles when they saunter by has fallen deeply in love with them in the first thirty seconds. First place "Handsome Man" contest winners, the whole lot of them. When you view it through that lens, it becomes fairly clear that IQ probably never played much of a role in the journey over to the melee in the first place. My bad. 😄