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Pattaya, Part of Yak, Let me Yarn!


toxjia

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I am a Chinese, making my mind to do start a hostel business in Pattaya since April, 2017. I have to say, the drama never ends since then on, I will post all my stories anonymously, but I think it would be fun for everyone to take my stories as reference of doing business here. 

Several facts I have to mention here, I do Social Media business in mainland China, "Weibo" is just a Chinese version of "Twitter", in where my account has 9 million fans. My original purpose was to extend my business aboard and to bring my fans great exotic experience in Thailand. Also I had several "Friends" in Pattaya. These factors make me think the hostel business in Pattaya. 

To say everything chronologically, my last trip in Pattaya was just to do some research and business observation. Then I talked to a "friend" called "A" (nick name), I had known A since 2015, the moment I was here with my best Chinese friend Ning, we were looking for a "massage service (with a happy ending)”, and he was the person come to serve, as being gay, I always put health as priority, so the moment A came, I checked him by asking him to take off clothes. Obviously, he got Syphilis. I told this to Ning in Mandarin, Ning told me just sent him away and pay him a fee for coming is ok, no need him to do any service further. So I politely use google translate saying: "hi, we are very sorry, Ning needs to have a Video call with his sister, so let me bring you out, and I want to talk something with you". 

As we, Chinese, always use a reserved way to show our politeness, I treated him a cup of coffee and paid him 500 B for his coming, and embarrassedly told him my concern of his getting syphilis, he looked so calm to know this, and after other chit chat with google translation, he went home. We added each other wechat ID, and kept in touch, after 2015, he told me he had cured his syphilis and became healthy, I double confirmed whether he got HIV, he told me the test showed negative.

In 2016, we met again in Pattaya just as friends. He was grateful to me, cuz he treated his disease on time, otherwise syphilis could go fatal. Then coming to 2017, in April, I came to Pattaya and met him again, cuz he is one of not so many Thai people I’v known in Pattaya, I told him I want to do hostel business here and promised him, if he could help me, I could give him 1% of our share. Just the next day, he quitted his massage job immediately, which totally surprised me. I asked him for several times that, are you sure you need to quit your job, actually, you can help me translate in your free time, no need to quit. He replied for thousands of time that it was fine for him. Then drama showed on. 

The 1st event, at that time, we looked for so many places to find the best location, then we found a building near Siam@Siam, the rental was affordable, and the location was just perfect, but when come to the contract, the owner offered us a contract template in Thai which she signed it with the previous lessee. I told A that we need to find a lawyer in Pattaya, who can help me check and modify the template to protect our rights. Then we went to a lawyer office near South Pattaya Road, I asked A to help me ask how and how much the lawyer charge. Honestly speaking, as I was young before, I quite understand how A’s feeling changes from being a bottom level massage boy into a very important interpreter between 2 countries’ business. At beginning, what A did was just to interpret my words into Thai and interpret English back. But the moment when we were in the lawyer office, he started his own single show time, he ignored my words and started to navigate the conversation seemed he was so experienced. Smart me! I used voice memo recorded at beginning when we stepped into the lawyer office. After A's leading the show into 45 mins, the lawyer started to make copy of the contract template. During the 45 mins, I shut my mouth up since A ignored me for several times, they played their Thai conversation so vividly like a Thai TV opera. I suddenly stopped the lawyer to make copy, and I repeated my words clearly to A again about: CAN YOU  HELP ME ASK HIM HOW AND HOW MUCH HE CHARGES? Seemed A finally started to understand English, he told me 5,000 B/ Hour after he got the answer from the lawyer. Then I told A: Please tell the lawyer, Thank you so much for his time today, I will come back to him when I confirm the price with my partner. A was embarrassed and told this to the lawyer, the lawyer's expression frizzed and asked me to pay for him 5,000 B before we leave. I stayed in calm, and A seemed totally lost his way, he strugglingly squeezed his words out: Oh, I think we should pay the lawyer first, then we can leave. I peacefully said, my business principle No.1, I never pay before I confirm the price. Since we stepped in the place, he didn't mention anything about his charging, and you kept ignoring my request, so I would just leave, I won't pay any. Then I got up and started to walk out. The lawyer rushed to the door and locked it right away. We held our breath, and I told A to call police, the lawyer didn't stop A's calling, seemed he knew how to manipulate the police to make punishment on us. When the police come, I asked A to say everything in short: 1st, the lawyer didn't tell us the price at beginning, 2nd, I have the whole record of our conversation, no single word he mentioned about the price. The moment the policeman came, he had a very intimate greetings with the lawyer like old friends, after A interpreted my words to the policeman. He glanced the lawyer, the lawyer crossed his arms around his chest in a sudden silence. Then he reluctantly bursted out his unpleasantness, “now, move your ass out, QUICKLY!”

After we got out, A and me kept silently for a while like we both escaped from the devil in hell. I said: A, what I hope from you, you just need to translate what I said, but don’t lead the role. You are inexperienced in business, even you are Thai, common daily life mode and business mode are totally different. He emotionally shouted: Ok, Ok, I am very experienced, in the future I just do whatever you want to do, Ok?

Since the 1st event of lawyer’s hustling, the seed of unwillingness of helping me germinates rapidly in A. As a business man, my goal of reaching the destination always comes the first, since A can help me, I don’t really care the past, everyone starts from a noob. I can easily let anything unhappy go. But as cultural and personal difference, A overanalyzed and magnified my words to a level of insulting his dignity. When I realized the outcome of my “insulting”, it has been quite late and irreversable. 

To be continued…

Edited by toxjia
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Hopefully, with your Chapter 1 experiences, you will: 1. Look for another Thai business partner/interpreter/facilitator.  2.  Shop around for a lawyer with more reasonable rates and better language skills.  Look for one that you can communicate with yourself in either English or Chinese.   There are lots of lawyers in Pattaya.

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48 minutes ago, newnative said:

Hopefully, with your Chapter 1 experiences, you will: 1. Look for another Thai business partner/interpreter/facilitator.  2.  Shop around for a lawyer with more reasonable rates and better language skills.  Look for one that you can communicate with yourself in either English or Chinese.   There are lots of lawyers in Pattaya.

There was lawyer? I walked away when he was prattling on about the guy with the clap.

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14 hours ago, newnative said:

Hopefully, with your Chapter 1 experiences, you will: 1. Look for another Thai business partner/interpreter/facilitator.  2.  Shop around for a lawyer with more reasonable rates and better language skills.  Look for one that you can communicate with yourself in either English or Chinese.   There are lots of lawyers in Pattaya.

Yes, Thank you very much for your suggestions, actually things get on the right track so far. that's why write them down here is somehow for a public study and discussion. Many thanks for your suggestions still.

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14 hours ago, NanLaew said:

There was lawyer? I walked away when he was prattling on about the guy with the clap.

haha, thank you to point out my prattling on, but actually my mentioning the syph-boy in detail was just to bring the readers a clear clue how he would thank me back when I came to Pattaya next time. and how the thank came into hatred in the end. Sorry to spend much ink in writing him. I will try to improve my writing skill next time. 

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Chapter 2, Contract & Break-Up

 

In last Chapter, I mentioned about my “friendship” with A, and his inexperience of dealing with lawyer nearly caused my loss. 

 

One day after A and me met the lawyer hustler, A passively showed his temper in a lot of ways. I have seen this kind of girly mood in the past so often, even I played this to my ex. But, as a famous Chinese saying: “don’t play tricks in front of an old fox”, I knew so much how to poker-face around more than him. As base on the basic logic, I needed him so far to do the help to achieve my goal, I should play around with his temper instead of pissing him off not until I could find a better one to play his role. So I held up my patience and dressed on my shamelessness, adopting the soul of SMILE in this country, nicely spoke that: A, I think you are very smart, actually I have to say sorry to say you are inexperienced before, but compare to most of people who are just new to business, you are quite capable and professional. I think we just need to move on, you will get more practice like we are in the team fight. 

 

One important rule in management, “Sweet words work much better than complaints, even though, you know the person you are talking to is just a noob”.

 

His carelessness melted somehow, and I asked him to use iPhone Speech Dictation to input all the words in the paper contract into text. Many thanks to his hard work and google translate, I get the most points in the Clauses in the contract. To be honesty, I doubt how dare can the previous lessee sign this contract with the owner. Let me just mention several unfair points:

  1. the lessor can go to the building at any time
  2. the lessor can not allow the lessee to do any change in the building
  3. the soon the contract is due, lessor will take away the deposit without returning back to him
  4. lessee should pay the fire insurance to the building, if the fire burnt the building, the compensation will be given to the lessor, and the lessee should pay double the price of the compensation to lessor at the same time.

These are just a few of unreasonable Clauses included in the contract. And the last person who had signed the contract was an Italian guy. After I did some interview with people live near this building, we got shocked. 

  1. the Italian guy lost a lot of money by signing the contract with his lessor. 
  2. The lessor annoyed the Italian guy by coming to the building too often and seriously interfered his business.
  3. The lessor shut down the electricity supply just because the Italian guy parked his motorbike in front of her washing machine (the lessor is an old lady, she lived just opposite the building)
  4. Once a customer in the building came back at 1am, she called the police to arrested him for slandering that he was stealing her goods.

Actually, what happened in the past was far more dramatic than what i could remember. I knew these kinds of information by asking the neighbors around. There were 2 massage shops and 1 711 store nearby, by patronizing the 2 massage shops, the personality of the old lady was well depicted in my mind. And the owner of 711 told me that he even put a gun in front of her to back her off, as she tried to charge him money just because some of the customers in 711 might park their motorbikes temporarily in front of her building.

 

After I had collected so many information about her, I asked A to go with me again. Before I reach the climax of this chapter, I want to introduce S and R, S is my business partner since beginning till right now, and R is his Thai boyfriend. They used to have a restaurant here, some drama between R, S and me too, but I will talk this in the future. Because we collected these information together, after that S refused to keep contacting with the old lady, cuz he thought it was a wast of time. But I told him to hold on, actually, we just do acting, pretend that we want to rent her building so much, pretend that we want to negotiate to push the step forward, the point of doing this is just to get some real life practice with some aggressive, astute, selfish Thai business people in Thailand. To be honest, as Chinese average IQ ranks the top 3 globally struggling it with Japan and Korea, I had dealt with many untrustworthy Chinese business men who were your friends and always said yes at beginning but stabbed you from behind. So I really want to have a game play with those in Thailand to see how different they are and how commonality they share to both be douchebag. Then I told her to arrange a meeting, and asked her to bring her lawyer. 

 

On that drizzle day, she, with silver white hair coiled on her head catching the rain drops like the spiderweb does, setup so well prepared trap for us to jump in. Her melodious voice with middle pitch tone made the spiderweb play the music of Requiem. And me, dressing casually with slippers and silly shorts, armed myself with tactics learnt from the Chinese epic art of war book ’Three Kingdoms’. Her professional business smile made her so ready to hunt. But she didn’t expected my shamelessness played like a nuclear bomb which cleaned all her well prepared commercial dialogue away. 

 

The moment I met her, I shouted: Ah~~~~ Ma Ma Ma, Sui ~ Sui ~ Sui (Sui, means beautiful in Thai), I acted like a stupid ladyboy fan the first time meeting her super star. She was shocked and suddenly became speechless, she had no other choice but to kindly smile. I knew she must asked thousands times about : <deleted> with this stupid Chinese! Noob!

 

Her spiderweb seemed got a big blow from the wind. It was shaking, but she tried to calm down and bring the conversation into her control again by asking how did we think about the contract. This somehow put her together again.

“Oh, Mama, love you, Sui, Sui, Sui, oh, the contract was here”, then I took the contract I had modified in the case out, and brought it in front of her, the first thing she must see were the dense red lines on the paper. 

“Those the clauses I had changed”, after hearing this, her face turned serious, just like the spider suddenly found out the prey sticked on her web was much harder to start the first bite. 

 

She turned back to bring the contract to a person standing behind her, then we found out there was a guy with suite and tie, maybe she was just too shinny since we start, I just noticed the man. He was around 50 years old, and the lady was in her 70s. Then she spoke Thai to A, A translated : She said, the original contract was drafted by the guy, and it was better to let him review.

 

As I was working for a private equity company long time ago, and I had reviewed many contracts in my past with each deal leading more than 2 million dollars transaction. So a contract shit of House Rental was quite like a piece of cake for me, why I wanted to find a lawyer in Thailand, because I would like to hear something more than common contract rules. But since the lawyer turned me down, and originally I would not sign the contract with her, so this day’s meeting really didn’t need any lawyer involved. Whatever happened, we won’t sign. 

 

After he checked the red line one by one, I saw his face rapidly pulling a long face. During the time he was reading, A kept talking Thai with the old lady. And I took out my iPhone, and turned into selfie mode, and said: Mama, you are so beautiful, let’s take a selfie. 

 

Without her permission, I suddenly stood up, and hug her from her wrest, she was uncomfortably annoyed but got no choice, she must think this must be a stupid Chinese business man’s culture. Taking selfie before signing the Contract? LOL, still she had no other choice but to squeezed her bitter smile out again and again. Seemed the spider’s poison not only did nothing harmful to the prey, but also the prey was quite enjoying drinking it. 

 

Yum, what was the taste? Like Tom Yum Koonn with rich flavor of taste. LOL.

 

I became more and more aggressive by showing her more intimate body language, that was somehow the advantage of being gay, she knew you won’t really harass her, well, even I was straight, how could I stretched my hand out to a 70 years old grandma. 

 

After the hunting game turned into a selfie show, the spider turned out to be a stripper, her being unarmed made her somehow disappointed to herself. The negotiating skills she got in her past seemed so old school and outdated.

 

After the last kiss on her cheek, I turned back to my seat with poke-faced enjoyment. The lawyer seriously looked at her and submitted the contract to her. And spoke Thai. Afterwards, I heard from A, A told me, he said to the lady like this: the contract the Chinese guy drafted was somehow professional, the soon we signed the contract, we had nothing ambiguous to request more charge on the electric and water bill, and the return of the deposit of the building was clearly narrowed down in one conditions: if lessee had paid the bills on time, at the last day of the contract, the deposit of the money should be fully returned. And after you signed the contract, you can’t go to the building any time by your wish. And further more, the lessee drew an area as an attachment of the contract, saying the lessee could allow his customers to park their motorbikes inside the drawing area, and lessor has no right to bother.

 

At last, the lawyer told the lady: they actually know the contract very well, and everything was written in a way stating clearly about the premise of this clause put into action. Seemed, everything was fair and reasonable. So I think you can sign this. 

 

After she heard this from the lawyer, she suddenly took the contract in his hands away, and sent him to buy her a red bull in 711. Then she spoke Thai to A, saying: Whatever change about the contract, this building is very popular, and a lot of people came to look at it, if you want to rent it, better you guys hurry up. And we can arrange more time to get the modification of the contract accepted in both our sides. So, better you could pay a deposit first, then I would not give further possibility to other people to come and check. Seems the building is 100% reserved by you guys.

 

Instead of letting A translate for me, I typed all the words in google translate. Saying: Beautiful Lady, you are the most graceful woman I had seen in Thailand so far, and because we have a principle before we did business in Thailand that: we never pay any money before we sign the contract. So we can wait until the modification of the contract got accepted by both our sides. But if during this period, someone decided to rent here from you, I was very happy for you. So we will give up renting here. But let’s get the speed up to check and go through all the modifications in the contract if you think we still have possibility to cooperate. 

 

The soon I turned my phone screen to show to her, I turned my head back and let the other 3 people get ready to leave. And after I turned my head back, her expression showed her being not resigned to accept the result. 

 

After we left, she called us for 2 times, then we lost in touch, on 19th April, was the Songkrang Festival in Pattaya, I armed myself with water gun, the soon I jumped out in front of her, I shouted, : Ma Ma, so beautiful, happy new year, we love you so much. And I pumped the air into the water gun with my maximum strength, and sprayed the WATER right into her face. She suddenly lost her grace, lost her superior, lost her arrogance and lost her ignorance of cheatiing innocent people. When the drowned rat raised her head up, her awkward bitter smile delivered an unspoken way to say “<deleted> YOU” . Well, I got it. And I left with the words: Ma Ma, we love you. Hope you will have “good luck” in 2017~~~~~~

 

I ran away like a naughty brat. The spray on her face, was for the innocent Italian business man, was for the owner of 711, was for the 2 owners of massage shop.

 

On 27th April, A told me he went to massage near the building, he got the news that, actually the lawyer was her boyfriend, em…. a sugar Mommy in deed. And she was very disappointed with her lover not being on her side to protect her rights, she splashed all her anger of being fooled by a Chinese boy on the lawyer, and they BROKE-UP. …

 

Now, so far the story about the 1st landlord ended up. The drama of the sylph-boy still kept on, his stable performance in our translation during the meeting made him feel he is somehow crucial to me. One day, he seriously talked to me that he think he should get more share than just 1% from me. 

 

To be continued….

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1 hour ago, toxjia said:

...

On that drizzle day, she, with silver white hair coiled on her head catching the rain drops like the spiderweb does, setup so well prepared trap for us to jump in. Her melodious voice with middle pitch tone made the spiderweb play the music of Requiem. And me, dressing casually with slippers and silly shorts, armed myself with tactics learnt from the Chinese epic art of war book ’Three Kingdoms’. Her professional business smile made her so ready to hunt. But she didn’t expected my shamelessness played like a nuclear bomb which cleaned all her well prepared commercial dialogue away. 

.. 

To be continued...

 

 

 

Very interesting insight how things are negotiated in Pattaya.  You write like Guy de Maupassant, I'm itching for next installment! 

 

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Very interesting insight how things are negotiated in Pattaya.  You write like Guy de Maupassant, I'm itching for next installment! 
 


Thank u, i am so flattered to hear ur compliment about my way of writing is like Master Maupassant, as English is my 2nd language, i am still struggling to find out the best way to express my meaning accurately and at the same time could hold enough fun in reading, LOL. Was tough and goofily funny...

My favorite book was "Great Gatsby", i found a lot of fun of reading it, and i quite like the rhetorics in the book.


Sent from my iPhone using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app
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26 minutes ago, toxjia said:


My god, i just know here actually has a lot of forums to post... Em, would be good to post somewhere else too?


Sent from my iPhone using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app

Its fine as is, If you post the same in another forum that will be closed as it is cross posting which is not allowed :smile:

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14 hours ago, toxjia said:

haha, thank you to point out my prattling on, but actually my mentioning the syph-boy in detail was just to bring the readers a clear clue how he would thank me back when I came to Pattaya next time. and how the thank came into hatred in the end. Sorry to spend much ink in writing him. I will try to improve my writing skill next time. 

How do you say 'water off a ducks back' in Chinese?

 

Or this...

 

776.jpg.fee166277841891d242d4e2a53adb63c.jpg

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3 hours ago, Rimmer said:

I am not sure if I should move this to Health forum, Business forum or general or leave it here,  Just joking :biggrin:

How about Farang Pub? There's always a quiet bunch in the corner there waiting for the latest Telegraph crossword.

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A post in Chinese has been removed, please see the following extract from the forum rules:

 

English is the only acceptable language anywhere on ThaiVisa including Classifieds, except within the Thai language forum, where of course using Thai is allowed.

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Today, I was very busy, and i was much lack of sleep recently, so i decided to post the 3rd Chapter tomorrow. From the beginning till now, I felt what made me somehow successfully escaped from the bad situation were those business principles in my mind, they set a great bottom line for what kind of risk I could take or not. Before my next installment, I want to share my theory about management with you guys. And it is open to discuss.  The theory is called : Science & Art. The definition of these two words may not fully refer to the concept we all have known, but very close to.

 

Allow me to explain.

 

Actually all things in this world perceived by human, in my experience, can be put into 2 categories. One called Science. One called Art. One may say it should be called objective or subjective, but the deeper you understand my explanation, you will find the subtle difference.

 

For "World of Science", it contains facts and known and unknown mechanism behind the fact. For example, "A" is a letter; Sound needs media to transmit, etc. Then there are 3 basic standard in "Science" world, they are: Right, Wrong, Unknown. For example, the current Thailand National flag has 3 colors is right. Whether people can find evidence of alien on the Earth is unknown. 

 

For "Art", it is more subjective. For example, whether you like iPhone 8 or not, or the reason behind it, it varies from people to people. Then there are still 3 basic standard in "Art" , they are: Like, Dislike and No feeling.

 

When you have a clear concept about what is "Science" and what is "Art", you will find that a lot people make mistakes in looking for a right or wrong conclusion in the issues of Art. For example, don't try to find it right or wrong of Thai people not wearing slippers at homes. Basically, it is nothing with right and wrong. you can say it is their culture, or you can say, most of they, them just like to walk bare feet at home.

 

The special feature between "Art" and "Science" is that, "Science" shows commonality in perception of all humans, where as, "Art" shows the diversity. 

 

So, when you do a cross cultural business or start a conversation, try best to look for the commonality in people or single person, but not for the diversity. The soon you find some potential problems in the conversation may fall into the "Art" world. Please don't continue unless you know it may make him happy instead of being angry.

 

Why I said this before my Chapter 3, cuz this kind of thinking is a key solution to most of problems I met here, even China and Thailand have a lot of cultural difference. 

 

And if you find a person he is somehow useful to your business, but at the same time, he likes to complains and judge people or even judge you. What you have to do is try your best to "Science - lize him", it may be part of brain manipulation or art of convincing, but if you can't "Science-lize" him, his "Artistic" state may cause you a lot of trouble.

 

Further more, if you can bring happiness, fun, satisfaction to his "Art", it shows you really have a high EQ, you can make more people love you, which will make them do things for you happily and efficiently.

 

All in all, if you understand my concept of "Art" and "Science", you should know, the 2 key principles in business or management are: 

1) find commonality as much as possible in people who you gonna cooperate with, make them talk the way more base on fact and strong logical way.

2) Say some irrelevant and unserious things to make him feel happy and satisfied, even sometimes, you know you are lying.

1) is to make him follow your commend and cooperate with others in a less "Artistic" way, which can reduce the risk of getting trouble.

2) is to make him feel comfortable to work with or be with.

 

If some one had seen a Real TV Show, Survivor, there used to be a guy called Russle. He plotted a story about his saving a dog in a flood very 1st time he met his team mates, he suddenly won some girls' trust in his group.

 

I have to confess, that to be a business man, one should be astute like a fox. But to say it Artistically,  A mature businessman should know that in his way of his chasing the "Scientific" money numbers, he should not abandon the good virtue of "Love, Faith, Royal, Justice, Honesty" in humanity. But my standard doesn't represent the others. So, my mentioning here is useless somehow, but I just feel one should still bare this in mind once becoming a business man.

 

And especially, after you have read all of my chapters, you will learn a lot of skills of "Art-lize" and "Science-lize" people to achieve your goal, just just just just just, plz plz plz plz, artistically speaking, don't do bad things. 

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