Mobi’s - The New Bar on Lake Mabprachan

[emilymat]

Are you going to make a living by 'ghost writing' the new owners blog.? Otherwise, what are going to read?

[balo]

Good luck in the future. We will miss your daily updates. .

[Upnotover]

Good luck to you Mr Mobi, I did enjoy your bar, and even from time to time some inappropriate groping, not initiated by myself of course.

[MAZ3]

I met you only briefly last month,but wish you well and hope the new owner carries on as you've started.

It made a very pleasured change from the normal bar life and I hope you continue to enjoy yourself.

Cheers

[boldface]

Good luck to you Mr Mobi, I did enjoy your bar, and even from time to time some inappropriate groping, not initiated by myself of course.

Why were you groping Mobi?

[tuvia]

Well done on the sale and good luck to you Mobi. I always thought that had your place been around Soi Bukhao or some such spot rather than the darkside you'd have been a great success with your daily updates drawing a larger group of regulars. Best wishes.

[Rimmer]

You worked hard building it up and making it a success in the short time you owned it, that's something only a few people could accomplish. Well done and good luck in your new ventures.

[MeMock]

New owners first mistake is changing the name. I hope the rest is smooth sailing for all parties. Well done Mobi for getting out like you have!

[casualbiker]

New owners first mistake is changing the name. I hope the rest is smooth sailing for all parties. Well done Mobi for getting out like you have!

Yer. I have never understood that..

[Mobi]

New owners first mistake is changing the name. I hope the rest is smooth sailing for all parties. Well done Mobi for getting out like you have!

I guess that everyone has their own ideas and business rationale and if the new owner plans major changes, then maybe he feels it would be better done under a new name.

Although I speak against myself here, I also believe that in most instances it is foolish to change the name of a bar or pub that is already well known, and God knows I have promoted the 'Mobi' name enough over the past 6 months to last a life time.

However, I was the one who changed it from Nana Bar to Mobi's, but before I did so, some of you may recall that I had a long running thread to discuss and decide upon a new name - this in itself helped to promote the new name.

Nana bar had been run into the ground and had literally zero business when I took it over, and that was the main reason I decided to change the name.

If it was already doing well, I would probably have left the name as is.

But we all have our own theories on this and there is no 'right' or 'wrong' answer.

I wish the new owner every success under his new banner of 'Nifty's Bar'.

Good on yer mate....

[petermik]

New owners first mistake is changing the name. I hope the rest is smooth sailing for all parties. Well done Mobi for getting out like you have!

Yer. I have never understood that..

The new owner is from Aus I believe.................that explains why

[Mobi]

I have just published my weekly blog which records the final days of Mobi's bar owning career, and a not few 'Tales From a Barfly', which I hope may surprise and amuse in equal measure....

http://www.mobithailand.com

Happy reading.

[Mobi]

Well done on the sale and good luck to you Mobi. I always thought that had your place been around Soi Bukhao or some such spot rather than the darkside you'd have been a great success with your daily updates drawing a larger group of regulars. Best wishes.

Strangely enough there was a constant stream of guys from Pattaya who came out to see the bar and say hello. They had read about it either on Thai Visa, or mainly my blog, and they were determined to check it out.

Unfortunately, it is quite a trek out for a few beers and very few ever returned - despite promises to the contrary, not that I blamed them.

Thank you for your good wishes.

[Mobi]

And it's goodbye from him.....

The bar is sold, and soon the name of Mobi’s on the Darkside, will disappear into history...

And so, sadly, will this thread fade away and become part of Thai Visa legendary archives.

Before it vanishes for good, I would like to thank one and all who have contributed to this thread and especially for the kind and helpful and constructive comments that have been made over the past 6 months.

I even acknowledge the contributions of the ‘trolls’, as they undoubtedly added to the cut and thrust of the thread and provided not a little amusement.

Without all of you, good and bad, this thread wouldn't have been the resounding success that it was and achieved with a 'hit' count of over 58,000 views.

By way of an epilogue, I thought I would post here the two articles that I posted on my blog yesterday which covered the final days of ‘Mobi – the bar owner’.

(My apologies to those folk who have already read this on my blog. It won’t happen again…I promise )

The deed is done!

Fare thee well; Mr Ting Tong, Screeching Lady, Singha John and Mobi's Bar....

The bar is sold and the lives of Mobi and Lek can return to something approximating normalcy.

How did it happen so quickly?

It started last Monday. I was at home, not feeling well and planning to take a day off from the bar when I received two phone calls in quick succession. The first was from an Aussie who was drinking at the bar and told me he was interested in buying it.

We made an appointment to meet at the bar the next day at 5 p.m. to discuss it further.

I then received a call from an ex-bar owner, who I knew slightly. He had just sold his last bar/restaurant and told me that he was now interested in buying my bar.

I should add that this particular gentleman, (I use the word loosely), had also called me a couple of weeks ago when I had first put the bar up for sale.

On that occasion, he was quite rude to me on the phone, telling me to turn my TV off, (it wasn’t on, and saying my kitchen was ‘shit’ and almost ordering me to lower the sale price. I had agreed to meet him that night at the bar 7 p.m. but he failed to show.

Now, here he was, calling again, claiming it was me - Mobi - who had failed to show on the previous occasion, which was utter rubbish, as Lek and I had sat there, at our bar, waiting for him, but he failed to turn up.

Anyway, not wishing to turn away any potential buyer, I agreed to meet him the following day at 3 p.m. - 2 hours before my appointment with the Aussie.

Later that evening, Lek called me to go to the bar as she had a technical problem with the music, so I gave up on having a night off and went back to work.

It must have been about 11 p.m. when who should arrive at the bar but the rude, ex-bar owner who I had agreed to meet the following day.

He was clearly drunk, (I later learned that he was well gone when he was drinking at my bar in the afternoon when he had called me), and I soon realised that this wasn’t going to go very well.

‘What’s all this shit about you being ill? Whatsamatter with you?

‘None of your business.’

‘Well you don’t LOOK ill, I think it’s a bunch crap.’

His attitude was extremely aggressive and he used some kind of drunken logic to accuse me of lack of respect for his ‘opinion’ when I told him the kitchen was not ‘shit’ as he had claimed on the phone.

‘My kitchen is not ‘shit’, ‘I told him.

‘That means you have no respect for my opinion…’ he shouted back at me.

‘Listen Mobi, you don’t know me very well, do you?’ he went on,

I remained silent.

‘I’m gonna tell you something – when we shake hands on this deal, my word is my bond and the deal is done. You can then take the bar off the market.’

He was becoming ever more aggressive and started to ramble on in a highly confrontational manner and I made up my mind then and there that that there was no way I was ever going to sell the bar to him.

‘Let’s just end this discussion now, shall we? Because there’s no way we are going to a deal on my bar,’ I told him’.

‘What’s’ the difference if we do the deal today, or tomorrow afternoon?’

‘No, you don’t understand, I will never sell you this bar, not today, not tomorrow, not ever’…

He became enraged and uttered a string of expletives at me and told me I didn’t know who I was talking to and that I was now his ‘number one enemy’.

‘You stupid c.nt,’ he screamed, ‘I have bought and sold more than 20 bars, and you are so stupid. You know nothing about selling businesses….’

I looked at him and laughed out loud, agreeing that I knew nothing about buying and selling businesses….

(One of my chief functions during my last few years of work was heading up a corporate mergers and acquisitions division, buying and selling a wide variety of businesses, both big and small; but bars? well, not really...)

‘You’re laughing at me! You’re being sarcastic! I can tell! You have no respect for me you c..nt’

‘And you have no respect for me!’ I shouted back. ‘If you did, you wouldn’t keep calling me an c..nt’

He could hardly control his rage and I thought he was about to explode. He was a big man and at least 15 years my junior and I wouldn't have stood a chance if he decided to bop me one.

‘Go on then, punch me in the face if it makes you feel better, but there’s no way you are going to intimidate me into selling you my bar if you were the last person on earth,’ I screamed at him , in a somewhat brave but undoubted foolhardy manner.

He glowered at me, but remained seated and I decided enough was enough.

I got up, packed my papers and computer put them in the the car, (for safety), and went and sat down at the back of the bar and waited for him to leave.

As I went to the car he shouted at me, ‘You coward!’

What I didn't tell him was that at that moment, there happened to be two plain clothed cops in the bar, as we were having a little problem with a Thai gang who were playing pool at the back, but that’s another story. (Read about it in today’s ‘Tales from a Barfly').

I started to tell Lek what had happened when the obnoxious drunk paid for his drink and left.

Thank God.

*

The next day I met up with a very friendly and polite Aussie, and I could see that he was very serious about buying my bar. He was already aware of my asking price and we concentrated on all the peripheral details.

He told me he would think about it overnight and we agreed to meet up the next day when he would hopefully make me an offer and finalise terms. He also warned me that he would probably want to move on ther sale very quickly.

The next day, (Wednesday), his Thai business partner arrived from Bangkok and we sat down again in the late afternoon to ‘talk turkey.’

He made me a low offer, which I refused point blank, but within ten minutes we both moved a little and we had an agreement.

He wanted to take over ownership at midnight on 15th October (that day) so he pulled out his lap top, went online and made the agreed transfers to my bank account.

I watched every step of the transactions, ensuring my bank deatils werer entered correctly and noting that once the transfers were made, his bank reflected the amount in his new bank balance.

We agreed to count the booze stock the following morning and he would give me an additional cash sum equivalent to the value of the stock.

I had a number of agreed tasks to complete, including making sure that the faulty TV was repaired and back up and running. I also undertook to copy over my entire music video collection onto his hard disk.

My last night at Mobi’s proved to be quite memorable as we had one of our best nights ever – sales wise – no doubt boosted by the new owner's friends, who all came along to toast his new purchase.

The late stragglers didn’t leave till well after 3 a.m., at which point we had to cash up, clear the till computer and pack all our things up for the very last time.

After less than 3 hours sleep, we then had to rush back to the bar to complete our various 'completion' undertakings

The TV repair task turned into a major nightmare, but we managed it in the end, after two visits to the repair shop, and me almost breaking my back getting it back up onto its mountings over the bar.

Then I had to do a crash training course with the owner’s Thai business partner to teach her how to use the till computer and also how play the music vids through a lap top.

So it was an extremely stressful and tiring day, and when I finally made it home in the evening, things were not good between Lek and I.

I was totally exhausted. I hadn't eaten all day, and my mood was not good, particularly as the bank transfers for the bar had not yet been credited to may account. To make matters worse, the new owner had temporarily run out of money as he had exceeded his daily limit at the ATM and could pay me for the bar stock.

Lek and I had a terrible row – the worst ever – and at the time of writing, we are only just getting back to normal. I don’t wish to say what it was about, but it wasn't about money,

Although Lek said she wasn’t tired, she slept for about 15 hours straight, but I couldn’t sleep well and once again I had to get up early and return to the bar to complete my agreed tasks and collect the cash for the stock.

On this occasion, I was paid the cash and when I returned home later that afternoon I found that one of the transfers had reached my bank and am pretty confident that the second will soon follow.

(He had a limit how much he could transfer in one day so he had to do it over 2 days.)

The new owner is in the process of changing the bar name to ‘Nifty’s Bar’ and my bar owning career along with the ‘Mobi’s Bar’ brand, is at an end.

I intend to remain in touch with some of the folk I met at the bar as during the past six months, I have made a few really valued new friends and I don't wish to lose them.

I've also met a few dick-heads - what else can you expect if you run a bar in Pattaya? But I must say they were few and far between. Somehow we managed to maintain a better 'quality' of clientèle than most of the other bars around, and the ‘dick-head’ brigade tended to take one look at Mobi's and go elsewhere... for which I was very thankful.

But I will miss all the daily adventures and the miss-mash of customers that came from such a wide variety of backgrounds and countries - so many of them with fascinating tales to tell. Some rich, some dirt poor like me, having fallen on hard times after a previous life of relative wealth.

I will miss the friendly drunks, the loud mouthed drunks and the ones that just flopped asleep on the table or scurried to the bushes to puke their guts out. I shall miss all those drunks on bikes who were so far gone that they could barely keep the bike from falling over, let alone drive safely down the road in the middle of the night.

I will miss the drunken lady from next door, who sometimes had to be restrained by the cops top prevent her from harming herself - and others,- yet was back at work the next day as though nothing had happened.

I will even miss ‘Singha John’….

Well no, not really….

Then there are the ladies – those gallant workers who cheerfully do their duty, night after night, from noon until sometimes well into the small hours of the next day– sitting with customers, making them feel happy with their feminine wiles, hugs and kisses. Even during all those years I spent at bars around Thailand, I never fully appreciated just how hard these 'working girls' have to work to earn their drinks and tips.

They entertain each customer in turn with total dedication, until he pays his bill and leaves and then they immediately perform the same function with the next customer and so on for more than 12 hours every day. Always with a smile on their face and always convincing each punter in turn that it is only him that they really like.

But when all's said and done, I did achieve one of my long cherished dreams - of running a bar in Thailand, - and by general consensus, I don't think I made too much of a balls-up of it.

When I bought the bar it was so run down that all the customers – and staff – had deserted the ‘sinking ship’. The bar had no stock and the staff consisted of two lady boys, who were distinctly hostile to all comers and were staying put until they were paid their wages which were weeks overdue.

Over the past six months – right through the low season – we built it back up and managed to break even and even a little more. There was hardly a day when I could say business was really bad, and even during those very quiet days when nearly every other bar around the lake was devoid of customers, there were always a few regulars in Mobi’s.

If I had a bucket list - which I don't - owning a bar would surely have been on it... so job done!

Now it’s back to the ‘writing board’.

The bar-owning chapter in Mobi's never ending story, has been brought to a close.

Edited October 20, 2014 by Mobi

[Mobi]

And here is article no. 2 - the very last 'Tales From a Barfly'

Mobi's Tales From a Barfly

My last week as a bar owner was quite a week.

A strange Scottish Gent

It all started last Saturday when around 11 p.m. a motorcycle taxi dropped off a farang outside our bar and the man stormed in, demanding immediate attention from the ladies.

He clearly couldn't make the ladies understand what he was asking for, even when he shouted louder and louder in a broad Scottish accent.

I happened to be standing nearby chatting to one of our customers and he turned to us in exasperation.

‘Can you help me?’ he butted in, ‘I asked the motorcycle taxi to take me somewhere where I can find a girl for a 'short time'. She must be under 21, and not had any babies. The bastard's dropped me here in the middle of nowhere and driven off!’

My customer and I looked at each other.

Is he serious?

He repeated his demand while getting angrier by the minute. He made no attempt to sit down and order a drink. He just kept on with this strange request, demanding that we tell him where he can find a very young lady, (without a baby and absolutely NO stretch marks), who would go and sleep with him.

I was thinking of bringing Lek’s auntie out – aged about 45, who has 3 kids, and telling him this is the nearest we can come to your specifications, but I thought better of it.

I politely told him that we didn't have any ladies might fit his particular bill suggested he try the next bar along.

He stormed out of Mobi’s and marched into the next bar and made his ridiculous demands once again. Whether or not the ladies understood him was not clear, but he didn’t stay long and soon stormed out and went to the third bar along.

I thought there may have been an outside chance that the third bar might have had something approaching his requirements, but no, once again he was there for less than a minute before leaving, yet again, striding out into the night, away from the three bars

The last I saw of him was walking into a restaurant at the far end of our little strip by the lake.

Whether or not the restaurant, (who have very few customers), offered him one of their young waitresses can only be a matter for speculation.

He disappeared from view, never to appear again…

What a dick-head!

*

Fare thee well Mr. Ting Tong

I have written frequently of a certain German who has long since self-christened himself, ‘Ting Tong.’ (It’s a Thai slang word meaning ‘crazy’).

Last Wednesday, the same night I was doing the deal for the sale of the bar, he was there in full Ting Tong mode

He had been there all day and was well oiled and he kept trying to talk to me when I was busy with the sale meeting.

He finally caught my attention when he told me this was his last night in Thailand as he was leaving to go back to Germany, early the next morning.

‘How long will you be back in Germany?’ I asked him.

‘About six months, I am going to get my pension.’

‘Pension? How old are you, Mr Ting Tong?’

‘I am 46.’

‘How on earth can you get a pension at 46?’

‘It’s very hard…take many months… I have a problem with my neck...’

I didn't tell him that he might have a better chance at getting a pension if he told the Germans he had a problem with his head… but what do I know about German pensions?

He went on to tell me how much he liked me and everyone in our bar and that he would miss us all very much. He must have shaken my hand at least ten times.

He could hardly stand but still managed to stagger over to another table that was occupied by 5 uniformed Thai cops. He insisted on shaking all their hands, while one of the girls called out to him in Thai to be careful when he drove home as he was very drunk.

‘He looked over at the girl, and then at the cops and shouted, ‘Mai bpen Lai – cap die!’ (‘Don’t worry, I can still drive’)

He looked at the cops. The cops looked at him and everyone started laughing – it was so preposterous – a farang who could hardly stand telling the cops he was in a fit state to drive.

Ting Tong stayed at the cops’ table and insisted on talking to them all in his fractured Thai, and to their credit, they humoured him and didn't seem to take exception to his drunken antics.

Eventually the cops must have got fed up with it all, as they were the first to leave, allowing Mr Ting Tong free range to weave his drunken way home for the final time from Mobi’s bar.

Fare thee well Mr Ting Tong – I doubt I will ever see your like again…

*

A Darkside Gang

Meanwhile, back at Mobi’s, we had been visited for the second night in a row by a gang of Thai’s who were playing pool on the table at the back of our bar.

I hadn’t thought much about them coming on the previous night as we do occasionally get some Thais in to play pool, but it was starting to look like this gang were going to make a habit of it.

This time, there were more members than on the previous night and they were getting quite drunk and rowdy.

Although we don’t mind serving the occasional Thai customers, we are not really set up to cater for Thai gangs.

We asked Auntie to call her friendly Thai cop, who we have on a modest retainer, and before long a couple of plain-clothed cops came to the bar to keep an eye on the gang. They also took photos of all the bike registration numbers.

After a couple of hours, the gang made ready to go, and told the cashier that they would pay their bill ‘tomorrow.’

In the nick of time, 5 uniformed cops - the very ones who were later to be entertained by Mr Ting Tong - had just arrived to back up the two plain clothed guys. The gang took one look at all the cops in the bar and paid up without a murmur and left.

Phew… I doubt they will be back...but if they do, it will be none of my business.

*

The lady who screeches

Some of my regular readers may recall my several tales concerning the screeching, drunken lady in the next door bar. She has been arrested on several occasions, after causing mayhem at her bar and also at Mobi’s bar.

On one occasion she tried to trash a table in our bar before trashing her own bar to the tune of 20,000 Baht's worth of damage, and when she then tried to trash the motorcycles parked outside, she had to be held down by five women and a man who kept beating her on the head with a lump of wood.

On another occasion she decided to attack a BMW owned by a man drinking in my bar. She picked the wrong guy as the BMW owner had special royal police protection - he was none other than the grandson of HM’s Swiss Tutor.

Not only was she arrested, but the cops shut down the bar and made all the staff and owner go to the cop shop to face charges.

There have been numerous incidents since and the last ‘biggy’ I can recall was when she was so stoned that she ran naked out of the bar and leaped into the lake. She had to be dragged out, hauled into the back room of her bar and tied down until she slept off the effects of whatever it was she had taken.

Remarkably, on each of these occasions, no matter how badly she had behaved and how much damage and mayhem she had caused, she was back at work the next day.

After the ‘lady in the lake’ incident, I have to admit that she pretty much behaved herself over the past month or so, only uttering the occasional shrieks when slightly pissed.

So it was with much surprise that the new owner told me that on his very first night in business, he had experienced the ‘mad shrieker’ first hand.

Apparently she had been drunk – and almost certainly drugged- out of her mind, and had tried to make trouble in Mobi’s bar before becoming completely out of control in the bar next door, where she worked..

Eventually she even attacked the owner of the bar – her boss. She punched the petite, 40 kilo, under 5ft tall lady, in the mouth, and the police had to be called out to arrest her. As usual it took several cops to restrain her.

I was told about this the following morning – Friday –when I also learned that she was back at work!!!

What do you have to do to get fired from that bar? Shoot someone?

However, yesterday, when I went down to the bar to fix the sound system, (somebody had ripped out all the speaker wires!!), I was somewhat surprised to learn from the new bar owner, that the next door shrieker had finally been fired.

‘Do you know why they didn’t fire her before?’ he asked me.

‘I think so, but tell me anyway.’

‘Because she brought in so much business – she was their star performer.’

‘Yes, I thought so…’

Only in Thailand....

*

Goodbye dear folk.