Riff-Raffles Update #16

[MC_Ldop 40]

Kevin Meach, owner of Jasmine Mansion on Soi Buakhao, has several updated on his Riff-Raffles blog. His latest posts are particularly interesting and revealing, as most of them revolve around the events leading up to his divorce. Anyway, here's the latest.

 

 

Off to See Our Daughter in Bangkok

[Continued from My Worst Day (Week?) in Thailand.]The conclusion to this sorry week was our trip to see Pakpao in Bangkok. We collected James from school, headed to Sri Ratcha where we collected Sam from his school and made our way to the northern part of Bangkok. The journey involved a fair amount of bumper to bumper traveling through Bangkok’s Friday night traffic — it is bad every other day of the week, just worse on Fridays! To make matters even less appetizing I had to contend with Mrs. Boss’ rather erratic driving, which saw me sitting in the front passenger seat doing an impersonation of a startled rabbit — in fact, rabbits that wanted to know how to act startled could have taken lessons from me such was my level of startledness! Mrs. Boss journeyed from one lane of the freeway to another for most of the trip and either completely ignored or, worse still, shouted and swore at those motorists who deigned it necessary to, quite understandably from where I sat, hoot their horn at her. When she was not traversing the lanes it appeared as though she believed the dotted white lines indicated that she had to travel along the centre of any one of them, she therefore chose to occupy two lanes of a fast moving freeway and not for the first time this week I felt my life was coming to its conclusion!

After approximately five hours in the car we reached our destination and Mrs. Boss had booked us into a hotel very close to our daughter’s residence. On the face of it, the hotel looked fine. It was only a year or so old and though sparsely furnished, everything that was there was modern. We had managed to secure two rooms with a private hallway between them so the boys were separate from Mrs. Boss and I when it came to the sleeping arrangements. After such a journey we were all tired and hungry, so we headed off to a nearby Vietnamese restaurant. Whilst en route, Mrs. Boss telephoned Pakpao to advise of our arrival. She was not pleased to be advised by our daughter that she was out eating with friends and would see us in a couple of hours. The whole point of coming here was to see Pakpao — if we had just wanted to go for a meal then Pattaya has a thousand restaurants for us to choose from!

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Jerry's Visit and PMT

We have spent the last few days endeavouring to come to terms with our recent misfortunes in Pattaya. Mrs. Boss has been as sociable as ever and just shrugged her shoulders whilst I opted for the more sensible programme of sulking and not speaking to anyone. I am sure those of you whom have taken the time and trouble to read my writings to date would agree that the more mature stance was taken by me!

One of our most regular visitors to the hotel is Jerry, who hails from Colorado in the USA. Jerry is now retired, although during his working life found employment across the globe and is, as such, an unusual breed (i.e. a much travelled American). He visits us here in Pattaya approximately every three or four months for a month at a time. Jerry and I had similar experiences growing up and have enjoyed many lengthy conversations over the last three years and become close friends. Jerry has not featured in any previous tales of mine due simply to the fact that he is a normal, decent human being who does not leave a trail of disasters in his wake. In this regard he is therefore unworthy of any mention, although being unworthy in this sense is a good thing.

 

As has now become common practice Jin and I endeavour to go out for dinner with Jerry at least once during each of his trips. This time around we decided to take him and his partner to The Orangery restaurant where we had spent and enjoyable evening celebrating Mrs. Boss’ birthday a few weeks ago. During that first visit we were accompanied by Dan who claimed to own a 90-percent stake in the restaurant. Whilst we were there, the staff all fussed over him rather more than they did with us and this added a level of credence to his claim. There were then several occasions where Dan would take leave of his duties at Jasmine Mansion claiming he had to pay the staff at The Orangery or deal with some other issue at said establishment. He would then disappear for a couple of hours and return to work, he would always be here at the hotel far longer than his normal hours so this neither caused us a problem or seemed implausible.

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Boys Are Off, Peter's in Town, and a New Chef Arrives

Although it appeared to be a slow start to the month it was a situation I was grateful for. February appeared to see us scampering from one rock to the next in an attempt to avoid being drowned by the sea of lies that flowed towards us in a Tsunami-like fashion. Slow, quiet, non-descript — yes I would happily live with these descriptions of my life in Pattaya.

What I have come to realise is that over the last few months, incidents related to poor form on the part of our guests have abated considerably. It was, at one time, an almost constant nightmare dealing with the cerebrally challenged who stayed with us here at Jasmine Mansion. Although the odd complete plonker slips through the net, in the main we have an established base of fully house-trained visitors, most of whom are returning customers back for their second or subsequent visits.

 

The boys are coming to the end of their present academic year and that, of course, throws a few more problems the way of Mrs. Boss and I. Last year was a nightmare as they spent the entire two months at home, we were very short of staff and at every turn one appeared to be tripping over one’s children. I understand completely that they were bored and really desired nothing more than some time being taken on a day trip or two by their parents. However, time was not something we had on offer twelve months ago so they either moped around the house or, worse, still moped around the mansion!

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Off to Koh Larn for Fishing, Seasickness, and Relaxation

Well, our new chef Chin has continued to turn up to work and cook. All the other staffers are here most of the time, so life at Jasmine Mansion Pattaya has continued its peaceful progress through the month. The boys are now on their school holidays and alternating between at home with either Mrs. Boss or me. I have been going to the Mansion with less and less frequency than has been the case since moving out to Thailand well over three years ago. I have to admit to thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to spend time with the children and just chilling out by our swimming pool.

Mrs. Boss arranged a day trip for us to take the boys to Koh Larn (a nearby island) and booked a private boat for the journey. We were due to be at the docks around 9:00AM and in order to ensure we were all up and ready on time, Peter came over the night before and stayed at our house. We had a couple of bottles of wine out on the terrace the night before and were in bed early and reasonably sober. At 7:30AM I was up and dressed while the boys were bathing and almost ready. Peter was also up and downstairs enjoying his morning coffee. It looked as though we were all ready to go on time! It was at this point I realised that Mrs. Boss was not only far from ready — she was, in fact, far from even having woken up! A quick shake of her arm and a nice cup of tea left by the side of her bed seemed sufficient to have, at last, woken her and I returned to sit outside and chat with Peter now thinking we would be only a little late.

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Realizing the End of My Marriage in Thailand

It soon became clear to me that somehow the seasickness incident of the previous week had stirred something far darker in Mrs. Boss than I had imagined. She had arrived in Udon Thani the morning of the day that Peter and I had arranged to meet up for our marathon pool-and-beer-drinking session. Mrs. Boss had been made well aware of the date before she had departed and it was therefore something of a surprise to receive a call from her early in our pool exchanges that was pure vitriol. I stood mouth agape for a minute or more as all sorts of wild and completely ridiculous accusations were being hurled at me and eventually decided the best thing to do was switch the phone off. Now cutting Mrs. Boss off deliberately takes a lot of guts and you know that if you ever undertake such action then you will be unleashing ‘the beast’ from within her. It was therefore with total justification that, when she was calling again some 30 seconds later, I left the phone alone — I saw no benefit whatsoever in picking it up and she was several hundred miles away, gone for a week and thus had ample time to calm down and return to planet Earth!

The phone call did rather knock me off my stride, albeit true to say that I had by that time not quite gotten into my stride. Peter was playing the best pool I have seen from him and he ran away with the match winning by the very comfortable margin of 19 to 11. We followed the pool-and-beer session with a curry — how very British of us — and were home by around 9:00PM. I did a little work before retiring to bed and found myself to be more than just a tad confused by Mrs. Boss’ recent behaviour. I would have understood if her recent anger was following the wake of our arguments during and following my return from Hua Hin. However, I had believed all of those difficulties had been resolved and could not bring myself to believe a reduced spell of dangling a line in the sea was the reason for this magnitude of marital mayhem. Women — Thai women in particular — I will never understand them!

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[LBJ 533]

Divorce you say! Why am I not suprised?