Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Opening

Our bar was empty of any staff. The first challenge was to hire ladies to work. What the problem, I thought. Pattaya is full of beautiful girls looking only for a job in bars. But no. Looking around more, we discovered that almost every bar has an ad in Thai: STAFF WANTED.

Ok, why not look around the Beach Road. Long sea side of this road has always a line of ladies waiting for a job in any bar, seemingly. But no, again. They are not looking for a job, on the contrary, they actually had left from their bar jobs. They are freelancers.

Actually we had a lady, a good friend of Lord, coming from the same countryside near Korat. Namely, Kai. So we started with a single lady in the bar. Lord was acting as a cashier, which left me with “general management”.

The first night - and we had a customer! A middle-age Finnish-Swedish. He was sitting in the bar, chatting with Kai and drinking a lot. At last, it was around 4 a.m. we considering about closing. But our dear customer refused to pay the bill. It seemed he was too drunk to understand where he is or what is happening around him.

We called to the police, watched the customer and waited. After an hour the policeman came. The man opened his wallet, paid the bill and walked away.

Two days later he came back with a huge bunch of roses. Completely sober, ordering only Coca-cola for himself and drinks for Kai. He becomes to be our first regular customer.

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