Visa Run - Pattaya to Sihanoukville Read Online Free PDF Page A

famous on the oil rigs of the North Sea. Toy appreciated the joke and went off to the temple, laughing.
    Later that morning I went out to post some mail and the little counter girl asked me if I was intending to do anymore dancing as she had enjoyed it very much and would like to bring her friend along to take a look. I was confused until she pointed out the new security camera system that had been installed whilst I was in Bangkok. The cameras looked down the corridors of every floor and were monitored by the receptionists twenty-four hours a day. I just hoped they didn’t make tapes. If so, I expect to see myself performing the ‘helicopter whirl’ on the internet anytime soon.
    That night I decided there was not much point in trawling the bars for yet another shag for Jai to sabotage, besides which, the very next day I had to wake up early to embark on the hated visa run. Because of this, I thought I would go and call on Ron, the old man whose wallet I had recovered. He had seemed so keen for some company he had been almost desperate, and I had felt sorry for him. I retrieved Ron’s card from where I had tucked it in the corner of the mirror that I had taken to staring into lately, trying hard to convince myself I had not become a complete old Pattaya Potato just yet.
    “Why not?” I thought to myself, looking at the card. Despite his frail state, there had been something in the old man’s bearing that had appealed to me. Perhaps I wondered if I would have been so brave as to travel the streets of Pattaya if I had been in such a bad way. Or maybe I simply thought there might be a few free beers on offer, which undoubtedly, I felt I deserved. Whatever the reason, just for once I decided on a change from the usual happy hour blunderings around the bars that were offering the cheapest beer and whose girls were wearing the least clothes at the time, and I went to say hello to old Ron. And that I suppose, is where this adventure really started.

C HAPTER T WO
    Ron was obviously quite a wealthy old fellow and the inside of his comfortable condominium was surprising and fascinating. He told me he was born within sight of the ocean in Portsmouth and when he was just fourteen he had become a Merchant Seaman. Ron said he had always harboured a boyhood desire to travel on the ships he used to see coming and going in the busy port and in those days this was the only way for a lad like himself to see the world. The old man had served in both the British and New Zealand Merchant Navies and had somehow managed to wangle a pay-off and a pension from both.
    The walls and cabinets in Ron’s spacious apartment were decorated with the souvenirs and treasures of a lifetime at sea. I looked around his condominium with interest. African tribal masks and ebony carvings of fierce warriors glared at me angrily and beautifully woven South American blankets were casually thrown over the chairs and the sofa. Hundreds of intricately carved seashells and bone and ivory scrimshaw pieces covered the many shelves that the sailor had fixed up around the rooms, and a huge, weathered piece of driftwood with a magnificent watercolour of a steamship depicted on its grainy surface dominated one wall. There were also scores of old nautical photographs in frames as well as many paintings of old-fashioned looking boats and ships hanging around the old seafarer’s home.
    Ron showed me a faded old sepia photograph of himself in a silver frame with two sailor shipmates and their girls. They were all sitting together on a low wall overlooking Manila Bay. The sun was just beginning to set over the ships in the water and the horizon on the calm South China Sea.
    “I was twenty-five way back then,” the old man told me wistfully, shaking his balding head sadly. I studied the snap carefully. There was no doubt that Ron was easily the most handsome of the trio of young sailors, and he looked stronger and fitter than I had been at that age. The prettiest of the