WHERE IS ANYWHERE?

WHERE IS ANYWHERE?

I was not a student in a writing class, and I did not have a job writing for a newspaper. I only had a desire to describe a sunset, which perhaps was a fairly easy task! I found a spot on some concrete steps that led down to the water’s edge. The ocean waves were in rhythm beating against the shore, and I had a position looking towards the West at the setting sun. It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon.  Above me there was not a cloud in the sky, but a few clouds had gathered around the sun. The sun had changed from a bright, shiny, yellow, to a more subdued, bigger, orange circle. I was attempting to describe the rays of the sun that danced colored imagines above the white caps of the water.

But all of a sudden, I stopped describing the sunset and for some strange reason I started writing my emotions. I was a stranger in a strange land, a million miles from home. There were people all around speaking in tongues I did not understand, and I did not know a soul. I remember writing the words, I wonder why I’m not afraid, I’m not lonely, and I’m not homesick? And suddenly a thought appeared; maybe, just maybe, I have found a home.

Little did I know, at the time, that in the very near future I would have a job writing for an English language newspaper? It was not a very important job and there was little pay, but it was a job!  Little did I expect that the words I had written that day by the water’s edge would be used in the first article? That article was published over a decade ago in the PATTAYA TIMES, and it was simply entitled, WHY PATTAYA?

After several years little has changed for me. I have moved into a more upscale condo in a high rise building in the heart of the city. I know my way around the city which has grown too fast, much too fast for a country boy, but I’ve managed! The city has just been placed in the top 20 most visited cities of the world in the year 2018. My, what a marvelous choice I made, hanging my hat in this city!  

In reality, Pattaya is two cities in one. There is the daytime Pattaya, where there is affordable shopping in some of the finest shopping malls on the planet. And then there is the nighttime Pattaya. And if entertainment happens to be your thing, in Pattaya you have struck gold!  For those who love to dine out Pattaya is a wonderland. There are unlimited fine restaurants specializing in all sorts of international cuisines, with reasonable prices.

Pattaya is a city that never sleeps.  Night-time Pattaya is the greatest of all because of the assortment of entertainment.  The most colorful is the Pattaya that comes alive between mid-night and sunrise. Pattaya is world renown for exotic nightclub entertainment.  Both male and female Go-Go bars light up the city.  Something for everyone they say! Well, how true that is in Pattaya!

But most of all, Pattaya People make it the greatest.  Thailand has earned the title of, “THE LAND OF THE SMILING PEOPLE.” And Pattaya has surely earned the title of, “THE PARADISE CITY BY THE SEA.” This is the city where the wildest dreams for a retiree can come true. I guess, being one of those, I should know!

There is a cable news channel in the USA that says, “You could have been anywhere in the world, but you chose to be with us, and we thank you.”

So I say, “You could have chosen to read anything on the Internet, and you chose to read this, and I thank you!”