BOOK REVIEW
From Beggar to Butterfly, by Peter Jaggs, 204 pp, 2006 Bangkok Books paperback,.Available at Asia Books and leading book stores, 350 baht
BERNARD TRINK
A fishing village on the Gulf of Thailand, surrounded by farmland, Thap Phraya didn't rate space on maps of the Kingdom a half-century ago. It was peripatetic farangs who came upon it, viewed the pristine beach and waxed ecstatic. Word spread. No particular person "discovered" the place, though a number make the claim.
The Vietnam War moved from French to American hands, battle weary GIs needed a spell of R&R, they flew into U-tapao, entrepreneurs built hotels to house them and watering holes to quench their thirst. Local lasses poured down from the capital and the provinces to further raise their spirits (pun intended). There was a change of name to Pattaya.
Following that conflict Pattaya caught on worldwide as a tourist destination, Germans leading the influx. Over the decades it went from being a village to a resort to a city, offering the same facilities as Bangkok - less the smog. Its nightlife is on a par. Farangs, expats settled there and short-term visitors can't resist writing about it.
Positive and negative, each exaggerates the virtues and faults. The former overlook or play down the polluted Gulf, crime (foreigners tend to murder one another, foreigners framed by the fuzz, double-tier pricing). The latter label it Aids City, liken it to Sodom and Gomorrah, charge that every bar girl is a sex slave, its very existence corrupts innocent children, farangs are rapists and paedophiles.
In From Beggar to Butterfly, comprised of 15 short stories, Peter Jaggs takes the positive view. The blurb tells us nothing about him. If Mickey Dylan, his literary creation appearing in several of the stories, is based on him, the author is an Old Thailand Hand from the UK. He's here for the women, the beer, the laid back life he prefers to his homeland.
His approach in his stories isn't that locals are always right and farangs always wrong or that women by definition are victims and men predators. It's apparent that he's been around long enough to be insightful. Yes, Thai demimondaines are greedy, yet that is what prostitutes everywhere are. Why should they be any different here? Taking farangs for all they've got is their right.
The stories are sympathetic to down-and-out Thais, show admiration for those who work hard and succeed in bettering themselves. He is nostalgic about the old days (when he arrived, whenever that was). While erecting condos, Pattaya lost its charm. He insists that the bad press it's been getting is unfair and unjust. He wouldn't live anywhere else.
There are more than a few books (mainly short stories) by farangs about Pattaya, From Beggar to Butterfly one of the best. While perusing it, James Michener's Tales of the South Pacific came to mind. This reviewer wishes Jaggs had included more stories as 204 pages really aren't enough to display his talent as a raconteur.
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