Category Archives: Condo Management

From the chairman of the committee in charge of his Pattaya Condominium building the author of “Welcome to the Fun House” comes the kind of advice condo owners need.

New book Pattaya Pattaya Pattaya Confessions of Sin City

So far my new book Pattaya Pattaya Pattaya Confessions of Sin City was only in my head. As The Chairman, The Return of Dick Fitswell, Death of Tatyana, Fun House 2? In the end I chose Pattaya Pattaya Pattaya: Confessions of Sin City, and now it’s for sale at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

(Update: Now you can buy Pattaya Pattaya Pattaya Confessions of Sin City in two sensational hardback editions from lulu.com and amazon. A full color paperback from both lulu and amazon and two black and white paperback editions from both. )

Here I’m celebrating the night “Pattaya Pattaya Pattaya: Confessions of Sin City at the La La Land bar on Pattaya’s infamous Soi 6.

I wanted to write about the beautiful Russian women who died in our condo swimming pool. Whose death is still a mystery even today.

But life moves on. Here I was chairman of the real Fun House where I had to oversee our Thai management team and develop our accounting system. Then I had to pursue the embezzler who was illegally borrowing up to 1 million baht from my fellow condo co-owners. I have seen three managers quit without notice as chairman of our condo committee. And now that we are with our fourth manager, I will put rank our condo up at the very top. Thanks to an excellent Thai staff, hard work and a lot of good luck. So if the book is only about how to successfully run a condo, then yes. The Chairman would be a good title.

Editor Tom Crowson and I are at MK Kitty go=go on Soi 6. I’m taking the picture.

Which brings up the main focus of This New book Pattaya Pattaya Pattaya: Confessions of Sin City. focuses on men who come to Pattaya where they can pursue sex with reckless abandon. While Pattaya is perhaps the greatest mecca of all where men can actually act out their most outrageous sexual fantasies. But to deny the importance of sex and how hugely important it is for most people is like the ostrich putting its head in the sand. Many potential readers won’t like my using so many four letter words or some of the outrageous sexual situations I portray. But this is the unvarnished truth about the real Pattaya and the hedonistic behavior of so many men I know.

Before writing “Pattaya Pattaya Pattaya: Confessions of Sin City I have thought “Dick Fitswell the Man in Quest for the Perfect Fit” was my best literary creation.

To the simple minded Dick Fitswell is absolutely disgusting. The guy’s got an 18 inch penis, and he glorifies it along with his conquests. Fitswell glorifies sexual depredation. So he opens his own bar in Pattaya’s Soi 6 red light district which he calls Big Dick’s. His mamasan’s Angry Pussy. Behind the bar where the bottles of liquor are normally kept he keeps a collection of plaster casts of the biggest dicks who frequent his bar while he starts to assemble a group of disciples to spread the gospel of the perfect fit.

I know what you are all saying. “All of this is pretty sick stuff.” It isn’t when you think of it as satire. Face it, most men constantly brag about who is the biggest swinging dick. If it’s about who has the most money, who has the most power, or who gets the sexiest women. It is men, who start most of the wars. While most women want to preserve the home and to keep the family safe.

There’s a lot in my new book Pattaya Pattaya Pattaya Confessions of Sin City about Lady Boys and why so many men prefer them to “women”. Or why lady boys are oftentimes called Thailand’s third sex.

Then there’s Kit, the enigmatic heroine or villain of Pattaya Pattaya Pattaya: Confessions of Sin City“. I have shot pictures of hundreds of American bar girls and leading feature entertainers. But I took the best pictures of Kit, who has the face of an angel and an attitude that’s impossible to fathom. Even today I really don’t know who she really is. I don’t even think she does.

And at last, there’s the title of this new book Pattaya Pattaya Pattaya Confessions of Sin City. Pattaya Pattaya Pattaya is a song that is played in nearly every bar here. It’s about a special place. Called a Disneyland for Adults where nothing is real. The new book Pattaya Pattaya Pattaya takes on myth like proportions in a land of make believe where hearts are constantly being broken while far too many men wind up losing everything to predatory bar girls and their heartless families. But there’s no place like it on earth.

Let’s give dishonest Thai bar girls a break

Let’s give dishonest Thai bar girls a break.  As one Soi Six girl explained.  “You are only customer.  You are not my tilak  (sweetheart) until you take care of me.”

Billy Bob discusses dishonest Thai bar girls

The girl continued:  “I don’t want you to break my heart.  So you customer only.”

So is she a dishonest Thai bar girl or not?

But there is another girl.  And she is very beautiful.  She is also very slim.  Too slim for probably 90 percent of the guys.  And my cousin, Rufus, he’s totally in love with this here girl.  While she’s totally in love with him.

I knows you don’t believe me but I’ve watched them together too many times

Why she will spend 2 hours at a time with him in that Soi Six short time room upstairs.  And when they are in the bar together she won’t take her eyes off him.  She won’t take her hands off his body either.  As for Rufus.  You would think she’s the only girl in his life.  He loves this Soi Six girl to death.

But here’s the problem.  He’s already got himself a Thai wife.  He found her in a bar too.  But that was many years ago.  He’s lucky too.  Her Thai family ain’t asking him for too much.  She’s got four brothers and two sisters.  And she’s got a mother and father.  But let me tell you, her mama and papa are very sick and very old.

The reality is this.  If he kicks his wife out of his life, she’s not going to get too much of his money.  Unless he gives most of it to her.  Her mama and papa can’t work and her brothers only make barely enough for their families to survive.  They have children, so the 15,000 baht they make each month is not enough to be supportin their own families and their mama and papa.

As for his wife.  She will probably be back working as a bar girl again.  If he dumps her.  The mere thought of her fucking all those customers again haunts him.  He cannot bare to look at those trusting beautiful eyes of hers when he thinks about that.

As for dishonest Thai bar girls this Soi Six flame of his isn’t one of them

She loves cousin Rufus to death.  But she’s got a child and has her mother up in Issan taking care of the little girl.  So she’s gotta be supportin her mama and papa and her child.  Working at the local 7-11 isn’t going to be able to do nearly enough.  So she works as a prostitute on Soi Six.

I knows she’s not one of them dishonest Thai bar girls.  Sure she lies to her customers.  She tells all the fat guys she loves fat men.  And she tells all the old farts, she loves old men.  It’s all part of her job.  She wants all these old farts and fat men coming back to give her more money.  If she can’t lie with conviction to all these customers she’s not going to be making much money.

Rufus hates seeing his Soi Six girlfriend having to go with customers

This is not the reed thin Soi Six Beauty in my story here. But when we were first getting to know this girl, she’d try to pull a fast one or two on us. But once we all got onto each other, she stopped pulling her stunts and became a real pal.

And it’s not because he’s jealous.  He just knows  how bad news most of these customers are.  She’s a real beauty.  Even if she’s too thin for most guys.  But Rufus views her as a gorgeous model.  She’s got that twiggy look.  A real model’s body.  The way models used to look.

She’s a beautiful willow swaying in the wind.

Now that I know her better I see her in the same way.

She’s so observant.  And so bright.  And so polite.  She’s really too good for most of these customers of hers, and Rufus knows it.

So now it’s high time for me to digress a little from this story and tell you what I think of most men who come to her bar.

dishonest Thai bar girls versus the Myth of Super Falang

Most Falang or Westerners who come to Pattaya think they are simply the most wonderful things to ever happen to these girls.

Why, they can play basketball, they can dribble the ball behind their backs, and they can dunk the ball every time against all these inferior stupid Thais.  And the English are the worse of them all.  Even though the Germans aren’t that far behind them English.

I happen to know because I am chairman of my condo building.  My fellow committee members do 1 percent of the work while I do 99 percent.

I know who pays their bills on time and who doesn’t.  Not to mention who are the big complainers are.  Among all my fellow condo owners.

Many of them complain a lot.  They go into the condo office and yak yak the two women working there mercilessly.  Most of the condo owners here treat them two women like dogs.

90 percent of these men aren’t worth a shit.

But I tell you one thing.  Most of them can’t play basketball.  They might think they are super falang. But I see most of them as lazy men who aren’t about to do anything for anybody, but themselves.

 The worse kind of men come to Pattaya

Most of them represent the worse that their respective countries have to offer.  They come here so that they can get drunk and party all the time.  Most of them come to have sex with as many women as possible.  But I think some of the worse men of all are the ones who come here for “True love”.  These are the kind of guys who could never find true love in their home countries.  And rightfully so.

It’s because they are so unlovable.  Do you really expect any kind of real woman to feel anything for such men?  But the real surprise to me is I see so many cute, lovely Thai women stick it out so long with so many condo owners here who I have nothing but disdain for.

Getting back to that lovely Soi Six Bar Girl

Most of the customers coming into her bar are Englishmen.  They are the worse kind of Englishmen.  Most of them have tattoos.  They wear the colors of their favorite soccer teams.  And they wear the kind of shorts that English football players wear.    As one of my German pals put it to me while we were visiting a Soi Six Bar:  “Look at these Englishmen wearing their monkey suits.”  You’d think a visiting professional team was coming into the bar wearing those ridiculous outfits.

They cuss a lot.  And they are loudmouths.  Plus they always go from bar to bar in their little Englishmen groups.

These are hooligan types.  Complete uneducated rif raf.  Yet these are the customers this girl has to keep fucking and pretending she likes it.

She oftentimes works in that Soi Six bar in high heels.  Believe me, she looks positively elegant wearing them.  Then she has to go upstairs with all these louts and have them slober all over her.

That’s one of the many reasons Cousin Rufus like to give her as much money as he can.  And spend as much time as he can with her in her bar.  The way Rufus has it figured, the more time he’s with her, the less time she must put up with such imbeciles.

But she wants more from Rufus.  She wants him to be the white Knight who will take her out of the clutches of all that white trash.  But Rufus cannot deliver.  On account of he’s already got a Thai wife.  Bottom line, eventually one of them has gots to go.  Either the Thai wife or the girl from Soi Six.

She’s going to want to cuddle with him all the time.  She is going to want to sleep with him almost every night.  She is going to want him to hold her in his arms to reassure her that she’s never going to have to fuck all those louts ever again.  She’s going to want to feel that she never has to worry about money again.  So it’s not going to last.

But she’s not one of them dishonest Thai bar girls.  In fact there’s a lot fewer of these dishonest Thai bar girls than you’d think.

dishonest Thai bar girls have a lot more integrity than most condo managers

Money Number One's about dishonest Thai bar girls
In Money Number One, Neil Hutchison tells the truth about dishonest Thai bar girls. Although Neil’s advice needs to be heeded he doesn’t have everything quite right about Pattaya’s bar girls. But one thing Neil never mentions is how much worse your typical condominium manager is than such bar girls. Or many condominium technician’s and other key employees. A lawyer once told us that 99 percent of all condominium offices in Pattaya cheat their condo owners.

A Thai lawyer once told my fellow committee members and me that 99 percent of the Thai staffs working for Pattaya condos are ripping off their condo owners.

Why our own condo bookkeeper and secretary embezzled 255,000 baht from us.  And that’s nothing compared to what I keep hearing about all the other condo communities around us.

As my old friend Hans Schumaker put it.  “When condo residents pay utility bills and maintenance fees to their condo offices a lot of money can pile up in the hands of the manager or bookkeeper.”  In Thailand where salaries are so much lower than they are in the West, it’s too tempting laying out all that money in front of condo office employees.  When you have condo residents paying cash to their condo offices, they are offering the condo  office personnel an invitation to steal.”

That’s why we now require all condo residents to pay their bills direct to our condo savings account.

But Managers and other key Pattaya condo employees can still rip off condo owners by getting commissions and kickbacks for repairs

It’s not just their 25000-40000 baht salaries that attract so many worthless scoundrels to become condo managers.  It’s all the money that they can get by overcharging for repairs

As chairman of the committee here in my condo community I must report that out of four managers, three were ripping us off for repairs.

Here’s the way all this works.

Condo communities need to keep up on their maintenance in order to provide a good living environment for their owners.  Water pumps need to be replaced.  The swimming pool lights stop functioning.  Someone needs to repaint the building every few years.  Generators need to be replaced for emergency lighting.  As well as the emergency lights themselves.  Insurance needs to be purchased for the condo building.  The elevator keeps malfunctioning.  And so does the Internet and television service.

Management must go out and purchase all those things that are necessary to keep everything functioning.  It also has to hire special technicians to take care swimming pool problems, water leaks that no one seems to be able to trace, etc.  And all these vendors supplying materials and labor to all these condo communities in Pattaya are going to be giving the condo managers commissions.

A manager might go out and hire an outside work crew for a 20000 baht job.  And then he will charge the condo owners 60000 baht for labor.

A few years ago our technician told us that we had to pay 174,000 baht to repair a fire control system that didn’t need to be repaired in the first place.

It was that bid from the super experts from Bangkok who would do the repairs that tipped me off.  When I saw a 13000 baht charge for an oil change on the bid, I knew that the experts from Bangkok were conspiring with our technician to rip us off.

For more detailed info about this unnecessary 174000 baht read “What a $400 oil change tells you about Pattaya Condo Repair Ripoffs”

I was certain of that when I talked to our manager about that 170,000 baht bid.  This was the honest manager.  The only one in four who was honest when it came to repairs.

“That 170,000 baht bid we got from Bangkok?  We had those two technicians come down from their company.  One of them said to me,  I can get this job done for just 100,000 baht.  But I will do it myself.  Me and my friends.  My company doesn’t need to know anything about it.”

This manager of ours, the honest one, didn’t get very far with him.  You can be sure that if she convinced our committee to go for the 100,000 baht deal, that she’d be getting her cut from it.

The next day our technician came up to my condo.  This was our technician.  And not one of the two hot shots from Bangkok.

“If I can get this repair done to our fire control system for 100,000 baht would you go for it?” he asked.

“Bingo.  I had the tech by the short hairs.”  My brain was telling me this.  Our technician had discussed money making schemes with one of both of the Bangkok techs.  One of the Bangkok techs made his offer to our manager.  Our technician had made a master plan with one or both of the Bangkok techs for 100000 baht.  One or both of the Bangkok techs would be pocketing a few thousand baht.  And our technician would be getting a few thousand baht for himself.

A few months later, our manager fired our technician.  We didn’t do any kind of repair whatsoever to the fire control system other than replacing two batteries that started the system off.  And an oil change to the diesel engine that ran the water pumps that supplied water for fire control.  I think it was around 2000 baht instead of 13000 to change the oil and oil filters.  And around 5000 baht to replace the two batteries.  So we wound up spending 7000 baht.  And not 174,000 baht.

Even dishonest Thai bar girls don’t try to rip you off this much.  Well, at least most of them won’t.

dishonest Thai bar girls, so what does all this have to do with them?

There’s so much embezzlement, and kickbacks, illicitly gained commissions from condo managers here.  And all of that is so accepted as the way that things should be.  That I just don’t view all these dishonest Thai bar girls the same anymore.  The rich people in Thailand are so busy exploiting the poor so that they can show off all their BMW’s and Mercedes to have big face.  That I regard so many of these dishonest Thai bar girls as saints in comparison.

 

 

 

What a $400 oil change tells you about Pattaya condo repair ripoffs

Pattaya condo repair ripoffs are harder to detect than embezzlement but very noticeable if you someone’s asking you  for a $400 oil change.  But before I explain exactly how our condo employees tried to pull this one on me, remember just one thing.  It’s in their DNA.

Also–I am the chairman running my condo community so I should know a few things the rest of you don’t

Now let me give you a little background.  We had an office girl, bookkeeper, who our past chairman and committee trusted too much.  The chairman was a good man.  And he was a very smart man.  But he never tried to understand the Quickbooks accounting system I introduced years ago.  The bookkeeper did.  I trained her.  The problem tried to keep track of what she was doing.

The embezzler would receive maintenance fees and utility bill payments from our residents in cash.  Then she gave those residents Excel spreadsheets showing that they had paid all their bills.  She then pocketed their money.  And the Quickbooks accounting system displayed large sums of money as “undeposited funds”.

When I took over as chairman I got a fellow American to be on the new committee as my right hand.  Ralph was even better on Quickbooks than I was.  So the secretary bookkeeper suddenly disappeared when Ralph started asking her why she failed to deposit the undeposited funds.

We had the thieving bookkeeper by the gonads and she knew it

Then we reported the missing bookkeeper to a Thai lawyer.  This lawyer has a lot of power and all kinds of connections.  The lawyer located the missing bookkeeper and called her to account.

We then had a meeting in the lawyer’s office about how we should handle the embezzler.  $20000 had gone missing.  Our past chairman, two other committee members and I met with the lawyer. One of the men asked the lawyer:  “What percent of the condos in Pattaya are ripped off by their employees who are managers or bookkeepers?

The lawyer replied–99 % of all Pattaya condos are being ripped off by such employees

While the thieving bookkeeper was embezzling our money, we had a completely inept manager who was either conniving with the bookkeeper or looking the other way.  So when the shit hit the fan in our condo office, she suddenly quit and disappeared.

We got a new manager.  An honest young woman.  Then we started requiring all condo residents to pay our condo bank account directly.  We made it very clear that our new committee would cut the hands off of any condo resident who tried to pay cash to our office girls.  We also hired a new bookkeeper.  Who was just as scrupulously honest as our new manager.

And to make a long story short, we have stopped the accounting embezzlement in its tracks.  While we are forcing the embezzler to make monthly payments to pay back what she has stolen.

It’s now time to move onto Pattaya condo repair ripoffs

Embezzlement is to be expected more than it is to be unexpected. But I’ve already dealt with that in — How most Pattaya condominiums cheat their owners.

Unfortunately Pattaya condo repair ripoffs are even harder to detect than embezzlement.   But they are very noticeable if you being asked for a $400 oil change.  Here’s a tall tale  that’s based on a true story that I’ve changed to protect the guilty.   Unfortunately for all of you Pattaya condo owners out there this tale is all too true.  Welcome to Pattaya condo repair ripoffs.   Just keep in mind as you read it—–ripping people off is in their DNA.

 It all started when our condo engineer technician warned us:  “Big problem with water pump and fire control system.”

The entire sorry episode started when a condo committee member warned other committee members our insurance wouldn’t cover us for fire damages.  He warned:  “If our insurance finds our fire control system is deficient I am afraid it won’t cover us”.

The committee member  assumed that a fire control sensor and alarm would go into action as soon as it detected a fire.  He also assumed that an apparatus in our pump room would then automatically start a Cummins diesel engine.   And that this Cummoms diesel engine would start a water pump that would pressurize the fire hoses in throughout our building.

Our manager decided it was time to call in the experts when we couldn’t figure how the fire control system worked.  She found a company that specialized in such cases.  And two technicians visited our condo from Bangkok.

Then the company the technicians worked for presented a 174,000 ($5500) baht bid to our manager.  When I looked at that bid, I smelled a rat.  The entire 174000 baht bid included 1 item for a 13000 baht oil change.  Which is $400 in American money.

The problem was the technicians underestimated their opposition

Me

I lived and worked on a farm for 23 years.  I owned 3 tractors.  This was my largest tractor.

This tractor uncovered Pattaya condo repair ripoffs
It took 22 quarts of oil to change the oil of my John Deere tractor. It had 180 horsepower so it’s engine was a lot bigger than the Cummins diesel engine running our condo water pump

I cannot count how many times I had to change the oil for those three tractors.  And their engines were very similar to the Cummins engine at our condo.  Except they were much larger.  So the procedure for changing the oil was the same.  For the 3 tractors or the Cummins diesel running the condo water pump.

But the 174000 baht bid was for a complete overhaul of the entire system, which included replacing several water valves, a pressure gauge, several ball bearings and their seals.

Hey—I had done a lot of that before.  On my farm equipment.

But now our condo engineer enters the picture.  He thinks our entire water control system should run on automatic.  Trouble with that is, if we keep running the pump to pressurize all the fire hoses, if there’s a leak in one of the hoses, we are going to have really big problems.  So getting all this fire control equipment to run full automatic makes no sense whatsoever.

I decide that this entire 174000 baht bid is just one more example from an endless list of Pattaya condo repair ripoffs

Meanwhile one of the two Bangkok technicians contacts our condo manager.  He tells her:

Don’t tell anyone.  But I can do this whole job for only 100,000 baht.  Just don’t tell my company.

But the Bangkok tech’s made a big mistake.

Our new manager is honest.  She tells me everything.

Then our technician contacts me.  He diagrams the repair job for me.  And then he tells me:

“I can get this entire repair job done for 100,000 baht.  Will you accept my bid?

“Bingo.  I’ve got those Bangkok techs by the scrotum and I’ve also got our engineer technician by his balls.”

“Yeah.  100,000 baht if the conniving Bangkok tech does the job.  But it costs the same 100,000 baht if our technician gets the same work done.  I know what time it is.”

And so does our manager.

So here’s how we handled that 174000 baht repair

We never did a damn thing.  We were paying our own tech 25000 baht to take care of our interests.  He wasn’t.  So a few months later we fired his sorry ass.

We ran fire drills.

  •  We implemented a procedure of checking all the fire hoses on our condo’s 7 floors.
  • And while we did that we checked to make sure that all the valves on each level, etc were working correctly.
  • We started training our security guards and other key employees how to start up the Cummins diesel engine.
  • And how to turn on the fire hoses properly until they were gushing out enough water to do their job correctly.
  • We replaced the two batteries for the Cummins diesel engine
  • And now each month we run the diesel engine for an hour or two to keep the batteries charged.
  • And to make sure the Cummins diesel engine is working correctly.
  • We make  our own employees responsible for changing the Cummin’s diesel engine’s oil.
  • While we use normal inexpensive oil that is commonly used for diesel powered trucks, etc (instead of that very specialized oil the Bangkok company wanted to get us at very inflated prices)

The lesson all Pattaya condo  committee members need to learn about Pattaya condo repair ripoffs are

Ripping off condo owners for both unnecessary and excessively high repair costs is a way of life here in Pattaya.

As Doctor Phillaneous Beckstein once put it: “Getting hired on as a Thai manager or other key employee  for just 20,000 baht a month is a big deal.  That’s  because that 20,000 represents only part of what a manager or other employees make given all the opportunities there are for ripping off the owners.  All condo owners in Pattaya should know that they are more likely to be ripped off than not of victimized by Pattaya condo repair ripoffs.  And act accordingly. Committee members need to be very vigilant.  They need to take action on repair issues.  Lastly the rest of the condo owners need to fully support  their elected committee members. Nothing less will  save them from Pattaya condo repair ripoffs