Fashion Faux-Pas in Pattaya

Pattaya is a well-known beach resort for a variety of reasons, but the fashion consciousness of its male farang population is certainly not one of the drawing points. The town boasts more sweep-over hair-dos than a General MacArthur lookalike jamboree and a surprising number of gentlemen sport beards and moustaches better suited a b-grade pirate movie from the 1960s. Obviously many guests have been spared a woman's touch before their arrival here and they are oblivious to their present girlfriends' entreaties to smarten up their appearance.
Now there's nothing wrong with keeping your wardrobe simple. Everyone should have a couple of jeans and a good shirt, but a staggering number of farangs consider the standard attire of a tee-shirt and shorts appropriate for every occasion. Breakfast at the local bacon and egg joint. Tee-shirt and shorts. Golfing with your mates. Tee-shirt and shorts. Beering yourself brainless. Tee-shirt and shorts. And some of these sartorial folks wear the same outfit more than one day in a row telling to themselves, "Funny, I don't smell dirty." Like hell you don't. God forbid one of these nose-dead farangs should get on the elevator. You barely have time to hold your breath. Of course the one time most farang men make an effort to dress is in preparation for a stroll down Walking Street in search of female companionship. Young men inevitably splendor themselves up as boy band wannabes with spiky hair, groovy shirts, and snappy trousers like they just got thrown off the set of AMERICAN IDOL. Middle-aged men with a Peter Pan fixation wear sport sleeveless tee-shirt to exhibit the muscles earned from long hours at the gym aided by about $5000 worth of steroids. Newly arrived travelers see a silk shirt in a tailor's window and think. "Silk. Sexy." On a girl near naked in bed. Sexy, but Thai women think silk shirts makes you look old. I know. I've bought a few and my girlfriend always shakes her head. "Old, old, old." And she really doesn't care what I look like as long as I come home from a venture to Walking Street with some money in my pocket. My friend Gordon was approaching 70. He didn't make any effort at all. He wore vulgar Hawaiian shirts and perched two sets of glasses on his red ribbed nose, while drinking rum and cokes. He couldn't be any happier. "What I have to worry about being good-looking. I left my looks in my 50s." Actually in the old days the only essential fashion accessory in Pattaya was a baseball cap onto which you can clip a 1000 baht note. It might not get you the girl of your dreams, but someone will come along and say, "Hey, sexy." After all it is low season.