Keep your mouth shut or itâ€™ll cost you a five-figure sum

October 20, 2011

A well-informed source has told me the people charged with upholding law and order in Pattaya are starting to once again trawl through the bars, mainly the outside beer variety, arresting foreigners for working illegally.

The definition of working has been expanded to the extent that a foreigner can be pinched for simply talking to a customer. Technically, the foreigner could be talking to his brother or a family or personal friend, but it won’t matter.

These foreigners would certainly have been nicked if the plod had seen them, if only for impersonating chrome pole molesters

In one specific case, a bar operator in a soi located off Second Road was targeted. When the avaricious officials said they were going to arrest him for working, he said he didn’t own the bar, his Thai wife did. The paperwork confirmed this. When he then added he hadn’t touched a glass, changed any music, or emptied an ashtray, the peelers claimed he was being clapped in irons simply for talking to another foreigner sitting in the bar. The cost of freedom was 25,000 baht.

My source tells me this is the fourth foreign bar owner he knows who has been given the ‘talking to a customer’ treatment and fined a sufficiently large amount to help keep him out of the cells.

Yes, we all know in most cases the ‘real’ bar owner is indeed the foreigner with the cash, while his Thai wife or girlfriend is just the proxy. That said, there is nothing illegal in being an investor in a business in Thailand. If the foreigner is not physically engaging in any activity that can be performed by a Thai person, then there should not be a problem.

This kind of thing has happened in previous years, but the word is that the plod are struggling to fill their coffers to the extent they formally did, and so out go the hunting parties looking for fresh meat and little bundles of the folding stuff to bolster their retirement fund. Therefore, in order to restore their economic fortunes, while savaging those of others, they are resorting more and more to stretching the letter of the law to help line their fraying pockets.

©Duncan Stearn