The best sign you’ll ever see in a Pattaya bar

[Pattaya One]

The Roo beer boozer, noshery and hotel (Walking Street) has been a well-known and popular fixture for more years than its Aussie proprietors would probably care to remember. As the picture with this story shows, it has a sign which is so beautifully worded

For its first 10 or so years it went under the name of the Jan bar before changing its cognomen to the Roo, but the people behind it remain the same. Not sure when the last coat of paint or wood varnish was applied to anything inside the bar, but it really doesn’t matter as the place is one of the few remaining in Fun Town which harks back to the pioneering days of Pattaya.

The food is basic but good, and not overpriced; the music is basic but good and suited to its generally ‘older’ clientele; the booze and other thirst quenchers are set in the mid range; but it’s the sign above the menu that I love.

Totally and utterly politically incorrect, which means it’s absolutely perfect for Pattaya. It’s been hanging there, as far as I’m aware, since the bar first opened about 20 years ago.

Some people might wonder just why the owners decided they needed to put up such a sign? I stand to be corrected on this, but from what I understand, going back 20 or more years ago, many of the regular visitors to the fleshpots of Fun Town were offshore oil workers and guys who were employed in the sandpit (ie, Saudi Arabia). No sex, drugs, booze or rock n roll for six weeks or more at a time while they were working, so when they hit Pattaya it was 10 days or more of playing catch up. The Saudis tended to be quite restrictive in their attitude towards their ‘infidel’ foreign workers and so when these guys went on leave to Pattaya the last people they wanted to share a bar stool with was a native from the sandpit. So, this carefully worded sign was erected in the old Jan Bar and remains to this day as a reminder of the world before PC.

©Duncan Stearn

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