The boys of Pattaya – and I don’t mean those who earn a living on their back – are having conniption fits (once again) thanks to the authorities cracking down on the concessionaires at Dongtan Beach. It seems they are forcing the vendors who provide deck chairs and umbrellas to cut back on the amount of beach they’ve taken over; they are being directed to move back to the area they were originally licensed to use. The boys are upset that the crack-down that occurred in early December came without warning too. If you ignore the meeting held at Pattaya City Hall attended by the authorities and concessionaires alike just a few days earlier. But facts are facts and if there is one thing that has no room in the sexpat world, it’s facts. Not when you are already living the fiction that Pattaya is a beach resort town.

The sexpat community even sent a petition to City Hall, and the Prime Minister. Which was surprising. Not in content, but rather that the petition contained so few grammatical and punctuation errors. Evidently, someone’s gin intake for the day was severely curtailed. But the fantasy world in which an angry bunch of sexpats’ opinion would matter to anyone in Thailand who is Thai still came shining through. “We come to Pattaya to enjoy our time on the beach here,” the sexpats claim in their document’s opening. “We are entertained and made to feel welcome by the various beach concession holders and their staff. This gives a wonderful impression of Pattaya, and we return to the same place year after year.”

By ‘entertained’ I assume they mean the hot and cold running prostitutes who troll for customers under the umbrellas. Which is the real reason they return year after year. And when it comes to impressions of Pattaya, as true as that may be, it doesn’t exactly qualify as wonderful in most visitors’ minds.

Other than mentioning those soon-to-be-lost “pleasurable times” the petition goes on to quote a few made-up facts, and then lists all the things that are really wrong with Pattaya beaches. Like the filthy, polluted water. And dirty sand. So the boys do have a point. Those umbrellas do serve a valid purpose. They hide the ugly reality of Pattaya beaches from the unsuspecting. Now if City Hall would just do something about the ugly realty of obese farang bodies on display under those umbrellas, Pattaya may some day become the Phuket it yearns to be.

And there’s the rub. It’s not that the beloved tattered, soiled, stained and faded umbrellas may disappear from Pattaya’s beaches. It’s that Phuket has already tackled that issue. And as usual, did it better. Without the need for a shady spot for sex tourists to gather, they banned umbrellas and concessionaires from Phuket’s beaches entirely.

Granted, that had more to do with corruption, tea-money, illegal structures, and The Good General stamping out supporters of former prime minister Thaksin wherever their wallets may be, but the result was still an improvement over what once was. Now tourists flocking to Patong Beach for the picture-perfect views of turquoise waters and palm trees Phuket is known for, can actually see those sights. Or as Jabba puts it, “Now in Phuket you have to carry an umbrella to the beach. Great!”

Oh the horror. The horror . . .

And it’s not just the burden of carrying a two-pound umbrella across the sand that worries Jabba. Logistics too are a concern. He says he’s never seen a beach umbrella for sale or for rent anywhere in Thailand. Or anywhere else. So someone will have to tackle that thorny supply-side issue. Too bad that other than on its beaches you never see umbrellas in Thailand or all would not be lost. But then Thais can be an enterprising lot when need be, so maybe they’ll build a village up north somewhere that will become so skilled at making umbrellas it will one day become famous around the world for that product. But then they say I’m a dreamer . . .

Jabba worries about having to lug a beach umbrella on a plane when traveling to other beach resort areas in Thailand too. Not to mention what to do with it when it’s time to return to your home country. ‘Cuz he’s never seen luggage that an umbrella would fit in. And obviously, anyone who dropped five bucks on an umbrella would want to keep it as the cherished souvenir that it is.

Worse yet, Jabba wonders how a tourist would ever manage to get an umbrella back and forth from their hotel to the beach. It’s a shame no one has invented one that closes and folds up; that could come in handy. But even then that small package may block your view of nearby restaurants, and Jabba is concerned that without the concessionaires beach visitors will be forced to endure “a long hike to a restaurant if they don’t die of thirst on the way”. Which is like a camel with eight humps worried that it may run out of water before reaching the next oasis.

And so the Pattaya aficionados on Jabba’s message board continue to moan. Life, as they know it, is once again being threatened. And Jabba predicts scores of unhappy visitors with the soles of their feet burnt on blistering hot sand because they forgot to wear footwear. ‘Cuz going barefoot on Pattaya’s streets and pathways is such a popular and injury-free pastime. Others in his band of merry men sound the warning that those umbrellas are the only thing standing between you and a ghastly death by melanoma. Or specifically that the “clear air in Phuket is just inviting skin cancer”. Which, obviously, is not a concern in Pattaya. No more so than the dangers of clean ocean water.

While some claim that “there was nothing wrong with the previous concessionaires except overpricing and occasionally commandeering areas of beach for themselves” – pesky but easily over-looked problems of no concern – one pundit ruefully pointed out that the result of the changes would be that “tourists are supposed to carry their gear from their hotel to the beach after having spent big bucks buying it for a one week stay”. Makes you glad those bar boys are capable of making it to the beach on their own ‘cuz otherwise visitors would have to lug them across the sand after having spent big bucks buying a boy for a one week stay too.

Not that most sexpats would go to that extreme. That’s like taking ice to the North Pole. Because along with umbrellas, deck chairs, life-saving hydration within easy reach, and a never-ending supply of fried and/or fatty foods to keep your waistline from becoming a shallow shadow of its former prodigious self, what Dongtan Beach provides is ample opportunity to indulge in every sexpat’s favorite pastime: commercial sex. And without having to pay one of those horrendous, wallet-sucking off fees. ‘Cuz face it, if someone opened a cheap bar in Sunee stocked with umbrellas, deck chairs, and not-quite-legal-looking boys in skimpy bathing suits, no Sunee fan would ever set foot on Dongtan Beach again. And their smiles would be all the umbrellas Pattaya ever needed.