Days T5-7: High Season

January 24, 2025

The ad-hoc booked 'Flipper House' hotel turned out to be a real winner. You can judge the success of a hotel business by how slam packed the breakfast tables are at 9am on the weekend and this was exceptional. The staff were quite friendly and attentive, and the courtesy with the bicycle storage was the biggest draw. For a cycle tourist, this is one of the nicest and most appreciated things that the hotels and guesthouses will do. It gives peace of mind knowing that it won't be stolen on the street as well it makes it the best way to get around the city.

Throughout all the comings and goings, the bicycle won hands down. Given the peak of the peak season, it was even busier than I remembered last year. For that reason, police checks were everywhere on the main roads. I saw countless motorcycles getting stopped and foreigners literally begging the police to let them off easy. But no such luck for them, it's a cash cow. The bicycle means that the police don't bat an eye at me. Locals even agreed this is the way to do it.

My brain is still a bit mush as the decompression effect hasn't quite run its course yet. It would have been pure madness to hop a direct flight here in the peak of the pressure but that is what several of my coworkers did. Obviously I'm not in the mood to see any of them here, what would be the point? Instead, I took advantage of the free swimming pool to update the budget and the blog and start to chip away at things.

Besides the actual budget which is shaping up again nicely, there was a new trading budget set up with the help of ChatGPT. After months of back and forth, we finally worked out a trading plan. Beforehand, one of my best friends kept saying with regards to this, "Make a plan and stick to it!" Easier said than done, but I worked on out in the end. This trip is being tested out as the warmup for all this. Once things start for real we are looking at this model

- Stocks: 2% per month profit target for a core and satellite long position across 12 categories, with the exception of the last category as four short positions. The core and satellite was inspired from a fund manager I met in Bangkok on a previous trip and I've structured my portfolio after that. The idea is like buying and selling inventory for a store. You buy stocks at a discount, keep an eye on 'next in line' to sell, then at the right time sell realized. Then you buy more and repeat the cycle. That 2% goal can be met surprisingly quickly.

- Options: this is a more consistent income stream, 3% per month realized. Options are sold across varying time horizons: weekly, 2-4 weeks, and 45 days to expiration.

- Futures: by far the hardest to trade, but with 5% per month target (on a smaller account size) the target can be met quickly. I already made this with a few good trades, but I am shutting down the account for the rest of the trip and will simply let the ongoing Gold short run in the background.

With that plan all set up, next it was time to hit the gym. This time I did a full hour of weights then another hour of cardio. I started to miss the structured group workouts already. They don't seem to be a thing in Pattaya, nor is the gym at all for that matter so you need to improvise a little bit.

Next up, some shopping for electronics but a Buri Ram shirt caught my eye along the way. This is the home of the famous football team and the stadium.

One of the highlights was three nights in a row of live music at one of the smaller music bars on Walking Street. I found out the band keeps up regular schedules and this one was legendary. They do live covers of all the latest music and their skills are so good to the point that you think you're listening to the real thing -- not a cover. After awhile they got to know me as a regular and did some requests.

With so much going on in Pattaya, success depends on making a routine and sticking to it. I was reminded of the conversation from the retiree who plays golf in the morning and bridge in the afternoon. Creating this kind of structure is paramount in a place where it's too easy to fly off the rails. This trip was one of the better ones in that I quickly learned to direct the show and control the narrative. The way it works, the 'up to you' model of getting around Pattaya can be freeing but also overwhelming and inefficient. Too many people get ripped off or pickpocketed with basic scams, etc... as they aren't really mentally switched on while going around. I didn't lose a single baht and kept to my system of mini-budgets, for example around 2k baht at a time on person.

Later on one of my coworkers wanted to meet up and it was his first time in Pattaya so I gave him an ad-hoc tour of the nightlife and we hit up various clubs including the live music bar. He thoroughly enjoyed the night and also provided a lot more context into the current difficult situation at my job.

Throughout this, I began to see that what's missing in this market are organized yet flexible nightlife tours. As mentioned, the current model of 'up to you' while walking around Pattaya is quite inefficient. It's like an entire row of bars trying to compete with the other by playing louder and louder music to create this caucophony of chaos. Why not instead hire a central DJ to play music for them all? Or for tours, why not have some tailor made experiences where you sign up and a guide leads you but you also have some agency in curating the tour? This is what they do in Korea or Japan for example.

But the first hotel was proving to be quite noisy and busy so I ended up moving to another one nearby my old condo and this was an excellent choice. It had mostly Indian clientele and I made friends with one of the businessmen who frequently goes back and forth from Mumbai. He made quite the interesting pitch about it: no police, no law.

All the while I spent less than half my budget and also felt refreshed and free not having that condo hanging over my head like before. Given this was all in the same area anyway, it was quite the perspective.

While it felt like last year was yesterday, this trip was reinforcing the idea that you can't, nor necessarily should you expect to repeat the same experiences. Almost everything that happened back then was a one-off. For example, biking into the compound would be next to impossible to meet John again. Same with the legendary chance meeting back in Khlong Hat. These meetings are organic and not manufactured. So it's a fine balancing of creating routines but also directing the narrative to constantly seek out new and organic experiences. When these things happen you then document them and process them with the help of ChatGPT.

But those few days passed quickly and it was soon time to move on.

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