One month after the catastrophic wreckage of your last Pattaya relationship, you find yourself sitting in Tree Town. You swore an oath on a stack of empty Chang bottles that you would never, ever date anyone from the ecosystem again. Yet, looking at your new partner across the table, a cold shiver runs down your spine: she just did something that is an exact 1:1 copy of your ex’s most annoying habit.
Ah well. The machine spares no one.
It’s a classic Tree Town evening. You’ve got a reliable, unpretentious gin and tonic in hand, while your new girl is carefully engineering a photo of her hyper-sweet, glowing TikTok cocktail that looks like liquid neon.
The tropical breeze is warm, and your view of the iconic McDonald’s and 7-Eleven across the street is suddenly obliterated.
A living, breathing mountain of flesh—easily tipping the scales at 200 kilograms—squeezes past your table. You catch yourself running a quick mental physics calculation on how long the plastic chair under him is going to survive. You lean over to drop a quiet joke about the human boulder to your date, and your gin and tonic nearly hits the floor.
Because sitting directly across from the 200-kilo freight train is your ex.
Her eyes lock onto yours instantly. The radar detects the target with military precision. A familiar, volatile spark of pure malice and competitive spirit lights up her pupils.
“You know what? The vibe here is weird, maybe we should grab dinner at that quiet place down the block,” you whisper, sweating through your shirt and initiating an emergency tactical retreat.
“Tirak, no way,” your new girl pouts, clutching her glass. “They literally just brought me my new TikTok cocktail.”
Too late. There is no escape.
You sit in agonizing silence, your mind flashing back to the grand finale of your breakup a month ago. Back then, she screamed at the top of her lungs that you were an “ugly, fat 82-kilo tree stump” and ranted endlessly about your height, treating you like a walking vertical disappointment.
Now, look at who she’s sitting with. A 200-kilo chunk of imported meat.
Deciding that the entire bar needs to witness her “glory,” she launches into full theatrical mode. She dramatically flags down the waiter, locks eyes with you across the sticky table, and projects her voice so the entire soi can hear:
“Bring me the most expensive cocktail on the menu!”
The local waiter blinks, looks at the sweating monolith of a man, and asks, “You mean the one for 1,999 baht?”
The 200-kilo boar sits in total silence, staring blankly at the table, completely checked out of reality.
Your ex throws her arms around the massive lump of flesh, flashes a triumphant, venomous smile in your direction, and announces to the room: “Yes! My husband is extremely wealthy, and he does everything for me—not like those broke, short little men!”
The dig about your height stings, awakening the petty, fragile male ego deep inside your soul. You decide you refuse to look small. You drop cash on the table, grab your new date by the hand, and say, “We’re leaving.”
As you walk past their table, you channel your inner runway model. You intentionally straighten your spine, pull your shoulders back, and rise up as high as you possibly can on your tiptoes, trying to look like a towering, statuesque giant to show your ex that you’re totally unfazed and way taller than she remembers.
You strut past them with an air of effortless, majestic dominance.
You make it about five meters down the soi, safely out of earshot, when your new girl suddenly stops. She looks down at your feet, then up at your strained, sweating face, and blinks in pure confusion.
“Tirak…” she asks, tilting her head. “Why are you walking so weird? Do you need to go to the toilet?”
You exhale, let your heels crash back down to the pavement, and realize the ultimate Pattaya truth:
In this city, everything works in both directions. We all swear we’ve escaped, we all trade up, and we all pretend we’ve changed. But underneath the fresh makeup and the TikTok drinks, the script is identical—and sometimes, so is the pathetic tiptoe walk.
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