November. Ekkamai. He was chain-smoking. Even though we were sitting in an open-air gazebo behind the building, the space felt completely suffocated by his smoke. He is Thai, slightly over fifty, and the owner of several massive nightlife venues across Bangkok and Pattaya.
“Look at the others,” he said, exhaling a thick cloud. “They all upgraded a long time ago. We are the only ones left behind. Give it six months. We rebuild the venue, attach a hotel, and in a year, we will be generating three times the money.”
I stared at him. “Do you not understand? What are we going to do with the people? Just scatter them across other venues like spare parts?”
He looked at me with mild exhaustion. “You always think about ‘the people’.”
Realizing the argument was completely pointless, I just nodded. “Okay. Up to you.”
And I walked away. I walked away from a place where I had poured all my energy, my emotions, and my sanity. I had practically lived in that building. Those people had become my family. And now he was casually announcing a six-month closure. In that exact moment, I thought: I’ve had enough. I am tired. I am out. It felt exactly like a massive defeat.
But nothing in this world is permanent. At first, I honestly thought my life in the industry was over. But I made a firm decision: I finally had free time, so I was going to write. I was going to write about everything I was never allowed to say out loud. I would explain exactly how the neon machine actually works. If I am being completely honest, at the very beginning, it looked a little bit like petty resentment. A bruised ego trying to vent. But sometimes, that is exactly how good things start.
I thought I would just lose myself in the typing. And for a while, I did. Then came the first thousand subscribers.
And then, he showed up at my house. He was chain-smoking again.
“Tomorrow, you are going to Pattaya,” he said. “We need you to oversee our new venue. Pick twenty of the best people from Ekkamai who know how to handle the floor, and take them with you.”
And once again, I found myself thinking about the people. But this time, it was also about those thousand subscribers who were waiting for the next post. I promised them I would show them how the underground machinery works, and I was taught that promises must be kept.
And so, torn between taking care of the venue, writing these stories, and trying to fit in my daily ten-kilometer walks, we are opening yet another Sunday.
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