Mr Bruce and Mr Bill signed a long lease and bought off Mr Singhs place.
Mr Bruce had recently immigrated from the Great White North[Canada], we’d met the year before at Thai Garden. Bruce was a regular there and was growing tired of his life as a $1,000,000 salesman in BC, Canada!
Mr Bill had also lived briefly at Valentines where we met him and his new wife from California.
Bruce had sent correspondence to us about purchasing Mr Singhs lease at Valentines, Mr Singh, for some reason thought we had first dibs on the place, but we had no intention of starting a business in Thailand or any other place at the time.
Mr Bruce then made a “deal” with Crazy Dave to buy off Valentines, Dave went off to America to gather fund$, but evidently didn’t return to Phuket in time and when he did, with “insufficent funds”, so Mr Bruce made a new deal with Mr Bill, the deal was done, Valentine became Paradise.
We arrived back in the Kingdom just before monsoon that year and checked into Paradise, our original room, but soon we could see that things were moving rapidly and it wasn’t for the better!
Mr Bruce ran the bungalows and little shop infront by the road, he moved into Mr Singhs old room behind the shop.
Mr Bill ran the bar and had a small room off the side.
We learned that night, around 2AM, when we were woken abruptly by a 200watt stereo going FULL BLAST! Led Zeplin never sounded better, but really we wanted to sleep! Mr Bill knew the drinkers would be aroused into buying more booze, cause this was the sign for LAST CALL!
Last Call was something that happened each night at 2AM, supposedly the bar was to close then, but the loud music only revved the boozers up and “Last Call” seem to last til about,,,DAYBREAK!
After a few days of this, we moved out and up the road to a new bungalow compound named TharaPatong, certainly MUCH quieter, plus we had a kingsize bed AND HOT water shower all for the princely sum of 80baht a day! Of course, “long term rate” was 50baht a day and we immeadiatley moved in.
The staff at TharaPatong were very kind, friendly and expedient, plus they served very good CURRY at their little restaurant!!
We didn’t miss the noise of Paradise or Thai Garden, we still visited both regularly, but rarely stayed past midnight. We knew the party never really ended at either place and we’d hop on the Spirit Of Patong before we turned into pumpkins at midnight and sauntered back up the beach, only a kilometer and had a good nights sleep.
The Government had run their big bulldozer over the beach the year before, knocked down all the squatters shops/shacks and planted some trees along the beachfront, which Mr Bruce felt was a direct intrusion on his view of the beach from Paradise. Well, very late one night, one thing led to another and someone happened by and somehow Mr Bruce was arrested by Patongs finest and taken away to Baan Ling in Kathu for “cutting down trees on the Kings Land”!
Bruce only spent the night in the hooscow, with the trial being soon after, it was decided that a “small fine” would be paid, no one was declared guilty[or innocent]because the court knew that “a general manager would never actually be doing manual labor[ie:cutting down trees with a hachet]. In the end Mr Bruce once again had a clear, unobstructed view of the blue Andaman Sea and all was well at Paradise.
Paradise was always a good place to have a cool one or a “cheeseburger in Paradise” but late at night, their ghetto blaster could be heard all the way past Scandia Bungalows!
Mr Bill could speak fairly good Thai, he’d lived in Bangkok after the war for several years and was wise to how to handle most things, Mr Bruce’s personality made him a favorite with the staff. They did alright.
