Pattaya Beach by John Elray

Pattaya Beach
Pattaya Beach

Pattaya Beach

By John Elray

A Common Tale of Woe Told in an Uncommon Way

Review by Owen Jones

When I was given this book by it’s author because he had heard that I lived in Pattaya, it was two years ago, but little did he know that I was writing my own first novel on girls working in the same Thai city. I put the novel at the back of my hard drive and wrote my own, because I was frightened that people would say that I had copied someone.

Anyway, I finished my novel, Behind The Smile and it turned into a trilogy, so I retrieved Elray’s Pattaya Beach earlier this week and started it.

I am glad that I left it and I am equally glad that I retrieved it because I loved it!

I have lived in Pattaya and elsewhere in the Land of Smiles for ten years now and you can believe me that most men who write and talk about the girls don’t have a good word to say about them.

However, I do and I am happy to say, so does Elray.

He is sympathetic, but still realistic. They are not all good, but then which group of people is?

The characters were varied and believable and there is plenty of action to keep the story rolling along. I found it a very enjoyable read.

I recognised the streets, the areas and types of places, bars and characters both in Pattaya and Nong Khai, which also features – I have been there many times en route to Laos for a visa.

I even live in a remote village like the one in this story, and as it happens, it is located not far from the one in the book as the crow flies.

If you are not a rabid misogynist of Thais and like the Land of Smiles, this is a book for you. Pattaya Beach was certainly my kind of book. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

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Review only, by +Owen Jones


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Owen
Owen

Owen Jones, Amazon Best-Selling Author from Barry, Wales, has lived in several countries and travelled in many more. While studying Russian in the USSR in the '70's, he hobnobbed with spies on a regular basis; in Suriname, he got caught up in the 1982 coup; and while a company director, he joined the crew of four as the galley slave to sail from Barry to Gibraltar a home-made concrete yacht, which was almost rammed by a Russian oil tanker and an American aircraft carrier.
“I am a Celt, and we are romantic”, he said when asked about his writing style, “and I firmly believe in reincarnation, Karma and Fate, so, sayings like 'Do unto another...', and 'What goes round comes around' are central to my life and reflected in my work. I write about what I see, or think I see, or dream... and, in the end it is all the same really”. He speaks seven languages and is learning Thai, since he lives in Thailand with his Thai wife of fifteen years.
His first novel, Daddy's Hobby is from the seven-part series 'Behind The Smile: The Story of Lek, a Bar Girl in Pattaya', but his largest collection is 'The Megan Series', twenty-three novelettes on the psychic development of a teenage girl, the subtitle of which, 'A Spirit Guide, A Ghost Tiger and One Scary Mother!' sums them up nicely. He has written fifty novels and novelettes, including: Dead Centre; Andropov's Cuckoo; Fate Twister; The Disallowed (a philosophical comedy); Tiger Lily of Bangkok; and A Night in Annwn (Annwn being the ancient Welsh word for Heaven). Many have been translated into foreign languages and narrated into audio books.
Owen Jones writes stories set in Wales, Spain and Thailand, where he now lives. He is a life-long Spiritualist, and this belief is interwoven, in a very realistic way, into many of his books and storylines. If you like a touch of the 'supernatural', try his books
He sums his life up thus: “Born in the Land of Song, Living in the Land of Smiles”.

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