I am a single male in my 50′s. I live in Southern California. I have owned several small companies in my life and am currently engaged in Internet Marketing.
During the 90′s I owned a paging store. I became one of the largest paging dealers in Southern California and sold the company in 2001. One of my goals in life was to retire before I was 45. The money I received from selling the company was not enough to retire in the US but I thought that if I could create a small business to cover my expenses, I could live out my days comfortably in a third world country. I chose Thailand.
I opened a pizza restaurant in a resort town. I signed the lease on August 11, 2001 and set about setting up a restaurant. I had never been in the food service business and didnt even know how to make a pizza from scratch. I bought an expensive conveyor type pizza oven and looked up pizza recipes on the Internet. The pizza I decided on was American style similar to what you would find at Pizza Hut, thick crust, lots of cheeze and pizza sauce.
Exactly one month after signing the lease, hijacked jets brought down the World Trade Towers in New York City. Americans decided not to travel that year.
Thailand has a law that prevent foreigners from running businesses without employing Thais. The basic rule of thumb is “you can’t work a job that a Thai can do”. I was turned down for a work permit and as such could not work in my own restaurant. To avoid problems, I was told I shouldn’t even enter the kitchen area.
The city where I lived was full of gogo bars, outside bars and tourist traps. Eventually I found a favorite bar that was favored by other American expats. I would spend most nights in the bar and visit my restaurant hourly to haphazardly manage it.
My time in the bar was spent with other expats who lived in the area, people passing through and tourists. Thailand is a colorful place. Many people work on oil rigs. Others are retired military, especially Vietnam War era vets. On any given evening you might talk to a DEA agent, a used car salesman, a mercenary or a drug dealer. The city is filled with real life heroes and wannabes. Many of the visitors are sex tourists or “sex-pats”. Everyone had a story. It is from these discussions I heard the stories and met the characters who would eventually end up as characters in my book.
I hope you read my book, The Bangkok Sporting Club. It fullfilled one of my lifelong goals which was to write a book. It is not an easy process. It took me over 5 years of writing, stopping, coming back to it and rewriting it over and over again. I would say that anyone who tells you it is fun has never written a book. It is hard work.
I had some ethical issues I wanted to explore but at the same time wanted to write something interesting to read. I wanted to lead and mislead the reader so they would form opinions of the characters and then have to re-evaluate. I wanted to define a character with actions and hopefully lead the reader to develop a like or dislike of a character without outright labeling a character good or bad. After I thought I had established the image of a character in the readers mind, I wanted to present evidence they had developed the wrong image.
I hope you enjoy my creation.
Dave Berger