Pratumnak Hill: The Other Side of Pattaya

Pattaya means noise, neon and jet skis. But at the southern end of the bay there is a hill where the city falls silent. In The Season of Breath, Mr Schaka takes his readers there in chapter 10: Pratumnak Hill, covered in trees and villas, with a giant hand, a big golden Buddha and one of the most powerful moments in the book.

Pratumnak Hill, far from the noise

For the last days of Gabriel, his best friend over from Liège, the narrator decides to get away from the racket. Pratumnak separates Pattaya from Jomtien, he writes, “like an old man separating two kids in a fight.”

Up there you hear the birds, the wind in the palm fronds, and now and then a scooter struggling up the slope. You breathe better. Or maybe, he adds, it was just him who breathed better there, which comes to the same thing. For a man with pulmonary fibrosis, that distinction matters.

Sitting in a giantess’s hand

At the edge of the cliff, a café with a wooden terrace looks out over the sea. In the middle stands a woman’s head as tall as a house: hair of green lawn dotted with roses, big blue eyes, red lips, a face of absolute serenity. In front of her, her hand rises out of the ground, palm open to the sky, its nails painted with seashells. You can sit in it.

The narrator sits in it, of course, wearing an Argentina jersey and Crocs. Gabriel, raised on Kaamelott, immediately sees the Lady of the Lake, ready to hand him Excalibur. The narrator’s reply: she has already given him a dragon, no need to push his luck. In the photo, the giantess seems to be holding him the way you’d hold a baby bird fallen from its nest.

He stays a long time in that concrete hand, the sea behind him, and in front of him Chu and Gabriel bickering good-naturedly over the bill, each in their own language. A good spot, he writes, from which to watch the people you love.

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The big Buddha and the naga staircase

At the very top of the hill, a big golden seated Buddha gazes out over Pattaya Bay with infinite patience. You get there by a staircase. Naturally. In Thailand, the book reminds us, everything sacred is up high, and everything up high has to be earned.

The staircase is guarded by two nagas, two great serpents with green and gold scales that run down the handrails, jaws open at the foot of the steps. The naga is the sacred serpent that sheltered the Buddha from the rain by spreading its heads above him. Ever since, it has been placed along temple staircases, like a handrail guarding the passage between the world below and the world above. The narrator would gladly have installed one on every staircase of his life.

The day he took Chu’s arm

The staircase isn’t long. But that day, his breath has already done its sums. Gabriel understands before anyone else: he announces he’s going to see whether there’s a drinks machine at the top, and climbs the steps two at a time without looking back. He leaves the two of them alone.

At the foot of the steps, between the two serpents’ jaws, Chu simply holds out her arm, bent, at the height of his hand. Throughout the whole trip he had refused it: at the airport, on the Skytrain, on the hill of the chedi in Isan. Accepting that arm felt like signing something. That day, he takes it.

They climb together, at Chu’s pace, which has become his own. And this time, during the pauses, nobody pretends to be looking at the view: they really look at it. At the top, Gabriel is waiting on a bench with three bottles of cold water. He says nothing. As for the narrator, he takes away a very simple lesson from that day: “letting yourself be helped takes nothing away. It adds someone.”

Pattaya, the bright-lights side

In the evening, the three of them walk down to the Bali Hai pier at the end of Walking Street, where the boats leave for the islands. On Pratumnak Hill, the PATTAYA city sign glows purple above the sea, “like Hollywood, only more modest and more sincere.” Chu takes one last photo of the two men from Liège. They look like two guys with all the time in the world.

If you’re passing through Pattaya, save half a day for Pratumnak. And if someone holds out an arm to you at the foot of a staircase, take it.