2 October 2009
Bar owner possible suicide: Trevor Hawley, better known among Pattaya and Bangkok bar owners simply by his initials TJ, was found dead in a hotel room in South Pattaya at the start of October. According to early reports it appeared TJ, the owner of the formerly very popular Coyotees go-go in Soi Marina Plaza, had committed suicide by ingesting a large quantity of sleeping pills. Just why he decided to end his life only he could possibly answer, given that he leaves behind a Thai wife and a young son. It is to them, and to his family in Australia, I extend my sympathy.
Coyotees had been raided on a few occasions in recent times and was suffering in a business sense as a consequence. The latest raid had resulted in TJ and a slew of dancers being hauled off to the local plod shop to explain the short-time rooms and the naked shows. That TJ was, so it is alleged, practically bankrupt financially, meant he was unable to supply the necessary funds required to make these kinds of issues go away.
Many bar owners in Pattaya didn’t have a good word to say about TJ, for a variety of reasons, most of them centring on his blatant attempts to lure the youngest and best looking dancers to come and work for him. He was quite successful at enticing talent and this, not unnaturally, angered other business operators. Personally I didn’t mind him and, by and large, found him straight enough to deal with. He was a ladies man through and through rather than ‘one of the boys’. He knew from the start that Coyotees would struggle to get passing trade and no matter what anyone says about him he succeeded in spades in a location that was always one of Fun Town’s black holes