Squabbling beach vendor gives rival a single bullet warning

When foreign tourists are on holiday and lying on the beach, usually all they want is some peace and tranquillity to enjoy the sunshine unperturbed. Beach vendors often seem to have missed the memo though, with a constant barrage of sales pitches falling somewhere between comical annoyance and an enraging frustration. Competition for tourist money is fierce, and, according to a police report, one beach chair vendor on Pattaya Beach took it too far.

The man is accused of making a thinly veiled, though somewhat poetic, threat against a speed boat operator over perceived stolen customers. The police report was filed on Thursday by a terrified young speedboat operator on Pattaya Beach. The 21 year old man said he had an ongoing rivalry with a beach chair vendor.

He said that in a previous confrontation, the beach chair seller had come up to his customers right in front of him and tried to steal them away. They argued over the customers, but the fight did not escalate to anything more serious that day. Then, earlier this week, the beach chair vendor approached a friend of the speed boat operator.

He handed the operator’s friend a single bullet with a message to deliver it to the speedboat vendor. This symbolic threat understandably frightened the speedboat operator.

The panicked young recipient of the bullet held onto it and brought it down to the Pattaya Police Station immediately to submit a report. In his police report filed on Thursday, the young man claimed that the beach chair vendor he had been squabbling with is a member of the mafia.

According to The Pattaya News, officers from the police station went down to where the altercation took place to try to find the suspect alleged to have made the threat. As of now, no arrests have been made in the incident.