by Guy Lilburne
“I’m not being funny but….”
“Do you understand where I’m coming from……?”
“I mean this most sincerely…..”
“I can say this hand on heart…….”
In fact, I should say that he nearly always starts a sentence with one of these saying, or at least, something similar. He was very sensitive to people’s feelings and he was genuinely a very nice person. A typical conversation between Tony, the owner of ‘This Way Bar’ and Gerry might go something like this:
“Do you want a sausage sandwich for breakfast Gerry?”
“I’m not being funny Tony, but I think I would like a bacon sandwich. I like sausage, but I also like bacon. Do you understand where I’m coming from? I mean this most sincerely. I like sausage and bacon, but I think I am going to go for a bacon sandwich. I’m not being funny Tony, but can I have a cup of tea as well? No rush. Whenever you are ready.”
He really was a lovely man and I was lucky to count him amongst my friends. Anyway, ‘Gerry the Swell’, or ‘Sexy Jelly’ as the local Thai ladies called him, had been telling everyone that his son, Tim, was coming to visit. Tim was in his early 40’s and Gerry was a bit worried that Tim would get bored hanging around Bang Saray for a month. I suggested that when Tim arrived the three of us could do a road trip around Thailand. Gerry was delighted with the idea and, apparently, so was Tim. A few weeks later Tim arrived and at 6:00am I took Gerry to Bangkok airport to collect his son, Tim. Gerry was beside himself with excitement. I knew Tim was in his early 40’s, but other than that I didn’t know anything about him and I didn’t really know what to expect. I didn’t need to worry. He was a lovely character, just like his dad. He dressed very young for his age. In fact he looked like one of the Harry Enfield characters, Kevin and Perry, with the baseball cap worn backwards on his head, tee shirt, ¾ length pants and big trainers. His tattoos were all testament to his support of Tottenham Hotspur FC. He had movie star looks and great teeth, which he flashed a lot with a cheeky grin.
Over the next three days we decided on the route of our road trip, the places where we would stay and how many nights in each place we would stay. We even booked a few hotels on the internet and a few days later we were on our way. We set out reasonably early and stopped for an English breakfast on the way. Our first destination was Bangkok. We booked into a nice hotel in the Siam district and spent the day looking around the city, taking a trip along the Choaphraya River and had a walk around China Town. We also took a tuk-tuk, because this was Tim’s first visit to Thailand and it was all new to him. In the evening we went to take in the delights of Nana Plaza. Tim was astounded, shocked, amazed and surprised, all at the same time. It is fair to say that he had never seen anything quite like it in his life. We ended up doing a round trip of 3,000 km, which included Bangkok, Khanchanaburi, Hua Hin, Phuket, Krabbi, and Cha Am. The scenery at times was just amazing, with beautiful lakes and mountains along the route and, to Tim’s delight, beautiful ladies in all the bars.
The only downside to doing a long road trip with other people is smells in the car - especially if I’m not the one who was responsible for them! Gerry always wears nice leather shoes, very expensive shoes, but they stink because he doesn’t wear socks. On one of the drives he was relaxing in the back of my lovely new car and decided to take his shoes off. He didn’t announce it or anything, but after a couple of minutes there was a rancid smell like rotting meat. I turned up the air conditioning and the blowers but I was still turning green. I tried turning off the air conditioning and opening all the windows, but then the car got too hot and the smell persisted. Eventually, after an hour and on the verge of being sick, I politely said;
“Fucking hell Gerry, your feet stink.”
“Oh! Is that me? I thought I could smell something bad, but I was hoping that it wasn’t my feet. Sorry about that.”
“Well it is. So put your shoes on.”
Later on, during the drive, another disgusting smell filled the car and had me heaving.
“For fucks sake, who has shit themselves?” I asked as politely as my anger would allow.
Tim just put his hand up and gave a sickly smile.
“Had I better stop the car, so you can go and have a test wipe?”
“No. It’s Ok now.”
Again I had to open all the windows and put the fans on high to blow out the foul smell. Just over an hour later the same thing happened again and I was gagging.
“Tim. You dirty bastard,” I cried in despair.
“I’m sorry about that,” said Gerry. “But that one was me and I mean that most sincerely.”
After fumigating the car once again and once I was calm enough to speak I said;
“Can we agree on a ‘road trip rule’? You and Tim are not allowed to shit in my car anymore!”
After they stopped laughing they agreed.
Chapter 17 - The New House
I had looked at several new houses around Bang Saray and they were all lovely, but I didn’t really want to live on a housing estate. There were lots of such houses available and typically the estates would be walled in with one access point which had 24 hour security. Most estates had a communal swimming pool and a gym. Although the houses were nice and bigger than the one I was living in on the pier, I just didn’t fall in love with any of them. The gardens were always tiny with just enough room to park a car on the front and just enough room to walk around the outside of the house without bashing your arm on the surrounding garden wall. If you looked out of any window in the houses you would be looking straight into the neighbours at either side or the back of you. It wasn’t how I wanted to live, but I kept looking. I still had a couple of months left before I had to decide what I was going to do.
I found a big new house for sale on a quiet soi on the other side of the Sukhumvit Road from Bang Saray. It was out in the countryside but still only about a five minute drive from the beach. The house was in an unmade soi and there were just three big detached houses along the soi. Each house stood in a plot of land that was 20 metres x 30 metres. On the other side of the soi were just fields and trees and a view of the mountains. I loved the house as soon as I saw it. It had a huge lounge and three big double bedrooms, two bathrooms and a separate western style kitchen. The house was brand new and the owner had furnished it with some beautiful solid wood furniture, which he had had sent down from Chiang Mai, along with some beautiful original paintings that adorned the walls in each room. They all had a Buddhist theme and the one in the lounge was 6’ x 8’ and I loved it! They agreed to leave all the furniture and paintings and we agreed a price. Two weeks later the deal was done and it only took me a couple of hours to move my stuff from the house on the pier to my new home. To buy a house and the land in Thailand you have to register a limited company, with yourself as the only director and buy the land and the property in your new company name. You will have to pay about £200 tax each year but that is it! Even though it was a new house there was some work to be done. I had a large terrace area at the front of the house but there was no shade and it was just too hot out there to enjoy it, so I had to employ some builders to extend the roof of the house at the front to completely cover the terrace. I wanted a Thai style kitchen so I also extended at the back of the house and made a second kitchen. There was also a matter of ghosts or spirits. There was a good sized tree in the garden, but one of my Thai friends explained that it was very bad luck to have this particular tree in a garden. So I had to pay to have it taken out. It was too big and well established for me to dig it out! Then there was the matter of having four steps leading up to the terrace at the front of the house. Four steps meant that I would have ghosts in the house for sure, according to my Thai friend. So I had to pay the builders to demolish four concrete steps and turn them into three concrete steps. At least my Thai friends and the ghosts were happy now!
Getting building work done in Thailand is very different from getting building work done in Great Britain. A Thai friend recommended a builder, so I had him come out to the house. He came with his wife and I took him around explaining what work I wanted doing. One of my Thai friends translated what I said to him and translated his replies back to me. We agreed a price for all the work. Well, at least I was under the impression that we had agreed a price. As it turned out I had to pay another 20,000 baht more in the end. My Thai friend tried to explain to me why I had to pay more in the end, but I still didn’t get it! Anyway, there was no written contract or anything and no architect plans drawn up. The builder told me that they would complete the work in seven to ten days. Wow! That sounded impressive. It sounded impressive, but it wasn’t, because it dragged on for six weeks. They arrived at 7:30am the next morning and dropped off a lot of building material and that was pretty much that for the first day. Each day they arrived at the same time, but each day it was different people with different skills who came to do a particular job. On several days there were children aged about eight years old who had come to do the labouring. Something inside me just wouldn’t let me sit by and watch as young children did heavy manual work - carrying heavy bags of cement or pushing wheelbarrows full of rubble. So I went inside and watched the TV and had a few beers! I’m only joking. I gave the kids sweets and fruit juice and I did the labouring for them, even though I was paying for all this work to be done by the builder! I was still travelling around the country a lot and a couple of times I went away for nearly a week, thinking that when I got back the building work would be finished. But whenever I went away, so did the builders. The day I returned then so did they. It was amazing how they knew! There was always some excuse. Usually that something they needed wasn’t available until that day when I just happened to return home. Anyway, bit by bit the work was done and I was delighted with it, although they did make a mess of my lawn. But it would grow back……eventually.
I went out and bought various fruit trees to plant in the garden and along the outside of the garden wall. Now I have lime, mango, papaya and lychee trees growing.
The hot dry season just seemed to go on and on that year. The rainy season usually starts at the beginning of May, but that year May was hot and dry. Very hot! We were sweltering in 38 degrees throughout May. My friend and fellow author Stephen Leather had been in Bangkok throughout May and he posted a few times on Facebook about the rain in Bangkok, but there in Chon Buri it was still hot and dry. In the last week in May I was watching the lightning every night and most of the days, but I never got to hear the thunder claps, it was just too far away! We still had sunshine. The rain was going to be a blessed relief as far as I was concerned. On Tuesday 4th June the rain came. It started late in the night and just didn’t stop. The next day I sat on my terrace as usual and was writing as usual, but it was cooler and the rain poured down. I liked it! I thought that it was the start of the rainy season…but it wasn’t. A couple of days later we were hot and bothered again in unseasonably high temperatures of 37 degrees. This continued throughout the rest of the rainy season. It just never arrived.
The rainy season usually ends in October, but that year it was when the rainy season arrived…..October!
Just when the weather should have been getting hotter it got cooler and the rain started. It rained throughout October, November and December, and eventually ended at the end of January. I guess that the seasons all over the world are changing! The only thing that doesn’t change about Thailand is the temperature. It is always hot, hot, hot!
Chapter 18 - Christmas was coming, again!
2013 was speeding by and my second Christmas and New Year was fast approaching. I had had another book published earlier on in the year. I was working on the new book for the following year and still writing this one of course in between travelling around Thailand and going on extended golf trips. I was amazed at how quickly time went by and I loved every minute of it. My friend Gerry had told me about UKTV, which I could subscribe to over the internet and get all the English TV live. I signed up and I was so happy to be able to watch all the programmes that I hadn’t even realised I had missed, until I was able to watch them again. In the build up to Christmas all the adverts made it feel so much more like a real Christmas again. I found myself getting excited for the festive season. My friend Jules Lee told me that he wasn’t going to be doing a Christmas dinner that year, so I decided that I would spend the holiday in the village. Most of my friends from Bang Saray were going to have Christmas dinner with Keith Beckham in his bar ‘Kobby’s Kitchen’, so I bought a ticket and reserved my place too. We all usually go there for a roast Sunday dinner every week. It’s a great get together and the food is consistently fantastic, so it was an easy choice to make. The plan was to have Christmas dinner there and in the evening go around to The Wilkris Resort for a party that Keith Callaghan had organised.
Well that was the plan! I woke up early at 5:00am and thought about my family back in England. It would have still only been 10:00pm on Christmas Eve there so I didn’t bother to ring them. I made myself a cup of tea and took it back to bed with the present that I had received from my mum. The present had arrived a few days before and I put it straight in the freezer. I put it in the freezer because I guessed that it was chocolate. My mum knows how much I love chocolate and it’s not easy to get English chocolate in Thailand. Back in bed with my cup of tea and the BBC news on TV, I read the card from my mum and opened my present. It was the only one I had to open and I was quite excited about it. Well, I was at first. It turned out not to be chocolate but frozen tea bags! They probably weren’t frozen when mum sent them, I might have had something to do with that, but it was a lovely present anyway even though I can buy tea bags from any supermarket in Thailand!
I cooked myself a full English breakfast and watched TV. Life felt good and it was Christmas Day. I got showered and changed and around mid-morning I went down into the village. Everybody was already out and about and dressed in their finest. There was a very happy atmosphere around the village, with people and their families going from bar to bar drinking and greeting each other. One beer led to another, which in turn led to drinking shorts. To cut a long story short, by mid-afternoon I was too busy drinking with my Norwegian friends in Ivar’s bar, ‘The Jasmin’, to go and eat Christmas Dinner at Keith’s place. Sorry Keith! I did make it to the party at The Wilkris, but to be honest I don’t remember much about it.
After the Christmas and New Year celebrations, I spent New Year’s Day relaxing with my good friend Gerry Davis on Bang Saray beach. We sat at one of the beach bars and looked out onto the Gulf of Thailand. The water was as blue as the sky, the sun was shining and we enjoyed a few beers! How fantastic it was to be sitting on a beautiful tropical beach on a beautiful sunny New Year’s Day.
“I’ve had worse days and sat in worse places Gerry,” I observed.
“Me too mate. Me too. Cheers! And I mean that sincerely.”
I felt good about life and I had settled into a wonderful life here in Thailand. My 9th book, ‘Thai Shorts’, was published in February 2014 and I was spending a lot of time travelling all around Thailand. On each journey I was reminded why I had fallen in love with ‘The Land of Smiles’. There was so much to see and do here and the people, expats and Thais are wonderful. Life really is what you make it and I was making my life an adventure.
I really loved Thailand and I loved living here, but there are some things that are just peculiar to Thailand. The following is a list of things you can find yourself doing when you have been in Thailand for a while. I can’t claim credit for this list. It has been reproduced many times in books and magazines and on various websites, but I have added a few of my own to the list. I’m sure that anyone who knows anything about Thailand will smile at a few of these!
Going Thai-crazy.
You know you have been in Thailand too long whe
n;
You look four ways before crossing a one way street.
You start enjoying Thai TV soap operas and game shows.
You sleep on the table and eat on the floor.
You think it’s normal to have a beer at 9:00am.
You haven’t had a solid stool in 5 years.
A Thai traffic cop waves you over and you automatically reach for your wallet.
You’ve bought a house for a bar girl (or at least a cell phone)
You carry an umbrella on sunny days to keep your skin white.
You stop wai-ing to beggars, waitresses, and go-go dancers.
You give up deodorants and start using talcum powder.
You tell somebody the time is 3:00pm when it’s actually 3:55pm.
You think a calendar is more useful than a watch.
You stop thinking that a girl riding side saddle on the back of a motorbike, wearing a mini skirt and putting on her make-up with one hand while holding a mobile phone to her ear with the other, is anything out of the ordinary.
You think opening a bar or a restaurant is a good idea.
