A Farang Strikes Back

by Louis Anschel

  “We have to talk about our business,” I said. “If I continue like that I will be broke soon. I have to earn some money after we move to the house.”

  Som made big eyes when hearing the word “broke”. “Please, don’t worry,” she said. “I will ask around tomorrow. But in this case I can't work again.” She looked at me silently.

  “I will pay your bar fine, don’t worry.”

  “Should I stop working?”

  I thought about Taen. But I trusted Som and said, “Well, actually I don’t want you to stop. It’s great that you have your own money and you don’t depend on me. Your earnings are yours. There is no reason to discuss it.”

  “Yes, but I work only a little bit in the moment. That’s not enough.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My family lives from my income. My mother and my daughter.”

  “So you didn’t mean the bar fine in the beginning?”

  Som shook her head. “I have to transfer money to the bank regularly so my mother can withdraw it with her ATM card.”

  I nodded. “And if you miss work too often, you can't transfer any money.”

  “At the moment I always stay with you. Especially in the evening when the most customers come to the parlour. It’s not enough if you just pay the bar fine for me. I get a 15 percent commission on the bar fine. Do you know how much that is? Only 30 baht! For a whole day! That is the reason why I have to ask you for money. For my family.”

  Som smiled in an insecure way, came over and put her hand on my thigh. “Do you help me?”

  “When do you need the money?”

  “I would like to go to the bank tomorrow. My mother already called and asked if I can transfer something.”

  I was surprised. Som had only asked for money a day before which she wanted to transfer into her account so her mother could withdraw it in Chaiyaphum. This time she didn’t say a sum. Either she didn’t like to talk to me straight about money whilst she said a number or she trusted my generosity. I knew more or less how much she made before I came to Pattaya. Or she hoped that I would give her some extra money after my calculation, just like that. Maybe this was the way in which Thais did business. If something is not written black on white you mostly get sketchy information, and even when it is in black and white, they are mixed so that there is a lot of grey.

  I went into the room to fetch my wallet.

  “How much?” I asked because I wanted Som to nail down an amount.

  “Up to you.”

  Did I expect a different answer? I gave her 5,000 baht. “That should be enough in the first place,” I told her.

  Som put the five brand new notes into her handbag without saying a word.

  “You never thank me when I give you money,” I complained.

  “Bargirls say thank you to their punters and wai them when they get money the next morning. I am your wife. Why should a wife thank her husband when she gets some money from him? It’s our money.”

  I should have considered that statement more thoroughly, as it would have saved me a lot of money and heartache in the future.

  “Anyway, we have to talk about our business,” I said after a while. “Dao pays Rung 100,000 baht to get the parlour. I am sure this is a bargain buy. I think we have to spend more.”

  “She buys the parlour but it's not hers,” Som said. “It will become very difficult for Dao.”

  Rung didn’t rent the parlour from the owner but from a third party, a sub-leaser. The sub-leaser paid the rent to the owner, and got the rent from Rung–with an addition of 100 percent on the regular rent. Money for nothing. The 100,000 baht which Dao wanted to pay to Rung was in the best meaning a payment for the crummy mattresses and tatty, dark green curtains. The sublease was horrendous. In addition there were more costs for electricity including the air conditioners and water. Anyway which you counted the costs, a lot of massages had to be performed in order to get any kind of a profit.

  “We will do it differently,” Som said. “We will rent directly from the owner. We have to pay a saeng, which will be charged against the rent. The saeng is depending on the location between 100,000 and 200,000 baht. Let’s say, for example, the monthly rent is 12,000 baht and the saeng is 100,000 baht. You pay only 8,000 baht per month until the saeng you paid before is used up. That will be the case after two years. At this time the parlour is running well and you don’t have to worry about the higher rent.

  “But the location has to be good as well,” I said.

  “The closer the parlour is located to Beach Road the better,” Som said. “Either on one of the sois near Beach Road, on Second Road or on Soi Buakhao. Locating the parlour any further away would be bad for business.”

  Som’s mobile phone rang. It was Dao. She wanted to come by this evening to talk with us.

  Then my mobile phone rang. It was John. I made a sign to Som to keep quiet and talked a short while with my son. He still tried to convince me to return home, but I resisted. I didn’t want to be there although I regretted that I couldn’t see him anymore.

  “Who was it?” Som asked after the call.

  “My son.”

  “Your son? You didn’t talk much about him. How old is he? Do you have a picture?”

  I fetched a not too recent photograph of my son from my wallet.

  “He is handsome,” she said smiling when she gave the photo back. “And you have his number in your mobile?”

  I feigned an angry look.

  “I am just joking,” Som said and laughed. ”Your son could visit us when we live in our beautiful house.”

  “We will see about that,” I said cautiously when the telephone rang in the apartment. “Jesus, this is like at work,” I said, and ran inside the room to take the call.

  Dao stood at the reception and wanted to come upstairs. The staff didn’t know who she was; she needed to be signed in by a resident. Som went downstairs and then returned to the apartment together with Dao. We went outside on the balcony.

  Dao said something to Som which I didn’t understand. Then she fell around my neck and gave me a big kiss on the cheek.

  “Richard transferred 150,000 baht!” she shouted delighted. “The money arrived today!” Dao cheered and almost couldn’t sit still because she was so excited. “Tomorrow I will give Rung 100,000 baht and the parlour is mine.” She looked at me. “I really thank you. Thank you very, very much.” She waied me and bowed her head, almost a sign of humbleness. She then said, “From tomorrow on, Som doesn’t have to pay the bar fine, if she doesn’t show up for work. She only has to call or to tell me before. That’s all.”

  She jumped up and left. Som accompanied her to the door. I stayed on the balcony. Dao appeared at the entrance of the building and set on the pillion of a motorcycle which was being ridden by a Thai man. She put her arms around his waist and they drove away. I looked after them for a long time.

  * * *

  A couple of days later Som and I met with the house owner at a notary’s office in the morning. In the middle of the sparsely equipped office which was in truth a retail shop, a desk and some chairs were the only furniture. Behind these were some shelves with document files, and on the desk was a computer monitor. We sat down in front of the desk, and the notary took a closer look at the sales contracts we had signed. He frowned a little bit while talking to Som. Both of them spoke Thai rapidly; I didn’t understand much. My Thai was almost fluent in casual conversation but if the topic got too complicated like business or news, I failed.

  Finally the notary certified the contract. Som told me he would take care of everything else. He would go to the land office and register our names for the property. I looked at the notary who nodded and pleasantly smiled at me. The legal things were done now and we could start with the financial side. In the early part of the morning, I had been to the bank and withdrew 700,000 baht. I fetched my backpack and laid seven bankrolls of 1,000 baht notes on the desk. Every roll consisted of 100 notes. The money was counted; it took an
eon. Almost the entire whole desk was covered with bank notes. Everybody smiled when the house owner finally pocketed the money. The final 100,000 baht should be financed through a mortgage. They notary wanted to take care of it as well. Now I was a proud owner of a private residential building.

  * * *

  That afternoon and for the next few days, Som looked for massage parlours which were for sale. We thought it would be very advantageous to buy a fully furnished parlour instead of renting a retail shop which we had to renovate and reconstruct. The sum of my cancelled life insurance shrank slowly but surely. If I had to customize an empty retail shop I wouldn’t have much money left. It was bad enough if I had to renovate an already furnished parlour. And I took Peter’s parlour as a model. You had to offer something special if you wanted to survive in the massage business.

  Som insisted to go alone. She wanted to take photographs of the parlours with her new mobile phone and show me the photos in the evening, so I could get a picture myself about the parlours.

  She said, “If a farang showed up in one of the parlours the purchase price would rocket sky high.”

  I killed time with long walks. Very often, I went to see Peter, who told me a lot about Thailand. He read a lot and grabbed every book he could get hold of. If he wasn’t reading, an open novel lay on the table next to his armchair.

  However, I chose to forgo any further other oil massages by Taen. After the fat German went home she had an Israeli boyfriend who wanted to marry her immediately. When he went home she got involved only with Russians. Taen hardly spoke a word of English and she didn’t have to worry much about the English speaking skills of her lovers.

  Very often masseuses live in the parlours they work. At night they sleep on the mattresses on which they massage during the day. This way, they save money on the rent. For farangs these would be unsustainable living conditions. Nobody would have the idea to live in the office where they worked. Thais sometimes had a different point of view.

  Peter’s parlour was different. He closed his business every night at ten o’clock. The masseuses went home or met with their current boyfriends. Peter and Yai lived in a flat on Second Road, not far away from the parlour.

  Sometimes I went to visit Dao to see what progress she had made. First she gave the parlour a new name and installed an illuminated sign over the door: Dao’s Star Massage. She painted the grey walls yellow and changed the solitary light bulb for several light chains. The still quite dim lightning became somehow rather lovely. Dao bought new curtains, and new sheets for the mattresses. On the floor she put linoleum with a tile pattern. At first sight, it looked like tiles but the linoleum arched at every wall and corner. I asked Dao about the floor, she just shrugged. Mai pen rai. Thai style. She also bought another huge armchair for foot massages. Inside the parlour it became dangerously narrow.

  Mr. Hong Kong sponsored the new furniture, I learned later. Besides Richard he was Dao’s largest financier. Dao, who was from the south of Thailand, was a crafty snake with many faces. Boyfriend number one–Richard–paid for the parlour, boyfriend number two–Mr. Hong Kong–the furniture. Both men didn’t know about the other one. I was sure she had a nice story for Mr. Hong Kong in hand why she suddenly had all the money for the parlour she had given to Rung. Or did he know about Richard? That would have been much bolder. Richard wasn’t a danger because he was in far away land, the United Kingdom. Mr. Hong Kong had only to sit down in a ready nest, apart from some renovation. He became Dao’s constant companion. He was in her company almost all of the time when I entered the parlour. He always sat in the new armchair, with Dao next to him.

  It never crossed my mind to blame Dao for her many acquaintances. She was a real good friend of mine. I could have walked all over her. Because of my help she was able to fulfil the dream of her life: an own massage parlour. She never would forget my help. I was in her good books.

  In the evening Som came home very tired. She said she travelled all over Pattaya but mostly without any success. She didn’t like the parlours which were for sale. And if she liked one, then she had something against the location. One or two were near Sukhumvit Road, for her these were totally out of our vicinity. I wanted to see the pictures which Som had made with her brand new photo mobile phone, but there weren’t any.

  “I don’t know how to do photos with a mobile,” she apologized.

  I was angry. “It's not that difficult. And you wanted to have a photo mobile. Now you got one and don’t know how to use it. A phone for 3,000 baht would have been more appropriate.”

  Now Som was angry. The whole evening we hardly exchanged words. Later we went for a walk, because we wanted to try to lighten our bad mood. There were some clothing stores on a soi which branched off of Soi Buakhao. The “stores” were large “tents” which defended the clothes from sun and rain. I didn’t want to buy anything and went ahead to explore. On the opposite side, some people were playing Bingo. Som walked around slowly and took a closer look at some of the shirts. When she returned to my side again, one of the sales girls shouted to Som. I figured the two knew each other. The sales girl shouted, “Khun bpai gap kaek mai?” Som went back and talked to her for a while.

  My stomach turned. Did Som lie when she told me she was together with only one other farang before our relationship started? How often did she go out with a farang after she massaged him? Possibly hand in hand. And what happened in the parlour before, or in the hotel room afterwards? I wanted to talk about it with Som, but she would have denied everything. I tried to think of something else but I had heard one sentence many times, which the sales girl shouted at Som, “Are you going out with a punter?”

  * * *

  Som’s search for a massage parlour wasn’t crowned with success over the days that followed. Was it really that difficult to find a massage parlour for sale in Pattaya? I had to become friendly with the possibility of renting a retail shop and doing some construction myself. And I was sure that I wouldn’t get any help from a Mr. Hong Kong. That’s why I figured it wouldn’t be too bad to go to a furniture store to do some investigation concerning prices. This wasn’t only for the parlour but for the new house as well in which we would move into very soon. Som didn’t like the idea much despite her love to go out shopping.

  We made a compromise and took our new Yamaha to Royal Garden Plaza, did some window shopping and afterwards ate a Whopper at Burger King.

  “We did a lot in the last few days,” Som said. “What do you think if we take a break and go up-country to relax a while?”

  “To Chaiyaphum?”

  Som nodded. “I haven’t been there for a long time. I miss my daughter like mad. And when we come back we can move into our new house and then we will find a massage parlour. If nothing else, I could give massages in our house. We still have the third room.”

  “Do you think this is such a good idea?” I asked doubtfully, but commended her for thinking about the situation.

  * * *

  Som took the rest of the week off and a couple of days later we were on a bus on our way to Chaiyaphum.

  During the journey, she cuddled me. “I never ever loved somebody like you,” she said.

  “How many were there?” I persisted and thought about the sales girl.

  “Not that many. One Thai and two farang. And you are the second farang. Before, I went out with an American. But that’s over. I already told you.”

  “Tell me something about your boyfriends.”

  Som didn’t want to. “There is not much to talk about. I married my first boyfriend. He is the father of my daughter. But he was very lazy and always ordered me around. And he was a chao chu, a butterfly, a philanderer. He was often drunk and always beat me and my daughter as well. One day he had a mia noi, a lover, and didn’t come home anymore. I never wanted to start a relationship with a Thai man again. That’s why I went to Pattaya, to find a farang with a good heart. And now I am with you.”

  “How old was your daughter when your husband lef
t you?” I stalked from the beginning to find out what I wanted to know.

  “Two or three.”

  “And now she is six, right?”

  Som nodded.

  She has been three or four years alone. I thought it quite unlikely. There were other men in her life she didn’t want to talk about, especially because she had been working in Pattaya for a much longer time period. At least one year. Did she always tell me the truth or only what I wanted to hear?

  If you ask a bargirl how long she has been working in a bar, she will say only a couple of weeks. And when you go out with her and ask her how many farangs she has been with, she will say you are the second. And she will emphasize that the other one doesn’t mean anything to her. The bargirls never say you are the first farang. That is far too unlikely, and even the most foolish and gullible foreigner wouldn’t believe it.

  Was there a difference between masseuses and bargirls? I thought about my encounter with Taen. She could work in a bar as well. But Som was different! I was sure about it.

  * * *

  When we reached Chaiyaphum, I found out that Som didn’t live in Chaiyaphum at all, but according to her explanation in a small city called Phu Khieo far outside of town. So we set off, seven kilometres before Phu Khieo we got off the bus in a big village called Ban Boa. She didn’t live there either because we then took a motorcycle taxi–three persons plus belongings–to a temple and a market. After quite some time, we reached a large water reservoir with hardly any water in it. Cows went slowly around it and fed on the grass which was growing in the reservoir. The dry paddy fields glistened gloomy in the light of the rising sun. Some time later we reached Ban Mueangow.

  Som’s large house was strategically and advantageously located at a cross road with five streets. It stood in the middle of a completely neglected garden in which I could see garbage and scraps of paper lying around. The dried out plants grew on sandy soil. The terrace in front of the house and the floor of the house itself were tinted white. Two sliding doors with tinted glass were at the entrance to the house. Through them, I entered a large living room with chairs placed at the walls. There were also some windows with tinted glasses as well. At the back of the room was a big television with a hi-fi set, and next to it a wide hallway leading to kitchen and bathrooms. A wooden stairway lead onto the second floor. On the upper floor, four wooden walls separated a room from the rest of the house but the walls didn’t reach the ceiling. They were about two metres high. There were about 50 centimetres between the top of the walls and the ceiling–Thai style. The same with the floor boards which bended dangerously under my weight. Between the boards were cleaves as wide as one centimetre which you could comfortably see what was going on in the first floor. The bathrooms are noteworthy as well. On the right side of one was an Asian squat toilet and in the left a cement basin which was filled with water. In the basin swam a sole plastic bowl. If you wanted to “shower” you had to scoop water from the basin with the plastic bowl and pour or splash it over your body. On the walls were spider webs like in a chateau in the dark ages. In the dirty wash basin I could see traces of wax. The neon light at the ceiling didn’t work and the family used candles when they wanted to use the bathroom in the dark. On the left, next to the kitchen, which consisted of one shelf and a countertop, was a back door to the garden. The family cooked in the garden because the “oven” stood there. It looked like a miniature barrel which had to be fired with wood or charcoal. On the side was an appropriate opening. A pan or a wok would be put on top of this barrel to cook. Before each meal, the family had to search for wood because they didn’t have gas. Behind the house was a cowshed with some cattle. Next to the shed were some man-sized barrels for collecting rain water. From the gutter a thick hosepipe lead to these barrels. They didn’t have a well. I didn’t intended on drinking water at all if it wasn’t bought in bottles. I didn’t know what it looked like inside the barrels. They were too high to take a look. And how long had the water stood inside? A week? Very unlikely. A month or longer? More than likely. It almost never rained in Isaan after the rain seasons.