by Guy Lilburne
We carry on towards Patong and I recognise a lot of things on the way. The greenery on the hills looks especially beautiful and as we climb and dip on the bendy road into the town I get snatched views of the sea. It looks incredibly blue under the clear sky that we have today. I can feel my spirits soaring; it feels so good to be back. To me Thailand is the best place in the world, I just love everything about it and I’m so happy to be back again.
The taxi drops me off at the Baumanburi Hotel, which is one road back from the beach and right next to the ‘O Top market. The hotel looks quite grand and expensive, I’m sure I’m going to like it here. I check in and unpack in my room. After a shower and change of clothes I’m off to walk around and have a few beers and something to eat. I want to go to the ‘Jungceylon’ shopping mall to buy another mobile phone because mines no good in Thailand. As I’m walking along the road towards the shopping centre I hear a Thai girl shouting.
“Hello, Hello, Papa Tom hello.”
I turn around as a young Thai lady approaches me all smiles, she wai’s to me and I wai back. I didn’t remember her but obviously she was a fan of Tom’s from the last time we came, I was amazed that she remembered me.
“Where is Tom?” she asked.
I told her that he hadn’t come with me this time. She asked me if I remembered her, and she looked a bit hurt when I said that I did not, so to even things out I pointed out to her that she only remembered Toms name and not mine.
“Yes, I remember your name, ‘Papa Tom’,” she said.
I continued to meander my way along, but now I was in no rush. It was too hot to rush anywhere. I stopped and had a beer with some chicken and rice at a bar along the way. I ended up buying a cheap second hand mobile in the ‘Jungceylon’ centre and the first thing I did was ring Jee to tell her I was here and how much I was looking forward to meeting her.
“Yes good darling, I same,” was her reply.
It was nice to hear her voice and it was nice to have a mobile that worked in Thailand. We didn’t talk for very long but we sent each other a lot of text messages over the next few days.
I spent the rest of the afternoon just wandering around and stopping at bars and drinking beer. Something felt very different about being here this time and I knew that it was because I was here on my own.
It dawned on me that I looked like the archetypical, wrong side of middle aged, sex tourist Farang. I had enjoyed touring the bars on previous occasions with either my girlfriend or my son but now doing it alone, it felt wrong, and I could tell I was being treated differently.
The welcome was as always warm, but the questions were direct.
“You here alone?”
“How long you stay?”
“You want lady?”
What did I expect? I knew all this went on; I had witnessed it many times with my own eyes. Beautiful young girls wrapped around fat and balding old men. There was something that always seemed so obscene about it to me. I didn’t like the fact that these hideous men could come and just buy the pretty girls for a night or a few days.
The thing that always made my blood boil was the many times that they talked too loudly about their exploits of the previous night, while tonight’s exploit was tucked under their fat sweating arm.
There was just no respect and no understanding.
Over the last couple of years I had met and talked to lots of bar girls, I had made friends with some, and they are nice people. The whole sex tourist industry in Thailand is a complex issue and I’m not expert enough to make any valid comments about it. I just know that it looks pretty sad and vulgar when you see it for yourself. And anyway what about myself? I had made the trip half way around the world to meet a Thai girl nearly half my age. Was I exploiting her in the same way? Would she even glance at me if she had been born in England? I am a romantic and I like to think that there was an attraction and I won her over with my charming character, but I’m also a realist and I know that I can offer a better quality of life and that the promise of financial security is a big hook.
My life was in a mess, and starting out over again here in Thailand was going to give me a second chance at life. Did I deserve it? Probably not, I’m nothing special, but I’m lucky that I was born in England and have a well paid job that allows me to have a second chance at life in a place like Thailand. I have come over to find a girlfriend and settle down, am I on any higher moral ground then the sex tourist who comes over to have sex with as many people as he can? I don’t know. I think I’m a nicer person but I’m not sure in my own mind if I’m not guilty of exploitation. It’s easier for me to hang on to the notion that I won Jee’s heart because of my charm and witty personality, oh and my mature, yet still good looks.
Anyway walking around the bars that afternoon made me think about things. I didn’t like being considered as a sex tourist. I drank more Singha (strong Thai beer) and continued to wander around Patong. All the streets, shops, markets and bars were all so familiar to me. I even recognised some of the people selling food from the mobile food stalls that littered the soi’s. I was delighted when one of them recognised me and remembered my tall blonde son. The other highlight of my day was when another girl came running out of a hotel in her long traditional Thai dress and very elegantly wai’d to me. She had been a receptionist at my hotel on a previous holiday and she had changed hotel but she remembered me and came running out to greet me and say hello. I was totally charmed.
I had decided to stay out for as long as I could because jet lag always stops me from sleeping no matter how tired I feel, but as the day turned into night, the bar girls came out in force. I didn’t want to be there so I made my way back towards the hotel, but ended up in the ‘OTop’ market. I quite liked this place and at night time it’s all lit up. Every twenty foot there is a little round bar, most, but not all, are owned by Farangs.
They are little intimate places, they all have three or four girls working there but some how these girls aren’t so in your face. They still establish very quickly if you want to pay to have sex with them, but once they know that you don’t they are more then happy to chat to you, and because these places aren’t busy like the bars in the town they have lots of time to kill and actually appreciate interesting conversation.
I felt a lot more comfortable here then in the town and over the next few days I spent most of my time between here and the beach. I made some friends amongst the girls that I met and I had three favourite bars. I told the girls all about Jee and coming to Thailand to meet her, I was surprised that most of the girls I talked to about Jee all warned me to be careful. They all told me stories of Thai girls with Thai boyfriends taking lots of money from Farangs. I was a Police Officer and quite good at judging someone’s character, so I wasn’t too worried, but it’s amazing how people can plant seeds of doubt in your mind.
One of the girls that I made friends with that first night was ‘Nut’.
A couple of the girls working at her bar had started chatting to me and asked me if I wanted them for tonight. I politely declined and told them about Jee. Nut had been watching me for a long time before she actually came and spoke with me. She was very direct and told me that she liked me because I didn’t want bar girl, which confused me because that’s what she was, or at least so I thought.
Nut told me that she was thirty with two young boys and that she was divorced from her husband who was a Police Officer in Bangkok. She was very interested in hearing about Jee, but thought I was mad to come all this way to meet someone off the internet.
“Many nice girls Phuket, why you go Udon Thani?” She said.
I couldn’t be bothered explaining, but I knew that Jee was the type of girl that I could have a chance at settling down with.
Nut gave me many warnings about losing all my money to a Thai girl and she kept repeating them so much so that she actually got on my nerves a bit. If I’m absolutely honest I knew there and then that Nut liked me. It was the way she looked at me when I first came to
the bar and then after that she didn’t take her eyes off me and she beamed huge smiles when I rejected the advances of the other girls, and once she did come and start talking to me she never left. She was reasonably attractive. She was slim and had high cheekbones and brilliant white teeth. Her skin was darker then a lot of the other girls.
Yes that’s how I would describe her, reasonably attractive, but not beautiful. I also thought she was a bit highly strung and if I said anything that she didn’t agree with, it made her face turn instantly miserable, if only for a few seconds, and she seemed to be telling me off a lot about meeting a Thai girl from Udon Thani. I decided that Nut was one of those people who are just alright ‘in small doses’.
At around 2:00 am the bars in the market all close down. I said goodnight, and Nut said that she would give me a lift on her motorbike. I could see the back of my hotel from where the bar was, I thanked Nut, but pointed out my hotel and said that I would walk. Her face turned to thunder; if looks could kill I was dead. She went into an instant mood and started saying things in Thai, which from her manner and tone, I guessed weren’t very nice things. I just walked away thinking that she is ting tong (crazy). I hadn’t said or done anything wrong, I’d only refused a lift, to walk to my hotel maybe 800 yards away. No doubt about it, she is crackers. I realised that Nut was short for ‘Nutter’. I walked back to the hotel and went to bed.
I awoke at 7:00 am the next morning, which meant that I had just had less then five hours sleep. I didn’t wake up happy. I hadn’t enjoyed last night even without the crazy Nut falling out with me over nothing, I just hadn’t enjoyed myself yesterday. What was I doing here?
I rang Jee and asked her to get a flight and come to Patong. I told her I’d pay for it. She was very excited and said she would sort out a flight and arrive tomorrow. She had the money so it was no problem.
I can’t tell you how much that cheered me up. I don’t know how I could miss someone who I hadn’t actually met yet, but I was missing her. Now it was ok, she will be here tomorrow and there are lots of great things to see around Phuket.
I had already decided that I wasn’t going to go to Nut’s bar again, but when I walked into the ‘Otop’ market she saw me and waved me over. She was smiling, so maybe it would be ok. She was very apologetic for her behaviour last night and said that it had just made her angry because I didn’t understand her. Oh so it was my fault after all then. She went on to say that she really liked me and she got upset because she thought that I thought she was a bar girl. I did think she was a bar girl but I was too scared to mention it at the moment. Nut said that she had 50% share in the bar with her friend and that she was only there for another week before she was going back to Isaan. I can’t remember where she said that she lived but it was somewhere north of Surin. She had been helping to set up the bar and sort out the staff for the last three weeks and was going back home on 16th.
She told me that she had a big farm with many water buffalo and two houses on it. She also said that she had a supermarket and a dress shop and offered to show me photographs on the internet.
“So you are a rich lady,” I said trying to keep the mood light.
“Yes, very rich lady. I like you a lot. You come and live with me, I no want your money, I good girl you have good life with me, I look after you.”
I didn’t know if she was being serious or not, she looked serious and I just looked at her. I think I was shocked and I couldn’t think of anything to say. She must have seen the look on my face because then she broke into a smile.
“You no worry, I joking.”
Nut was an odd character, she was very intense. I knew that she liked me a lot. It wasn’t that hard to tell because she kept telling me how much she liked me and she never left me alone. She also told me that she has a gun and that when she was married her Police Officer husband had taught her how to shoot. I was actually quite relieved to learn she kept it on her farm in Isaan because I had no doubt that she was the sort of person who would use it all too easily.
She kept raising the subject of Jee, wanting to know when I was going to meet her and why I was going to meet her. She just couldn’t understand why anyone would want to travel to meet someone they didn’t know and she was very concerned that I should not give Jee or her family any money.
When my mobile bleeped as a text arrived she went to grab it off the bar, but I beat her to it. She laughed, but I didn’t think it was funny and then she asked me if it was a text off my girlfriend. I didn’t stay at the bar too long; I think that I had already had my ‘small dose’ of Nut for today. She would actually be alright if she wasn’t so bossy and highly strung. When I was going to go and have a wander around she kept saying “you come back?”
“Maybe later,” I said waving goodbye.
I got a few text messages from Jee during the day, updating me as to the flight situation and then finally she sent me a text telling me that she had tried everywhere but couldn’t get a flight to Phuket until after Songkran. (The Thai new year water festival). They were fully booked because of the Thai new year holidays. There was no point in her coming then because I was already booked on a flight to Udon Thani on 16th anyway.
I was really disappointed; I didn’t want to be here without Jee. It was still only 10th April and I didn’t want to wait until 16th so I rang Jee and told her that I would try and book a flight tomorrow and come sooner.
I think we were both getting excited about it. I did go back to Nut’s bar later that night but again I didn’t stay too long. She always kept on about not going to Udon Thani and living with her. She tried to say it jokingly but I knew that she meant it and it was getting tiresome.
“I could never marry you, you’d drive me crazy and you tell me off all the time,”
I said tongue in cheek.
Her face stiffened with rage, she just couldn’t help herself, my god she really is crazy. So I went back to the hotel.
The next morning I went straight to the internet café outside the front of the hotel and checked on flights to Udon. There was one with Thai Airlines flying out the morning of the 12th, so I booked it and rang Jee to tell her. I sent her a text with the flight and arrival time. It was a relief really to know that I was going tomorrow. I had spent to much time drinking and feeling sorry for myself. It was too hot to be on the beach, so I ended up spending most of my time in the O’top, which is exactly what I did again today.
When I told Nut that I was going the next day her face dropped, she knew that I was going to go on 16th, the same day that she was going home and she didn’t try to hide her anger that I’d changed my plans.
Again she told me that she was angry with me for not understanding her. She was missing one little point. Why one earth do I have to understand her? She was nothing to me I didn’t even know the girl, but somehow she was missing that bit. It followed the same pattern as the last couple of days. I could only stay a little while before she got on my nerves and then she got angry because I left, but later on she’d wave me over all smile and saying that she was sorry about before.
She told me that it was something about me that made her this way. I had just assumed that she had always been crackers but it seems it was my fault again. I spent yet another day drinking too much, but I was happy to be going the following day.
Chapter 13. Trip to Udon Thani (12th)
I was excited to be on my way to meet Jee for the first time. It was 12th April today and it was four days earlier then I had planned but I just didn’t want to wait anymore. I hadn’t been enjoying Patong as much as I wanted to, and I had spent most of my time thinking about Jee and well, I just wanted to be with her really.
I had to fly from Phuket to Bangkok and then from Bangkok to Udon Thani. The actual flying time was just over two hours but with the waiting around at airports for connecting flights, it was to take me eight hours from leaving my hotel at 6:30 am to arriving at Udon Thani International Airport.
The taxi driver chatted all the way to P
huket airport. His English was very good. He was a handsome man in his late twenties with an easy infectious smile. He was married with one young child. We chatted about his life, hopes and plans for the future and the same in respect of me.
It was an easy conversation and the one hour’s drive to the airport passed in no time at all. By the time he dropped me off I felt as if I had made another friend and I was surprised at how much we now knew about each other. What a great start to my day! My spirits were high and I was getting nearer by the minute to meeting Jee.
I like Phuket Airport, It’s right on the sea and you get a great view across the runway through the palm trees to the ocean beyond. I had about an hour and a half to wait for my 8:00 am flight to Bangkok but I was happy enough.
After checking in my case I wondered into the departure lounge and decided to buy a book from the shop. In England you can’t get Thailand themed books for love nor money, but here there was a good selection on offer. I had only ever read one book set in Thailand.
‘Private Dancer’ by Stephen Leather. It’s a great book and I read it in a single day. It’s about a Farang who falls in love with a bar girl in Bangkok. I won’t tell you anymore then that in case you want to read it yourself and I would highly recommend that you do. Anyway, I found myself standing in the airport book shop and there are lots of books about, or set in Thailand. Being a typical Gemini I couldn’t make my mind up as to which one to buy, so I bought a few, probably influenced by my own current plans for the future. I filled my back pack with five paperbacks, hoping they’d be good. The one I started to read while I waited for my flight was ‘My Thai Girl and I’ by Andrew Hicks. I didn’t think I was going to like him at first because he had been a solicitor and I was a Police Officer and it’s always been my experience that the two never get on very well. One is too pre occupied with truth and justice, the other is a solicitor. I have to say that I really warmed to him. His book is about his own life in Thailand with his Thai wife, Cat. He writes with a lot of love and affection for the Isaan area of Thailand in the North East of the country, the same area I was heading to. I didn’t get to finish his book
