Nittaya--by Alexander Turner

[Central Scrutinizer]

ALL,  

This story was first posted on asfo by Alexander. For me this is one of the most poignant, amusing, moving, and real (some might say surreal) stories I've read on life in Bangkok in a long, long time. I loved it and could have read for hours more. Thanks Alexander.-Cent

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   Nittaya

-by Alexander T.

I've read some great posts at asfo. Some of you are very well informed and have amazing experiences to share.

But I have to add to all the cultural theorising with one remark. I can't speak for the rest of Asia, but in Thailand, the more someone tries to understand the more the country will slip through their fingers. Most of the people who I have seen come a cropper in Bangkok had a very fair idea about how it worked.

The only way to enjoy the place without it destroying you seems to become a happy fool, and make sure you have a home to return to. Don't become hard hearted and cruel, but don't be a soft-hearted sucker either. Just act like an idiot and you'll always fall on your feet.

Before my current marriage I once married a Patpong bargirl. The marriage, as a marriage, never even began. I got nothing out of it, and paid nothing for it. Getting divorced was as easy as falling off a log. How this came about is an interesting story, well, it's interesting to me, but then it's my life. You guys will probably be bored to tears. But there is a kind of stupid moral to this. Acting like a hapless fool might have saved my life, but I'm not sure about the effect on my immortal soul.

Nittaya Charoensak was her name.

Her nickname was Tak. I could never remember her nickname properly. I knew it meant crap and had one syllable, but that was as far as I got. She worked at The Pink Panther and the first time I took her out the bar it was to take her to dinner. Nothing more. Just dinner and a tour of Patpong in the company of someone who knew it from experience. There was never a hint on my part of any sexual activity and there was never a hint of it on her part either. Sex is easy in Bangkok. It's the rest of the stuff that's difficult. She took care of me well. I'd liked another girl called Fon, but at this time she'd gone to Singapore.

Tak was very sweet, not a beauty but nice-looking, she took me to the infamous upstairs bars in Patpong and got me friendly with everybody without ever letting me get stuck with an upstairs bar rip-off bill. It was all nice.

I was new to Bangkok. Very new. I thought, in my peanut sized brain, that if I married a Thai girl I might be able to get Thai citizenship while she could get an English passport and everything would be hunky dory. A win-win situation.

As we got to know each other better there were times when she seemed to be in love with me. There were times when I was in love with her. But these times didn't clash all that often. I actually believed I could do a good thing for her and get a chance to live and work in a country I had fallen instantly in love with.

I knew nothing.

Tak spoke only a little English and I spoke hardly any Thai. Our go-between was a beautiful but acerbic katoey mamasan called Lek. Tak seemed to think Lek explained things in crystal clear English. In fact she made matters even more confusing to me.

Lek was one of those katoeys who has theories about the ways of farang, as all encompassing as some of the theories you read here about Thai women. She might have met some farang who fit the theories, but I don't think I was one of them. You might not realise this but at the age of 28 all farang start travelling the world in search of a wife to settle down with. Her theories made things travel at a pace that might just have destroyed both our lives.

Tak was, in many ways a classic bar girl, she ranted on about hating Thai men even in front of Thai men. I saw her kicking the casual staff at The Pink Panther during the day. She blamed this hatred on her previous experiences and that of her friends. When she was haranguing some poor cab driver about the evils of Thai men I remember seeing a speech bubble coming out of my head saying,"Me thinks the lady doth protest too much."

After it was all over another bargirl from the Pink Panther took me out, bought me a cup of tea with biscuits, and told me Tak had had a Thai boyfriend. But then, as this seems an almost bizarrely vindictive thing to do I'm still not 100% on this. I told Tak even later that I had been informed of her duplicity and she denied it with great conviction. But then she would.

Now Lek, being a mamasan, and a katoey to boot, could tell straight away that I was not the best catch a girl could make. I was stingy with money and wore shirts fraying at the cuff. Tak took me on shopping expeditions and overhauled my wardrobe.

We started talking about setting something up with an amphur. The one in Suriwongse. With some support from Lek, and a sister or two, we underwent a grilling before it was discovered Tak needed loads of stuff from her home town, so she had to set off for Nong Khai. She wanted me to go with her but I declined.

I somehow got it into my head there'd be a lot of begging relatives. She'd said a lot of stuff about how she held me in high esteem like I was a Buddha. Though flattered I didn't think this was a particuarly good sign.

Now, just so you get the impression of how mean I was. This was in November 1991. I had gone out to Thailand with £1200. That's for a three-month stay. That works out at about £100 a week. Say $150 American. I didn't know I was going to get so involved with all these women. I thought I'd have a few weeks in Bangkok and then I'd be up in Chiang Mai and all over the place.

A woman in my guesthouse asked me, after two months, why I hadn't gone on these excursions. I said something along the lines that if I had seen all of Bangkok and got bored of it then it would be worth taking off somewhere, but I wasn't bored of Bangkok yet. I used to walk to Patpong and back, or get the river express boat for 7 baht. By the time I left Thailand I knew the streets of Bangkok much better than the average Isaan tuk tuk driver.

Anyway. I'm getting

distracted.

Tak was in Nong Khai for about 4 days. One night, on a visit to Patpong, I met Fon.

"My friends tell me about you and Tak. Is it true?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I must be mad."

"I not tell you this, but this is a bad idea."

"I know."

"Then why you do it?"

"I don't know."

Fon smiled.

"It's a pity because the apartment is empty now. But that probably bad idea too."

She smiled and massaged my shoulder for a second before saying "Be careful, na."

When I next met Tak a lot had changed. I had met some people. The previous night I had gone to a short time Chinese hotel room with a girl called Ae. I had met an Aussie bloke living a life of madness called Billy. But none of this stopped me from walking into the amphur with Lek and Tak and signing a whole bunch of forms I didn't understand. Lek kept prompting me to wai at the right times. If she hadn't I might have been even more zombie-like.

While a lady was asking me questions through Lek I watched a palm tree sway in the wind through the back window and thought that this was me. I knew this was a mistake. But as on so many occasions I didn't act. I did nothing but sit and there and sign forms that were written in the unintelligible scribble of Thai. When we walked out I thought we might have to come back for the real getting married part, but it turned out we were married. Lek went back to the bar, and Tak went to see someone "in her family". I went back to Khao San Road.

Feeling a bit disorientated I went to see Billy. Billy said "Shit mate. Don't worry about it. Doesn't mean a thing. Just walk away."

"Yeah but at least I can stay here now. Apply for a green card or something."

"Sorry pal. Thailand doesn't work like that. The only way you can get to stay here legally is if you were mates with the King and even then you'd have a struggle. No. You've made a mistake. Anyone can make a mistake. I've made bigger mistakes than that and I'm still here. Just walk away mate. Just walk away."

That night I met up with Billy and ended up with another woman called Pow. The way I celebrated marrying Tak was to sleep with someone else. Of course I never set out to do any of this. It all just happened.

As a married man I was as unmarried as a man can be. During the first two months of my marriage I probably got involved with more women in a short period of time than I had ever got involved with at any other time. Meanwhile Nittaya changed her name from Charoensak to Turner. I think she liked the idea that she could have an alliterative name. Tak Turner. Like Tina Turner, Fred Flinstone, Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, and Mad Frankie Fraser.

Tak was illiterate and hadn't compensated with other gifts. I liked her then, and I still like her, but she didn't know what she was doing any more than I knew what I was doing.

She probably thought that by marrying me she could stroll into an England out of some Merchant Ivory film. All high tea and "morning vicar." Or maybe she suspected that I was one of those secret millionaires who act poor to see if people really like them. Whatever she thought it wasn't going to happen. I ran out of money around Christmas.

I had arranged for a money transfer but it took an age. At one point it looked like it wasn't going to come and I was going to have a big problem. Tak didn't know how to respond to this problem, but other bargirls, notably the crazier types from Thermae land, showed themselves to be living angels. But that's another story.

Anyway. Nothing ever came of our marriage. We never went short time or long time. We never slept in the same room. Maybe some part of me thought that if the marriage had been consummated there might have been grounds for alimony.

When I finally left Thailand in early 1992 she saw me off at the airport. My mind was on another woman. The sister of my current wife who I had slept with the previous night. There was a large family in the airport cafe seeing off their daughter who was leaving with her white husband.

"Next year maybe me same."

"Yeah. Maybe."

During the following 8 months I got a lot smarter. I bought a Linguaphone Learn-Thai-in-three-months kit. They are good. If you can stand the idea of giving street directions to your stereo this is probably the best way to get a basic knowledge of the language.

And my father, who I hadn't seen for about four years just out of absent-mindedness, died.

Tak and I had correspondence. I don't know who wrote her side of it but he/she was good. She was smart enough not to hit me for large requests for cash. I think I even sent some once when she mentioned her mother was sick and she needed money, but she knew I couldn't help her. The reverse psychology worked. The first and only time I sent a Thai girl money.

When I returned to Thailand I avoided Patpong for over a week. My first priority was seeing Da (my sister in-law). When Da wasn't about I got involved with a girl called Gei, which turned out to be one of the weirdest and most troubling affairs of my life, and which is another story.

When I went to Patpong everybody knew my father had died. I had mentioned it in a letter. Everybody was very sympathetic. But I found myself putting on a bizarre performance. I claimed that since my father's death I had gone a little bit crazy and couldn't deal with anything. I had come out to Thailand with money my father had left me, and had been sacked from my job for acting like a nut. (In fact my father had left me nothing, and I had just taken three months off, as I had the previous year.) I had no money now but the small remains of this legacy. I just wanted to do the right thing and let Tak go, maybe to find a good man who wasn't crazy and had money to support her.

"I don't care you money. I only care you." Said Tak.

"But it's not fair on you. How can you stay married to a man who can't take care of you? I'm no good. Crazy as fuck. I've started biting my toes in the bath."

Without too much argument it was suggested that we should get a divorce.

"Maybe when you get better you can marry her again." Lek said.

"Yes. But I don't think she should wait for me." I said.

That night, for some absurd reason, I went to the room she shared with a couple of her friends. Both classic Patpong stunners. Both with their Thai boyfriends living all together in the one room. I got along with the boyfriends just fine. We had a few drinks.

I found myself trying to explain to one of the girls, called Bar, that English was written right to left just like Japanese. If anyone told her otherwise she was misinformed. I started writing right to left just to show her. Instead of twigging that I was full of shit she actually started getting confused and tried to remember if she could think of specific examples that would prove me wrong.

Tak just looked on. One of the Thai men told me that she was very horny for me. Everyone would leave if I liked. I said this would have been nice if my dick worked any more. Unfortunately I had recently been involved in an altercation with a threshing machine. I don't think they understood this and I didn't care. I found that the crazier I acted the better I felt.

By the morning nobody seemed to doubt that there was something truly wrong with my brain, and that Tak really ought to move on. Tak decided to take me out in the morning to help me find a tuk tuk.

The rains had come. It was late October but the alleyways had puddles the size of the Atlantic. She took me to the end of the soi and asked when I would see her. She wasn't crying but there was some kind of hurt in her face that made me feel as guilty as fuck for a while.

About two days later we went for the divorce. There was an old lady doing the forms who had a bit of a problem with Lek's male ID. She couldn't see how a man could have such well-formed breasts. In fact this old lady was finding it very hard to concentrate on what she was doing, and kept staring at Lek's breasts and shaking her head like a cartoon character. This had all three of us in hysterics. We sat there laughing through the whole divorce proceedings. We were still recovering from the hysteria while we sat facing the highest official.

"Why you divorce too quickly?"

"Family problems." Snigger.

"Can't you work it out?"

"No."

"No."

"Absolutely not."

They took away our marriage certificates and gave us divorce certificates instead. Tak and I parted company and didn't see much of each other afterwards. But then we hadn't seen that all that much of each other before either.

I don't tell people this story much. And, even here, I've left out a lot of details. Maybe because I suspect I come out of it looking like a bit of a cunt.

I saw her once or twice on each trip to Thailand. Sometimes we got on okay. Sometimes there was a little bitterness. Once she tried to hustle me for money to change her name back. I knew that it was free, but that it took time. On another occasion she met my current wife, but they didn't talk much.

I met her again a few months ago. She was serving drinks at the beer bar outside the Pink Panther. She looked nice. Age had treated her well. Better than some.

I was in Bangkok with a friend trying to get some business stuff together. She asked me how I was and how my wife and son were. I said they were okay. My friend was feeling a bit rough though. It was his first trip to Bangkok and I think he'd had some iffy water. She said which chemist was the best to get him a cure. She seemed a lot brighter than before, and her English was now very good indeed. She said I should come back later and have a chat about old times. I said I'd like that.

 

When we walked away my friend said, "She seemed nice."

"She is nice."

"She seemed to like you."

"It's hard to tell."

"No really."

"For what it's worth, she's my ex-wife."

He was shocked. He knew I'd had another wife, but our meeting had been so casual and pleasant. He'd probably expected a vicious money grabbing harpy. Instead of which was someone well spoken and polite who seemed to like me.

I regret to say I never went back.

Alexander Turner 

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