Stupid Tales of Bangkok--by Alexander Turner

[Central Scrutinizer]

   Stupid Tales of Bangkok

-by Alexander T.

Strange. How do you tell if a man has spent any length of time in the east? Tell him one of your stories. If he believes you the chances are he's been there. A guy who hasn't been will start yawning the way you yawn when a liar reels off his fantasies. That's why I stopped telling Thai stories long ago. It's a real compliment that a few people on this board seem to recognise the situations I try to describe. Most people don't.

I knew this bloke called Billy. He was a friendly Australian, about 50, who resembled the craggy-faced comic actor Sid James. I met him when I was staying on Khao San Road. I was getting pissed off with the "travellers" there.

Don't get me wrong, Banglampoo is the real beating heart of Bangkok, but that road with its tie-dye wearing refugees from adolescence can grind you down sometimes.

When I saw Billy I had no idea what he was doing in the place. It was in a large bar called Buddy's. And Billy was flanked by three Thai girls who looked just as out of place as he did. They all had that kind of turned on sex appeal that you don't really see too much of in the old town. He seemed to be holding court with them. One, a big girl called Bun, was rubbing a stockinged foot up the crotch of his grey suit. Some of the staff and the serious Lonely-Planet-reading hippies looked with distaste at this. To me it was like a breath of fresh air.

The Japanese photographer Araki said that, "Without obscenity, our cities are dreary places and life is bleak." I can't argue with that. So when Billy invited me to have a drink with them I didn't hesitate.

Billy had been in Bangkok some years. I don't know how many. He had a grasp of Thai which I didn't. (This was back in 91.) The girls were laughing and talking in a way almost calculated to shock the virginal waitresses in their drab clothes. One of the girls, a dazzling creature in lime hot pants and singlet who had a body that looked like fire, was staring at me and said something to Billy.

"She wants to know if you've got a big dick."

"No. Very small."

They laughed some more.

"You don't want to take any notice of them. Thai's can't drink beer. Fucks up their brains. Normally these girls aren't like that at all."

Bun bit her lip provocatively as she added another stockinged foot to Billy's groin. "I'm horny Billy."

"Not now." he said to her then turned to me. "See what I mean. Totally out of character. Shy as anything normally."

"Yeah. I'll bet."

"No. Really. I'll admit though. I've got a bit of a big appetite sexually. I like a fuck. I can fuck all night with one of these birds. I'll tell you what. That little one. She likes you. I can tell. You could probably fuck her if you wanted."

The foot was working him, and he suddenly broke, "Would you fucking pack it in Bun." Bun went into an angry sulk staring angrily at both of us. "She's pissed off at me now for talking to you."

"You bullshit man." Said Bun. "Talk too much."

"See what I mean?"

As things turned out I ended up going with the "little one" whose name was Ae, and who, one way or another, led me into a world of shit . But I won't go into that here. That's another story.

Billy was staying in one of those seedy Chinese short time places numbered all around town. This particular one was called the Gao Sip (90). It was, and probably still is, across Ratjadamnoen from Khao San Road. Conveniently next to one of those singsong Thai bars. The first time I saw Billy's room it was sprinkled with broken glass. He was shouting at Bun as she swept it up.

"They're probably going to make me pay for that."

"I don't know why I stay with you Billy. You old man."

I had come back with Ae. The third girl, Pow, was sitting on the bed blankly uninvolved in the whole thing.

He turned to me "They're all going on to the Thermae now to look for some money." I had no idea, at this stage, what he was talking about. "When they're gone we'll go out on the town and have some real fun." I'd just had three hours of real fun and was kind of pissed off that my girl was going to this Thermae place to look for money. After all I was in love with her. But, being an honourable girl, she told me I must forget her and all three of them buggered off in a tuk tuk into the night. So contemplating an evening of debauchery on the town with a Bangkok old hand as compensation for my lost love I turned to Billy. But he'd passed out in a drunken stupor. He wasn't going anywhere.

Billy's story was the classic one. He had come over to Thailand wanting to start up a new life. He'd divorced his wife in Australia, or she'd divorced him, and he'd left her in custody of his two kids. The boy, who was in his late teens, was the apple of his eye. But Billy had elected to live far away in Thailand. When I asked him why he said, "Look at the young spunkers I can be with here. If I was back in Australia I'd have to be with some old bird. Nobody wants to end up with an old bird."

He'd arrived in Thailand with big money and thought he'd make twice as much over again. He'd had a bar in Washington Square for a while, and one somewhere else too. Things hadn't quite worked out as he expected though.

He'd made some money all right. He just hadn't kept hold of it. "Women have been my...well my Achilles heel. I was a big man in this town once. Still am in a way but I've fucked it all up with women."

He once showed me, with something like pride, an article about his money losing exploits in the Bangkok Post. It headlined something like "Silly Billy" and told of the money he had squandered on or been cheated out of by a series of Thai wives and girlfriends. He had kept the yellowing newspaper in a special place as if it was his main claim to fame.

Foolish he might have been, but he also educated me in the ways of Bangkok. He drew my attention to the short cons and the long cons and all the medium sized cons in-between. He introduced me to the Thermae and the Soi Cowboy and the Malaysia hotel. He was like an Obi Wan Kenobi or Yoda with just a touch of Jabba the Hut thrown in for good measure. He told me that I would never have much trouble with a Thai bloke. Maybe a gang of Thai blokes, but not one. He told me the range of scams used by the girls and, even worse, the down at heel farang always looking for someone to lend them money. His cynicism was almost too broad. All Thai women were cheats, except Bun of course. She was a diamond.

I don't think I realised just how far his fortunes had collapsed until, one night in what is now the Hollywood, he ran into a couple of old friends that he apparently owed quite a bit of money to. He went over to them like a mate and they just gave him stern looks and asked him where the money was, and what he was still doing in Bangkok.

He came back over to me and started going on about how he was going to beat the bigger of the two guys up. He'd been a bit of a boxer in his time. The trouble was it wasn't his time any more. I saw the guys owed money getting more and more pissed off at his rantings. I was happy to get out of there without a brawl.

In fact he was so down on his luck that he had stooped to the fencing of passports and stolen travellers cheques. I once accompanied him on a tour of all the gold shops in Banglampoo as he tried to buy gold with a cheque signed Abram Azif. "I don't fucking understand it. Gold shops never used to be this fussy. They all want to see some other ID."

His partners in this dubious enterprise were a Pakistani called Ali, and another bloke who, because he's still around, I won't mention. His relationship with Bun went up and down. Bun was earning a bit of money at the Thermae. When he had a bit of money he would pay for things. But when he didn't she would, and her friends would run her down for this. Billy too. Even I knew what mangda meant.

He admitted that he'd initially planned to try and put the squeeze on me for a loan and bugger off but that I turned out to be a good mate. The sort of bloke you could talk to. And when Bun eventually left him he needed to talk. He talked a lot. He listened too because I had been with her friends when he hadn't. I knew what they had come to think of him.

But there was something far nastier in the air. Billy had got a passport for some Pakistani gangsters and was half-way between them and some Chinese gangsters who were improving the used passports up to fit the new holder's ID's. All very involved and I didn't pay too much attention to it.

I remember sitting once on a Sunday morning with a bunch of these Chinese gangsters as Billy did business with them. I don't know if anyone out there has seen the film Cyclo. When I saw it it reminded me of these guys. I could imagine the splash of blood that might come if the wrong person said the wrong thing. They bought me drinks and I would have preferred to be almost anywhere else in the world. I focussed on a train of ants crawling up a flaking white wall.

Eventually Billy sold his first few passports and got a sizeable down payment on some more.

"So you've got to get some more?"

"Screw that. I've got the money. I'm going back up to Sukhumvit."

"You think they won't find you there?"

"These Pakis stick pretty much to the places they know. We'll go out and celebrate."

I declined. I think I'd got to the point where I'd had enough. The Khao San Road travellers were starting to look okay again.

I met him the next night down the Thermae and he was back with Bun. I got the tuk tuk with them back to Banglampoo and went to his room for a drink but left when they started having an argument about something.

I woke the next morning with him banging on my door.

"She's fucking fucked me that fucking bitch. I'm fucked. I don't know how I could have been so fucking stupid. I'm really fucked. The money's gone. I should've put it under the fucking mattress. The first fucking rule, but I was so fucking drunk. Shit. She must have just seen the money and took it. Probably thought it was her lucky day. I thought, after last night maybe she was back. shit. How fucking stupid."

Anyone who's ever stayed in a Khao San Road guesthouse should know that the walls are made of a plastic cardboard substitute. I was heading towards the end of my money and didn't want to get billed for Billy putting his fist through one of them. I led him out into the street. He wasn't really talking to me, more to himself. He just went over what had happened over and over.

Over the next couple of days I went to all the places she was likely to be. I wanted to point out that without this money Billy might well end up sleeping with the fishes. She wasn't about. So I told everyone else.

One girl that I had been seeing said. "Billy take her money. She get her money back."

"Is she still in Bangkok?"

"How do I know? Not my business. Not your business."

"Don't you understand? It's not Billy's money. If he doesn't get it back he could be killed."

"Good."

Billy told the police at the Thermae what had happened. He told everybody. Most people, on the face of it at least, took his side.

Billy went to Yasothon to see her family. He knew her family and had, at some point, promised them that he would marry Bun and make sure they would all be taken care of. He seemed to think that after this Bun would have lost so much face that she wouldn't be able to go home.

After a couple of days she turned up in Bangkok again. She couldn't go back in the Thermae, she was staying with some friends. she had blown half the money on a holiday to some island with her Thai boyfriend who had, in an ironic twist of fate, stolen the other half.

When I left Thailand a couple of weeks later, Billy was sleeping on the floors of a number of good-hearted bargirls and freelancers. I never found out, exactly, how things ended.

All I know was that I did go around asking after Billy when I returned 8 months later. One of the guys at the Gao Sip said he didn't know who I could have been talking about. A guy I knew from the Nana told me he was sure Billy was dead or something. A scatterbrained girl I knew told me she had seen him a couple of days ago. I saw Bun a few times. She always said she missed Billy. Had I seen him? Was he all right?

I never saw him again. Nor did I ever find out for sure what happened to him. Maybe he found some money and disappeared upcountry. I like to think he got someone back in Australia to lend him money for the plane tickets home. For all I know he could be reading this now.

Once Billy said to me "All you need to live on nicely in Thailand is 500 baht a day. 500 baht a day and someone who loves you. Is that too much to ask?"

"It's more than most people have."

"Maybe." he said. "But you've got to dream."

 

   Pow

Thanks for the kind words due to which you are now likely to be lumbered with a series of rants called forth from my memory. Just remember. You only have yourselves to blame. You could have flamed me out of existence, but you didn't, and now you're stuck with me.

This story doesn't really qualify as a story. I only tell it because, for some reason, it has always stuck with me. I told it to someone in Bangkok once and they said "Yes. We've all had nights like that." If that is true, then, hopefully, some of this might strike a nerve.

Her name was Pow. She had pretty eyes and spoke no English. Of the three women that had been with Billy that first night in Buddy's she was the least whore-ish. She wasn't able to turn her looks into an asset the way the other two were. I still haven't made up my mind if that's a good thing or a bad thing given her circumstances.

On the night in question I was anticipating seeing Ae. Now Ae was an expert. Slim, small, Khmer with a voice so soft that it seemed to put you in a place halfway to your dreams. After one night with Ae I had fallen for her completely. She had whispered in my ear that I should forget her because she was no good and I think that might have had something to do with me not being able to. But the whole mess about Ae and what she led me into is another story.

It was wanting to see Ae that led me to Buddy's that night. After all. Billy had told me she was definitely turning up and I thought he knew what he was talking about. I soon found out that, with the exception of Bun, he knew little more about these girls than I did.

That night was a Saturday and Buddy's was filled with loud music and tie-dye tourists. It was one of those nights before or after a Koh Pang Ngan full moon party and there was the ambience of a magic mushroom pie around the place. (Incidentally I have an interesting Koh Pang Ngan magic mushroom pie story but this is probably off topic.) Billy had to shout my name before I noticed him sitting like a king flanked by three fast women and enough beer to drown a mule.

I didn't mention the absence of Ae right away. I just joined Billy in a toast to the cheapness of beer in Banglampoo. In addition to Bun and Pow was a girl called Nan. As before, all the girls were drunk, but Nan struck me as beyond drunk. In fact she wasn't much of a drinker. She kept spilling it as she raised a glass and talking before she had a chance to raise it to her lips.

She was nervously hyper and gave the impression of not having eaten anything but cocaine for a month. She spoke a strange Pidgin English and qualified virtually everything by saying afterwards "Me bababobo. Clazy." And nobody ever argued with her.

"Ae my good friend me. She say she miss you too much. But she go Koh Samui three day. Make money with farang." She made a little fucking gesture with her fingers just in case there might have been some doubt as to how she was to make the money. Then she pointed at her head. "Bababobo. Clazy." and she spilled a quarter of glass of beer down her front but pretended not to notice.

Billy had bought the girls some food but they weren't eating it. "What's the matter with the food?"

Bun said "Not food. Shit."

"For God's sake. Just put some fucking chilli on it."

"Fuck you Billy. You don't say fuck to me."

"Shit Bun. Don't start all that again. Why don't you just order some chips? You always eat the bloody chips."

During this Pow had started silently weeping. Nan leaned toward me and said "Husband she take baby. Now she cry all the time." Nan turned to her and started telling her off in Thai. Pow nodded a couple of times and dried her eyes. Then she went to the toilet.

By now I was accepting the Ae-less situation and started knocking back the beers.

While Nan was talking to Bun in Thai, Billy leaned over to me. "I think it might be a good idea to get rid of these three and go to Patpong. Are you up for that?"

"Big time."

This idea kept me going. I didn't even mind when Nan leaned into me and said "Look chocolate man." and laughed. Despite having leaned towards me she had almost shouted the words.

There were a group of Nigerians sitting at the next table minding their own business. Bun carried on "Chocolate man too big." And stretched her arms out in measurement. The measurement she estimated was about two feet. "No good. After Dead."

I caught the eye of one of the chocolate men. He looked none too pleased, but wasn't about to make anything of it.

After an age Pow came out of the toilet and had to steady herself by leaning for a second against the bar. Pulling herself together she started the long walk from the toilet to our table. She walked straight into the Nigerian table and knocked at least one beer flying. She sort of apologised with a bow but looked genuinely shocked for a second at the man's colour. Then she smiled sweetly. She picked up a jumper and was about to mop up the mess when the Nigerian told her not to worry about it. He'd clean up the mess.

Nan started telling me that Pow was her cousin and that she was responsible for her because she didn't understand Bangkok. Pow sat back down but almost straight away started crying again. This idea of getting to Patpong and away from this lot was very appealing to me. My experience of Patpong led me to believe that this was where the smart women worked. Patpong was like Disneyland, while Khao San Road was like... Nowhere else on Earth.

The Nigerians got up to leave. One came over to our table and gave Pow a photograph of himself. I didn't understand why. Pow looked at it for a few moments as if trying to recognise something in the face. Then she tore it into eight small pieces that she left in an ashtray.

We finished the beer and left. Billy said that, as it was getting late, the girls would soon be heading off to the Thermae. Pow attached herself to me as we walked. Nan walked ahead independently of us all.

Billy stopped at a bar that was showing a Chuck Norris movie. "I've just got to find out if Ali's been up here." He said, and disappeared talking to a Chinaman inside.

As I sat at one of the tables that spilled out on to the street a middle-aged French guy started talking to me in French. I don't speak much French but as I was drunk I thought I might get away with it. I said stuff like "les femmes" and "deja vu" and "Chiffon negligee" thinking that what I was saying was probably making pretty good sense to him. I also said "haw-hee-haw" a couple of times when I couldn't think of an actual French word. He was nodding sagely as if I was uttering profound philosophical truths. I don't know if this guy was really drunk or if French philosophy is a bit like what I was saying.

Anyway. Our wonderful intellectual chat was cut short when Pow started crying all over me almost knocking me off my chair. Trying to maintain my dignity I started saying picking phrases out the air that I thought might describe my position. "les femmes, Edith Piaf, sentimentalite, Betty Blue, il pleut, frere jacques." or some such rot.

I can't remember exactly what I said as the whole weight of Pow's emotional agony fell upon me. I speak even less French now than I did then. I think when I learned Thai all other foreign languages were banished from my brain to make room for it. Anyway. When Billy came out and saw Pow crying all over me he said, "You've got a good heart mate."

For some reason we had to go back to Billy's place, but somewhere between the mouth of Khao San Road and Ratjadamnoen Klang the stupidity of the evening rose to a level of stupidity that goes way beyond the stupidity I normally feel comfortable with.

We were just coming to the crossing on Tanao Road when Pow pushed me away from her and ran in front of a tuk tuk. The tuk tuk screeched to a halt just in time. Nan pulled Pow out of the road and slapped her several times hard across the face. Pow slumped to a crouch and sobbed. Without thinking Nan then turned and slapped me squarely across the face. My ears rang.

Before I had a chance to think what had happened Nan was on her knees in front of me wai-ing and saying "Khortort. Sorry. Sorry." But if anything happened to Pow her family would kill her. Bun started having a go at Pow, but I think this was intended to placate Nan. Then Billy started telling Bun to calm down so Bun hit Billy, and told him he was a farang and didn't understand anything. It was all like some very dark version of The Three Stooges.

My ears kept ringing. I later found out that Nan was one of those people for whom fighting was a way of life, and her first response in almost any situation. But that's another story.

In Billy's room we ordered more beers. This didn't seem a good idea to me, but by now I was in react-only mode. I didn't know what was going on, and I didn't really care. I was drunk. I didn't speak Thai. And these women were all fucked up.

Billy was taking a piss or a shave or something when a young Thai guy brought in the beers and glasses on a trolley. He looked at the girls and then winked at me. I paid and tipped him wondering how anyone could think that being in a room with three pretty Thai girls could be a good thing. "Surely as another Thai he must know how crazy they are." I thought.

We all had some beer and things seemed to be calming down. Bun even made a joke about Pow walking in front of the tuk tuk. Unfortunately this set Nan off again. She smashed the glass in her hand against the wall spilling beer everywhere and her lips curled back as if she was about to attack Pow. Bun said cautionary words and started making like she was about to hold Nan back. Nan pushed her away and started shouting in Thai about Pow. She was pointing the broken glass about a lot and I found myself ducking at one point.

Billy said to Bun, "Can't you do something about this."

Bun said, "Not my business Billy"

"But it's my fucking room."

"Sorry Billy." said Nan "But you not understand she want die. Want die. I die first. I not scare to die. Yed. See." And Nan slashed at her wrist with the broken glass. "Not scare." The colour drained from Billy's face.

Nan started shouting at Pow in Thai gesticulating wildly. Drops of blood were flying in each direction Nan was gesturing. She then paused a moment, looked at her wrist, and started licking it.

Billy said to me "Could you get Pow out of here. I think it might be all right if we can seperate those two before they kill each other. You get a room for the night for three hundred baht. I'll pay you back."

Still in react-only mode I did just that. I booked another room for the night and took Pow there kicking at me the whole way. I had to virtually carry her in.

Of course, once inside, it was completely different. She just sat on the bed and started crying. I sat on a different part of the bed watching. She took a ring shaped like a snake and started trying to cut at her wrists with it. I pulled the ring out of her fingers and threw it across the room and she embraced me and cried. Her fingers scraped at my back and she embraced me like a boa constrictor with its prey. She wept into my shirt, already wet from her tears and my sweat, but the more she held on to me the more relaxed she seemed. For some reason I kissed her and held the kiss for a while. She didn't seem too hysterical any more. Her hurt eyes looked at me for a moment as she pulled back, then she launched into me kissing me with real passion.

We broke off and I went to shower. I didn't think too much of this though because I put my shirt back on straight after. When I walked back into the room she looked a lot calmer. Then she went into the bathroom and threw up for a good ten minutes. I saw myself in the mirror and barely recognised myself in this place.

When she had finished throwing up I heard the shower come on. What I was doing was not a clever or smart thing to be doing. I was in a short-time hotel room with a drunken suicidal woman who was a friend of the woman I was in love with.

The sound of the shower stopped. Then nothing. She didn't come out. I walked up to the bathroom.

"Pow?"

Nothing.

I pushed at the door and it opened . Pow was sitting wearing nothing but a towel with one of those razors used for sharpening eyebrow pencils held to her wrist.

She looked up at me and said a whole bunch of stuff in Thai I didn't understand. I walked in with an arm outstretched for the razor. When I made a grab for it she held it behind her back. I put my arm around her and grabbed her wrist twisting it until I heard the blade went clink on to the bathroom floor. She seemed to like that I had forced her to drop the blade. I liked it too. I was out of react-only mode.

She put her arm around my neck and we kissed again. It wasn't nice. But somehow that wasn't important. She pushed me away and I grabbed her by the wrist pressing her against the cool tiles of the bathroom wall. We were both soaked from sweat and condensation. But I held her up and she sobbed lightly. I pushed my hand down to her thigh and underneath her towel until the ball of my palm was against the damp of her cunt.

Everything came into a very passionate sharp focus. This was as real as life got and there was nothing but this moment. Standing in a toilet kissing a woman I didn't think I loved whose breath still had vomit in it. My hand on her cunt and her cunt pushing against my hand.

Initially I just didn't want her to kill herself. Not because I'm a good compassionate caring man, but because I had this terrible vision of me waking up in a short-time Chinese hotel room covered in blood with a dead woman beside me with three policemen asking me questions in a language I could not speak. But as I fucked her I loved her as much as any human being can love any other, and when we finished fucking we fucked some more until we both fell asleep wrapped in each other's arms. Of course I had to wake up and extricate myself at some point because my arm had gone to sleep.

When she woke the next morning she seemed happy and content. We fucked some more, but when the fucking was done I found myself wondering if all that bit with the razor wasn't just a bit of play acting on her part. It seemed a bit unlikely that I had fucked her from a suicidal misery into this contentedness. I decided, at the time, that this had all been a bit of skillful manipulation. Maybe I just wanted to think that so I didn't have any responsibility towards her.

Despite this I went back with her to the Thais-only slum off Soi Ruam Rudi. There she offered me some glue to sniff. I declined, but she went for it.

It was there that I met another Australian, called Peter, who was holed up with a beautiful girl called Noi. With Peter I had one of the most alarming nights of my life but that's another story.

Blissfully off her head on glue Pow looked at me with a contented and victorious expression before slipping back into sleep.

When I saw Billy, Bun and Nan later that day they were all completely calm normal people. Nan said that Ae must never know about this. And I believed her. I still had a lot to learn.

Patpong Girls

Sometimes, at a point where my life had gone insane, I used to sit all night at a bar called King's Paradise. For those who don't know Patpong it was on the corner of a busy Soi that cut between Patpong 1 and Patpong 2. There's a similar bar there now called King's Garden. It had padded wicker chairs that were comfortable to sit in. I loved that place. I could just sit there with a drink in my hand watching the world go crazy around me without anything crazy happening to me.

The staff there got to know me, and when they ate I ate too. Most of the hookers who passed through, or hung out in the bar, were katoeys. They were always pleasant and joked with me. But they never tried to hustle me. They had some class I guess. The staff of that bar probably thought I was the kind of farang that never went with anyone.

While there, I got to know quite a few girls quite well, and I learned a lot about Patpong.

Som, who was twenty six, but considered herself totally over the hill, used to point individual women out to me and tell me their stories. This woman has a farang boyfriend who takes her money. Not even a good looking man either. This woman, she's a pickpocket, look. See that. That woman over there, some say she killed her husband.

But one of the things that surprised me the most at the time was how a Patpong bar girl liked to spend her money.

"You think a bargirl works here for money. Maybe some. But I ask you, if you did a job for money at the end of the week you'd still have some money, for your future or your family. But these girls go to the gay bars and buy men."

"Why?"

"Maybe they just want to go to a disco with a nice looking man. Maybe they likes the fucking. Maybe some girls, after being bought all night, just want to get their own back."

"But what about AIDS."

"Look around at the women you see here. Do they look so smart to you? Most of the women here don't believe in AIDS. They don't see for themselves. They don't believe it exists."

Som had an Italian boyfriend. She told me she'd go with customers sometimes, but customers only really liked young girls. She was old already. Me. I probably liked young girls too. She pointed me to a girl called Gung. Gung was smart looking dressed in a suit. She fluttered between men, never landing on one for too long.

"You like her?"

"She seems okay."

"She's thirteen years old. She can touch a man's dick and give him a hard on in about ten second. I can't make like that and she's a child. Not much future for me here."

Gung always kept a look-out for something. Maybe the police. I knew then that if the police grabbed her she'd probably go to the clink for being under-age. (The law was later changed to prevent this from happening so much) Who's fault was someone like Gung?

If the average drunken punter couldn't spot a ladyboy then he probably couldn't spot this thirteen year-old either. Or maybe he could, but just didn't like to admit it. Either way I wondered how old Gung would be before she felt she was over the hill.

One night I was sitting with Som, and a katoey, and one of the waitresses over a plate of takatan. An old hooker ran behind a man who was walking with another hooker, herself not an oil painting, and smashed a bottle over his head. The man fell while the two women argued. Then he sat on the edge of the curb with bloodstains on his suit.

Nobody seemed to be doing much for him.

He started inspecting his shirt and tie and tried to brush the mess away. His main concern seemed not to be that he was bleeding, but that his shirt was going to be all messed up. He seemed dazed, but okay.

Eventually one of our friendly tourist police turned up and started asking him questions. After finishing the questions the cop folded his notepad and walked away. The man continued sitting there. Someone from the Banana Bar took him a cup of tea.

A woman came to our table and excitedly told the story.

Apparently he'd been sitting chatting up this woman at one of the outside bars and he's even paid her barfine. When this first woman went to the toilet a second woman who didn't even work in the bar had muscled in and spirited him away.

"So why didn't she bottle the other woman."

Som smiled and said, "She probably thought the man deserved it more."

 

Alexander (Jo) Turner

[Guest]

I am new to this board, but after spending way to much time reading about every report on here in preperation for my trip on the 17th of next month, I have to say thank you to Cent, Alexander, Tbird, Steve, Tyler Durden, Ranger and anyone else who I missed, thanks. I am going to try to do my best to return the favor by documenting my trip upon return to the states, but some of you guys set the standard so high, I almost feel like my report will be the equivelent of following John Holmes in a porno movie.

Anyway I just wanted to say thanks. Like Tbird had said in one of his reports, I had fears of getting jailed/sick ect on my trip to thailand, but after reading your reports, now I'm worried about getting sick before and not being able to get there. Keep it up, your reports are mana from the gods to us soon to be ex newbies.

[Guest]

Alex,

OUTSTANDING Reading. A total treasure. You sir are fantastic.

Yes, I have seen the movie Cyclo. It's one of my top 5 movies. Hard and direct, it's an intense movie. So, I know EXACTLY what you are talking about.

Outstanding writing. I can FEEL the scenes you describe and can picture the charaters. Tell me, a Book you are writing?

Many thanks.

Bangkok35

[jagoturner]

Thanks for the kind words. Always appreciated.

A book... Well. I would if I thought I could get it published.

By the way. I'm glad someone else has seen Cyclo. I think it is one of the finest films made in South East Asia. Very dark, very disturbing, and very real. Maybe too real. It's surprising how few people seem to be aware of it.