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Mushroom Pies--by Alexander Turner

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Mushroom Pies

-by Alexander T.

For this story we have to turn the clock back to November 1992. It begins with a chance encounter at about 3.30AM on a Wednesday night; no better make that Thursday morning, at the Thermae. For anyone not too familiar with the Thermae I should explain.

The Thermae is a coffee shop that sat underneath a massage parlour of the same name on Sukhumvit Road. After hours, and it always seemed to be after hours, you walked in by walking up a small alley to a car park and then through a busy hard smelling lavatory to a multitude of dimly lit faces and voices.

Virtually anyone who has spent a length of time in Bangkok knows the old Thermae well and has a hundred or so tales about the place. They will tell you it had a lot of atmosphere while the new place has none.

Atmosphere. Drunken farang whose faces are turning ruddy and whose legs barely support the wobble of beer in their heads. Girls dressed like they are going to a party slumped on synthetic PVC chairs looking bored and deflated. Small pockets of light and laughter here and there. And hungry looks on the faces of women spreading their honey traps and silken webs wide for a man whose wallet bulges like Tom Jones' Y-fronts.

In the midst of this atmosphere I would often sit at one of the better-lit tables and order a toasted chicken sandwich. The occasional brush of bodies notwithstanding, the Thermae was one of the finest places for a late night snack. The toasted chicken sandwich came garnished with a frizz of lettuce, two slivers of tomato and four moderately sized potato chips.

As the morning wore on and I was on to the coffee there'd always be a bit of impromptu cabaret. A bit of hysteria and the odd rabid cat fight in which the more demure young ladies would step aside and let the hard cases go for it tooth and nail. As tempers frayed a farang knocking into the wrong woman would be treated to a lesson in Thai cursing. You have to admire the sheer verve of Thai hookers when they embark on one of these colourful tirades. I never knew there were that many animals you could fuck before I started hanging out in the Thermae.

Anyway, I was contemplating whether I should go for the second coffee or not when a girl I knew started telling me briefly of how she had just left a farang boyfriend in Koh Samui having first got a nice 4 baht gold chain out of him. When she moved on a young bloke with a broken nose and a South London accent leaned over to me from one of the booths.

"You speak a bit of Thai?"

"A bit."

"'cause I'm having a bit of a communication problem."

I looked behind him and a very attractive woman smiled sweetly.

"What sort of problem?"

"I keep trying to ask her how much for a blowjob but she doesn't seem to know what I'm talking about."

I relayed the message to the woman. She just shook her head. She didn't understand me either. I asked her if she spoke Thai? She gestured with two fingers, a little bit.

"Parlez vous francais?"

"Oui."

"Do you speak French?" I said to the bloke.

"French?"

"She isn't Thai. She's Cambodian."

"Fuck that. Bloody marvellous isn't it. Come half way round the world and you have to speak French."

"Don't worry about it. I'm sure if you flash a bit of money about she'll know what you mean."

"I would but I've only got a couple of hundred baht left. I thought I'd haggle her down a bit. Or is that too little."

"Probably. If I were you I'd have a drink instead."

"Yeah. I'm as pissed as a fart anyway. If I'm going to pay for it I may as well be a bit compus mentus. Sorry love," he said to her. "This bloke's my brother. I haven't seen him for twenty years."

His name was James and he had just let his friends go home while he went in search of the cheapest blowjob in town.

It turned out that, like me, he was staying at a cheap guesthouse on Khao San Road. Unlike me he really wanted to get to an island. He hadn't developed an infatuation with Bangkok. He was headed to Koh Pang Ngan for the next full moon party.

The Thermae started looking more sparsely populated as we kept drinking and talking bollocks. The few remaining bargirls by five probably would have gone for a couple of hundred baht. We poured out and grabbed the number two bus which took you all the way back to Banglamphu for a couple of baht. Two beer soaked farang standing amidst the early morning workers always get a few laughs. James was flagging by now. As we parted company I thought that would be the last I saw of him.

But it wasn't. In fact we met up the next day with his friend Adrian. Adrian was a bit edgier than James. He was blond and good looking and had made his money to travel the world through some dodge involving stolen motorbikes. He got a letter from his sister while we were out there saying that the police would be very interested in talking to him on his return. We went on a few bar crawls enjoying Thai hospitality all the way. Adrian, like James, was going off for the full moon party on Koh Pang Ngan, but he was much more enamoured of Bangkok.

The charm of Bangkok was not just to be found in the bars but in every shop and park and open place. People seemed to laugh at life, even when life hadn 't seemed to hand them the best cards.

Us Brits are a good humoured but bitter lot. We resent those who make more money than us and moan about the injustices of life. Also staying in the old part of town you still run into the occasional people to whom farangs are a novelty. But the bars were where we'd head in the evenings.

I introduced them to the wonders of the Soi Cowboy, still the friendliest of the three main barzones. James was getting a bit pissed off at the language problems and talked of missing farang women. He had some older lady that he'd been eyeing up. There are quite a few abandoned girlfriends in Banglamphu for reasons too obvious to mention. James was getting into this.

One evening Adrian and me were out. We were sitting in the Tilac bar fighting off women. Adrian said "You know. When I first met you I thought you were a bit dodgy."

"Dodgy ?"

"Yeah. You know a rip off artist or something. But you're all right."

"Well cheers but you're still a cunt."

"Ahh. No really you're all right. James is off his head. He said he thought you were on the run because you spoke a bit of Thai."

"But you are on the run."

"Not really. I was going to Australia anyway. I can't be arsed with England. Anyway. There's no proof."

"Right."

He didn't say anything else because some woman had her breasts in his face.

A couple of days later Adrian and James both hit Koh Pang Ngan. I had an interesting but weird affair with a Patpong girl we'd met a couple of nights before but this is another story. Point is it was just coming to a head when I got a knock on my guest house door.

The wife of the owner said that I had a message from Mr Adrian. I had to go to Buddy's. He had a big problem. My mind raced. Interpol had tracked him down and he needed a lawyer quick. Or maybe James had been the victim of one of those cult murders on Koh Pang Ngan, very much in vogue at the time. So I went to Buddy's.

One of the waitresses there who had been sneaking me off to give me free Thai grammar lessons went to the front desk and told them she was taking me to see Adrian.

Adrian was sitting in the room pouring with sweat and looking very very bad.

"Shit. Thank God. I think I need some help."

"What happened?"

"I feel like I'm going to die man. I'm dizzy as fuck. I keep seeing things in the shadows. I've been puking like a motherfucker. I'm shit scared."

"Okay we'll get to a doctor."

"The thing is... I'm a bit worried about that too. We were on Koh Pang Ngan. There was a whole bunch of us. And we done some E's and I had some of this mushroom pie. Something poisoned me or something. No fucker wanted to help me out. I've been travelling all the way up here like this. But if I tell them it was an E I don't know what could happen."

"Yeah. Well. We'll get you to a doctor and tell them you think someone spiked your drink. No problem."

Under the advice of a local pharmacist I took Adrian to this large hospital. I can't remember what the hospital was called but it looked like a palace. A huge reception area with luxurious chairs and magazines. Indoor fountains and perfect air-con. Nurses with clear pretty faces smiling sweetly with crisp starched uniforms that went swish as they walked. I thought if I have to die in a hospital let it be a place like this.

Adrian's spirits raised substantially. "This place is all right." He said.

A nurse who looked like the cure for anything came to get him and took him in to see the doctor. "Would you come along? Just in case he doesn't understand."

"In a place like this they probably speak everything from Eskimo to Serbo Croat."

But I went.

The doctor gave him a thorough going over and I kept flashing smiles at the nurse in attendance. I had decided that I wanted to marry this woman.

"Yes. It looks like appendicitis. Inflammation of the appendix. The cure is to operate."

Adrian went white.

"It's not dangerous. Of course we'll have to keep him here for a day first. No food. Just a drip."

"Um..."Said Adrian "How much is it going to cost?"

"It's all right. You can claim it on your travel insurance."

"I don't have any travel insurance."

I explained the situation to the doctor who explained the cost to me and I explained the cost to Adrian.

Adrian explained that he didn't have this sort of money to spare. He wouldn't be able to get to Australia and he really couldn't go back to the UK. I explained this to the doctor who, without indicating the slightest distaste or prejudice, said that it was okay because, if he didn't mind having the operation at a teaching hospital, he could get away with only paying for the drugs anaesthetic and so on. Adrian was cool with this. After all, a teaching hospital didn't sound too bad.

Adrian was stuck on a trolley and pushed along to the hospital car park where we had to stand out in the sun waiting for an ambulance. As the mid-day sun beat down and Adrian lay there staring up at it he said "Where's the hidden camera man? This is all a big laugh isn't it? We'll have Jeremy Beadle dressed as one of these guys jump out."(Jeremy Beadle is the British Alan Funt)

The ambulance pulled up and Adrian was banged about as the Three Stooges tried to negotiate the width of the ambulance doors against the length of the stretcher. Adrian started to get up.

"I can get in by myself."

"No. No No." said one of the orderlies. "You stay there."

I stood back as they finally got him in. I got in after him and sat as the ambulance sped and bumped and skid its way to the hospital.

"They are. They're having a fucking laugh aren't they? The driver. The driver's Jeremy Beadle."

I laughed and the orderly started laughing too though he clearly didn't know what we were laughing about.

After about an hour we arrived at the other hospital, which turned out to be about half a mile away.

The ambulance driver had probably taken us on a more scenic route to keep us entertained. One of the orderlies tried to find someone at reception. It must have been lunchtime. So we waited out there for a while before one of the orderlies had the brainwave of taking us to the A&E ward without going through reception.

After half an hour of wheeling Adrian around we came back to reception where someone was eating a bowl of noodle soup. They seemed to find all this very amusing but Adrian was starting to feel pretty bad and I had this terrible sense of having a corpse on my hands. Who would I go to? I had to find a way of finding his next of kin... just in case.

When we got to A&E I forgot all of this.

The screams took my mind off everything but the screams.

On one bed was a man with a bloody bandage around his gut that he was clutching. He wasn't screaming. He was just making gurgling breathing noises as his hands clenched and unclenched covered in blood. The screaming man was someone who had appeared to have lost all the fingers on his right hand. He wanted something for the pain. He kept saying this over and over again.

I noted that the whole ward could do with a paint job.

The paint was peeling off the walls and even the smell of hospital antiseptic didn't quite cover all the other smells. A nurse came up to our trolley and pushed it in the furthest corner from the screaming man. Her face was blank impassive. She took the doctor's notes from the other hospital and disappeared.

Leaving me alone in MASH unit 4077.

The man with no fingers wouldn't stop screaming. His face contorted with grief and pain. I started to feel a bit iffy.

"How's it looking?" Said Adrian.

"Fucking awful."

"No doc. Just give it to me straight."

"No you're all right. It's these other poor sods."

The guy with the stomach wound stopped gurgling and made a big gurgle that sounded kind of final.

"Chuay duay. Chuay duay." The man with the finger problem started shouting.

The nurse reappeared. I thought maybe responding to the calls for help but she ignored them and came straight to our bed and explained to me that we had to go to another ward. Somebody would be along in a second.

An old man, about five inches from his last breath, turned around and smiled at me. I smiled back.

An orderly came and wheeled us away singing some Thai country song.

"Just smile and keep thinking of Patpong. We'll be there in a few days back to normal."

"I'm terrified mate."

The next ward was supposed to be an observation ward but my first impression was that they had put Adrian in the terminal ward as a joke.

There wasn't a single person in the ward who looked like they'd make it through the night. The bloke in the bed opposite was covered in lacerations and had a nicely bandaged stump where a left arm would normally be. The bloke in the bed to the left looked skeletal with the skin blotched I always associated with AIDS. On the right was a man who looked 106 years old. He was the healthiest looking guy there.

Some orderlies came and put Adrian on a drip while the doctor tried to explain to Adrian in halting English that, although he was advised for an appendectomy, they wanted to see what happened over the next 24 hours first.

If there was any sign of his condition worsening they would bring forward the time of the operation. After this brief explanation this doctor disappeared and that was the last English Adrian would hear.

I stayed with him for a couple of hours and tried to cheer him up before drawing the blinds on the near dead that surrounded him. He nodded off and I left.

The next day I went back bringing gifts of Viz and Mad Magazine. He seemed to be a lot better. He said "I'm starving. I need to get something to eat."

"What?"

"I don't know if that's the best..."

"That drip's cleaned the poison out of my system. I just want to get the fuck away. All these student doctors keep coming around pointing at my chart and laughing. It's doing my head in. I just need to get the fuck out of here man."

"You're serious?"

"Yeah. Draw the screens around again. I'm going to get my clothes on."

While he was getting dressed I went up to the desk and paid for everything that had been used.

As we passed the desk Adrian said "Just going for a little walk. Getting a spot of air." The man behind the desk looked nonplussed for a moment before pressing a buzzer. Seeing this I said "Scarper."

We ran out the hospital grounds like criminals fleeing the scene of a crime. We grabbed a tuk tuk on Taksin Road and I said "Khao San Road."

"Fuck that." Said Adrian. "Patpong. I've been keeping myself going by thinking of sitting in MacDonalds in Patpong having a quarter pounder. And nothing in heaven or earth is going to keep me away from that quarter pounder."

We hit the rush hour and by the time we were creeping up Silom Road night had fallen upon the city. The lights from the bars were flashing multicoloured lights and those bloody starlings were shitting on the market stalls as we sat in the MacDonald's on Silom Road facing Patpong. We both had quarter pounders and shakes and fries. I would never have believed fast food could taste as good as it did that evening.

"I'll tell you something," said Adrian. "You can keep your fancy French food. You can shove spaghetti up your arse. And somtam can eat shit and die. Nothing in the world beats a quarter pounder, chips, and a strawberry milkshake. Real food."

The morals of this tale are:

Always get health insurance!

Never eat mushrooms or E's on Koh Pang Ngan!

Don't underestimate the restorative power of MacDonalds fine food!

Thank you for your attention!

Alexander Turner 

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