My name is "Mobi"; I'm an alcoholic

Please click on any the above tabs to read previously blogged stories in chronological order

Wan was very upset when I told her that I didn’t want to see her any more.

She told me that she was prepared to live with me in Pattaya, and that she was planning to come and meet me here to discuss everything with me

She that unless I had another girlfriend she was sure we could sort things out. So I decided the best thing I could do was to come clean, because at least it would bring the affair to finality, even though it would probably hurt her more than I wished to.

When I told her about Tan, she was very upset and very angry. She said she now realised that I was a very bad person and she didn’t blame my wife for all the things  she had done to me – she said I deserved it. She also said that all Englishmen are bastards and that she would never trust another one.

I guess it was all predictable, and I feel very sad about it all. But when all is said and done, yes I  have probably hurt her a lot and dashed her dreams that I would be her personal, ‘on-stream ATM’.

When I was with her, I was more than generous so she has little really to complain about.

I haven’t heard from her since that tirade, so I hope and assume she had come to terms with it all.

Now to Tan.

Tan has just turned twenty two, she comes from Nakhon Sawan, so she is not ethnic Issan, and does not speak Isaan.

She is a very eye-catching dark skinned girl with a lovely sexy figure and a flair for dressing in an eye-catching manner. I have never seen her  badly dressed.

She speaks and reads  fair to good English, which was mainly mainly learned from school, and as such she has a strong Thai accent.

Tan is a feisty girl, (as I like them), but has a nice, generous, thoughtful nature and invariably sports an infectious smile. She is confident and knows what she wants in life.

Tan graduated from High school in Nakhon Sawan and attended college in Bangkok to study accountancy.

Unfortunately, like so many before her, she shacked up with a Thai man who got her pregnant, which meant that her boyfriend sought sexual comfort elsewhere. By the time the the baby was born her boyfriend had found a new woman and was a bad memory.

She was devastated, took her baby back home to live and dropped out of college.

Tan comes from a large family, all of which as far as I can determine, are quite well to do. She has a twin sister who is still at school and another sister who goes to university in Bangkok.

Her parents are substantial land owners, and they all have quality houses and drive modern vehicles.

When Tan had been living at home for a few months, one of her distant relatives, an elder woman who was married to an Englishman, came to see her and asked her if she would be interested in working with her at a new bar she was opening on Mabprachan Lake.

Tan had always been the family ‘rebel’. For example, when she was thirteen, she decided to dye her hair blond and her mother nearly had a fit and made her change it back to black.

She has also had several tattoos, has a stud in her tongue, and a ring in her stomach. All this had been carried out  with stealth, against her family’s wishes.

Now she wanted to go to Pattaya with her ‘aunt’ but her mother refused to let her go. So when her mother went out one day, Tan packed her clothes and followed her aunt to Pattaya. This was almost exactly a year ago.

She stared working in the bar/restaurant last April and worked there for ten months, before stopping work when she found , what she thought, was a new, long term boyfriend, a young man from England.

I first met Tan very soon after she started work, and we immediately hit it off. I was keen on her from day one, but I couldn’t really follow up as I was still living at home with Dang, although by that time it was a question of ‘when’, not ‘if’ I would be leaving home.

I did take Tan out to Pattaya a couple of times for a meal, but always returned her to the bar after the date and went home.

I was planing to follow up seriously with Tan, once I had left home. I saw her quite often at her bar and we also kept in touch by sms. The plan was for us to take a brief holiday in Nakhon Sawn and then take it from there.

In the event, I was so traumatized when I finally left home last July that I didn’t want to see anyone, and I even put my phone on permanent voice mail so that no-one could call me. Tan tried a few times and then gave up.

It was after this that she found a new boyfriend, and by the time I reappeared on the scene, Tan was working as a cook in the restaurant as she no longer wished to be a bar girl in view of her new relationship.

The boyfriend was back in England, sending her money every month and after a while, Tan decided to move back home to look after her daughter and await her boyfriend’s return to Thailand.

Something went wrong and the relationship started to founder. Tan decided to break it off and one day she sent me an sms.

This was the start of an ‘on again’ off again’ period for us as we kept agreeing to meet, but she would cancel out at the last moment.

The old relationship was in its death throes and Tan was confused.

Finally she broke it off completely and our communications increased. All of these events led to me to make the decision to go and see her at her home in Nakhon Sawan last week,which resulted in me bringing her back to Pattaya.

Many of my readers have strongly advised me to stay alone and just pay for sex when I need it, and cannot understand my desire to always have someone living with me.

This is good advice but I doubt I can ever take it.

Many men, and I am certainly one, can never live alone for any period of time. If we do, we become depressed, very lonely and invariably end up doing harmful things to ourselves, such as excessive drinking or taking drugs.

I cannot explain why, but as long as I have a ‘live-in’, however bad she may be, I am much happier and the worst excesses of my behaviour are curtailed.

We have been together one week, and so far so good. She is a really nice girl and I have been happy with her. We have been out several times both as a couple and with friends and I have enjoyed socializing in places other than girlie bars, for the first time in years.

Tan wishes to go back to college to resume her accounting studies and today she registered at a local college which will involve full time attendance when the new term commences next month.

This is fine by me as it will give us both space, and she will be able to mix with people of her own age. As it is, she already has quite a few friends in Pattaya, who I am encouraging her to spend time with.

When she is with me, we have ‘real’ conversations, and I believe we get on well with each other.

I completely understand the basis of this relationship and I am content. I fully appreciate that it will probably turn ‘pear shaped’ at some point, but until that happens I will enjoy myself and try to get my life under control.

I have know so many Thai ladies in my life, and I know that I will have good shot with this one. She is genuinely nice and I believe she will stick by her side of the deal.

So far, with good reason, she is much more concerned that I will break the deal.

So, gentle readers, don’t hold back…. tell me what an idiot I am…..

MOBI VIGNETTES

MARDIE (Part 7)

Mardie had told me on the telephone that she might find it difficult to meet me at the airport as he had a prior engagement. I assured her that she shouldn’t worry about it, as by now I knew the way and in any case I wanted to show her that I was perfectly capable of getting there by myself.

(One of the many sources of conflict between us was the fact that I would argue about the correct way to go somewhere invariably i would get lost).

I navigated my way to her apartment in Queens successfully, but was somewhat put out when her flat mate answered the door and advised me that Mardie was not home.

As I hadn’t seen Mardie for more than two months it didn’t bode well that she wasn’t home to greet me, even though she had suggested as much when she said she might not be able to come to the airport. Her flat mate let me in and told me that Mardie would be back in an hour or so.

I asked her where she was, but received a monosyllabic reply which told me nothing; so I sat down, feeling very weary and disappointed to wait.

Sure enough, an hour later Mardie arrived home, escorted by a smart looking guy in a suit, who was introduced to me before making a quick exit.

Mardie apologised for not being there and explained that she was out with the ‘date’ and they were held up badly in traffic in upstate New York.

Charming!

Things went from bad to worse when Mardie told me that I could spend the night at her place but tomorrow I would have to move as her flatmate had objected to me staying there, even just for a week or so.

Things were not going well at all and no amount of entreaties from me would change her mind, so I became resigned to finding somewhere to stay on the following morning.

Mardie told me that tomorrow, which was Saturday, she would take me downtown and help me find a cheap room, and with that both women disappeared to their bedrooms and left me to kip on the sofa for the night.

So it was with a heavy heart that we lugged all my belongings onto the subway, and travelled downtown where, after a quick look around some seedy hotels I finally settled for a cheap room in the YMCA.

As soon as I had checked in, Mardie gave me a quick peck on the cheek, told me she had a pre- arranged appointment and that I could come over and see her the next day, but I should call first to make sure she was home.

I sat in my room wondering what the hell I had got myself into, but I was young, naïve and full of optimism and decided to make the best of it. I resolved to do my utmost to see if I could recapture my beloved’s obvious lack of feelings for me.

So the next day I called ahead and once again Mardie was out, but her flat mate told me to come on over and that Mardie would be back later.

Somewhat to my surprise, Mardie was there when I arrived, but she looked very glum and serious and I feared the worst.

She told me that she didn’t want to say anything when I arrived yesterday as I was very tired from my journey, but that she had been thinking about our relationship a lot lately and thought it better if we didn’t see each other for a while. She said that I should go to Montreal, find somewhere to live, get a job and once I was settled than I could call her and then maybe I could come back for a visit.

She said that my life was too unsettled and in any case she was very busy at work and wouldn’t be able to spend much time with me.

I asked her about her other ‘dates’, but she insisted that she had no serious boyfriends. She said that she had a few men friends’’ who took her out on dates but they were all casual relationships and that she hadn’t slept with any of them.

I tried to argue with her and suggested I stayed for at least a week, but she told me that the whole worry of me uprooting my life and coming to the USA had been getting her down. She was getting a lot of migraines and that the stress of it all had caused her to break out in acne, which I could see, was a fact.

We argued back and forth for a while, but the discussion was becoming increasingly acrimonious, and the end I acceded to her suggestion and took off back to my room at the ‘Y’ to sort out my bus journey to Montreal.

Mardie had agreed that we could keep in touch by telephone, and that once I was settled then I would be welcome to come over for weekend for a visit.

This seemed to be the best I could hope for in the circumstances, but I was far from a ‘happy camper’ when I made my way to the Greyhound bus terminal two evenings later,  for the overnight trip to Montreal Canada and the start of my new life – all alone.

All went well until we arrived at the Canadian border.

First the American customs and immigration officers entered the bus, gave us a quick perusal and disappeared shortly after.

The bus drove on a few yards to the Canadian side and the Canadian officials entered the bus.

Of course there was a daily free flow of people over the border with Canad. The Americans and Canadians were not required to carry passports. Everyone was asked to verify their identity by showing a social security card, a driving license, or indeed, any document with their name and address on it.

When they came to me I showed them my British passport. I was asked the purpose of my visit to Canada, and I told them that I was an immigrant. The officer looked at my passport again and asked me if I had an immigrant visa. When I told him that I planned to apply when I got to Montreal, he looked at me with suspicion, and asked me to accompany him off the bus.

I asked him about my luggage, and he told me that the bus would wait for me.

I was led into a room where I told to sit to await the arrival of another, more senior immigration officer.

He was a big bastard and very aggressive. He was holding my passport in his hand and suggested that it was a forgery! I was completely taken aback, and assured him that it was the genuine article.

He examined it again in great detail and the suggested that the photograph didn’t look much like me. I had had the passport a few years and my photograph showed me with a short haircut, whereas now, in keeping with the fashion of the late sixties, my hair was almost down to my shoulders – I was a veritable hippy.

He then accused me of being an American draft dodger from the Vietnam War. Apparently there had been thousands of draft dodgers who had fled across the border and were now living secretly in Canada.

I asked him if I sounded like an American, but when that didn’t impress him I searched in my hand baggage and found a few documents that I hoped would convince him I was English.

He examined them in silence, and then slowly handed them back to me.

“OK Mac.. you’re not a Yank. But why are you going to Canada?”

I repeated my statement that I wanted to apply for an immigrant visa as I wanted to settle in Montreal and work there.

He looked at me and said: “Where are you going to live?”

“I don’t know”.

“Where are you going to work?”

“I don’t have a job yet.”

“What’s you line of work?”

“I’m an accountant.”

This response seemed to impress him and his unfriendly glare seemed to relax a little.

“An accountant, hmm…. Show me your qualifications.”

“I don’t have any, I’m only partly qualified”.

His manner turned sour again.

“You’re an accountant with no qualifications…. Ok buster, how much money have you got with you? Show me.”

I pulled out my wallet. I was carrying about fifty pounds. He wasn’t very impressed, so I tried to explain to him that due to UK foreign exchange regulations I wasn’t allowed to take much money out of the England but that as soon as I became settled and was able to open a Canadian Bank account, I would be able to transfer funds from my account in England to my new account in Canada.

He didn’t seem to understand what I was trying to tell him and I had to repeat it three times, but he still looked at me as though he didn’t believe a word I had said.

Finally, he asked: “So – you have some proof of this money plan?”

I told him that I had some documents in my suitcase that should prove what I was telling him was true.

With that, he stood up and called another officer over. He gave the officer my passport and bus ticket and asked him to go and remove my bags from the bus.

“What about the bus?” I asked. Will they still wait for me?”

“No buster the bus is leaving now, and you are staying here.

You have no visa, no job, you don’t know where you’re gonna live,and you ain’t got no money.

I am not at all sure that we will allow you into Canada, and frankly, I doubt if you will be allowed back into the States, so you may be in for quite a stay at our little border jail!”

Please click on any the above tabs to read previously blogged stories in chronological order

Yet again I offer my apologies for not blogging for several days.

I have been settling into life back in Jomtien with Tan and assessing whether its going to work or not.

I have probably been having a tad too much to drink, but not overly excessive and at no time have I woken up with a hangover.

I have been out a lot, mainly with Tan, shopping, running errands and so forth, but I also went to see a friend for  one afternoon and I just haven’t had enough ‘sober time’ to post on my blog.

I have mentioned before that I never post after I have taken a drink, even if it’s only a couple of beers or so as I don’t wish my beer to do the talking.

This evening we are meeting a couple of old friends of mine for dinner, so we’ll almost certainly have some wine and that will mean no blogging tonight.

Tomorrow I am up early to take my car for a service and repair near Chonburi and I could be stuck there all day, so it is unlikely I will be doing much blogging tomorrow, yet again.

However I will ear-mark Friday for a good long session and will also try to catch up over the weekend.

In the meantime, I will just report that today I have told Wan that our relationship is over, so those who are concerned that she may turn up on my doorstep can rest at ease.

I feel absolutely awful about what I have done, but rest assured I would have done it whether or not I had shacked up with Tan.

It would never have worked with Wan, for all the reasons I mentioned in my last blog, (plus some  more that I forgot to mention, like all the trouble with Jasper’s father etc), and it was far better to do it now than later when it would have been even more traumatic.

Well the deed is done and I am with Tan, and so far so good. I will write more on this over the weekend, but I will just say in conclusion today that: “Yes, I know Tan is a whore; yes I understand this is purely a financial arrangement; and yes I fully understand that she will never love me.” But it still might work!

I know, famous last words……..

Please click on any the above tabs to read previously blogged stories in chronological order

Firstly, a few brief words about my drinking and celebrating Songkran in Roi Et with Wan and family.

The temperature was hovering in the mid forties Celsius every day and Wan’s house was like an oven, so I suggested on Songkran Day that we all go out for lunch. Anything was better than staying in that intolerable heat.

I had stayed completely free from alcohol for eight days when Wan agreed that we should go out with her family for a Songkran lunch.

This was an interesting day for as we drove through a few scattered villages, not far from Wan’s own village,, we passed endless groups of locals playing Songkran.

Unlike in Pattaya, the girls were all modestly dressed and there wasn’t a trace of flesh in sight, but suddenly, in the distance I noticed a group of scantily clad females.

I mentioned this to Wan who immediately told me they were not girls – they were Lady boys! My God, even in this remote spot, some eight hundred kilometers from Pattaya we still can’t get away from them!

The tale gets even more bizarre.

As we approached the group, Wan let out a squeal and disappeared under the dashboard.

She had just spotted the lady boy who owned the Jomtien bar from which I had ‘rescued’ her.

Word had got out, thanks to Wan’s “blabber mouth” aunt, that Wan was with Mobi, and the bar owner was looking a seven thousand Baht payment for ‘stealing’ one of his ladies.

The flesh trade is alive and well in Thailand.

We made our escape without being spotted.

We had lunch in a traditional straw covered wooden hut, one of dozens that had been built on stilts, way out on a huge lake. The rickety, one plank walk ways that led out to the huts looked as though they had seen better days and many of the hand rails werer missing.

I wouldn’t fancy making my way back to ‘terra firma’ along them when drunk.

It would have been quite a picturesque setting except for one problem. The lake had almost dried up. There was just acres of mud.

We went to one of the farthest huts where there was some semblance of water still washing around the stumps of the stilts, some two meters below us, and it was there that I had my first beer in eight days.

The Issan food was delicious and we all spent a happy couple of hours there, looking over the mud flats, which in less arid times had been a flowing lake, full of wild life.

The next day Mobi, Wan, her mother, sister and her new born baby all went out again; this time to another restaurant where the main fair was prawn. You could have any dish you liked, provide it contained prawns – so not a great place for anyone allergic to them.

I had a few more beers, and late in the afternoon we were joined by Wan’s aunt and her daughter, even though they had not been initially invited. (More of this little episode is recounted below).

In case you were wondering, on both these days, although I was not particularly drunk, I insisted that Wan drive home.

Since then I have been having a few beers on most days, but not to excess.

I know – I am as weak as shit.  But there you go.

I am quite sure that a great heap of condemnation will be leveled at me from all sides when I report what I have been up to as far as Wan is concerned and what I have decided.

To recap; I was staying with Wan at her little village about nine kilometers from Selaphum, which in turn is nearly an hour’s drive from Roi Et city and  Yasuthon City.

I previously wrote about having three choices.

Choice number one was to move up to Roi Et.

Choice number two was to rent a house and move Wan and her son to Pattaya.

Choice number three was to move back into my house with Dang, but we would lead separate lives.

I have received suggestions from my readers and my close friends who, between them, have endorsed all the above options and more; all with convincing arguments as to why I should opt for their recommended course of action.

I am very grateful for all this advice, but at the end of the day it left me more confused and undecided than ever. Each argument has its good and bad points.

So here’s what has happened – so far….

Wan was absolutely determined to persuade me to uproot and move up to her village to stay with her and her son.

Even though I never agreed to this, and insisted that I wanted to ‘suck it and see”, she seemed to conveniently forget what I had told her, and she continually made remarks like: “When you move here for good….”; “I have decided that I can put your book case against this wall…; ”I will rebuild the driveway so that we can accommodate two cars without having one behind the other…” and so on and so forth.

She never stopped dropping hints and speaking as if it was a done deal, which as far as I was concerned just served to irritate me, and set me more and more against the whole idea.

Then there was the subject of money. I know many of you will jump on what I am about to say and say: “See, I told you, she is just a whore, after your money!”

Well maybe you’re right and maybe you’re wrong. We could argue about it all night and never really come to agreement.

Ok, let’s just say there are whores, and there are whores.

There are whores that work in places such as massage parlours, short time bars, ‘red light’ areas like Soi Cowboy and Walking Street  and who for the main part are there for the money. The better looking ones make a great deal of money, and wouldn’t change their lives if you begged them to and offered them a good well paying job in the ‘normal’ world.

At the other end of the scale are the desperate village girls who have babies and possibly parents to feed, have been deserted by their men, have little education and come to the bright lights of Pattaya and Bangkok in desperate search of a farang who will rescue them and take them away from the sordid bars and take care of them forever.

Then there are many in between these two extremes: some having got used to the money and the life style find it difficult to go back to being a ‘normal’ person; some hating it but are under the control and obligation to the families who have also got used to an increased standard of living. I could go on forever: for every girl who sells her body, you will find a slightly different variation on the same theme.

Some love being whores, some hate being whores, some are reluctant whores who tolerate it to maintain a decent lifestyle for themselves and their families.

So inasmuch as Wan went to Pattaya with her Aunt to seek a new boyfriend/husband who would take care of her and her son, then I agree she was a whore, and since she has been with me has been my whore.

I doubt that there are too many Thai girls who are married to farangs who didn’t fit into one of the above “whore” categories, at some point in their lives. (Though most farangs will deny it with pompous outrage till their dying days.)

Back to Wan and money. Well, before the end of last month I sat down with her and asked her what her monthly expenses were: house, schooling, and food, mortgage repayments and so on. She had it all worked out and told me the figure which I considered to be reasonable and within my budget, so I told her I would be happy to pay that every month.

On 1^st April, I duly transferred the agreed sum to her account.

The first time I went with her to Roi Et I paid out some cash to fix some air conditioning and of course paid all the food bills.

Back in Pattaya I also paid the food bills and bought her a fair amount of clothes and so on.’

Then when we went back to Roi Et I had along talk and explained to her that I didn’t have endless pots of money. She said she understood.

Then every time we passed the local government bank, where she had a forty thousand baht mortgae, she reminded me that she wanted to get her Chanod back for her house as it worried her having to leave it there.

Then she told me that she owed her aunt five thousand baht. I gave here the  money to pay her Aunt back.

Then she told me that she had borrowed twenty thousand baht on her farm land from the village co-operative.

Then she told me that the water pump needs replacing, which was why we often had no water in the bathroom.

Then she told me that she had to rebuild the back of the house because the rain and sun came in too much.

Then she told me about the structural problem with her house.During the recent hot spell, her house was like an oven. It had been badly designed and needed some major structural alterations to make it cooler. She talked frequently about this.

The crowning moment happened the last day I was there. We were planning to go out to lunch with her mother and sister, but Wan said we should wait until her aunt and niece left as she didn’t want to take them to lunch with us. I asked why, and the reply was that it would cost too much and she wanted me to have some money left to give to her when I left!

I asked her about the monthly allowance I had given her and all the odd thousand baht notes I had also been giving her which she never seemed to spend. She actually admitted that she wanted to save all of it and just spend my money!

I told her that I gave her money to spend – not to save, and she agreed, but said she had very miserly habits with her own money.

Of course with so many debts, I could well understand her desire to hang on to as much money as possible, but this was ridiculous. As ever, I was simply the ‘walking ATM’, who was being withdrawn to his ‘limit’, whenever the occasion demanded.

She was extremely sweet about it, and I could have refused, and often did, but it grated – a little too much for comfort. If I wasn’t careful I would be drawn into a net of never ending debt repayments, house re-building and God knows what else.

Now to Jasper. He is a lovely little six year old – very sharp and very endearing. But he clearly has a few psychological problems. He talks in his sleep every night and sometimes shouts so loud that it quite alarming. This is a nightly event, and what is more he sleeps on the floor at the bottom of our bed, as he cannot sleep alone.

He is fairly well behaved with everyone, (even me), except with his mother. I have no idea why it is but Wan has a lot of difficulty controlling him and he rarely does anything that she tells him

The result is that she resorts to shouting and screaming at him which rarely has any more effect than just talking, and it briefly puts the lovely, gentle Wan into very bad moods.

I have tried to advise her on some parenting skills but I fear the problems are deep and it will take a long time before she can turn the mother/son relationship around. They clearly love each other but there is a problem.

To be honest, I am not sure that at my time of life I am ready to take on a problem child, and to have to put up with a screaming, stressed mother on a daily basis.

Now to the location. I have described it already. I doubt if I could even live in Roi Et city, let alone an isolated village, one hour’s drive away. I am too used to my home comforts, cable TV, fast internet, shopping malls, Starbucks, pubs, bars and last but not least, a few good friends.

I couldn’t live there, and I wouldn’t e3ven attempt to bring Wan to Pattaya. She doesn’t want to come and she would never be happy here.

And on top of that, I don’t love her and doubt I ever will. I first took her home out of pity, and then I realized she was quite a pretty young lady with a nice personality, and quite intelligent.

But there was never a ‘’spark”. Some have it for me and some don’t. Unfortunately Wan doesn’t and the best we could ever be is good friends.

So I regretfully made the decision to leave – in fact I doubt I could have stood it for more than another a day or so. It was really starting to get me down.

So Mobi, the sniveling coward, made an excuse and left last Thursday morning, early.

I hate lying, but I have been in this country long enough to know that telling the truth is not always the best way of breaking bad news.

I will ‘’drip feed’’ it over the next week or so and in that way she can slowly adjust the reality that she will not see me again. I may give her some more money to tide her over for a while. I am still considering this.

Wan may need money fairly desperately but she is not destitute. She has a house, a farm, land and a decent car. Her family are not impoverished,. Her mother and her aunt both have substantial houses near to Wan’s, and there is another large, empty house on a huge block of land that used to belong to Wan’s Grandmother who died a few years back.

During the time I have known Wan I have gleaned much information from her about her previous marriage and her time in the UK. In particular, I have learned much about her relationship with her ex mother-in-law who is crazy about Jasper.

After Wan returned to Thailand, her ‘then’ mother-in-law paid for her and Jasper to fly back to England to visit her, which they duly did. Wan has also mentioned that Pete’s mother has often threatened to cut Pete out of her will if he didn’t be more generous towards Wan after he kicked her out.

From all this I surmise that there is a pretty good chance that when the old lady finally passes on, that she leaves  Wan and/or her son a substantial sum in her will.

Finally there’s the business of feelings- emotions – love. I have already stated that I do not love Wan, and quite frankly I doubt if I ever would. She is a lovely looking lady with a nice figure, a gentle endearing manner and is a very kind and attentive person.

But she just doesn’t turn me on. There is no chemistry as far as I am concerned. You may recall that I took her home initially out of pity – she didn’t attract me in any way, but I did feel for a while that given time, I would become fond of her; but now I know different. (I know, I previously wrote that at long last I had met the ‘girl of my dreams’, ‘my soul mate’, and so on. Well I genuinely believed that she would turn out like that at the time – all part of my paranoia, I’m afraid.)

To be honest, she is so attentive, she smothers me. She won’t let me do a thing for myself, and even a lazy, procrastinating alcoholic like Mobi feels she takes it too far.

I am not allowed to make a cup of coffee; she wants me to teach her how to give me insulin injections, and so on. It was all too much.

So that is that, and is why I will not go back to Wan, nor will I suggest that she moves to Pattaya. It is sad, but I think it is the best for both of us in the long term.

Now to Nakhon Sawan.

In my blog of 20^Th February, I mentioned a young lady named Tan who worked in a beer bar out by the lake. I was quite keen on her and have known her for a year, but back in February, when I went to meet her on a pre-arranged appointment, she wasn’t there, and I was sure she was out with a customer.

To cut a long story short, although I resolved to give up on Tan after that incident, we have continued to keep in touch over the past six weeks, and I even  had another abortive liaison with her in Bangkok which ended in disappointment when yet again she failed to show.

Every time I tried to forget about Tan, she would contact me again, and by the time I came back to Pattaya with Wan, we were exchanging almost daily emails.

Well one thing led to another and when I decided to leave Roi Et, I decided to detour to Nakhon Sawan and go and see Tan, who by then was back living with her family, just outside Nakhon Sawan city.

It was worth the detour for the journey alone. It was an interesting and scenic drive over the mountains on route 225. If any of you happen to be in that vicinity, I thoroughly recommend the drive. Some of the views are quite stunning.

I was stopped several times by police during this journey as I drove through villages with road blocks right across the road where the locals were celebrating Songkran.

You may recall that I have lost my driving licence, so I was quite apprehensive, but in the event, I told the policeman in my best and most polite Thai that I was driving from Roi Et to Nakhon Sawan, and they just waved me on without asking me to produce the missing document.

After six hours on the road, I made it Nakhon Sawan town, called Tan and she agreed to meet me in Big C.

Nakhon Sawan was every bit as hot as Roi Et, some 42 degrees, and after queuing up forever to get into the car park, I finally joined the holiday throng in the ice cool atmosphere of Big C.

I was hungry and thirsty, and while waiting for Tan I devoured some KFC chicken and French fries – literally the first I have had in years. Then in the large, teeming food court I spotted a couple of lovely, very young, uniformed ladies in miniskirts and made my way over to order a glass of draft Singha.

It took a bit of ‘to and fro’, but eventually I understood that they were telling me that they were not allowed to sell beer after 2.p.m (it was around 2.15) but if I wanted to buy a jug, I could join the groups at tables who were already half way through their jugs of grog; which of course I did.

Half an hour later she turned up – with bandages covering her right leg form the upper reaches of her thigh, down to her ankle.

She had had a motor cycle accident three days earlier, trying to avoid a dog.  Her sister, who was riding pillion, limped along behind her, but Tan was by far the worst for wear.

Tan doesn’t drink so I believed her account.

She had been driven in by a cousin and after exchanging the usual greetings, everyone took off and left Tan and me alone.

We hadn’t seen each other for about six weeks and there a few awkward moments. Although I had known Tan for a year and had been out with her a few times, I had never slept with her and we weren’t particularly intimate with each other.

I asked her what she wanted to do, and she asked me if I would like to meet her family, to which I replied I would be delighted.

Our first stop was a large Wat where there was an afternoon Songkran rave up in progress. It must have been around 45 degrees, but amazingly there were hundreds of young Thais dancing up a storm to an incredibly loud band playing and singing mor lam like there was no tomorrow.

It wasn’t quite the romantic encounter I had anticipated after a tiring six hour drive from Roi Et, but WTF?

I was greeted by all and sundry, including the aforementioned sister, cousin and some other relatives, and on the basis that if I can’t beat it, join it, I ordered some beer and tried to get in to the spirit of the occasion.

It was now late afternoon, and with a sense of foreboding, I fully expected the festivities to go on until late into the night. So I was pleasantly surprised, when at around six p.m. the band stopped and everyone started packing up and making their way home.

We drove to Tan’s house, in the outskirts of the city and on the way there, I  we passed fertile paddy fields.  There was lush, verdant green terrain, and the paddies were full of green shoots semi submerged in water – a far cry from the arid, scorched land I had seen in Isan.

Tan pointed to some fields as we passed and told me they belonged to her mother.

I thought that Wan’s family was very ‘middle class’, but they didn’t have anything on Tan’s clan. There were number of large, well furnished houses belonging to Tan’s parents and relatives, with cars and modern pickups parked in every nook and cranny.

There was a celebration going on in her brother’s house and we all joined him to enjoy barbequed seafood, beer and Regency brandy.

Tan had two sisters, one was her twin and the other was home on vacation from university in Bangkok. They were clearly a pretty ‘well to do’ group.

Following the jug of beer at Big C then the beers at the Wat followed by the beers at Tan’s brother’s house,  the accumulation of alcohol was starting to take its toll and by around nine p.m. I was fading fast.

Tan suggested that she take me back to the city and check in a hotel, to which I readily agreed.

At the hotel she asked me if I wanted  her to stay with me or to go home and come and see me again in the morning, to which I replied if it was OK with her, I would like her to stay with me for the night.

We registered at the hotel and she then asked me whether I wanted two single beds or one double bed?

I’ll leave you to guess my response.

I slept pretty well, but poor Tan had a very restive night due to her leg injury which was playing up somewhat.

The plan had been for me to stay there until Saturday, and on Friday Tan was going to show me the sights, but when we woke up on Friday morning, Tan suggested that we drove back to Pattaya that day, clearly intimating that she would come with me.

I had no objections to the change in plan, and Tan’s sister drove in to pick her up from the hotel and she told me she would be back before noon.

I had a pretty terrible breakfast – kow tom – but not as we know it – followed by toast with sickly, sweet condensed milk spread over it. Anyway, it filed a hole and I had a relaxed morning waiting for Tan to return.

At around eleven thirty, she called to say she would not be back until three p.m., so I told her that I was not prepared to leave that late for the four to five hour hard drive to Pattaya, and in any case I had to check out at noon, so what the Hell was  I supposed to do for three hours??

She said she would be there in half an hour, but I quietly resolved that if she did not turn up by one p.m. I would leave without her.

After all it wouldn’t be the first time she had failed to show.

In the event she duly arrived at twelve thirty with a large bag, and off we went to Pattaya, arriving very late as we were nearly back  home when out of the blue the police descended and  shut down the whole of  route seven to allow passage of some police-escorted royalty.

We were shunted into a side road along with dozens of trucks and it took more than an hour to get back onto the main highway and complete our journey.

During the journey I had the opportunity to take another look at Tan’s injured leg and didn’t like what I saw. She told me she had not been to hospital and her mother had been dressing her wounds.

I could see an exposed portion of flesh wound at the top of her thigh and it looked decidedly dodgy. Furthermore I noticed blood had seeped through the bandages in places – and this was four days after the accident.

So before driving to my condo I took Tan straight to a hospital where they were  a bit alarmed at the state of her wounds. If I hadn’t taken her injuries in hand I am sure she would have been in danger of losing her leg.

They had to clean up the wounds, bit by bit, taking off the bad pieces of scar and sort of stripping  the wounds back down to open flesh. They looked pretty bad but at least they were now clean, and they were gently re-dressed. The whole operation took well over two hours, so by the time we got home, exhaustion was setting in.

So now I am shacked up with another young lady – a pretty and very sexy young lady – and I have to say that I feel happier than I was with Wan, but who knows how long this will last.

I feel I have nothing to lose, if it doesn’t work out, we can both go our respective ways.

Early yesterday morning, I packed my things and took off across the mountains to Nakhon Sawan, which was a six hour drive.

I spent last night here, and today I will drive back to Pattaya.

Why did I come to Nakhon Sawan?

All will be revealed when I return to Pattaya.

A SONGKRAN MOBI VIGNETTE

LOONG, NA AND JOY

Joy’s father, (“Loong” or Uncle to most of us), was about 10 years younger than me, but looked about 15 years older.

He was a worn out, wrinkled specimen of a man who had spent his entire life in back breaking labour in the sweltering paddy fields and dusty building sites scattered around  North Eastern Thailand, and was incapable of work.

The villagers took pity on him. Any time there was a ‘piss up’, they would make sure he  got ‘tanked up’ very early on and then he would quickly pass out – usually on the ground, where he was left till he woke, hours later.

He would always greet my arrival in the village with great enthusiasm and immediately pester me to buy him some beer or, his favourite tipple – Mekhong whisky. I used to be apprehensive about encouraging an obvious alcoholic who was clearly in bad medical shape, but Dang always assured me that it was Ok to give him the money.

I once asked Dang why his family and friends didn’t take him in hand and try to stop him drinking. Her response was that he had lived such a hard life; let him enjoy the few simple pleasures available to him before he passed on.

Joy’s mother (‘Na’ – Dang’s aunt) was a friendly, well rounded lady in her mid fifties. She lived just across the way from Dang’s family house and would always give me a wonderful welcome whenever I visited Dang’s village.

Na was very close to her sister, Dang’s mother, and was always in and out of the house, helping to cook and take care of the countless screaming urchins who scurried hither and thither, upsetting any stationary object in their path and generally getting under our feet.

She was a pillar of the community – until she got a brain tumour. The hospital could do nothing and sent her back to the village with a bag of pills.

Within weeks, she was a skeletal, barely conscious, and spent her time prostrated on a mat – unable to move or feed herself.

After a year of being in a semi coma, she started to make a partial recovery, but everyone knew she would never be the same person she was before the tumour – assuming she survived at all.

Joy was in her early thirties. She had been alone and penniless since her husband left her some years ago.

She spent her days in the family hut, living a frugal existence, reliant on hand outs from her already impoverished parents and other kindly souls in the village. Day after day she would mope around, staring into space and generally doing nothing.

When I visited the village, she would always come over to Dang’s family house, join in inevitable festivities that took place whenever Mobi made an appearance and help with the kids.

She rarely smiled – except on the odd occasions when we took her with us when we went on a day out with the kids.

I’ll never forget one day we all went to the waterfalls near Khao Chackan.  She enjoyed herself so much – swimming and splashing in the water, fully clothed and laughing with the kids. I have some lovely pictures of Joy and the kids from that day.

One day I went with Dang to my wife’s village, and Joy was sitting on the porch looking even more sad than usual. It soon became clear that she was not well.

My wife took her to the local doctor where she was given an ‘injection.’ I enquired what was wrong, but just received a shrug of the shoulders in reply. She really looked very ill, but was struggling to make the best of it and to join in the conversations with the rest of the family.

A week later, when we were back in Pattaya,  Dang told me that Joy had collapsed and Dang’s brother had taken her to the hospital in Sa Kaeo.

The doctors had examined her and told her she was in an advance stage of AIDs. They said there was no hope for her.

I was completely shocked. As far as I was aware, this woman had hardly ever been out of the village since she left school; she was no ‘looker’ and I couldn’t imagine how she could possibly have contracted AIDS.

My wife assured me that Joy had never ‘played around’ after her husband left her, and knowing the situation at first hand, I believed that was true.

Joy was a plain, simple woman, and she never went anywhere.

Her husband had obviously infected her.

It was far too late to do anything to help her, but Dang and I went back to Sa Kaeo, to do what we could.

We went to see Joy at the hospital. She was in a bad state, but she smiled when she saw us and held Dang’s hand for long time.

The next day we returned home to Pattaya.

Two day later, Dang told me that Joy was unconscious in ICU.

The next day Joy died.

If we had known about Joy’s condition earlier she would still be alive. I would have made sure she received the drugs she needed. But often the doctors won’t tell you when the girls are HIV. There is such a stigma.

My friend’s wife died of AIDS a few years ago. Right up to almost the end, the doctors never told her or her husband (a farang) that she had AIDS. Everyone thought it was TB. When her family in the North East found out she had died of AIDS they refused to attend the funeral and shunned her husband.

Thank God that didn’t happen in Joy’s case. Her family and friends were all around her to make sure she had a proper cremation and that her passing was properly remembered.

Once they had buried their daughter, both parents went downhill very quickly.

A few days later, Loong passed out in a drunken stupor, one extremely hot, Songkran afternoon and never woke up.

Na passed on a few days later, finally succumbing to the long endured brain tumour and no doubt devastated by the loss of her husband and daughter.

Shit happens, but it didn’t have to be that way.

RIP Lung, Na and Joy.

Please click on any the above tabs to read previously blogged stories in chronological order

Today I have been sober for one week.

MOBI VIGNETTES

MARDIE (Part 6)

I flew back to London with what turned out to be false optimism. I was so desperate for any sign that my relationship with Mardie was back on course that I misread her behaviour towards me in the last couple of days I was with her in New York, and I took it as a sign that the affair was far from over.

I returned to work, dreamily remembering the good parts of my trip and conveniently blacking out most of the time when I was feeling pretty miserable.

As before, I wrote almost daily letters to Mardie, and received the occasional one paragraph reply, but after a  month or so, the letters stopped completely and I became increasingly concerned as to what was going on with Mardie in The Big Apple.

Transatlantic telephone conversations in those days were still rather primitive as compared to today’s instant world- wide mobile access, and I used my company’s facilities to book an  evening call to Mardie’s apartment number, hoping to catch her before she went to work.

By the time the call came through, Mardie had gone but I managed to get hold of her flat mate who told me that she was fine. At least I now knew that nothing untoward had happened to her.

I kept trying to make contact and on about the fourth occasion I called, I finally managed to get hold of an offhand Mardie who sounded a bit irritated that I had disturbed her when she was getting ready to go to work.

However she did say that she missed me and this gave me enough encouragement to get my mind working overtime.

Mardie clearly had no intention of coming back to England, so if I didn’t want to lose her, I would have to go to her. The more I thought, the more this seemed like the solution to my problems.

However, after a bit of research, I realised that there was one insurmountable problem. If I did decide to go to New York, there was no chance that I could obtain a ‘green card’ and stay there unless I married an American citizen. I realised that this would be a bridge too far for the “on again off again” Mardie.

I came up with a possible solution. New York City was only a bus ride away from the Canadian border, and as my father was a Canadian citizen, it should prove a relatively easy matter to get a residence visa in Montreal, just over the border.

It was not an ideal situation, but I would be infinitely closer to my beloved, and if I worked in Montreal I would be able to make frequent trips to New York to see Mardie, and maybe she could return the compliment and visit me in Montreal.

In this manner I would be able to continue my relationship and hopefully bring it back to the happy state it used to be when Mardie was in London, and who knows – maybe even happier.

I broached the subject with Mardie, the next time I was able to make contact on the phone and while she wasn’t wildly enthusiastic, she seemed to be telling me that it was a good idea.

Whether or not I misconstrued what she was saying I will never know. After all, many of our disagreements in the past had been caused by language confusion,(“two nations divided by a common language”).

Nevertheless I took Mardie’s perceived ‘positive’ encouragement as a signal that I should put my plan into action, and duly informed my employers that I would be leaving in due course as I was planning to emigrate to Canada.

Now to my bloody father. Since I had been old enough to remember he had told his family that he was Canadian. He certainly had a North American accent, and we had some black and white photographs of him in the Canadian Rockies, when for some reason he had been posted there by the RAF during the 2^nd World War.

Indeed, at the end of the war, my father, mother, brother and sister had their passages booked to emigrate to Canada, and it was only cancelled at the very last moment as my mother was heavily pregnant with  the urchin thatb was later to become the Mobi that you all love to hate and she was forbidden to make the long voyage across the Atlantic.

I had even seen an old Canadian passport at home with my father’s name in it.

So I had no reason to assume that he was anything other than what he purported to be and I duly went to the Canadian Consulate to commence the process of obtaining immigrant status.

The forms were all pretty straight forward and the officer assured me that in view of my father’s Canadian citizenship, my approval would be automatic, and I even qualified to apply for Canadian citizenship for myself.

As I was planning to leave within the next month or so, I decided to give up my room in Bayswater and move back home for my remaining time in the UK, and when I arrived home that night, I approached my father to permission to borrow his birth certificate or some other document that verified  his Canadian citizenship.

I hadn’t realised what a hornet’s nest I had awoken by this apparently simple and reasonable request.

My father immediately became aggressive and tried to convince me that I could get immigrant status without any proof of citizenship from him. When I insisted that he give them to me, he lost his temper and screamed at me that he didn’t have any documents – he had lost them many years ago.

I stood my ground and told him that he could get replacements. All he had to do was to take his expired passport to the Consulate and they would be able to check the records back in Canada and issue new documents.

He insisted that it would be impossible, but wouldn’t explain why, and refused to discuss the matter any further and stormed out of the room.

Later he calmed down and told me that he would go and see the Consular officer himself and see what he could do. He asked me to give him all my documents, and two days later he travelled up to London to see the officer.

I felt very reassured, as my father invariably got his way, sometimes against seemingly impossible odds. As well as being a very intimidating man, from both his size and appearance, he was also a very intelligent person and he knew how to persuade, cajole and even threaten when the occasion demanded it.

I also surmised that he did indeed have proof of his citizenship, but for some reason did not wish me to see it. He was an extremely secretive man.

I was wrong. When I saw him that evening after work he was almost contrite. He told me that he had spoken to the officer for hours, and had even insisted on seeing his boss but to no avail.

They absolutely refused to issue me with an immigrant visa if he couldn’t provide evidence of his citizenship. He told me that the officer’s advice was for me to go to Canada as a tourist, (which didn’t require a visa), and then once there, apply to be a ‘landed immigrant’.

I tried to ask him why he couldn’t get them to do a search for his details, but he refused to discuss the matter further and said it would be impossible.

That was that, but I was upset and disappointed. I couldn’t understand his refusal to try and obtain copy documents.

I resolved to see if I could do it by myself; all I needed was his passport and I would make a note of his date and place of birth and then take these details to the Consulate and ask them to do the necessary searches.

My opportunity came a couple of weeks later when my parents went for a long weekend to stay with my aunt and uncle in Margate. I knew that he kept his private papers in a drawer in his bedroom, so with some trepidation, I entered the ‘forbidden territory’ and started rifling through his papers to search for the expired passport.

This was the first time I had ever dared to venture into his bedroom and do such a thing. Even as an adult I still feared him and his dark personality seemed to permeate the room, even when he was miles away.

I didn’t find the passport, but what I did find shocked me out of my skin, and to this day I have still not managed to put together all the pieces of my father’s real past.

What I found was an ‘alien’ book. The book was in a completely different name to my father’s and stated that he was born in Zhitomir, Ukraine, (then party of the Soviet Union), in 1901.  The book bore recently dated ‘stamps’ from a local police station. I leafed through the book and read that the holder was required to report to the local police station every three months.

I rummaged further and found county court documents, dating back to the mid 1950’s that related to a court case when my father, under his original name, but also containing his ‘new’ name as an ‘AKA’, was summonsed to appear in court to answer  a proposed order seeking to deport him from the United kingdom.

I was astonished. To my own knowledge my father had been living in England since the 1930’s when he met my mother.

I know that he had qualified as a chiropodist at the Chelsea school of chiropody, he had served in the Royal Air force for the entire war, had an honourable discharge, was married to a British woman and had three British children, all born inn England.

What possible reason could there be for wanting to deport him? Amongst the documents were his honourable discharge papers from the Air force, together with a letter of commendation from his commanding officer, both of which were no doubt presented in court in an effort to persuade the justices to turn down the deportation request. this they obviously did as he was still there, albeit having to report as an alien every three months.

My discovery asked as many questions as it had answered. I now knew why he refused to let me do a search for his Canadian citizenship, for the simple reason that he wasn’t Canadian.

He was Ukranian, although in those days we regarded anyone from the Soviet Empire as “Russian”. Back then, the ‘cold war’ was still at its height, and it hadn’t been that long since the Cuban missile crisis that had brought the world to the brink of a nuclear war.

One thing was for sure; I would have to do as the consular official had suggested, and go to Canada as a tourist and try to sort out my immigrant status, once I was in the country.

Somewhat ruefully, I finalised my plans to fly back ‘over the pond’ for good, which included spending a further two to three weeks with Mardie in New York before jumping on a bus and seeking out job opportunities in Montreal.

I had saved up a little nest egg, (part of the reason that I moved back home), sorrowfully sold my lovely, immaculate white, 1962 Cortina and was all set for the big move.

Although I hadn’t been with my employer that long, I seemed to have endeared myself to them and was pleasantly surprised by the huge turnout of staff who arrived at a company sponsored farewell drink, to wish me off. I had no idea that I was that popular and even some of the head honchos from California were there to make presentations and tell me how much they would miss my contribution.

I was truly taken aback. Maybe if I had known that my presence had been so appreciated at high levels, I might have reconsidered my decision to emigrate. After all, in spite of my lovelorn state, I was a young ambitious accountant, ready and raring to embark on a successful career, should the right opportunity present itself.

However the die was cast, and once more I made my way to Heathrow airport in the early spring of 1969, the year that Nixon was inaugurated for his first term, (I was actually in new York on inauguration day and watched it on television), the Vietnam war was still in full swing, the Beatles performed their last live concert and Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.

It was to be the start of a new life, but yet again, I was in a terrible quandary not knowing what kind of welcome I would receive from Mardie.

As an aside, (I am sure some of you are wondering), I have made very little progress through the years in trying to find out the background to my father’s deportation case. I copied all the documents I found in his bedroom drawer and gave them to my brother and he made enquiries with the county court to obtain details of the case, but was informed that too much time had passed and the details were no longer available.

The information I have to this day is still extremely sparse.

Zhitomir in the Ukraine, used to contain a large Jewish enclave and in the early 1900’s anti-Semitism was rife and in 1905 terrible pogroms were perpetrated against the Jewish population there.

This resulted in an exodus; both to Palestine, (later to become the State of Israel), and even to the UK where they all settled in the east end of London. We learned from the documents I copied that my father had first arrived in England as a baby of five years old, which makes it even more puzzling why he had never become a British citizen.

Incidentally, if you look at the Novel “Exodus”, by Leon Uris, which is probably the definitive literary work on the creation of  modern Israel, one of the titles of an early chapter is “Zhitomir, 1905″ and traces the exodus of Jews from that part of eastern Europe to the Middle East.

We knew that my father lived in the east end as a child and young man, and from time to time, especially when I was a kid, we would meet friends of his, (some were allegedly my aunts and uncles –  maybe they really were), from the east end who were clearly of the Jewish persuasion. We even went to the occasional wedding and funeral in places such as Forest gate, on the edge of the east end. Such occasions became rarer and rarer as I grew up, possibly due to my father’s alienation from his ‘roots’ (don’t forget he invariably fell out with just about everyone), or maybe he just moved on, and maybe they all died or moved away.

When I looked at my father, it was now clear that he was a Jew. Although not overtly Semitic in appearance, there was enough there, especially as he grew older, to identify his ethnic origins.

Although I do have a large-ish nose, (so loved by the Thai ladies), I have never considered that I have Jewish features, for after all am only half Jewish, but there was an incident when I was a trainee accountant that remains stuck in mind to this day.

I was sent to audit the books of an orthodox Jewish furrier in the city and proprietor was a German Jew who had managed to flee Germany during the war. As soon as he set eyes on me he was convinced that I was a Jew, and no amount of denials on my part could persuade him otherwise.

Maybe he had seen young men just like me who were Jews and he couldn’t believe that I didn’t have Jewish antecedents. At the time I was mystified as to why he was so vehemently insistent that I was of Jewish origin, but later I understood only too well.

Then there was the occasion when I was in my early teens and I wanted to go with the scouts for a summer camp in Germany. My father adamantly refused, telling me I go could to any country in the world – but not Germany.

Now I know why. It was hardly surprising that he would object to me going to a country whose people, less than twenty years previously, in 1942, had systematically murdered tens of thousands of men women and children in his birth place; effectively wiping out the entire Jewish population in Zhitomir.

Strange to relate that in the early seventies my father managed to obtain what was then known as a British Visitor’s Pass which entitled the holder to travel throughout western Europe.

All that was required was proof of address, such as a utility bill or bank statement, and armed with this and two photographs, the document could be obtained in five minutes from the local post office.

In those days the world was as close to peace and posterity as it was ever likely to be, and is a far call from today’s terrorist ridden planet where biometric passports and body scans are the order of the day.

Naturally, my ever-scheming and rebellious father had no problems obtaining such a document and so very late in life he started travelling, once again on false documents.

He would make frequent trips to Holland and especially to Germany, and would delight in relating to me his adventures on the Rhine during one of my brief trips back home.

It was clear that he knew Germany and Holland pretty well, and even spoke some dutch and German as he tried to explain to me some of the differences between the two languages. More unexplained mysteries.

The inveterate law breaker also got himself put on the electoral role and he  regularly voted at local council elections. Even though he proudly never paid a penny in income tax, he had no choice but to pay local council taxes, so in his warped way of looking at things, this entitled him to vote, despite the fact that he wasn’t British.

Many years later I learned that sometime in the early seventies the ‘powers that be’ decreed that it was no longer necessary for my father to report to the police station every three months, but he remained an ‘alien’ till the end of his days.

When he died in 1982 I went back to England for the funeral and naturally the subject of my father’s past became the chief subject of discussion.

To my surprise, my mother admitted that she knew something of my father’s past and that he came from the Ukraine, changed his name, and so on. She also confirmed that all the people from the east end we had met when we kids were friends and distant relatives of his.

She also knew about the attempts to deport him from England in the mid fifties.

She told us that one day there was a knock at the front door and standing outside were two plain clothed policemen with a warrant for his arrest.

He was soon released on bail, and obtained the assistance of the Royal Air Force Association to obtain legal help to fight the deportation, which subsequently succeeded.

She also told us that he had hired a private detective for a while to get evidence for his defence – but God knows what that was all about.

But she could throw no light on the reasons for the draconian court action, or fill in any more of the gaps of his past life.

He had confided in her, but only to a very small extent, and had sworn her to secrecy.

We know he was born in Zhitomir; we know he brought up in the East End; we know he used to be a merchant seaman and spent a lot of time in the USA and Canada; we know that he used to sell cheap cigarettes illegally at markets and was always one step ahead of the law – but surely this didn’t justify attempts to deport him.

We also knew he never paid a penny of tax in his life. He was called in by the tax men more than once, but always stuck to his story that he won his money ‘on the dogs’ and they always gave up.

Last, but not least we know that he had a brother who emigrated to Australia under his original name. I believe my niece tried to track her great uncle down, but to this day has had no success.

Anyway, by now he would be long gone, or he is the oldest living being in Oz.

I hated and detested my father for many years. He made my family’s lives and my life such a misery. I was in fear and dread of him throughout my childhood and such was the force of his dominating personality that he made me feel worthless and inadequate as a human being and it has taken me much of my life to assert myself and try to be my ‘own man’.

To this day, although quite rarely, I still have nightmares that he is alive and making my life a misery.

Of his three children, I think my brother learned to cope with him the best – well he’s the only one of the three that is still in England!

My sister fled to South Africa when she was in her twenties, married there and has never returned, except for holidays.

These days I don’t hate him. I have come to realise that he was probably a tortured person who did not know how to control his emotions and temper.

Yes he was a domineering bastard, but I like to believe that he thought he was doing the best by us and didn’t realise how miserable he was making us in the process.

I must bear in mind that he grew up in a totally different world where the man of the house was ‘King’ and must be obeyed at all times. He was a product of his harsh environment and the times he lived in.

I hope he is at peace now.

Please click on any the above tabs to read previously blogged stories in chronological order

Today is my sixth day of sobriety.

It is still boiling hot here; this afternoon it was nudging forty, and at three o’clock this afternoon, Wan and I decided to take a ride in the car to cool down.

I took the opportunity to teach Wan how to drive an automatic vehicle, and by the time we reached Selaphum, some 10 kilometres down the road, she was driving like a pro; a slow pro, but a pro. Tomorrow I will show her how to put it in reverse!

In spite of all my internet projects, which occupy a great deal of my time, reading books, watching a stack of movies I brought with me, and following all the violent events happening in Bangkok, I’m still getting bored. It’s difficult to put my finger on the reason, but there is no doubt the extreme heat is a contributory factor, as it is difficult to do anything except sit still by a fan or stay in the air conditioned bedroom. It is too hot to occupy myself in or around the house, or go for a walk.

In Pattaya it would be less hot but more humid – probably worse overall, but at least there are plenty of places I can go to, within a few minutes of my condo – like coffee shops, restaurants, shopping malls, cinemas – and yes, even a few bars. If all else fails, there’s always the swimming pool or the sea.

Selpahum is a ‘one horse’ uninteresting, sleepy, dusty junction, and Roi Et City or Yasuthon City are both close to an hour’s drive away.

So I’m not sure how long I can stay here, but am still looking to return to Pattaya maybe Tuesday or Wednesday next week.

I am keeping a close watch on the events unrolling in our capital, and it may be the case that I am better off to stay put in the heart of Red Shirt territory for the time being. So I’m not rushing into any decisions just yet. Life may be a bit boring, but it is quite tolerable.

I am continuing to stay completely sober, with Wan’s help and I am feeling the better for it.

MOBI VIGNETTES

MARDIE (Part 5)

Relations were a bit frosty, to say the least, when I awoke late on Sunday morning. Mardie was civil, polite even, but there was little warmth in her smiles, and even a young, naive Mobi, realised that he had probably blown it, big time.

I still had ten days to go on my holiday, and even though I felt devastated by the turn of events, I resolved to try and pull myself together and see what could be salvaged of my relationship; after all I still had ten days to try and repair relations with my beloved.

Mardie announced over a very late breakfast that she was taking me to see the Statue of Liberty on Ellis Island, and on the way back we would stop at a few more famous landmarks , such as the Empire State building and Central Park.

We duly did the tourist bit on a bitterly cold Sunday afternoon and Mardie behaved more akin to a tour guide than a girl friend. I guess she felt obliged to go through the motions after I had taken such good care of her in London. Besides, she knew very well that I had been saving up for  this holiday for months.

On Monday she was back at work and I resigned myself to ‘doing’ New York, on my own with the assistance of a guide book. I seemed to be making little progress on the romantic front so I resolved to suppress my disappointment and try to make the best of things.

I became an expert on the notoriously complex New York subway, and also used the city buses, the routes of which which were slightly easier to comprehend, but, as I soon discovered, the drivers insisted on exact change before they would let me on. Waving dollar bills at the driver got me nowhere.

I actually got around quite a bit and explored all the boroughs of New York, from Brooklyn, to Manhattan, to Bronx, to Queens and Staten Island. I even made it to Coney Island, all in the bitter, sub zero January weather.

It was the start of a long love affair with New York. I don’t know why, but I related to it and I started to like the crazy, brash, no nonsense New Yorkers. I hated London – to me so unfriendly, but New York seemed to suit my style.

I loved their ‘Diners’; fast food restaurants where you sat at a circular counter, and they cooked your food in front of you, fresh and delicious. Some of the best breakfasts I have ever tasted were cooked in those downtown establishments. I especially enjoyed the home fries and the eggs done to order.

I well recall the first time I ever ordered coffee in New York. The guy looked at me as though I had come from the moon. I had to repeat myself three times and point to the coffee pot before he understood what I was saying.  In spite of the Beatles-led, ‘England swings’- invasion of America, most Americans were even more insular then than they are today and the average new Yorker struggled mightily to understand our cute, English accents.

The subway seemed to be a microcosm of New York people and their culture.

In the late sixties the city was an extremely violent place – murders and muggings were common place – and you were chancing your arm if you rode the subway after ten at night unless you sat in the one carriage which contained the obligatory armed cop.

Unlike the London underground, New Yorkers were always willing to help a lost or confused soul – be it a fellow New Yorker, a country cousin from the ‘untamed’ west, or a shy, diffident young soul from the other side of the pond.

It used to amuse me, because such was the complexity of the subways, (sometimes there were proper interchanges, but on other occasions you actually had to exit the subway, walk a block before re-entering to take a different line – then there were ‘express’ trains that didn’t stop at every station, and so on….phew!), that even most seasoned travellers only knew their particular journeys, and were often totally at sea when it came to other people’s travel routes.

But that didn’t prevent them from chiming in and offering their advice on which way to go and where to change lines. Inevitably an argument would develop, and before you knew what was happening, the whole carriage had joined in, all shouting and gesticulating and insisting that they were right and everyone else was wrong.

Can you imagine such an event happening on the London Underground? Yet this was a daily occurrence on the subway – and I loved it!

So I was learning my way around a place which, in later years, was to become one my favourite cities. But at the same time I was desolate at the way my love affair was going west on me.

I still met Mardie after work and we would either go for a meal downtown, or do a bit of shopping and cook back at her apartment, but there were few signs of affection from my pretty little New York lady.

We started to argue with increasing frequency, and I well recall one major row which, of all things, concerned how to get to a particular place on the subway. By this time I considered myself an expert, and I remember having a blazing row with not only Mardie but her flat mate as well, insisting that they were wrong on their proposed route. I forget who proved to be ultimately correct – probably them – but it served to emphasise how relations had dipped to an all time low.

I think we must have been on our way home on Thursday evening, when, to my surprise, Mardie announced that she was taking the Friday off, and would I like to go to Washington for the weekend?

This seemed like an offer I couldn’t refuse, but just when I was relishing this proposed intimate weekend in the Capital City, Mardie added that I must agree that we stay in separate rooms.

This was a body blow, but it was better than nothing, so I eagerly agreed to the conditions and the following day we took the subway to the downtown Greyhound Bus station, and boarded a bus for Washington.

Apart from my obvious interest and enjoyment of seeing all the famous sights for the first time: Lincoln Memorial, the White house, Federal Government buildings, Arlington cemetery with its Kennedy memorial (it was only a few years previously that he had been assassinated and feeling was still very high), the Veteran’s memorials, and other famous and interesting spots in and around the capital and so on, two particular events stand out in my memory from that long ago trip.

The first was when we arrived at the bus station in Washington. It was already dark and we had nowhere to stay. Mardie had reasoned that it would be an easy matter to find a bed and breakfast place in the nation’s capital.

It transpired that the bus terminus was in a pretty rough area of downtown Washington. In fact, in the 1960’s pretty much the whole of downtown area was pretty rough and was largely a no-go area after dark.

As soon as we emerged from the terminus building we were approached and jostled and by huge, poorly dressed blacks who asked us for money and gave us the ‘once over’ with menacing eyes.

We looked around for taxis, but there were none in sight – just crowds of blacks, seemingly hanging around, doing nothing.

My naivety prevented me from panicking too much, but Mardie was not at all happy. She grabbed hold of me and said we better go back into the bus terminal. I resisted, asking her what good that would do? We needed to find somewhere to stay.

We were still arguing and the blacks were becoming ever more interested in these two white folk who had suddenly appeared in their midst when a taxi drove into view. The driver took one look at us, wound down his window and beckoned us.

We hurried over, and the guy, a black, jumped out of his cab, threw our bags in the trunk, literally pushed us into the back seat and sped off.

He didn’t stop cursing us for five minutes.

“What in God’s sweet name was you white folks doing out there at this time of night? You must be plain crazy! Don’t yer know that there’s at least five murders a night in that neighbourhood?

That place is real bad – full of bad assed ‘nigras’ – murderers, pimps and druggies. You two both lucky you not already dead!”

Of course we didn’t know and we told him so, but bit didn’t stop his tirade.

As it turned out it was very difficult finding a place to stay and we eventually ended up quite a way outside the city, which cost us a fortune in taxi fares, but I guess cheap at the price considering the alternative might have been a quick mugging and possibly death at the hands of ‘city residents’.

As agreed, we took separate rooms.

All of which, in an indirect manner, led me to my second memorable incident. The high cost of the taxi and the cost of the rooms which had to be paid for in advance blew my budget, so I needed to change some money.

Fortunately the banks were open on Saturday morning, so we stopped by a bank armed with m y crisp ten pound notes and a passport. The bank took one look at my money and declined to change it. They had never seen British currency before in their lives.

Ok it was a bit of an ‘out of town’ branch, so when we arrived at the centre of Washington, we tried again – same result; second bank, third bank, fourth bank – all with the same result. Sorry we don’t change British money here.

I had not encountered any problems in changing my pounds in New York and I was amazed that the banks in the capital city of the richest, most powerful and technologically advanced country in the world could be so ‘provincial’.

In the end, Mardie lent me some money and I repaid her when we returned to ‘civilisation’.

We enjoyed our stay in Washington and I detected a slight thawing in our relationship.

By the time we returned to New York, I only had a couple of days of my trip remaining. Mardie was becoming increasingly friendly and the night before my flight, for the first time since my early days in New York, she came to me in my ‘bedroom’ and we had a little canoodle – foreplay but no sex.

Looking back, I think she felt sorry for me. She knew that I was crazy about her and that I was very upset at the souring of our relationship. I think she wanted to cheer me up and send me back home in reasonably good spirits.

She continued in the same vein when she took me to the airport then following day – very friendly, almost loving. When she said goodbye to me at the airport departure gate, I am sure I detected a tear in her eye as she gave me a full blooded kiss on the lips.

At the time, I thought that she was crying at the thought of me going away again; but in reality, it was probably because she believed she would never see me again.

She was wrong.

Please click on any the above tabs to read previously blogged stories in chronological order

Today is my fifth day of sobriety.

Sometime, in the past couple of weeks, I have lost my Thai driving licence – God knows how or where but it is no longer in my wallet. Wan and I have searched everywhere, but no luck.

The last time I used it was on my way back from Roi Et a couple of weeks ago, when I was stopped by a fat, jolly cop on route 23 for allegedly speeding – almost exactly the same spot as I was stopped on my way to Roi Et.

It is certainly a dangerous way to earn tea money, as the estimable constable stands on the central reservation of a fast, almost empty, four lane highway and waves down any cars he sees speeding towards him in the outside lane.

On my way up I showed him my licence, before being asked for four hundred Baht, which I immediately bargained down to two hundred. On the way back, I took out my licence but he wasn’t interested; just wanted his two hundred Baht.

That is the last time either of us recall seeing my licence.

I am telling you this because last Tuesday morning I had planned to go with Wan to the Pattaya driving Licence centre to see what we could do about obtaining a replacement, as we were due to go back to Roi Et on Thursday, and I didn’t want to make the journey without a licence.

Anyway, as previously reported, Monday night was binge night and I was in no condition to go anywhere on Tuesday, and didn’t even get out of bed until the afternoon.

I felt guilty as I had promised the kids that after going to the driving licence centre I would take them all out for more sightseeing before they returned home on Thursday.

As it turned out, they spent most of the day on the beach, while I spent most of the day in bed.

Anyway there was no time to go and get licences on Wednesday, as there was a lot of shopping to do and things to sort out prior to our departure. I even managed to squeeze in a bit of sightseeing.

I had a long chat with Wan and asked her to help me to stop drinking. I told her that if I wanted to drink a beer, then she should try to dissuade me, and she said she would do her best.

Following the abusive and disturbing email from Mario, I had very little sleep on Wednesday night and arose before seven to get ready for the long drive.

We left at eight and arrived just before five p.m. It’s a distance of seven hundred kilometres and takes a good eight hours at the wheel.

At sixty three years old, not in the best of health and with inadequate sleep, (thanks to Mario), it was quite a strain, as even though the roads for the main part are not too bad, you have to be continually alert for idiots that may do anything, and it is much more stressful than making a similar journey in the West.

Next time, If i can’t get Wan to share the driving, (she says she can only drive cars with manual gear shifts!!), I will have to stop over night in Korat. It is just too many hours to drive in one day.

Anyway, we made it without incident, and Wan laughed at me when we hit route Twenty Three as I was constantly on the lookout for the fat jolly cop wanting his tea money, and determined to outwit him and make sure I was driving on the inside lane within the speed limit. I was concerned about my lack of driving licence. But of course he was nowhere to be seen on this occasion.

As we ventured further and further into Isaan territory, the temperature steadily rose, and it was soon hitting forty two degrees Celsius (that’s 108 degrees in ‘old money’). When we stopped for fuel and ‘relief’ we were almost burnt alive in the searing heat. It was unbelievably hot, and we quickly did our business and rushed back to the cool comfort of the Beamer’s icy air-conditioning.

Wan, thoughtful as ever, phoned ahead and asked her sister to open the windows of her house, turn on all the fans and the air conditioner in the bedroom.

At six o’clock the temperature was still over forty degrees, and even the local villagers were sweating and complaining. There was no relief; the fans were just blasting hot air around the room.

I retreated into the cooled bedroom and remained there.

The heat barely let up all night; I doubt if it went below the high thirties until early morning, when thankfully, it finally stated to relent a little.

I emerged from my iced cocoon at nine, and at least the fans were now cooling the air somewhat.

Wan suggested that we go to Roi Et and do our shopping as the town was going to be jam packed over the weekend when all the Isaan folk returned for the big holiday.

I wasn’t keen on the shopping, but I was very keen on any idea that kept me out of the expected mid forties heat for a few hours, so off we went.

Tesco Lotus, the only hyper store in Roi Et, was seething with customers, and it took us over thirty minutes to find a parking space – and this was before the main inrush of people from Bangkok and other provinces.

By this time it was so hot that even in Tesco, with the air conditioners going at full blast, it was still very warm and there was a lot of moaning about the heat.

We wanted a cheap toaster, but I guess Tesco had decided that it was hot enough without needing a machine to toast bread, and they didn’t sell any.

So we went down the road to Macro.

There, an amusing incident happened as I was waiting to park. I wanted to park in the shade and lined up behind a SUV who was half turned into the parking lane and was presumably waiting for someone to drive out. We waited, waited, and waited. I was fairly relaxed, but Wan was getting more and more agitated.

She finally jumped out of the car and went to investigate the cause of the hold up. She disappeared out of sight and then approached the driver of the SUV and stared shouting and gesticulating. Then she came over to me and told me to try and drive around the vehicle. There was insufficient room to pass, but as I edged towards it, it reversed slightly so that I could manoeuvre around it.

Wan was outraged. She told me that the driver was a woman and there was nothing in front of her; she had stopped, holding up all the traffic, (by this time, there was quite a queue of cars behind me), because she was sending a text on her mobile phone!!

I thought it was very amusing, so typical of many Thais who are so selfish and uncaring of others, but Wan was so upset that a fellow Thai should be so self-centred. A bit of role reversal, methinks.

The heat in Macro was far worse than in Tesco and I couldn’t wait to get out again – this in spite of the very visible air-conditioning.

We bought a toaster for around three hundred BIaht, and when I saw how cheap the microwaves were (large Samsung – 1700 Baht), I bought one of them as well. I need something to heat up my coffee.

We got back to the house around five thirty, so we effectively kept in the cool for most of the day, and thankfully the temperature had dropped down to the low thirties and was almost pleasant after the intense heat of the previous forty eight hours. The house was still like an oven, but outside it must have been at least five degrees cooler so  I sat in the garden for an hour reading a book.

I suddenly craved  a beer and I asked Wan to get me one, but she gently refused and reminded me of my promise. She brought some me iced water instead and the urge passed.

It’s still pretty hot today, but at least I can sit outside in the living room with the fan. The thermometer on the wall reads thirty eight degrees. The trick is to remain as still as possible. Any exertion inevitably produces a torrent of perspiration.

I’m not sure how long I will stay here. I’m thinking of going back next week, maybe Tuesday or Wednesday, but I’ll keep my options open.

I feel quite relaxed here and Wan tends to my every need. All her family are lovely, and her kid is very loving and as bright as a button.

I will reserve judgement on whether I can move here permanently. There is no hurry and I will be patient and see how things go.

I am very fond of Wan – she is a lovely lady, both in looks and in character and I doubt I will ever finder a kinder, more attentive lady than her if I look for the rest of my life

But I don’t love her.

I may do one day but right now I don’t. Is love important? Am I capable of loving someone again? I don’t know. Part of me says that maybe it’s good that I don’t love her. That way I can be strong and not succumb to unreasonable requests and behaviour on her part.

No doubt that is true, but in the short time that I have been with Wan, I just can’t imagine her ever trying to ‘put one over on me’ or behaving in a bad manner. It just isn’t her.

Now back to the incredible Mario and his hurtful comments.

He has written again today and you can read what he said in the comments section. It is pretty much the same crap as before, except to tell us he is six feet five and can walk over anyone. He really is a prick isn’t he?

As you can imagine I have been thinking much about this – not because he has said anything new; I have already pretty much blogged just about everything he has said about Dang.

OK I admit that he also heaped a lot of abuse on me, trying to make me feel bad about myself, belittling my sexual abilities, even indulging in rampant and cruel ageism.

But I am more upset that someone would deliberately set out to hurt and gloat over a fellow human being who he had never met and never done him any harm, than what he actually said.

Many of you cannot understand why I put my whole life out there on the line for all to see. I can’t answer that, but it does seem to be therapeutic and it does help me in many ways to understand myself better, and as a consequence, try to change myself.

I have already ‘spilled my guts’ so there’s not much left to spill.

I will never know if Mario is telling the truth, whether the whole thing is just a figment of his warped imagination, or whether there is a basis of truth, but has been highly exaggerated.

It could all be made up. There is nothing he has written that could not be discerned from my blogs or my posts through the years on Thai Visa. Everything he has seemingly ‘knowingly referred to’ is available on the net if you want to find it – including the location of my house and the location of Dang’s shop.

However, if he knows so much, it is strange that he hasn’t bragged about knowing Dang’s real name. I’m sure he would have done if he knew it.

Having said that, the basis of the story rings very true as she often went ‘AWL’ for the night when she had her shop, and would return the next morning, hung over.

If she didn’t do it with Mario, I am quite sure she did it with plenty of others, so it really doesn’t matter, one way or another.

As for my sexual prowess, well I am not going to demean myself by responding to that, except to say that since I left Dang I have enjoyed some of the best sex of my entire life, and that is yet another reason why I would never go back to her. For some reason, apart from the first few weeks we were together, it never seemed to work very well for us.