Mobi-Babble

I am becoming increasingly anxious about my medical condition, which has been diagnosed as aortic stenosis, or to us laymen – a dodgy heart valve. My worries started when I realised that despite a mountain of blood pressure reducing drugs, my BP was still quite high – just before the time when my next twice-daily dose was due to be taken. During most of the intervening period, the BP was impressively low, but it concerned me that only a few hours later, it was back up again. This didn’t seem to be quite as it should be to my, admittedly non-medical, brain.

So I started to do some more research to try and assess the severity of my condition and how long will it be before I really need to get serious about having an operation.

The first thing I have established is that heart valve replacement is inevitable. It is not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’ as there is simply no alternative treatment. I also learned that the longer I leave it, the more damage I will do to my heart and the higher the risk of me suddenly becoming the ‘late -Mobi’.

With this in mind, I made another attempt to get hold of the results of the cardiogram test I had last December at Bumrungrad to try to see how bad my condition is, and this time I was lucky, as the nice man on the phone emailed me copies of all the reports within an hour of my enquiry.

I have tried to understand the various ‘Doppler Measurements & Calculations’, and I confess that  most of them are still a mystery to me, but I have been able to establish that certain key readings concerning my aortic valve have deteriorated since the previous test was done in June 2010. The Doctor’s summary report states my condition as being ‘moderate to severe’ which is none too encouraging.

On the positive front, the readings that I was able to decipher do not appear to be as bad as those quoted in clinical papers that I have studied, although they are by no means very encouraging.

I am also concerned about taking too much daily exercise; I now learn that too much exercise can cause heart failure, as exercise puts the heart under more pressure because of the impaired valve. I also better understand why I was feeling so tired, breathless, feint and generally shitty when I first started to take exercise a few months back. They are all symptoms of aortic stenosis – not just because I was unfit. Anyway, given that most of these symptoms have either reduced or disappeared completely, I think I will continue with my daily walks, but ensure that I do not overdo it, as I have done on a few recent occasions.

But, as a medical expert has told me in unequivocal terms, the bottom line is that I need surgery, sooner rather than later. I am going to Bangkok next week, (Wednesday), and try see a specialist at Rajawithi Hospital, a government hospital, which I am told is the number one hospital in Thailand for heart surgery.

 I will have to join the queue and it may take a while to be seen (I may even have to return 2 or 3 times) but eventually I will get to see the consultant who will schedule me for surgery, if he decides that I need it.

This might all take a few weeks, maybe a month or more, but the advantages of going this route are two-fold. As stated, Rajawithi has the best surgeons, provide the best after care and have the lowest mortality rate, and, equally important, it will be a lot cheaper than going to one of the private hospitals.

So wish me luck and I will duly report on progress.

“An angel reaching for the sky”

Last year Amy, and this year Whitney…what is it with these singers? They seem to have it all, but in the end they turn out to be mere mortals, like the rest of us imperfect citizens of Planet Earth.

I am sure that there will be millions upon millions of words written in tribute to Whitney over the coming days and weeks and endless speculations – even conspiracy theories – on how she died, why she died and whether it needed to have happened or could it have been prevented.

Even barely two hours after her death, Twitter has already gone viral…

So I will just confine my own uttering to state that for a long period of my life – most of it during my ‘Insurance Years’ in the UK – Whitney was always there, with her incredible voice and her towering ballads that couldn’t fail to move and inspire even the hardest of hearts.

What a God-given talent! What a waste of a beautiful person who I believe still had much to give, despite the ravages of recent years.

My own tribute to Whitney is not a Whitney song, but that hauntingly evocative song which was written by Brian May as a tribute Freddie Mercury, but has since become an anthem for the ‘good who die young.’

 If you have a few minutes to spare , please click on the link below and listen to this incredible song – and for goodness sake, GIVE IT SOME WELLY! …but keep a tissue to hand….

“ONE BY ONE”

One by one

Only the Good die young

They’re only flyin’ too close to the sun

Cryin’ for nothing

Cryin’ for no-one

No-one but you…

R.I.P. Whitney; from one recovering addict, to one who never quite made it.

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Bits and Bobs

Syria…

I regretfully note that I was spot on when I predicted in a recent blog that the recent Russian and Chinese vetoes at the UN Security council were effectively giving the Syrian regime a ‘licence to kill.’

I believe that history will record that the two-nation veto, used  for unquestionably political and self-serving purposes, was one of the most despicable acts carried out by so-called responsible world states in the past thirty years. The continuing suffering and death to the people of Homs and elsewhere are testament to this gargantuan error of judgement.

Thai floods…

I had to chuckle recently when I read that in her Saturday talk show, P.M. Yingluck  admitted that severe flooding may recur and that participation from all related bodies is crucial to ease the situation. She went on to say: “her government will help locals in flood-prone areas to adapt themselves to a new lifestyle, for example, by introducing them to jobs in water-related fields.”

The mind boggles…. scenes of the movie ‘Waterworld’, where the entire planet was permanently flooded, immediately spring to mind. Is the lovely Miss Yingluck telling us that these folk will be living in a world perpetually surrounded by water and that they had better get used to it and adapt? It certainly seemed so….

A Concert for George…

Thanks to Roger,one of my readers, I learned about this excellent concert that was staged as a tribute to George Harrison at the Albert Hall in London, exactly a year after his untimely death. It has to be one of the truly great live concerts of all time and stars a veritable ‘who’s who’ of great musicians: Eric Clapton, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, Billy Preston, Malcom Abbs, Gary Brooker, Jules Holland, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, and so many others.

And what about Joe Brown? Where has he been for the past 40 years? and what a performer! – especially his amazingly emotional closing song, complete with ukulele solo…

Not to forget the opening section of Indian music, written by Ravi Shanklar, (plus a small piece by George himself), played by the most extraordinary and wonderful collection of Indian and western musicians and singers. It totally blew my mind away and set me up for the incredible western music concert that followed, featuring George’s own eclectic output of original, wonderful songs.

It is said that the main Beatles song producing partnership of Lennon/McCartney was so good and so prolific that George’s songs rarely made it onto their albums. This may have been true, but when they did, my God, were they ‘good-uns’!

‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ with a soaring Clapton solo stands out, but for me, the high point of the night was when Paul McCartney started playing a ‘honky tonk’ version of ‘Something’ on yet another ukulele, (George’s favourite instrument), and after a minute or so, it somehow morphed into the full orchestral version in all its majestic glory – truly one of the greatest love songs ever written… ‘Something in the way she moves’….

BUTT…BUTT…BUTT…I don’t give a hoot…

Today I have published  Chapters I through VIII of Part Two in their entirety, both in the main blog below, as well as under its own tab.

The reason for this is that I have made some minor changes to Chapter I, as well as adding two new chapters -a very long VII and a very short chapter VIII which winds up ‘Part Two – Ying’. The other chapters remain unchanged, but for the sake of completeness I thought it better to re-publish the entire Part Two.

I confess that I am finding it a bit of challenge to make continual jumps forwards and back in the story time line and I do  hope that my readers are not finding it too confusing.

The changes I have made to Chapter I are quite minor. I have added a few paragraphs near the end of the chapter and have moved what used to be the final few paragraphs of Chapter I to a new chapter VIII. I think it works better this way – I hope you agree.

Next week, I will make a start on ‘Part Three – Toby’ and I expect the first few chapters  to move along very quickly as they have already undergone a number of re-writes and are almost in their final state.

It will be good when I finally reach ‘virgin territory’ and get to the point where the text is all brand new.

Anyway I hope you are enjoying the ‘story so far’ even if I do keep tinkering with it.

Tomorrow, I will publish my usual Sunday Blog.

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A Lustful Gentleman

PART TWO – ‘YING’

CHAPTER I

Ying turned her Honda Jazz into her driveway and drove slowly up the long driveway and under the carport. The car stereo was blaring out so loudly that when she opened the front door of the car, it sounded like one of those mobile discos; the ones that drive along Pattaya’s roads at night, blaring out music with such ear-splitting intensity that bystanders can barely even think, let alone hear themselves speak. The deafening pop music reverberated harshly across the peaceful, still night. Until Ying’s abrupt arrival, the only sounds to be heard were those of the toads in a nearby pond, emitting their repetitive mating calls.

She cut the ignition and suddenly the world returned to its state of somnolence and once more the toads held pride of place in the humid night air. Ying unlocked the side door to the house, dumped her handbag on the dining table and then summoned up one last burst of energy to climb up the central staircase, enter her enormous bedroom and collapse, fully clothed, on her bed. She lay there for a few minutes, unable to move. She had been drinking but was not wholly drunk – she had drunk just enough to make her woozy and very sleepy.

It had been a very long day. She had been woken before 8 a.m. that morning by the girl who usually opened her hair dressing salon, with the news that she was sick and would not be able to make it in to work that day. As a result, Ying had only had about four hours sleep and it had taken all her will power to drag herself out of bed, take a quick shower before jumping into her car and make it to her salon before the regular opening time of 9 a.m.

She had spent the whole day there and at around 8 p.m. when the final customer had finally left, she had driven to a friend’s house where they had spent the next seven hours playing cards and sipping Bacardi Breezers. By three a.m., Ying was down about three hundred Baht and she decided to call it a night. She would have to get up early, yet again, to open her shop in the morning.

She roused herself briefly – just long enough to pull off her jeans and top before collapsing once more onto her bed in her underwear. She lay there for a few minutes with her eyes closed, but for some reason sleep wouldn’t come, a problem she often encountered when she was over-tired and feeling tipsy. She was so tired but her mind kept going round and round.

What sort of life was this? Living in this huge house virtually all alone? It was far too big and it was a daily battle to keep it in in a half way decent state on a minimal budget, while at the same time trying to start a business that was struggling to break even. It was all a bit of a nightmare; now that her assistant was ill, so she wouldn’t even get a decent night’s sleep.

But the longer she lay there, in her heart she knew that on this day she would never make it to her salon much before noon. She was just too tired. She idly speculated on how many customers she might lose if she had yet another unscheduled closure. It had been difficult enough to attract customers in the first place, and for sure, if any of her regulars came in the morning and found her closed, they would not come back. There were simply too many other hair salons in the vicinity for them to remain faithful to a place that kept closing without warning. What a mess!

She curled up with her favourite cuddly panda in the enormous four- poster bed, but still she couldn’t sleep. It was a strange journey indeed that had brought her to this point in her life: thirty four year’s old, living in a huge house, with a nice car in the driveway, but almost perpetually broke. Her estranged husband, Toby, barely sent her enough money to cover the utility bills; she knew that he was also financially distressed and very soon, even that cash stream would probably dry up. There was no way they were going to be able to sell their jointly owned house in the foreseeable future. The market was dead – no one was buying. It was a veritable ‘albatross’ around both of their necks. If they succeeded in selling it, they could both move on with their lives, but as it was, they were both broke and unable to make the clean break that they both yearned for.

*

When Toby had first left her, Ying had been totally distraught. She had lived with Toby for so long that she didn’t know how to live without him – even though she didn’t love him. When Toby had done his ‘moonlight flit’ he had left a brief note to the effect that he had left Thailand forever, and for quite a while she had believed just that and her life was in a daze, not knowing what she was going to do to pay all her bills.  

But finally, through a friend, she discovered that he was living in a condo in Jomtien, just south of Pattaya and not long after Toby had finally made contact with her. They still had the house which was worth a great deal of money and it was agreed that they would sell the house, divide the proceeds and then go through with a divorce. But as they were both to discover over the coming months, selling the house was a lot easier said than done. The housing market was completely dead; no one was buying.

Ying started to realise that life wasn’t going too well for her estranged husband when he called her early one morning and asked her for help. He was in a bar in Pattaya at five a.m. completely drunk and unable to move. This was the first of many occasions when Toby was to call on her to bail him out from one predicament or another. He had turned into a total alcoholic – worse than Ying herself – and was always getting into scrapes – some very serious, sometimes involving police and at other times he would end up in hospital. It was the familiar tale of a Pattaya drunk who was slowly drinking himself to death – either by an excess of alcohol in his system or, more likely, by having some fatal accident when he was drunk.

Ying, along with his few remaining friends, had implored him not to drive when he was drinking. Sometimes he followed their advice, but on other occasions he still seemed to believe he could drive safely – even when severely under the influence. Her point was well and truly proven one day, when the Pattaya police contacted Ying to enquire after Toby’s whereabouts. They told her that he had been reported for a ‘hit and run’ in the middle of the afternoon and the victim was very angry and was pressing charges. It took not a little of Ying’s charms and a great deal of Toby’s money to extricate himself from that little mess, and Ying was getting very tired of it all.

Then, the final straw was around three months ago when Toby had called Ying from the emergency department of Pattaya hospital. He had fallen over and badly smashed his wrist and he urgently required surgery. But he was so drunk that he didn’t know what was really happening and had called Ying to come and sort it all out for him.

Ying was very weary of bailing Toby out; she was trying to re-build her life; she had opened a new hair dressing salon and was trying to get her life back together – without Toby and his money. She had looked at the time – 2.30 in the morning; she hadn’t really wanted to make the thirty minute journey to Pattaya at that hour of the morning, but realising that there was no one else who could help him, she had eventually roused herself, got out of bed and drove to the hospital.

Once there, she had spoken to the surgeons, sorted out Toby’s medical insurance and waited until the surgery had been completed and he was safely tucked up and recovering a private room. When Toby woke up, several hours later, she told him that this was the last time he could call on her for help. She had done quite enough for him and if he wanted to kill himself, then he could go ahead and do so. But don’t ever call her again because she was done with him! Toby promised her faithfully that he would never call her again and he would never again get into this kind of trouble

Her final words to him were: ‘And whatever you do, don’t ever drink and drive again’

‘I won’t, Ying, I promise’, Toby had replied, ‘I promise.’

*

Finally, she dozed off. She drifted into a deep, dreamless alcohol- induced sleep for a few exquisite minutes when she was suddenly awakened by the screeching sound of a Thai rock song, which rudely pierced silence of the early morning. She slowly regained consciousness, wondering for a moment where on earth the music was coming from. Then she knew; it was coming from her phone – her mobile phone was ringing.

She reached out blindly, grabbed hold of the phone and without looking at who was calling, she put it to her lips. ‘Hello?’

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PART TWO – CHAPTER II

Ying was sitting cross legged, at one end of a huge, roughly hewn wooden table cum workbench, which served as part cooking area, part sleeping area, part drinking area and part living area; which has such a ubiquitous presence in the rural Thai villages. It was the central meeting and gathering area for the occupants and friends of any particular abode.

This particular ‘family bench’ was probably around two meters in length by about one and a half meters wide and covered the entire shaded area in front the modest, two room single storey wooden house that had been the only home Ying had known for the entire eight years of her young life. It was a home that she shared with her mother, younger sister and two younger brothers.

Barely ten minutes ago, she had arrived home from her long, daily walk from school; but already she was hard at it, preparing the vegetables for the family’s evening meal which she would soon start cooking for the five of them – possibly six, if her father decided to stay and eat with them.

She looked across to the far end of the table where her father was also sitting cross-legged in an alcohol-fuelled conversation with one of his drinking cronies from the village. Both of them were well into their ‘cups’. Ying had noticed one empty bottle of Mekong whisky on the ground near to them and a second bottle was already half empty. The two men sat facing each other on the table, the space between them occupied by the whisky bottle, along with a dirty ice bucket and some empty soda water bottles.

Her father snarled at his daughter, ‘Ying! Get me another bottle of soda!’

She jumped up and ran to the side of the house where a half empty case of soda bottles was standing and grabbed a couple of bottles and quickly delivered them to the two men.

The drunken man barely acknowledged her existence as she put down the bottles and returned to her cooking chores. Mama would soon return from the rice fields where she toiled daily at her back- breaking, twelve hour shift in the flooded paddies – up to her chest in the warm, mosquito-ridden water. Ying’s two brothers and baby sister were inside the crudely built house, watching a small black and white television in the corner of the room. They would all be very hungry.

As poor as there were, there weren’t many families in her village who enjoyed the luxury of a television, and on most evenings, a large crowd of villagers would descend on their humble abode for a couple of hours to watch the nightly ‘soap operas’ put out by the only two Thai Channels they were able to tune into from their somewhat isolated neck of the woods.

Ying wasn’t sure whether she should be grateful or resentful of the fact that her father was one of the ‘big wigs’ in the village and had been able to provide them with a coveted TV. She knew well enough that there were many occasions when they wouldn’t see him for days – sometimes weeks – when he would disappear, without warning. On such occasions, the sparse food money he occasionally gave her mother would dry up completely. Sometimes, they wouldn’t eat for several days and it was for this reason that her mother had recently started to work in the paddy fields, as a sort of protection against the vagaries of her common law husband’s largesse.

One of Ying’s friends from the village had told Ying that her father had several other ‘wives’ in a nearby village and that when he disappeared, he would go and stay with them. She wasn’t sure of the truth of these stories, but suspected they were probably true. She did know for sure that her father was not a very nice person. Often, he would return home very drunk and pick a fight with her mother, beating her mercilessly. On more than one occasion her mother had been so badly beaten that they had to call for a doctor to treat her injuries. He had even hit Ying and her brothers on the odd occasion, so whenever they realised that he was particularly drunk, they would do their best to keep out of his way. But no one would dare to say a word to him about his brutal behaviour. He was a very powerful, well-connected, ‘mafia-type’ figure and everyone seemed in awe of him. No one had the courage stand up to him.

Ying could see that her father was getting very drunk and feared that it wouldn’t be long before trouble started. She wanted to warn her mother to stay away but she didn’t know how to go about it. If she left off from her food preparation, her father might get angry; he was so unpredictable. In the end she did nothing; she just sat there, working away and hoped that something would happen to take her father away from their home before her mother arrived back from work.

She couldn’t believe her luck. Almost at the very moment that she wished something would happen, a motorbike drove slowly down the narrow track which led to their house. She could clearly see one of her father’s friends driving the bike but she didn’t recognise the young man on the back. She assumed it was another member of her father’s ‘criminal-gang’. ‘Good,’ she thought, ‘maybe they are all going off to do a ‘job’ somewhere.’ That’s what usually happened when his low-life friends came to see him in the late afternoon.

The bike came to a halt outside the house, less than a meter from where her father and his drinking companion were sitting, but they didn’t get off. In fact, both men remained seated and the engine remained running. As Ying watched, she heard the man on the front yelling something angrily at her father, but he behaved as though nothing had happened. Deliberately ignoring the shouts from the motorbike driver, Ying’s father picked up his whisky glass to take another sip. As he put the glass to his lips, the angry driver shouted something to the youth behind him, whereupon the young pillion passenger lifted his right hand to reveal a handgun; the dark metal glistening in the late afternoon sun.

Although Ying hated her father, she suddenly felt a jolt of panic and revulsion at what was about to happen. But before she could even shout out a warning, the youth fired three shots – one after the other – at almost point blank range, into her father’s head and body. Her father had been so drunk that he hadn’t even seen the shots coming. The smoke was still clearing as the driver snapped his bike in gear, raced the accelerator and skidded his tyres on the dusty ground as the two killers sped away, out of the village.

She instinctively rushed over to her father’s slumped body, hoping against hope that he might have survived the violent attack, but one look at his head told her that it was all over. The bullet had taken half of her father’s face away and Ying stood transfixed, aghast at the grizzly sight. She started screaming, becoming hysterical as the villagers emerged from their nearby homes and rushed over to see what all the noise was about.

Into the midst of this commotion arrived Ying’s mother. Quickly taking in what had happened, her mother grabbed hold of her, and led her towards the house, just as her other children were emerging to see what was going on.

‘Go inside! All of you!’ her mother shouted, ‘and stay there until I say so,’

‘But Mama…’ Ying started to protest.

‘No, Ying, go inside and look after your brothers and sister.’ She shouted loudly at her.

Although Ying knew her mother to be a kindly woman who loved her children dearly, her hard life and difficult circumstances had given her a nasty temper. Woe betides anyone who tried to cross her or gainsay her when her ire was roused – except of course, her now deceased husband. But Ying always did what she was told when her mother was in this kind of mood, so she led her younger siblings back into the room and back to the television, dreading what disastrous effect this tumultuous event may have on their family’s fortunes.

***

#In her wildest dreams, Ying couldn’t have imagined quite how catastrophic the after effects of her father’s untimely death would actually turn out to be.

She stayed away from school on the day following her father’s killing, as had her mother from the rice fields. There were many things to sort out, least of which was the cremation of her father’s body. Her mother had no money to pay for a funeral and was wondering what on earth she was going to do when the problem was solved for her by the appearance of her husband’s elder brother and sister, who lived in the next village.

Ying had only seen her ‘in-laws’ once before – when her father had invited them to a big party he held in the village. She doubted her mother had seen them very often either, as on that occasion they had been very unfriendly and had virtually ignored them. So she had expected the worst when they suddenly turned up, but her misgivings were soon assuaged when she heard the brother tell Mama that her father’s family would assume full responsibility for her father’s funeral arrangements.

‘Mama, that’s god news. Now you can stop worrying about it.’

‘Ying, go inside the house, I have some things to discuss with these people,’ she told Ying who once again felt aggrieved at being dispatched away from the centre of action.

She reluctantly walked into the house and tried, without success, to overhear what was being discussed. But it wasn’t long before she realised that whatever they were talking about, it wasn’t good news. She could hear her mother’s raised voice and the responding loud voices of her father’s relatives. She knew that things were not going at all well.

At length, she heard her Mama shout out in anger and after a long pause, she started to cry. She heard the man bark something back at her mother and then there was a long silence. Ying sat, waiting for somebody to say something, becoming ever more fearful at what might have transpired between them, but no sound could be discerned. Eventually, she gingerly peered out of the house; all she could see was the sight of Mama, her head in her hands, weeping quietly to herself. There was no sign of the others. They must have gone.

‘Mama, what has happened? Where have they gone? Did they refuse to pay for father’s funeral after all?’

Her mother looked up bleary eyed at her daughter – incredibly mature for her young years. ‘Funeral, my love? Why yes, child, they will pay for the funeral, don’t worry about that.’

‘Oh that is good news Mama,’ Ying said with a smile. Isn’t it?’

‘Yes, my child, it is good news. But I’m afraid that we have to stay away. They have told me that we are not allowed to go to the Wat. If we do, then they will refuse to pay for the cremation.’

‘That’s terrible Mama, why won’t they let us go to father’s funeral? I don’t understand.’

The tired woman looked at her eldest daughter. She wasn’t sure if Ying would understand. ‘They don’t want us there, my child, because they say that I am not his real wife and that you and your brothers and sister are not his real children. They say that his real wife lives with them in the next village and it would bring a big shame on his family if we go to the funeral. They said that nobody wants us there.’

Ying tried to absorb all this confusing information. ‘What does it mean?’ she asked herself. ‘Why can’t Papa have two wives? I don’t understand. What does it matter if we go to the Wat and pay our respects to our father?’ She considered everything for a few moments, before finally speaking, seeking to reassure her mother.

‘So we can’t say goodbye to Papa. Never mind, Mama, please don’t cry. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, he wasn’t a very nice man, was he?’

Her mother looked at her daughter, lovingly. ‘No Ying, you are right; he wasn’t a very nice man,’ before bursting into a new flood of tears.

‘But Mama, Mama, if he wasn’t very nice, why are you crying? We don’t have to go to the Wat. It’s not so important. Please Mama, please don’t cry.’

Eventually, her tears stopped and she dried her eyes. ‘Ying, my child, I am not crying about your father’s funeral. Yes I want to go. He was an unkind and selfish  man, but  he was the only man I ever loved and her bore me four beautiful children – but that is not why I am crying. You don’t understand.’

‘Try me Mama, try me. Why then?

There was an even longer silence before the distressed woman finally explained the bombshell news to her daughter. ‘Because, my child; because Papa’s family have told me that we must leave our home. They say it belongs to them and they want it back.’

‘Leave our home! They can’t do that! Where will we go? Surely Papa’s family wouldn’t be so cruel to us…’

‘Yes, they would, my love. It belongs to your father and I wasn’t married to him – not properly – and they want it back. They don’t care about us. They hate us.’

‘Oh, Mama, why are people so bad? When must we leave?’

‘Tomorrow!’

‘Tomorrow! We can’t leave tomorrow! Where will we go?’

‘I don’t know, my love, I don’t know where we will go. I have no money to go anywhere.’

‘Then you must refuse to leave Mama, you must tell them we have to stay here until we find somewhere to go.’

‘I already told them that. That man – your uncle – he said if we don’t leave by tomorrow evening, he will bring the police and have us thrown out; and he means it, I know he does.’

‘But Mama, where will we go?’

‘I don’t know, Ying, I just don’t know…’

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PART TWO – CHAPTER III

Ying sat with the rest of her fellow-villagers on the hard benches at the village Wat and stared at the ground.  Around her, the adults held their palms together in prayer and joined in the resonating incantations being chanted by the saffron robed monks, who were seated in front and to the left side of them on a long bench. The somnolent drone of the incomprehensible Pali prayers had almost caused her to drop off to sleep, but without warning, the chanting momentarily stopped and she looked up, wide awake once more.

At the centre of her deeply tanned, Issan face that was already showing signs of promised beauty to come, her cavernous, deep brown eyes, were transfixed on a point several meters in front of her. She stared at the raised plinth at the far end of the temple grounds, where, hidden from view, her beloved grandfather was lying in a large casket dressed in his finest traditional Thai clothes, awaiting his journey to the next life.

It was just yesterday that she had arrived back from school and was in the process of getting changed to join her mother for her late afternoon session in the nearby paddy fields, when her brother had come running into the house, with a message for her to go quickly to her grandfather’s home. Her worst fears had been confirmed; Granddad’s disease-ridden body had finally given up the unequal struggle  in his seventy fifth year on this earth – a worn out, skeleton of a man, who had lasted a lot longer than anyone could have reasonably expected, for he had been sick and infirm for several months.

To Ying, he was one of the few souls who had shown her kindness during the past few years of her brief but careworn life and although she had been expecting his death for some time, it came as a huge shock when she had rushed into his primitive room and found the poor old man, stiff and cold, lying on his dirty worn out mattress, his tattered, soiled clothes reeking of death and decay.

The next twenty-four hours had passed in a blur, and now here she was, at the village Wat, attending the last rites before her poor Granddad’s body was incinerated in the primitive crematorium.

She remained seated as the as the villagers around her rose to walk over and form a line in front of the plinth to pay their respects to one of the doyens of their humble village. ‘If it hadn’t been for Granddad, God knows what might have happened to me and my family when we arrived here from our previous home, some four years ago,’ she pondered to herself.

*

She would never forget that long journey of some twenty kilometres from the village where Papa was viciously murdered, to the village where her mother’s father – Ying’s grandfather – still lived. It had been in that village, some twelve years previously, that Ying’s father had first met her mother and had taken her away to live in his own village near to the Cambodian border, where his four children were subsequently born.

It seemed only yesterday that they had made that long, arduous trek, the five of them dressed in tatters, carrying all their worldly possessions, either balanced on their shoulders or piled perilously high on a primitive, two-wheeled cart, which they had borrowed from a neighbour. The trip took two exhausting days to complete, and at long last, the family had made it back to the place where Ying’s grandfather had made his home and where, some twelve years ago, Ying’s mother and father had first met.

Ying knew from her grandfather that Mama was originally from Chaiyaphoom, in the North-east of Thailand and that being desperately poor, she – along with many other Issan folk – had migrated to Sa Kaeo province to find work and start a new life. Thus, many villages in the area had become almost entirely populated by ethnic Issans, who all spoke Issan in their daily lives and had brought their Issan culture with them to this little part of Sa Kaeo province. But Ying’s father was an ethnic -Khmer, as were a majority of Sa Kaeo residents, given its proximity to Cambodia.

Ying then started to realise that there was another, more sinister reason why her mother and her family had been so hated in her father’s, Khmer-centric village. Who knows? It might have contributed to the reason he was killed, such was the hatred and distrust between the two cultures.

When they had arrived back at Granddad’s village some four years ago, they found him still in reasonable health, but eking out a poor existence as a field labourer. However, he did own a small plot of village land, which he had been smart enough to buy at a give-away price some years ago, when the previous owner had been desperate for money. Ying’s Grandmother had been dead for many years, and since then, he had lived alone in a small, makeshift house on stilts, which he had built himself. After his wife passed away, his needs were modest and he informed his daughter that she was welcome to take the remaining part of his unused land for her family to live on.

***

Ying was still rooted to the bench, now the only one left seated. ‘Come on Ying’, a village elder called out, breaking her reverie, ‘Come and pay respects to your Grandfather before we burn him’.

She rose as if a trance, without offering a word of acknowledgement, and joined the end of the line; but her mind was still in the dreams of yesterday.

*

The very next day after their arrival, her mother had gone to work in the rice paddy fields from dawn to dusk to earn sufficient money to feed her family. They now had to fend for themselves for much of the time; they had no money to build a house, and for many months the family had to make do with a few rusty sheets of corrugated iron, kindly donated by neighbours, which was fashioned into a lean-to.

Ying had returned to her village school and despite the harsh conditions under which she lived and the responsibilities she had to endure during the evenings and weekends, she continued to make good grades. Not only did she have to look after the family but she often had to join her mother working in the rice paddies to supplement their meagre income.

Ying’s mother may have been illiterate, but she was a canny woman and she soon realised that the land given to her by her father was worth more to her than just a place to build a home on.  So after months of battling through frustrating, bureaucratic ‘red tape’ at the local government offices –  particularly problematic given her illiteracy – and with the help of some village elders, the desperate mother finally succeeded in transferring Granddad’s parcel of land into her own name. 

She was then able to borrow some money from the local government bank, lodging her newly acquired land as security and utilised the money to build a rudimentary house for her family to live in. It was more of a shack than a house, but it did put a solid roof over their heads, and did provide them with a proper, albeit very basic, toilet. This was to be Ying’s family home for many years to come.

Since then – several years in fact – life had settled into a hard but relatively uneventful routine. Her younger sister and brothers had started school and her mother had continued to keep the finances afloat by her daily labour in the paddy fields. She knew that Mama was for ever having financial problems and sometimes she had to borrow money from her neighbours to keep up the payments up on her bank loan. Mama’s constant fear was that the bank would seize her little bit of land and render the family homeless yet again.

***

At the tender age of twelve, little Ying, could not devote too much of her precious time thinking about such matters. She had too many other burdens on her young shoulders: surviving day to day, keeping up with her schooling, working with her mother and having a major role in the care and upbringing of her young siblings.  Even as she stood in line at her Granddad’s funeral, she fretted that they had now taken two days off from the paddies and they must get back to work tomorrow, or by the end of the week, there wouldn’t be enough money to buy food.

At length, the formalities – unusually brief, due to the family’s lack of funds to pay for something more ostentatious  -  drew to a close, and her dear, worn out Granddad was sent on his way to his next life with puffs of black smoke bellowing out of the tall chimney, high above her head.

She wasn’t a particularly spiritual person – what girl is at that age – but on impulse, she closed her eyes and sat silently in prayer, begging ‘whoever may be out there’ that her Granddad be granted a better life the next time around. She felt sure that he deserved it as he had been a virtuous man and had made much merit in this life, now sadly at an end. When she eventually opened her eyes, she looked around and was surprised to find that everyone had gone. There was no sign of her mother and siblings, so she assumed that they had left her to her prayers and already taken off for their trek back home.

Overcome with grief but still dry eyed, Ying started to take the long, hot slow walk back to her home when just as she walked out of the Wat grounds, she was unexpectedly intercepted by the local head man – the Kaman of the village. He was Khun Somsak, the final arbiter of all village matters and the political ‘tool’ of the provincial party bigwigs. Ying knew him to be a strict, but fair old man and she surmised that he had decided to come over and pay his respects.

‘Sawasdi, Khun Ying,’ the old man started, ‘Do you have a moment? I would like to talk with you.’

‘Yes, of course, Khun Somsak, is it about my Granddad?’

Not exactly, Ying, come, follow me to my home, and we can have a quick chat.’

Ying dutifully followed the man to his own home, near the Wat, where she was bidden to take a seat in the porch, while a maid brought out a welcome glass of cold water for her.

‘Ying, your mother has asked me to talk to you on her behalf.’

‘Why, Khun Somsak, is something wrong? Has something happened to my Mama? She seemed fine at the Wat.’

The old man was silent for a few moments; not a man for quick repartee or unconsidered responses. ‘Yes… and… no… my dear. Yes, something is wrong, and no, your mother is perfectly well, as far as I am aware.’

‘Then what, sir?’

‘Ying, you are aware that your mother has problems making the monthly payments on her bank loan?’

‘Why, yes, of course, she is always talking about it and worrying herself silly.’

The old man remained silent.

‘Oh no! No!’ she suddenly exclaimed. ‘Don’t tell me we are going to lose our home again. This is too much – not now that Granddad has died. What will we do?’ she asked him, almost in tears.

‘No, Ying, the bank is not foreclosing – not yet, at any rate. No, the problem is that your mother has borrowed a lot of money from people in the village and she can’t pay it back.’

Ying thought about this for a while. ‘So what can I do about it? Why are you talking to me?’

‘Because your mother asked me to and because I think I have been able to find a solution to your family’s financial problems.’

‘So…this solution – it involves me?’ she enquired, fearing what may be coming next.

‘Yes, my child, it involves you, but please don’t be scared. We are not going to sell you to a massage parlour or anything like that. We are poor folk but we are not so bad as that.

‘Ying, my child, your mother has asked me to tell you that we have arranged for you to go and live with a family in Bangkok, to work as their as their maid and as a nanny to their children.’

‘Bangkok? I… I don’t understand…’

‘Ying, I have some friends who know a very nice family and they live in Bangkok and they need a young live-in maid. I am sorry, but it seems to be the only way out of your family’s money problems. The family will pay you a small wage and they will send it home to your mother to help with her daily expenses.’

‘But…what about my school?’

‘I’m afraid that your school days are all over, my child. You can already read and write – very well I hear – so that will hold you in good stead. Now you are grown up and you must help your family by going to work in Bangkok.’

‘But…what about my family? If I go to Bangkok, I won’t see be able to see my brothers and sister any more, will I?’

‘Well maybe one day you will be allowed to go home for a few days. You will have to discuss that with the family after you start work.’

Ying sat for a long time in silence, trying to absorb all these sudden and unexpected changes to her life. No more school – no more work in the paddy fields – no more looking after her family – no more village life with her friends…It was almost too much for her to take in all at once.

But the longer she thought about it, the more puzzled she became. It didn’t make sense – surely the money she would earn as a maid wouldn’t be that much more than she could earn in the paddy fields. And if she left home, who would look after the children? Who would cook their meals? If her mother had to do everything, then she would have to stay at home and she wouldn’t earn any money to buy food. What about the bank loan and the money she owed in the village? How was all that going to be paid back on a maid’s salary?

The canny old man seemed to sense what was going on in Ying’s young, over-active brain. ‘You are wondering how your mother will pay off her debts, aren’t you?

‘Yes, how did you know?

‘Because I know that you are very smart young lady. Well Ying, here is the crux of it all. We need you to be a very good girl and promise that you will stay with this family in Bangkok and work hard for them until you are eighteen years of age. Can you do that?

‘Well…yes… I suppose so… but why?’

‘Because the family have very kindly agreed to give your mother enough money to pay off all her debts, and in return, you must stay with them and work for them for six years, until you are eighteen. Is that OK?’ Can you do agree to that?

‘Agree? Why yes, of course. I have no choice do I?’

The man looked at her in silence.

‘But what happens… what happens if they are cruel to me and beat me and don’t feed me… what then?’

‘Don’t worry Ying, they won’t do that. They are good people, you have my word.’

‘And Mama? Will she be able to stop working in the paddy fields?’

He smiled at her concern. ‘Yes, Ying, you mother will have enough money to give up her work and stay at home. Your salary should be enough for the family’s daily needs, once she no longer needs to make the monthly payments on her bank loan.’

There was little more to discuss so she thanked the old man for his intervention and help in this matter, bade her farewells and walked slowly back to her own home.

Ying found her mother sitting cross legged on the ground outside their little home, waiting patiently for her return. She looked at her deeply troubled mother. Despite her tender age, she was not completely ignorant of the toll these past few years had inflicted on her mother; toiling in the hot, unremitting sun, up to her knees in muddy water, with her back bent at acute angles. This had left her with permanent back problems and severe arthritis. The child could see that Mama had been experiencing difficulty in getting about, even though she was still only in her forties. But to Ying’s young, but wise eyes, her poor Mama looked to be in her sixties.

Her mother looked at Ying, terrified what her eldest daughter might have to say.

‘It’s OK, Mama. You can stop worrying. I will go to Bangkok, and you can pay off the loans and stop working in the fields. I have agreed to everything.’

Her mother looked at her with tears in her eyes, and Ying knew that her Mama hated doing this to her daughter. The Kaman had told Ying that there was no time to be lost if Ying was to take up the position in Bangkok, so both of them were also distressed at the imminent departure of the family’s eldest daughter.  

Like most Thais, Ying’s family weren’t particularly demonstrative, but on sudden impulse, she crouched down next to her Mama and hugged the disconsolate woman closely to her chest. ‘It’s OK, Mama – it’s OK; everything will be just fine.’

Her mother remained stiff and motionless; her moist, myopic eyes, transfixed on a nearby mangy dog which lay spread eagled on the hot dusty earth. As she stared, the dog’s shape slowly faded from view in the ever lengthening shadows of a fast approaching dusk.

-

-

-

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PART TWO – CHAPTER IV

Ying was very hungry and utterly exhausted.  It was 4 am and it was over twelve hours since her last meal and she had been cradling little Mac, an increasingly exhausting weight in her arms, for the past four hours. Thankfully, he had finally stopped crying, but she wasn’t too sure how much longer she could manage to nurse her tiny, malnourished, four month old baby.

But more than hunger and fatigue, Ying was wracked with fear. She was  terrified that at any moment Udom would suddenly appear out of the of the early morning gloom on his ancient motorbike , spot them at the bus stop and drag them back home. There was still about two more hours to go before the Bangkok-bound would arrive – assuming it was on time, and these next two hours would be the most nerve wracking of all. It would soon be light and there was an ever increasing chance that Udom would wake up from his drunken stupor and come looking for them.

Ying couldn’t even contemplate the idea of having to return back home with her son. She had suffered enough and was determined to get away from the violent, uncaring Udom for good. This was the third occasion over the past week when she had packed her meagre belongings and tried to creep out of the house with Mac at the dead of night, after Udom had fallen asleep, but on each of the two previous occasions, the baby had started crying and effectively put paid to her plans. Fearful that Udom would wake up, she had returned to her mattress on the floor.

But she hadn’t given hope, and finally tonight, Mac had remained asleep and she had succeeded in getting out of the house without waking her dreaded common law husband to make the long, arduous, three kilometre trek to the bus stop , carrying baby Mac in her aching arms.

She was so tired that she couldn’t stand up any more, so she decided to find a patch of grass, off the road verge where she and baby Mac could lie down and rest. That way she could hide from the prying eyes of Udom until the bus arrived; but the problem was: she might fall asleep and miss the bus.

This problem was hopefully solved when she was joined at the bus stop by two middle aged women and she decided to ask them if they would let her know when the bus arrived. They looked at her with a quizzical stare, but nodded their somewhat offhand assent, so without further ado, Ying slumped on the ground behind a large bush and put her baby gently down beside her, where he thankfully remained asleep.

She wasn’t at all sure if the women would indeed do as bidden but she couldn’t stand up for another moment and knew that she had no choice but to place her trust these women, and if not them then in God. Even if they didn’t call her, she would still probably hear the bus arrive; for at least she could now be sure that it would stop at the bus stop to pick the two waiting women.

She lay down, so tired, but her mind was in a whirl. What a mess she had made of her brief life, and what sort of reception could she expect when she went back to her home in Sa Kaeo with a new born baby and no money? Her mother had been relying on her and she had let her down so badly. If it wasn’t for baby Mac, sleeping blissfully at her side, she might well have decided to end it all.

Where had it all gone so wrong? She asked herself.

***

It had all started off so well. The family in Bangkok had been very kind to her and she soon found that her new job as a house maid and nanny to two young children had been ‘child’s play’ when compared to the arduous manual work she had been subjected to, back home in Sa Kaeo. She had been treated fairly, and as promised, her employers had regularly sent money back to Ying’s mother so that she didn’t have to return to the back-breaking work in the paddy fields.

In the early years of her time in Bangkok, Ying had managed to make a few brief trips back home to visit with her family, but as the years passed and the needs of the children became more demanding, her visits home became rarer and rarer. But she didn’t really mind, as her employers had treated her almost as part of the family and they would take her with her whenever they went away on holidays, or even out to eat on evenings and weekends. Ying grew very fond of them, especially the two young girls, who were more like younger sisters than ‘employers’.

But it all changed one day, soon after Ying’s sixteenth birthday, when she met a young, very handsome young cook, who worked in one of the restaurants which her employers liked to frequent on Sunday evenings. The restaurant was only a short distance from her home and once the acquaintance was struck up, the two had many late night, clandestine meetings, when the young Udom had finished work and when Ying’s employers were fast asleep.

This had been Ying’s very first romantic experience and with her hormones raging like never before, it wasn’t long before she had fallen hopelessly in love with the good looking, fast talking, twenty-one year old lad from Surat Thani, who was determined to take the lovely young virgin to his bed.

During the  next twelve months of their secret courtship, Udom found several opportunities to do just that, and by the time Ying had reached her seventeenth birthday, she felt that she couldn’t live a single day without seeing her beloved Udom. This was proving more and more difficult as the family had started to suspect that something was going on with the young teenager in their midst. They had discovered that she was in the habit of disappearing late at night and as a consequence, they kept a close eye on her, effectively preventing her from meeting up with her boyfriend.

The family had no idea who Ying had been sneaking out to meet late at night, but were determined to stop it, whoever it may be, so Ying had to satisfy herself with brief meetings with her lover whenever the family decided to dine at the restaurant. The two of them had discussed the problem, and Udom’s solution was for the two of them to run away together, but so far Ying had resisted. After all, she still had another year to run of her work contract with the family.

***

The family had nearly finished their meal and Ying was running out of time to do something. She looked around the table; the two girls were gorging themselves on ice cream and their parents were sitting back in their chairs, watching them lovingly through sleepy eyes, their stomachs bursting from the mountain of seafood they had just finished eating. It was Sunday afternoon and the happy, contented family were about to go home after their weekly foray to their favourite seafood restaurant.

Ying, who by now been part of this family family for the past five years, was also feeling full; but more than that, she was feeling extremely anxious that she wouldn’t have a chance to see Udom. It had been such a busy afternoon and the restaurant had been packed, which meant that it was all ‘hands to the pump’ in the kitchen and poor Udom hadn’t even had a chance to think about Ying , let alone spend a few minutes with his beloved.

In desperation and fearing that they would soon be on their way back home, she told her employers that she was going to the toilet and hoped against hope that as she passed near the kitchen, Udom would gain sight of her and come out to join her for a few precious moments. At first, she thought that she was destined to miss him for yet another week when, just as she was returning to the table, the young man appeared from nowhere, pulled her quickly into a small store room and soon they were in a fierce embrace.

When she was able to come up for air, she looked at her young, slim and startlingly handsome lover.

‘Oh my darling I have missed you so much,’ Udom whispered to her as she clutched him, shaking with emotion.

‘Me Too, sweetheart, I was afraid we wouldn’t see each other today. Oh Udom, I don’t think I can stand this much longer’

‘You won’t have to my love’

‘Why? What do you mean?

Ying, do you love me – truly?

‘You know I do?’

‘And do you want to live with me as my wife?’

‘Yes, yes, you know I do, but it’s impossible! You know that. How can I go away with you? I still have one more year to go of my ‘contract’.’

‘Ying, if you really want to come away with me, I will find a way.’

‘But how? I’m not running away – they might send the police after me.’

‘They wouldn’t do that, Ying, You have been a very good maid to them and their daughters; they would never send the police after you. In any case they wouldn’t dare. They can’t hold you against your will; that so-called contract is illegal.’

‘Oh Udom, I don’t know. They have been very kind to me and I love them. I can’t do anything bad to them.’

‘Leave it to me my love, I will find a way.’

With a quick peck on Ying’s cheek, the young man rushed off back to the kitchen where, Ying assumed, he had to complete his cooking shift.

But she was wrong. She returned to the table and was helping the children to gather up their things, when to her astonishment, Udom walked over to the table, as bold as brass, and addressed her employers directly.

‘Good evening sir,’ he said to the head of the family. ‘I would like to introduce myself. My name is Udom and I am a cook at this restaurant.’

The middle aged couple stared at the young man in silence, feeling somewhat taken aback by this brash and unexpected approach by a member of the kitchen staff.

‘You are probably not aware of this sir, but I have known Ying, your ‘employee’, for over a year and we are betrothed to each other.’

Although initially taken aback by this surprising news, Ying’s employer soon gathered his composure. ‘Well young man, we suspected that Ying was up to something late at night, but we had no idea that the culprit of her attentions was you…’

‘Yes, sir, it was me, Udom, isn’t that right Ying?’

Ying stared at him in embarrassment, not knowing what to say.

‘Is this true, Ying?’ the children’s mother joined in, ‘do you know this man? Have you been seeing him behind our backs?’

Ying realised that she had better tell the truth. ‘Yes, madam, I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid it is. Udom really is my boyfriend.’

Her employers looked at each other in astonishment, wherupon the man asked her: ‘So how long have you two known each other?’

‘Exactly one year sir,’ Udom replied quickly, ‘and now we want to get married’.

‘Married!’ the couple exclaimed in unison.

‘Ying, you want to marry this man?’ the woman asked her.

‘Yes, madam, I do. I love him very much.’

‘But you are so young, what do you know about love? What about your mother, Ying? Does she know about this?’

‘No, not yet, but I will write to her and let her know.’

‘Well, Ying and Khun Udom,’ the man said at length, in a harsh tone of voice, ‘these marriage plans are all very well, but Ying still has one more year of her work contract with us remaining, so whatever plans you two may have, they will have to be put on ice at least until then. Come on Ying, we are going home, it’s getting late and the girls have to go to bed.’

***

If only those plans had really been put on ice for year, Ying ruminated ruefully; I might not be in this unholy mess today. But unfortunately, Udom was like a man with a mission and he had been determined to have his beautiful bride and to bring her down south with him to Surat Thani where he planned to open a small restaurant.

Within days, Udom had made representations to Ying’s family at their home and, unknown to Ying at the time, had made some scarcely veiled threats that he would report them to the police of they didn’t let Ying leave with him.

The family had sat down with Ying to discuss her plans and asked her if she was sure she wanted to go with Udom. When she had assured them that this was what she wanted, they tried in vain to persuade her to postpone her plans for year, just to make sure she was making the right decision; but Ying told them her mind was made up and she wanted to go straight away. Eventually, with some reluctance, they gave her their blessing and wished her luck in her new life, making her promise to keep in touch.

*

As she lay in the long grass, her gaunt frame cuddling her baby, she wished that she had listened to them and taken their advice. She thought at the time that they had just wanted to keep her and get another year’s work out of her, but now she realised that they only had her best interests at heart.

How foolish she had been; and what about her mother and her own brothers and sisters? She hadn’t been in touch with them since she had moved south with Udom, some two years ago, and she hadn’t sent them any money. She had always intended to, as soon as the restaurant had got itself established, but Udom had soon put paid to that by adamantly refusing all requests for cash to send home, in spite of  his earlier promises.

‘How had her mother managed these past two years?’ she wondered to herself. God forbid that the crippled old lady had been obliged to go back to work in the paddy fields! ‘What are they going to say when I get home? Maybe Mama will disown me and refuse to let me stay. What will I do then?’

***

At first, the plan had seemed so exciting and promised so much for her future life. Things had started well enough. Udom borrowed some money from his parents and he leased a run-down restaurant in Surat, where the two of them worked hard to get it back on its feet. Udom would do all the cooking and Ying would do just about everything else; from getting up at the crack of dawn to take a bus down to the local market and buy the produce, to preparing the food, to waitressing, to washing the dishes and clearing up at the end of the day.

It was hard work and Ying had no time for herself. By the time they closed up in the evening, she would be exhausted and would immediately collapse into a deep sleep as she had to get up very early every morning to do the day’s shopping. At first, business was very slow, but over the weeks and then months, it grew steadily and they were just about able to make ends meet. But every time Ying asked Udom for some money to send to her mother, he made an excuse to postpone sending any – citing the need to buy more food in or some essential, maybe a new item of cooking equipment.

Although Ying fretted more and more about her mother and her family, she was now totally committed to the relationship and lived in hope that business would improve to the point where Udom would be able to give her some money to send back home. Six months after she had moved to the south, Ying’s commitment became even more cemented. She discovered she was pregnant.

As soon as she told Udom that she was carrying his baby, he seemed to lose interest in her as a lover. She still had to work from dawn to dusk to support his shaky business, but as soon as the restaurant was closed up at night, Udom disappeared into the nearby town and wouldn’t return home to the small hours, reeking of cheap, Thai whisky.

*

Ying drifted off to sleep for a few minutes in the long grass but woke up a few minutes later as her dream turned into the usual recurring nightmare; the one where a drunk Udom was  beating her baby to death.

*

She had already suffered much in her life, but somehow she had always managed to remain stoically cheerful, but the past year’s events had really started to drag her down to the point where she despaired of ever finding any happiness. She was carrying a baby, had to work like a slave, and received no affection or care from the man that she still deeply cared about, but who was obviously taking his pleasures elsewhere.

The pregnancy had duly gone to full term, despite the harsh conditions in which Ying was living and working and she delivered her son, Mac, at the local hospital, with the minimum of fuss. Udom had been out enjoying himself when Ying had been rushed into hospital one evening by some concerned neighbours, and Udom had only managed to make it to her bedside by the following morning, when he had arrived home drunk in the early hours to find her gone. He immediately checked them out of the hospital and took mother and son back home and put the young mother back to work in the kitchen.

If Ying thought that life was difficult before, she was now finding her daily existence almost unbearable. From the day she delivered her baby, Udom had forced her back to work in the restaurant. He warned her that if she didn’t work, there would be no food for her and baby Mac.

So work she did, much as before, but now she had her baby to take care of at the same time and life became ever more desperate. Unfortunately, things were to get even worse. Udom’s increasing propensity for alcohol had reached the point where he would drink during the day, while working in the kitchen.

The result of this was that he was becoming more and more violent towards his family. The slightest mistake or failure to do things exactly how he wanted them done would result in a hard slap and even the occasional punch to Ying’s delicate face. Even the young baby was not spared. Sometimes, when Ying was too busy working to take care of the baby and stop him crying, Udom would grab the baby, hold him out in front of him and shake him violently.

Ying was terrified that Udom might do permanent damage to the baby, or even kill him in a drunken fit of temper. She decided that enough was enough and that she had to get out of this miserable, loveless and abusive relationship. How to get out? It was a problem. Now Udom was drinking during the day on a regular basis, he didn’t go out very often, as it was cheaper to drink at home. By late evening, when the restaurant closed, he would usually collapse in a drunken stupor and sleep the night away.

She had managed to secretly save enough money to buy a bus fare to get herself and her son out of the south and back to Sa Kaeo. She knew she wouldn’t be welcome back home and she knew that her mother would be very angry with her, but she had nowhere else to go. The problem was how to leave without  Udom discovering what she was up to and preventing her from going? He would be lost without her as he would have no-one to do all the work that his ‘wife’ was doing for nothing. Even if she proved physically strong enough to get away from him, she could never do so carrying a young baby, barely six months old. Udom might grab the baby and make all manner of dire threats in order to keep her there with him.

She resolved to wait until Udom went out one night, but day followed day and week followed week and he never went out; he just drunk himself to sleep every night at home. In the end, Ying gave up waiting and had decided to take a chance when he fell asleep.

***

Dawn had broken and the two ‘runaways’ were entering the most vulnerable period of the early morning. What would she do if Udom discovered them? She was far too weak to fight him, and there was no one around who could help her. As tired as she was, she couldn’t sleep and she hoped and prayed that the long awaited bus would arrive soon. Please God, don’t let it be late. She lay on the ground and stared through the bushes at the road beyond, determined to stay awake, now that the time to go was drawing ever closer…

*

Suddenly, a loud thump crashed through the early morning stillness and she awoke with a start. She opened her bleary eyes and made out the sight of a bus, revving up its noisy diesel engine – its filthy smoke billowing out of an ancient exhaust. She was so sleepy that it took a few moments before she fully realised what was happening. The thump had been the sound of the bus door closing and the revving engine meant that the bus was about to leave! As she wearily scrambled to her feet, she heard the unmistakeable crunch of the engine being put into gear and before she could so much as shout out to them, the bus slowly moved away from the bus stop.

Ying panicked. She left Mac where he was lying and rushed out into the road in time to see the bus moving off into the distance. She tried to run after the bus, screaming and crying at the top of her voice, in the futile hope that someone might see her or hear her. The bus kept gathering speed and she knew it was hopeless. She kept running, but after a few steps, she tripped on a pot hole and fell head first onto the middle of the tarmac.  

It was the final straw – she knew that all was now lost; she lay prostrate on the road, breaking down into uncontrollable sobbing, with her eyes tightly closed in a desperate attempt to shut out the world and her desperate situation.

*

Her mind was in a whirl; it seemed as though she had been lying there for an eternity when she was suddenly brought back to harsh reality by someone’s hand, gently touching her shoulder. She turned over to see two men looking down at her anxiously.

‘Are you all right Miss?’

She looked at them, terrified for a brief moment that they may have some connection with Udom, but one of them had a sort of uniform and they both looked very concerned for her.

‘Yes,’ she replied, between, sobs, ‘I think so. Who are you?’

‘Miss, were you waiting for the bus?’

‘Yes, I was, but how do you know? Anyway, it’s too late, it’s gone, and the next one won’t be along until tomorrow. Oh my God what will I do?’ she cried, and once again tears formed in the corners of her eyes.

‘Miss, Miss, come on, sit up.’

She looked at them through her tear-filled eyes and slowly sat up.

‘Now,’ the man in the uniform said, what do you see, along the road, in the distance?’

She looked and she saw and her heart gave a leap of joy. There, barely visible in the far distance of the morning gloom was the distinct outline of a bus, stationary in the centre of the road.

‘But…But… I don’t understand… how could you have heard me?’

‘We didn’t,’ replied the young uniformed man, who Ying now realised was the bus conductor, ‘you can thank the two women who we just picked up. They told me about you sleeping in the bushes with your baby, but in the rush to get on the bus they had forgotten all about you, so they persuaded the driver to stop. Then they asked me to come and get you.’

Ying could barely take it all in. ‘Oh I don’t know how to thank you,’

‘Just get your things – and your baby  -  and hurry, we are already late!’

‘My baby! Oh My God! My baby!’

She needn’t have worried. Little Mac was still fast asleep where she had left him and five minutes later, she wearily but thankfully climbed on board the ancient bus, quickly settling herself and Mac into her single seat.

Her eyes brimmed with tears yet again; but this time they weren’t the tears of sorrow and despair, they were tears of relief and happiness that at long last, she was now safely on her way out of Surat Thani and away from the malevolent Udom, hopefully forever.

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PART TWO – CHAPTER V

Ying sat alone at the far corner table of Siam Coffee shop, staring out of the window onto On Nut Road, wondering if her friend, Gay, was still coming, or whether had she been stood up. She couldn’t really blame Gay if she had decided not come, as after all, she hadn’t been in touch with her friend for several months. She had more or less dropped her like a stone, ever since she had stopped working at the Galaxy Night Club and moved in with Don.

She suddenly realised what a good friend Gay had been to her, and how kind she had been when she had first come to Bangkok looking for work. If it hadn’t been for Gay, helping her through those first difficult weeks, who knows what might have happened to her – a timid, vulnerable 18 year old girl, with no experience in the wicked ways of Thailand’s notorious capital city.

*

It had been more than a year since she had once again taken the bus from her Mother’s home in Sa Kaeo and made the journey to Bangkok in search of work to support Baby Mac and the rest of her family. She had embarked on this journey to Bangkok only a few weeks after her emotional arrival back at her family’s village, following her perilous trip from the South of Thailand. She had used up the last of her precious savings to hire a tuk tuk to take her and Mac from the bus terminal in Sa Kaeo City to her family’s village, some fifteen kilometres away, and had been dreading what the reception would be. But she needn’t have worried.

Ying’s mother was a hard woman, but she was also a compassionate and loving mother. She had taken one look at her half-starved daughter and grandchild, arriving in the back of a rusty, smoke-belching tuk-tuk and she hobbled over to them at a surprising turn of speed; literally lifting the two of them out of their seats and hugging them to her ample bosoms, with her tears flowing down her gnarled, sun blackened cheeks.

Ying was as thin as a rake and barely weighed 40 kilos; her baby was also very thin and undernourished. Her brothers and sister had gathered round to comfort their eldest sister when they saw her state and learned of the ordeal she had been through and within a short while, her entire extended family – aunts and uncles and cousins who lived nearby – also came to welcome her home and to hear of her exploits during the past few years.

Ying’s mother had managed to make ends meet by once again borrowing money on the small piece of land that she owned and it soon became clear to Ying that the money was fast running out and that something had to be done as a matter of urgency. She had been home for three weeks when she came to the conclusion that it was going to be down to her, yet again, to bail her family out. But what could she do? Where could she find work?

This dilemma had been temporary put on hold by the unexpected arrival of Udom in the village. Ying had never expected for one moment that Udom would find out where her family lived, much less bother to follow her there. It transpired that within days of Ying fleeing, Udom had been obliged to do a ‘moonlight flit’ from the restaurant himself due to mounting, unpaid debts and he had gone to Bangkok to obtain Ying’s address from the family she used to work for.

Ying locked herself inside her mother’s house and refused to speak to him, but he refused to leave and spoke to Ying’s mother who eventually agreed that she would try to persuade Ying to come out and settle things between them.

After much coaxing, Ying had eventually emerged from her home to confront her now despised ex-partner.

‘Ying,’ Udom began, ‘I am so sorry for everything. I know I treated you very badly and I promise I will change. I have learnt my lesson; please come back to me. I will treat you properly and take care of little Mac. I swear I will. Give me another chance, I beg you…’

‘No! Never!’ she had shouted angrily back to him. ‘You treated me like a slave and nearly killed my baby!’ I will never forgive you….’

‘Please Ying,’ the young man begged, please come back to me, I love you so much…’

‘Love me! Love me!’ she had shouted in an ever shriller tone, ‘You don’t know the meaning of the word. Get out! Get out of my village and keep away from my family!’

‘Please Ying…. Please…’

She had taken an enormous risk to get herself and her baby away from his drunken clutches and she was not about to go back. ‘Udom, It’s all over! I never want to see your ugly face again. I hate you. If you don’t go now, I will set the villagers on you.

Udom quickly realised that he wasn’t going to get anywhere with Ying and he left the village the same day. But it took another week or two before he gave up completely. After all, despite her thin stature, Ying was flowering into a very beautiful young lady and he now regretted the way he had treated her. He realised that he was still in love with her and desperately wanted her and his son back with him. Every two or three days he would return to Ying’s village in the vain hope that time would heal Ying’s anger and that she would eventually relent and return to live with him.

*

As she waited for her friend, she sipped on her cold cup of coffee and reflected on these recent events with a grimace,  Udom had  finally realised that he was wasting his time when, on the last occasion that he came to try and change her mind, his beloved had already long gone.

Later, Ying’s sister had written to her to tell her that when Udom had realised he was no longer there, he had broken down in tears. Then he had started drinking and became very drunk, threatening her mother with violence if she didn’t tell him where her daughter was staying. Eventually, the villagers got hold of him bodily and threw him out of the village and nobody had seen him since.

*

While all this aggravation had been going on with Udom, one of Ying’s many older half-sisters, on her father’s side, had come to visit her and told her that her best chance of work was to go to Bangkok. The sister had taken one look at Ying and realised that Ying was fast becoming an exceptional beauty and that it wouldn’t be hard for her to find work in Bangkok’s burgeoning nightlife industry.

‘With your looks, you won’t have any problem finding work in one of the night clubs that cater to the rich Thai businessmen,’ she had advised Ying.

‘But…but what will that involve? I couldn’t face having to sleep with them! I can’t do that! It would be terrible!’

‘Don’t worry; you won’t have to, not if you don’t want to. You will get a small salary and if you are popular with the customers – as I am sure will will be with your looks – you can earn a lot of money from drinks and tips. Some of those millionaire Thais can be very generous.’

‘But what will I have to do?’ asked Ying naively.

‘Do? You just sit with the customers and chat to them.

‘Is that all?’

Well you may have to let them hold you sometimes, and if you have a special customer, you may have to let him kiss you sometimes, but that’s all’

Ying had shivered to herself; ‘Sounds horrible!’

‘Horrible!’ her sister repeated, ‘well, maybe, but it’s better than starving. Mind you, if I had your looks, I would be looking for a ‘sugar daddy’; some rich elderly man who would put me in a nice apartment and look after me and my family; but of course, for all that, I would have to sleep with him whenever he wanted

‘That sounds terrible! The innocent young teenager replied. I can’t imagine sleeping with a man who I wasn’t in love with….’

*

That conversation had occurred only fifteen months ago and oh, so much water had flowed under the bridge since then, she thought to herself. She had decided that Gay was definitely not coming and was about to call the waiter and pay the bill, when the door flew open and in came her errant friend.

Gay was in her early thirties, but still a very good looking lady; she was  born and  bred in Bangkok with a good figure, slightly fleshy but still exciting, sexy legs, and an attractive, well-proportioned face; but her most attractive attribute of all was her silky, white skin – so admired and sought after by many of the night club’s clientèle.

Gay had met Ying late one evening when she had taken pity on her. She had spotted her when she had come into the night club where she was working to speak to the manager. The young girl had been dressed in a dirty, ill-fitting T-shirt, with cheap, baggy jeans and tattered flip flops, revealing blackened feet and dirty broken toe-nails. The clothes had done Ying’s skinny frame no favours and no one could be blamed for assuming that the girl had just emerged from one of the many slum markets to sell ‘who knows what’ wares.

It was clear that Ying had been asking for a job and it was also clear that the manager was telling her in no uncertain fashion that there were no jobs at the Galaxy Night Club for the likes of riff raff like her and that she had better be gone – sharpish  -  before he set one of his bouncers on her. Ying had started walking towards the door, when Gay hurried over and asked her where she was going?

‘Going?’ Ying responded, almost in tears. ‘I don’t know where I’m going. I was told that I could find work in this area, but I’ve been wandering the streets for hours and nobody will even give me the time of day?’ she said, looking desperate.

After Gay had managed to take a closer look at the young girl, her earlier suspicions were confirmed. Underneath all those terrible, ill-fitting clothes, the young lady standing in front of her was quite a beauty. ‘Why hadn’t that stupid manger realised that?’ she asked herself. ‘Look, she said to Ying, I know you don’t know me, but my name is Gay and I work here as a hostess. Is that what you want to be? A Hostess?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I do, but nobody will talk to me.’ I must have been to half a dozen nightclubs around here and always the same answer – No! Get lost!’

‘That’s because they are all stupid and can’t see how pretty you are. Listen, what is your name and where are you staying?’

‘Staying? I’m not staying anywhere. My name is Ying; I just arrived from Sa Kaeo this morning and haven’t found anywhere to stay yet. I was hoping to find a job first, but now I don’t know what to do…’

Gay had been working the Thai nightclub circuit for almost ten nears and the experience had hardened her, but like so many of her ilk, she was still a glutton for a hard luck story. In fact it was probably this ‘compassionate’ side to her nature that had led her into so many disastrous affairs and meant that she was still working for drinks and tips at a time when her looks were starting to fade and she should have long since settled down with a steady boyfriend.

‘Look Ying, I think you are a very pretty young lady and I’m sure you can get a job here or in one of the other clubs in the area, but nobody will look at you when you are dressed like that. You just don’t look like a hostess.’

‘But these are the only clothes I have.’

Gay looked at the desperate girl for a few seconds.

‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If you want to wait outside for me, when I finish work tonight you can come home with me and I’ll see what I can do about finding you some work tomorrow.’

Ying looked at her new found acquaintance, and instinctively realised that she really wanted to help her and was probably telling her the truth. ‘That’s very kind of you. Do you really think I can get a job?’

‘I’m sure you can, I just need to make you more presentable. Now, promise that you’ll wait for me; I usually finish work at around 2 a.m. but I’ll try to get away early tonight.’

She opened her handbag and pulled out a hundred Baht note. ‘Here, take this and go and get something to eat and be back outside the nightclub at midnight. And wait for me. I’ll try to come out as soon as I can and then we can go back to my room.’

Ying looked at the woman in astonishment. She couldn’t believe that someone was actually being kind and helping her.

‘Come on, take it, I have to get back to work.’

She thrust the money into Ying’s reluctant hands and rushed off back to her customer, thinking: ‘She’ll either get herself a good meal and then disappear for ever or, if she’s got any sense, she will be waiting for me when I finish work tonight. It’s up to her, but either way, I wish her well. She looked so unhappy  - so desperate…’

*

Gay sat down breathlessly opposite Ying at the small table and apologised for being late.

‘You know how it is Ying, I had a very late night,’ she added with a smile.’ Now what’s all this about? You’ve finally found time to meet up with your old friend again then have you? She asked, still smiling.

‘Oh Gay, I am so sorry. I know I have been selfish and unthinking,’ Ying responded. ‘I am so sorry; I should have called you before. I wanted to call so many times, but something always came up and I kept putting it off.’

Gay looked at the friend who she hadn’t set eyes on for many months. She was as beautiful as she remembered and it would seem that her dress sense was as good as ever. She was dressed like a fashion model; truly looking like a million, very sexy and desirable dollars, but one look at her eyes and Gay knew that Ying was in a very unhappy state of mind.

‘Ying’, she said, ‘do you remember that first night we met – when you came to galaxy looking for work?’

‘How could I ever forget,’ Ying answered with a weak smile, temporarily putting all her troubles to one side. I was so innocent and shy and I was dressed in those awful clothes. I can’t bear to think what may have happened to me if I hadn’t met you. You were so good to me.’

*

Her mind went back to that awful night when she had waited for two hours outside the club, slowly losing all hope that Gay would eventually appear and wondering where she was going to spend the night as all her money was gone; she was completely broke. Then much later, her tears of happiness and relief when Gay had finally emerged, full of apologies and whisked her into a waiting taxi to take them back to her little room about two kilometres away.

The two girls had fallen asleep almost as soon as they had arrived at Gay’s room, but the following morning, Gay filled her new found fiend full of food and then proceeded to find some clothes from her overflowing wardrobe that would suit the young, budding hostess. It wasn’t easy, as they were of different heights and Ying was so emaciated that almost everything seemed to hang off her, but eventually, with a bit of creativity, they found a flimsy white top and a very short jeans miniskirt that transformed the ‘upcountry rice picker’ into a gorgeous, very alluring slim young lady with smooth, slim legs that seemed to go forever.

Gay then took Ying to a nearby beauty salon where the staff went to work on Ying’s long, but unkempt hair and transformed it into glistening, black silky tresses and although her young, flawless complexion didn’t really need it, they applied delicate, understated make up to her quite exquisite face.

The Galaxy manger didn’t even recognised the badly dressed kid of the previous evening and immediately offered her a job

*

‘Gay,’ Ying said, recalling that day, ‘you have been such a good friend; I don’t know I can ever thank you.’

‘There’s nothing to thank me for,’ Gay said. I would have done the same for anyone. You looked so sad and desperate when I saw you that night. Besides, I was being selfish – I was doing it for me, not you; I am a Buddhist, I was making merit for my next life,’ she said with a cheeky grin.

Ying laughed with her, but Gay knew that there was an underlying sadness in her eyes. ‘Ying what happened? We used to be so happy together at the Gay, do you remember?’

‘Of course I do, Gay, yes they were good times,’ she answered, thinking back to those happy, crazy, fun-filled first months she spent as a nightclub hostess.

You remember ‘Paw’? Gay asked, referring to one of Ying’s regular customers.

‘Yes of course I do.’ How is he?’

‘He’s fine. He still asks about you. I think he’s still in love with you. And… Don?’

‘Yes Don,’ Ying replied with a shudder, her smile suddenly vanishing.

‘Don – is he still with you?’

‘Yes Gay, he is still with me.’

There was a long silence between the two friends; both of them thought back to happier times.

*

At first, Ying had been extremely shy and tried to avoid having to sit with the customers but after a few days, she slowly got into the swing of things and started to understand what was required of her as a hostess. There was no obligation for her to go home with a client or to a motel for a ‘short time’ – although many of the girls did just that to supplement their income – but she was required to sit with customers and let them hold her hands, occasionally cuddle her and even, on the odd occasion, kiss her. She had found this quite distasteful when she first started working, but within a short while, after she had discovered the joys of alcohol, she found it easier and even enjoyable to smooch with the better looking ‘clients’.

She was young, very pretty and her figure was starting to fill out after the years of semi-starvation in her village and at Surat Thani. She was fast becoming a highly sought after lady at her new place of work. Many customers would go there, specifically to spend a few happy hours in the company of the delectable Ying, only to leave disappointed, as she had already been commandeered for the evening by another customer who had beaten them to it.

Most of the club’s clientele would buy a bottle of premium grade whisky or brandy  to drink with her and after a few weeks, Ying found that she was more than capable of holding her own – drinking glass for glass of whisky – or brandy – with her wealthy customers.  Ying had started to acquire a real taste for alcohol.

Even without sleeping around, she was earning good money from her ‘drinks’ and tips so for the first time in more than two years, she was able to send a small amount of money home to her mother. But it wasn’t enough and her mother still had the loan hanging over her head. Ying didn’t know what to do as she had no intention of selling her body for money.

She had been working as a hostess for about three months when, apart from the countless men who tried, without success, to make her their special girlfriend, she had realised that she was becoming quite serious with two – very different – Thai men. The first was in his early fifties. He was a lawyer and he owned his own law practice in the nearby district of Prakanong. He admitted to Ying that he was married, but had long since separated from his wife.

He was a very kind, gentle man who was more of a father-figure to Ying than a boy-friend. In fact, he was so eager to give advice to this naïve young lady who had little or no experience of life outside of Sa Kaeo, that almost from the start, she called him ‘Paw’, the Thai word for ‘father’. Ying’s real father had been shot dead, right in front of her, when she was eight years’ old and she was certainly in need of an older, wiser person to steer her through the ‘pitfalls’ of life in Thailand’s teeming, exciting and sometimes dangerous  capital city.

Paw wanted Ying to come and live with him at his house in a soi off Prakanong, and effectively be his mia noi – minor wife. He told Ying that he would take care of her and treat her very well. Ying had already told Paw about her family’s financial troubles back home in Sa Kaeo and Paw had promised to pay off her mother’s debts, if she agreed to go and live with him.

Ying wasn’t sure what to do. She had grown quite fond of this likeable, kindly old man, but she could never love him – he was just too old for her. But she wanted to help her poor mother and her younger brothers and sister back home in Sa Kaeo, and this seemed like a heaven-sent opportunity to do just that. Paw was obviously quite well off and she was sure that he would keep his promises. She just couldn’t bring herself to make that final jump.

In the event, she came to a somewhat different decision a couple of weeks later. The second significant man in her life was a very handsome young man called Don. Don had fashionably long hair, was tall, slim and dressed in the latest styles – beautiful, skin tight, silk shirts which showed off his slim, athletic torso and the latest fashion jeans. He used to come to the club several times a week with a group of friends, similarly attired and the girls would almost fight each other for the chance to sit with these fun-loving, big spending, handsome young men.

Don had long since made a bee-line for Ying and within a short time he was totally smitten. He was determined to make her his ‘own’ and single-mindedly set about winning her with a diligence and determination that belied his reputation as a playboy. Before he met Ying, Don had always played the field as far as women were concerned but Ying had changed all that.

Ying had been flattered and was literally swept off her feet by this crazy, attractive youth who seemed to be the very antithesis of the dour, spiteful Udom, her first lover. When, one momentous night, Dom implored Ying to leave her job at the nightclub and come and stay with him as his girlfriend, Ying took little time in jumping at the opportunity, but not before she had broken the sad news to Paw, that she had fallen in love with another man.

Paw had seen Don at the night club with his friends and had suffered pangs of jealousy as he watched Don and Ying together, their hands all over each other, clearly infatuated. But he tried to keep a sense of perspective about it and realised that he would be no match for such a person. He wanted Ying to be happy, but he was concerned about her plans to stop work and shack up with the young man. He warned Ying that although he didn’t know Don personally, he had seen such people many times at clubs through the years and he could tell the type. He felt sure that Don wasn’t all that he purported to be and warned Ying to be very careful.

In truth, Ying knew very little about Don’s background, or indeed what he did for a living, but that didn’t seem to matter in the whirlwind that overcame her as she packed her belongings and moved in with Don at his apartment, off Sukhumvit Road.

The problems first surfaced when Ying asked Don for some money to send back home to her mother. Don immediately lost his temper and screamed at her that he wasn’t going to support her family. She had then burst into tears, whereupon Don calmed down, came over to where she was sitting and put his hands over her shoulders, to comfort her. He seemed full of remorse for his outburst and told Ying that he would ‘see what he could do’ to find some extra money for her family.

But more rows were to follow, and although the two were clearly crazy about each other, there were issues between them which forever got in the way of a happy relationship. For one thing, Don was very vague about his family and background, and was even vaguer about what he did for a living. He seemed to go out at strange hours and return at even stranger hours, refusing to tell Ying where he had been and what he had been doing.

This would inevitably result in rows, as Ying was extremely jealous and feared the worst. Don would usually solve the problem by taking Ying to bed and totally mesmerising her with his incredibly energetic, sexual prowess. They would make love for so long that in the end, the two were too exhausted to fight any longer.

*

‘So what’s happened?’ Gay asked at last. ‘What’s going on between you and Don? You are obviously not happy. Has the bastard got another girl friend?’

‘Another girlfriend? Ying repeated, absent mindedly. ‘No, Gay, not a girlfriend… nothing like that.’

‘What then?’

‘What  then…’ Ying repeated, thinking back…

*

For many months, life had stumbled along for Ying; a mixture of heady highs and depressing lows. Highs when she was with her man, in bed making love, and lows when he disappeared, sometimes for days at a time, leaving her stuck in the apartment, wondering if he would ever come back again. It didn’t take Ying long to realise that whatever Don did for a living, it almost certainly wasn’t legal. She could see by the hours he kept, the snatches of telephone conversation she overheard and other tell-tale incidents – like Don returning after an absence of two days wearing brand new clothes and  flashing bundles of money, some of which he would begrudgingly give to Ying to send home.

Ying could have learnt to tolerate this topsy-turvy lifestyle if it hadn’t been another, more sinister event. One morning, after a night of passion, she awoke to find her boyfriend injecting heroin into a vein in his left arm. She was horrified and berated Don for doing such a terrible thing. But Don just smiled the smile of an addict who was rapidly getting ‘high’, and fell fast asleep.

Later, after Don had returned from yet another two day absence, she raised the subject of his heroin use with him, but he laughed it off, telling her that it was a ‘one off’ and assured her that he had never done it again. She didn’t really believe him and sure enough, two days later, she found him in the bathroom ‘shooting himself up’ once again. This time, a row ensued when Ying tried to take the syringe away from Don and in the end Don became violent, grabbed Ying by the hair and threw her out of the bathroom and locked the door.

From then on there had been an uneasy truce between the pair. Don would continue to take heroin and Ying had become withdrawn and quiet. She was scared to intervene any more but was even more scared of what was happening to Don and their relationship.

Don had changed. He was no longer the fun-loving, caring young man who had asked her to go and live with him. He was either away from home, getting up to ‘God knows’ what?’, or he stayed at home, sleeping the days away and ‘high’ on heroin for most of the time. They barely made love any more and Ying feared for herself, her family and her boyfriend’s sanity.

Then today, when Don had ‘come down’ from his latest dose of heroin and before he injected another one, she had sat him down and tried to talk to him. She told him that they couldn’t go on like this any more. She still loved him but couldn’t bear to see him like this. Don told her that he loved her and would try to quit. She informed him that if he didn’t quit she would leave him – her mind was made up.

Don had become very emotional. During his brief, ‘sober’ state, he knew that he was destroying himself and their relationship.

‘Ying, I love you and I can’t live without you,’ he had told her.

‘Don, think very, very hard about what I have said. I mean it Don, I will really leave you if you take another shot of heroin. I just can’t take it any more.’

‘I will try; I promise,’ he had replied. ‘If you leave me, my life is over,’

‘Then you know what you have to do,’ she had said. ‘I am going out to see my friend Gay. We haven’t seen each other for so long. When I come back, I hope you will still be free of drugs.’

He had looked at her – a desperate, frightened look on his face, tears forming at the corners of his eyes and he told her he would try his best to do what she had asked of him.

Without a backward glance, Ying picked up her bag and left the apartment, for her date with Gay, leaving Don to contemplate her ultimatum.

*

‘Don… I’m sorry Gay, I don’t think I want to talk about it.’

‘But you look so unhappy, Ying.’

‘Yes, I know; but today we had a long talk and maybe it’s Ok. Maybe everything will be fine now. Anyway, I’ll find out when I get home. Now, what have you been up to? Come on, tell me what’s been going on with everyone at The Galaxy over the past few months. I’m dying to know,’ she asked with a slightly forced smile.

Gay told her that she had taken the day off from work so that they could spend the afternoon and evening together, talking about old times. She related to Ying about her former friends who were still working there, and about the ones who had left because they had found regular boyfriends or had become mia nois (minor wives) to older, rich business men and about the many, regular customers who still enquired after her.

When they were completely ‘coffee-logged’ they adjourned to Gay’s room nearby and continued to catch up on gossip. It was one of the happiest few hours that Ying had enjoyed for quite a while. For a short period of time, she almost forgot about Don back in their apartment, fighting his heroin addiction.

So it was after ten when Ying made the journey home. She was dreading what she may find, as she had a strong suspicion that Don would not have the will power to stay away from the heroin.

But nothing could have prepared her for what she did find. She opened the front door and the apartment was in darkness. There was no sign of Don in the sitting room so at first she assumed that he must have gone out. But then she heard a familiar noise coming from the kitchen. It was the sound of a kitchen ceiling fan revolving on its axis in the corner of the room,

‘He must have forgotten to turn it off’, she thought to herself as she wandered into the kitchen.

She snapped on the light and almost fainted in shock at the sight in front of her. Her beloved Don was hanging from a short piece of rope, his head at an ungainly angle, his feet dangling about nine inches from the floor, a kitchen chair upended a couple of feet away. He was dead. He had hung himself. She stood and stared at his limp body, with the whirring fan rattling back and forth, slightly ruffling the dead man’s hair as it passed a particular point in its rotation.

‘Oh No! Don! Don!’ she screamed. ‘I didn’t mean it! ‘You can do what you like! – I don’t care! – I love you, Don! Please, please don’t do this,’ she screamed, with her tears streaming down her cheeks. She rushed up to him and grabbed him around the waist, trying to pull his body to the ground, failing miserably.

His neck wouldn’t budge from the rope that tethered him, so she just clung onto him, wailing a terrible wail of grief, as the whirring fan continued its inexorable course – across the room and back again – intermittently ruffling the hair of the two bodies; one still full of frantic, distressed life and the other – cold and ugly – hanging in untimely and premature death.

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PART TWO – CHAPTER VI

Ying jumped up with a start as the ‘Sky-train’ screeched to a halt at Prompong Station and she barely made it out of the carriage before the doors snapped closed behind her. She desperately tried to gather her confused thoughts together as she slowly descended the long staircase down to the busy eight lane highway beneath. Reaching ground level, she walked the short distance along the noisy, smoke-polluted Sukhumvit Road to ‘Soi 33’ – the infamous side road that contained literally dozens of western oriented bars – one of the many red light districts in the heart of Bangkok.

As she reached the little side road where her new place of employment was situated, she wondered yet again what on earth she was going to do for money if today, as she fully expected, she ended up being shown the door after only one day of work. The previous day, her very first experience of working as a ‘hostess’ in a ‘farang’ bar, had been a disaster.

She had decided to take the job as a ‘hostess’ in this particular bar, just off the main ‘Soi 33’drag, in a large establishment called the ‘The Second Office’, as she thought it looked a bit classier than most. The décor was state of the art; the very large, well-furnished bar had multiple TV screens showing a variety of live sports events and the girls looked prettier and dressed much better – in their long slinky cocktail dresses – than in the other bars she had visited. Most of all, she noticed that the farang customers were mainly young, reasonably good looking, well dressed and – she surmised – had plenty of money; unlike many of the overweight, badly dressed, sweaty farangs she had seen in other nearby bars

But her first day at work had been pretty demoralising. She had been shocked at the number of girls who worked at the ‘Second Office’ and wondered how on earth they could all make a living. She had started work at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, along with maybe two dozen other ladies, where she was required to cram herself behind the large, circular bar with all the other hostesses and display her ‘wares’ in the hope that a customer would look favourably upon her and invite her outside to join him for a drink. She had felt degraded but realised that she would have to go along with the system if she wanted to continue working there.

Ying had been filled with increasing dismay as most of the prettier girls soon disappeared to the other side of the bar to sit with clients who obviously knew them. She watched them as they chatted away in English and ‘downed’ their ‘lady’s drinks’. She was dreading the moment when a customer might choose her to go and drink with him and then probably complain to her boss because she couldn’t speak any English. Her only alternative was to try and remain hidden behind the other girls, but if she did that, she wouldn’t earn any ‘drinks’ money or tips. She had manoeuvred herself into a perplexing state of confusion.

In the event, she had remained behind the bar almost until closing time when, at around midnight, a very drunk, very fat American had staggered in. By then, only had a handful of girls had remained, Ying being one of them. The drunk took one look at her and beckoned her to come and join him on a bar stool. She was terrified but did she was asked. The man had ordered her a drink and immediately made an ungainly grab for her breasts.

She instinctively pushed him away, whereupon he had called out to the ‘mama-San’ – Ying’s boss – who was sitting nearby. Ying feared the worst when the drunken man spoke to the mama-San in English, pointing towards Ying. She guessed that that he had complained about her, but it transpired that he wasn’t complaining; he was telling the mama-San that he wanted to take her home with him! When her boss translated this for her, she was horrified and backed away. Never in a million years would she would go with this drunken, ugly, smelly, fat farang, she had told her boss.

Fortunately for Ying, the ‘Second Office’ did not force the girls to go with the customers if they didn’t want to, although much pressure was often brought to bear if a regular customer wanted to bed a particular lady. Unfortunately for Ying, it transpired that the drunken American was indeed a ‘regular’, and the Mama-San was none too pleased with her ‘point-blank’ refusal to go with the man.

In the event, the drunk had paid his bill and left in disgust, but Ying was left in no doubt that her behaviour had not meet the approval of her boss. She was warned that her tenure at her new place of employment may prove to be woefully short-lived if she didn’t ‘play the game’ next time one of their ‘high rollers’ wanted her to go home with them.

And now, here she was, clocking in for her second day, fearful that this time around she would be shown the door if she refused any demands  by some ugly farang to go home with him. After changing into her figure hugging, low cut hostess-dress and putting the finishing touches to her make-up, she quickly joined the other girls behind the bar to and prayed with all her might that a handsome, young, rich farang would come into the bar and whisk her away into the night and a good time. She nestled herself between two larger ladies, with the vague plan that she would try to remain at least partly hidden until she saw someone who might fit her particular requirements..

She stood in the line, ignoring the gossip of the girls around her, and wondered how they could bare to work like this; week in and week out. She was already bored out of her mind and she had only been working there for two days. What a life, standing behind a bar for hours on end, waiting for some drunken, lecherous farang to pick you out, take you home with him and abuse you. She thought back to happier times, when she had worked with Gay at the Galaxy Club. It was much nicer working there, but she knew she could not solve her money problems at a Thai style night club; her last hope was to find a few rich farangs; how had it all come to this?

She had experienced so many ups and downs in her short life; her father was shot dead in front of her, then her family was kicked out of their home and they were forced to trek all that way to her granddad’s village; then her granddad died; then the happier years when she worked as a house maid in Bangkok, followed by yet more bad years with Udom in Surat Thani ; then her dear little Mac was born; their terrifying escape from Surat Thani; her happy, fun time at the Galaxy night club; and then Don…oh Don…oh Don…

***

She didn’t know how long she had crouched there, hugging her dead boyfriend’s body before she finally realised that she must do something. But what? What could she do? She was in turmoil and she couldn’t think straight.  Should she call the police? If she did, she feared there might be trouble. Don was a criminal – of that there was no doubt. ‘Maybe the apartment was full of stolen stuff; and what about the heroin? Where did he keep it?’ she frantically asked herself. ‘What happens if they find some hidden away somewhere? Maybe they will arrest me – maybe they will think that I am drug addict criminal as well’.  But she couldn’t just leave Don like this. ‘Oh dear, what a fucking nightmare!’

She went back into the living room and sat down and tried to compose herself, but within seconds she burst into tears again. Don was dead and it was all her fault. ‘If I hadn’t told him that I would leave him if he didn’t quit his drug habit, this would never have happened. Oh God, what have I done?’

Eventually, pure survival instinct came to the fore and a semblance of a plan slowly formed inside her spinning head. She remembered that her old friend, Paw, from the Galaxy night club, was a lawyer. Maybe he would know someone who could help her. After all, Gay had told her earlier that day that he was still in love with her, so surely he would do something. She realised that he might be her only hope of sorting out this mess so she frantically checked her mobile phone and breathed a sigh of relief when she found that she still had his number in the memory.

‘Paw – this is Ying. Do you remember me?’

‘Ying! Of course I do. How could I ever forget you? How are you, my dear?’

‘Paw, I’ve done something terrible. Don – you remember Don don’t you? Don is dead. I made him kill himself. Paw I need some help. Do you know any lawyer who can help me? I’m so afraid. I’m afraid to call the police, they might arrest me.’

‘Ying, where are you?’

‘I’m at my apartment.’

‘And where is Don?’

‘He’s here, with me.’

‘And what do you mean, you made him kill himself?’

‘I – I told him that I would leave him if he didn’t stop taking heroin, and when I came home tonight I found him dead – hanging by a rope, in the kitchen.’

‘Ying, does anyone else know about this?’

‘No.’

‘You’re all alone are you, with…Don?’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t do anything, don’t call anyone and don’t touch anything. Give me your address and I’ll be over straight away. Don’t worry Ying, my love; I will take care of everything.’

*

He had been as good as his word and had taken care of all the arrangements. He brought some people round to clean up the mess and remove all evidence of drugs and then he called a contact he had, a high ranking officer at Prakanong Police station, and had arranged for the body to be removed from the apartment. Ying had been in a complete daze – virtually on the point of a breakdown – and later could recall very little of what happened during the ensuing days as Paw took total control, and moved Ying and her belongings to his own house. He gave her a large bedroom to herself and arranged for his personal maid to look after her.

Ying slowly recovered from the shock of losing Don in such a dramatic fashion and she grew content to remain in Paw’s house and let him and his maid take care of her every need. This was the first time in her life that anyone had given her so much attention and she rather liked it. In many ways, Ying had now become Paw’s ‘minor wife’ and he behaved with her in almost every way as though she was really was his girlfriend: eating together at home , dining out and going to the cinema together, watching TV together, and much more besides. But there was one major exception; they never had any sexual relations.

Ying had steadfastly refused to let the liaison develop into a sexual relationship and Paw accepted it with equanimity. She knew very well that he was very enamoured of his young house guest and that maybe he harboured hopes that one day, he would be able to break down her resistance. But she also knew that Paw was a good, honourable man and that if he couldn’t enjoy her intimately then he would be content to steer her away from the ‘rocks’ that had so nearly smashed her young fragile life to smithereens. She understood that he was doing his best to bring some stability and meaning back into her life and she was very grateful to him.

After a few weeks, when Ying was still trying to get over the shock of what had occurred, she told Paw one evening that she would like to learn how to be a hairdresser, and asked him if he could help her find a suitable school. Her mentor was very agreeable to this idea as he felt it would take her mind off the recent tragedy and also provide her with a means to earn a decent living – away from the bars and nightclubs which would only lead her to yet further misery.

So Ying had attended hairdressing school and Paw paid the fees and gave her enough money on top of this to enable her to send some back to her family in Sa Kaeo. It was the start of a happy and stable period for Ying and during the two years she spent at the school, she forged some close friendships with like-minded young ladies.

Towards the end of her studentship, Ying had arrived home from school one evening to find that Paw had taken a strange lady to his bed. Her initial reaction was one of jealousy; how could he do such a thing to her? – but she quickly realised that she was being selfish. She had refused all his advances for the past two years, so who could blame him if he found someone who could make him happy in that way? But it was still a little disconcerting. If Paw found a new lady and fell in love with her, he might ask Ying to leave. What would she do then? She had no money of her own.

Over the next few weeks, nothing much changed, except that every now and then Ying would encounter a succession of strange women in the house who would quietly disappear the next morning. But then there was one lady in particular who had become a ‘regular’ and things started to get a little strained. Paw’s new-found bed mate wasn’t exactly overjoyed to discover he had a long- term, single, very attractive house guest, and Ying wasn’t exactly delighted to bump into the same young lady in her home at every turn.

In the end, Paw had grasped the mettle and he gently suggested to Ying that now her schooling was coming to an end, she should find a small room for herself, move out and get a job as a hairdresser.

Ying hadn’t been totally averse to this proposal as she felt that her life was being quite restricted by having to live with her benevolent and fatherly benefactor. Now that she was more or less over her tragic affair with Don, she wanted to be ‘free’ and start to enjoy life.

Two of her closest friends from the school were graduating at the same time as Ying and they resolved to set up home together in a small but nicely furnished apartment in the Bangkok suburb of On Nut. Paw had met Ying’s friends and agreed that this would be the best plan for Ying as her two friends could keep an eye on her.  Now that he had found himself a new lady to come and live with him permanently in his house, he agreed that Ying that she should go and live with her friends and that she had his blessing. ‘It is time, Ying,’ he told her with a kindly smile, ‘that you learned to stand on your own two feet again.’

Ying had accepted the situation with good grace and thanked the older man for all his kind and generous help over the past 2 years. Paw eased the  sorrow of the ‘break-up’ by giving Ying a very generous sum of money to tide her over until she found a job, and assured her that he would always be there for her if she ever needed help or advice in the future.

Deep down, Ying knew that Paw still loved her, but that he was wise enough to realise that she would never be able to return his love. She hoped that he was content to have helped her over the worst period of her life and see her on the road to something better. She was very lucky, for she knew that there weren’t too many young ladies who had a wise and loving friend to call upon, should they ever need one.

*

Ying had duly moved in with her two friends, Lek and Gung. They were also young and very pretty and all three of them settled down to a life of fun. By day, they scoured the local hair dressing salons, in search of gainful employment and by night, they loved to party. They would get ‘dressed to kill’, go out on the town, get drunk and dance the night away at the most popular pubs and clubs in the area. They were the epitome of ‘good time girls’.

They all had a seemingly ‘bottomless pot’ of money. Of her two flatmates, one had a ‘patron’ who was the general manager of a five-star hotel, and the other had a French boyfriend who came to visit her in Bangkok two or three times a year and when he wasn’t in Thailand  he would send her  money for her ‘living expenses’. As for Ying, she had sensibly sent some of Paw’s money to her family in Sa Kaeo and the remainder was used to live on while she looked for a job.

The three had a number of things in common. They had money, they were young and beautiful, they had great dress sense, and they loved to party and get drunk. By general acknowledgement, Ying was the pick of the bunch. Now in her mid-twenties, she had grown into a very beautiful young lady. Her figure had filled out and she had legs most women would die for. They were so tantalisingly slim, with just the right amount of flesh on her upper thighs and it didn’t matter whether she wore one of her fashionable, micro mini-skirts, or put on a pair of skin-tight jeans, she would never fail to turn the heads of hot-bloodied men; and this in a city that was already overflowing with gorgeous ladies.

But not only was she the prettiest and sexiest, she was also the most ebullient when the three of them went for a night out. She had developed into a real ‘party animal’ and always had Lek, Gung and all the folk that gravitated into her orbit during the course of an evening’s merriment, in paroxysms of mirth.

Yes, she was the life and soul of every party but she was also the one who always became the most inebriated. Lek and Gung seemed to instinctively know when they had enough and either curtailed their drinking or stopped completely, but once Ying started to get a little tipsy, her consumption of alcohol would increase rather than decrease. On a typical evening out, she would start off by daintily sipping on her drinks, but by the time midnight had arrived, she would be gulping down glasses of neat whisky, or ‘chug-a-lugging’ bottles of San Miguel with a single swallow.

On many occasions she had become so drunk that her friends had to half drag, half carry her home in the small hours where she would invariably collapse, fully clothed on the sofa and sleep the remainder of the night and the next morning away. Sometimes, Ying’s drunken behaviour had resulted in heated arguments and even fights at late night venues and on more than one occasion, the three of them had been thrown out and barred from future entry to the club where the Ying–instigated trouble had broken out.

After a while, and before her money had become totally exhausted, Ying had managed to find a job at a local hair dresser. Like everything else in her life, she had started work with great hope and enthusiasm. Her bubbly personality and good looks soon made her a popular favourite in the salon, but the hours were very long and the salary and tips derisory. So it didn’t take long for her to realise that she was not going to be able to support her lifestyle, plus her family in Sa Kaeo, on such meagre fare, but not knowing what else she could do, she soldiered on in the vain hope that something would come up – maybe another ‘Paw’ to save her once more.

But no handsome young men had appeared on white chargers and after six months of working hard by day and drinking and dancing the nights away, her savings were exhausted, and her mother was calling her every day to send some money home. On top of this, she had grown very disillusioned with her career as a hairdresser; it just wasn’t going anywhere.

Ying’s final act of desperation had been to pawn the items of jewellery that Paw had given her so that she could pay her share of the rent. When the jewellery money ran out, she didn’t know what else to do, and was getting close to despair, when Gung suggested that she should try getting a job as a hostess in one of the better ‘farang’ bars.

She told Ying about a collection up-market of bars that were located in a soi off Sukhumvit road, in the Prompong district of Bangkok. Gung knew the area quite well, as her ‘patron’ was the manager of a nearby hotel. She told Ying that a lot of very rich farangs lived and worked in the area and that many of them would go to the Prompong bars when they finished work for the day. She even knew of several girls who had been taken out of the bars and had become wives to these rich foreigners.

Ying spoke hardly any English and had thought it was unlikely that any bar would want to hire her, but when she trawled the Soi 33 bars in search of work a few days later, she had found that many bar managers were willing to employ her, even though her English was more or less non-existent.

*

It was around 9 p.m. when she noticed an older man walk to the bar and take a seat almost opposite to where she was standing. She studied him. He was no youngster – looked to be in his late forties, tall and quite slim with the beginnings of a pot belly. But he looked very clean and was dressed quite smartly, in well-fitting jeans and an expensive looking, long sleeved shirt, with gold cuff links. He wasn’t particularly good looking but neither was he ugly and he still had a reasonable head of hair – unlike so many of the farangs who frequented the bars. Why on earth they thought they looked like God’s gift to women with their revolting bald heads she could never imagine.

He ordered a drink from a passing waitress but when she had served him and then sat next to him, hoping to strike up a conversation, he completely ignored her. Ying assumed that he wasn’t interested in the girls and just wanted to drink alone. But once the waitress had moved away, the man looked around the bar and let his eyes settle on first one first pretty lady, then another, before moving onto yet another, sizing up every available girl as though he was choosing a side of beef. At length, he spotted Ying, still watching him from the other side of the bar and for some unaccountable reason the two smiled at each other.

Ying immediately looked away in embarrassment, but when, after a few moments she stole another glance, she saw that he was still staring at her and as soon as he caught her eyes, he beckoned with his finger for her to come out and join him.

‘Well,’ she thought to herself, ‘I could do worse,’ as she made her way to the bar stool next to him. She wasn’t normally shy – not after all her experiences at the Galaxy and then letting her hair down almost every night Bangkok’s discos and clubs – but this was to be her first encounter with a farang, who didn’t speak her language, and she felt a bit out of her comfort zone.

For his part, Toby could hardly believe what he saw. The apparently shy girl who had been standing behind the bar was an absolute stunner and even though it wasn’t his normal ‘modus operandi’ to call a girl over, (he would usually wait for them to approach him), he wasted no time in beckoning her to come out and sit next to him at the bar.

For her part, although Ying certainly hadn’t found her ‘dream farang’, she soon discovered that she had found a man who could speak passable Thai, which relieved her of the worry of how she was going to communicate, and he seemed to be very kind. He told her he was fifty three years old – older than she had thought – about the same age as Paw. She wasn’t sexually attracted to him, but he didn’t look too bad and he was certainly a huge improvement on the drunken, fat slob of the previous evening. She sat and nursed her drink, smiled back at him and realised with resignation that if she was to pay her bills and keep her family from starvation, then she was going to have to make some personal sacrifices.

They sat together at the bar for about two hours; Toby buying round upon round of drinks for Ying and himself, and as the evening drew on, he even bought the mama-San a couple of drinks. Once he felt sufficiently emboldened by alcohol, he tentatively raised the subject of whether his gorgeous companion would consent to go home with him, fully expecting outright rejection.

Ying realised that this time around, she had no choice but to accede to her customer’s request – after all, that was what she was there to do. But she was still terrified at the very idea of bedding this middle-aged farang, so she decided to play her final ‘ace’. She used the age-old fib that had been used by thousands of women before her when they had been asked to go with a man that they do not wish to have sex with. She told Toby that her menstrual period had just started, although quite what she hoped she would achieve from this untruth, even Ying probably couldn’t have adequately explained.

Maybe she had a ‘second sense’ as to what Toby’s reaction might be, for as soon as she had told him the reason she had to decline his request, he made it clear that her menstruation was not going to divert him from his purpose. He told her that he would still pay for her to go home with him and that she could just sleep with him – only sleep – no sex.

She was more than happy with this arrangement, as she knew she would earn good money from Toby without having to ‘sell’ her body. So the deal was done, and as they drove down Sukhumvit Road on the way to Toby’s apartment, Ying suddenly asked him stop his car at a nearby 7/11. She rushed in and reappeared a few moments later flourishing a plastic bag containing a packet of sanitary towels. She had decided to make her deceit as plausible as possible.

But the plain fact of the matter was that her first ever relationship with a farang had commenced on the premise of a lie….

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PART TWO – CHAPTER VII

As soon as Ying turned her car into the driveway of her home near Pattaya, she knew that something was wrong. She couldn’t immediately put her finger on it, but something definitely wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t just that Toby’s car was absent from its usual position in the car port; that was only to be expected. She had been away for three days and who knows what he may be up to? Getting drunk, somewhere, no doubt.

No it wasn’t that. For starters, it was only 2.30 p.m. in the afternoon, yet her son, Mac, was at home, sitting in the shade on the terrace. Why wasn’t he at school? And sitting opposite him was Tee, her cousin – Mac’s uncle – from her village, who worked as her gardener cum cook cum security guard cum child carer. What were the two of them doing sitting there looking like the end of the world was about to descend? Her phone had been off since last night, ever since she had received a late night call from Tee, and had followed it up with short conversations with her son and Toby. She hadn’t wanted any further interruptions, so she had switched it off, planning to surprise everyone when she got back home the next day. But the surprise seemed to be on her.

She parked up and got out of the car, immediately confirming her initial suspicions that Tee was not at all happy. In fact, a closer look at his eyes told her that not only did he appear to be very sad, but there was also a tinge of fear.  Mac had a similar look on his face.

‘Tee! What’s happened? Where’s Toby?’ she shouted.

Tee started to mumble incoherently before clearing his throat and starting again. ‘Toby – Toby’s gone.’

‘Gone! Gone where?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What do you mean – he’s gone? He’ll be back later, won’t he?’

‘No, Ying, I don’t think so…’

‘Why? Why won’t he be back? What’s happened to him? He hasn’t had another accident, has he?’

‘No… I mean… I don’t know… I don’t know where he is, but he’s left. He’s taken all his things and left.’

Ying looked at the two of them for a moment. ‘Taken all his things? What things? Why didn’t you call me? I told you to call me if he did anything like that again.’

I… we… didn’t know until we woke up this morning. He must have gone late last night, after Mac and I went to bed. And anyway, your phone was turned off, so we couldn’t call.’

‘You could have called Lek – I gave you her number and told you to call her if you couldn’t get hold of me.’

‘I did. She told me you had already left.’

It was true, she acknowledged to herself.  She and her overnight companion had stayed with Lek last night in Bangkok, but they had left early this morning to have some breakfast and then do some shopping, before she drove back to Pattaya this afternoon afternoon.

‘Well, he couldn’t have taken much with him; he’ll be back after a week or so, when he starts to miss me again.’

‘Khun Ying, he has taken all his clothes, most of the things in the office – his computers, printers and loads and loads of other stuff. Go and look for yourself. He must have taken about three car loads. He has taken everything. He has even taken some stuff from the kitchen – plates, glasses and goodness knows what else.’

‘Ying stared at the two of them. ‘Three car loads? All his clothes? How could he do that without both of you knowing about it? He had to carry his things from the upstairs bedroom, along the corridor, past Mac’s bedroom and all the way down to the car port. How could he do all that in the middle of the night without one of you hearing him? Were you drunk?’ she shouted at Tee.

‘Well… Toby…yes… he did buy me a bottle of whisky.’

‘And you drank it all?’

Tee nodded.

‘And you! Mac! She snapped. I spoke to you at midnight when I told you to send your friends home. What was Toby doing then?

‘He…he …was in his office, working on his computer.’

‘He hadn’t started packing anything up?’

‘No… I don’t think so. He had only just come home.’

‘How could he take all his clothes downstairs without you hearing him?

‘I…I …was very tired…and this morning, I found that someone had shut my bedroom door…’

‘Someone shut your door! Ying screamed, ‘not someone! – Toby!!’

‘Had he really gone?’ she asked herself, still refusing to totally accept what they were telling her. She screamed at Tee to follow her and she went into the kitchen where she could immediately see that some of the glasses and crockery were missing. Then she went into his large office at the other end of the large ground floor and was shocked at what she saw. The furniture was still there, but that was about all. The place had been stripped empty. All Toby’s computers, printers, fax machines and other myriad pieces of electronic equipment were gone; his cupboards and filing cabinets were devoid of contents. He had taken pretty much everything.

She rushed up to her bedroom where she hurried into the massive ‘walk-in’ wardrobe cum dressing room and saw that almost all of his huge accumulation of clothes had gone. ‘My God,’ she thought, ‘how on earth did that drunken old fool mange to carry all that stuff downstairs and out to his car. It must have taken him hours…’

Reality stared to sink in. Toby had left her before – sometimes just for a few days, but on two occasions for much longer. His last absence from the marital home had lasted almost three months, but even then, he had hardly taken anything with him: just a small suitcase of clothes and his lap top.  But this time, maybe it is different. No… Surely not… surely she will be able to convince him to come back home again. She had to be patient and wait for him to call her, and then she could start to work her whiles on him and make new promises to him that this time, she would really change.

But what if he didn’t call her? What if he had left Thailand, never to return again? What then? What would she do? She couldn’t live without Toby and his money. Even apart from the money, she wanted to stay with Toby. She didn’t love him but she was fond of him – after all, they had been together for six years, married for three of them and he had given her everything. She was genuinely worried about him. He was getting old and suffered from many serious health problems and – like her – he drunk far too much alcohol. What would happen to him if he didn’t have his wife and the maid and Tee to take care of him?

She sat down on her huge four-poster bed and started to take in the enormity of what had happened. Everything pointed to the fact that this time Toby might well have gone for good. ‘Oh my God’ she cried out loud, ‘Toby, where are you? What have I done to you?’

Her thoughts meandered back to the day, some six years ago, when she had first set eyes on him.

***

It hadn’t taken Ying long to realise that Toby was not only very wealthy, but that he was also a ‘soft touch’. Once he had shown himself to be gullible over the little white lie that she had fed him about her ‘period’, she realised that he seemed prepared to believe almost anything she told him, without question. It was evident that he was so delighted to have landed such a gorgeous young lady, that he was willing to do anything necessary to make her happy; including opening his wallet whenever she flashed her eyes at him.  

Her career as a bar hostess had lasted a grand total of two days. Once she had  seen  his opulent apartment on Soi 15, and he had confided to her that the rent was over 45,000 Baht per month, she knew in her bones that this middle aged farang  was going to be the solution to her all financial problems. She immediately realised that if she played her cards right, her days of working for a derisory salary at a hair salon or at some bar where she was required to ‘sell’ herself  to the first drunken stranger who walked in, would be at an end.

From that very first time, when she had gone home with Toby to spend a purely ‘platonic’ night with him in his ornate king-sized bed, she had received  a more than generous ‘remuneration’ for being his exclusive, female companion. But she quickly realised that as distasteful as the prospect of having sex with Toby might be, she had better occasionally let him have his way, just to make sure that he didn’t grow tired of her excuses and start to look elsewhere. She was determined not to let this extremely tasty ‘fish’ slip out of her net. She sensed that Toby was becoming infatuated with her, but she knew that no man would be content to continue paying out large sums of money to a woman if he couldn’t occasionally ‘have his way’ with her.

Well, Paw did, – but he was different – he had known from the start that she wasn’t interested in him in that way. But Toby, well, she had Toby on a nice piece of string, and she had convinced him that she was every bit as enamoured with him as he was with her. So sex, once in a while, would be price she would have to pay, but she was determined to make those unpleasant occasions as infrequent as possible.

She knew she would never have any romantic feelings for Toby; in fact she had not experienced any romantic feelings for anyone – ever since Don had killed himself. She enjoyed the company of handsome young Thai men, – especially those who enjoyed a good time – and she also enjoyed having sex with them when she was drunk enough, but the very idea of ever falling in love again was a total anathema to her. Those days were over and would never return. She had been emotionally scarred by her previous experiences and she was now ready to be a ‘user’ rather than a ‘used’ woman. Like countless Thai women before her, she soon found that controlling a farang was infinitely easier than trying to control a Thai man.

If Toby had been a stronger person and hadn’t been so obviously gullible, the relationship might have stood a better chance of succeeding, but he was so infatuated with her that he hung on her every word and did everything that was asked of him to keep his lady happy and content. As well as showering Ying with money and gifts, he was kind and considerate towards her in other ways. He appreciated that there was a large age difference between them, (he had since revised his true age upwards to fifty seven), and he encouraged her to have friends of her own age. He told her that she should feel free to go out with them on occasion and enjoy herself, not realisng that his new ‘live-in’ lover was a border line alcoholic and there was nothing she liked better than to go out, party, get drunk and end up in some young man’s bed.  But despite this naive encouragement from her new benefactor to ‘misbehave’, she initially made some half-hearted attempts to change her ways.

Her previous relationships with Udom and Don had been disastrous mistakes and deep down, she had always yearned for someone who would be as kind to her as Paw had been; someone who take care of her and her family on a permanent basis. She knew that sacrifices had to be made and that she should do her best to make Toby happy and be a good companion to him, in return for his generosity to her and her family. It would a good arrangement and no different to those made by countless thousands of other Thai women who had settled down with older farangs. But she was too weak to resist ‘temptations of the flesh’ and she quickly realised that Toby was too weak to stop her.

So In spite of being full of good intentions, once  she had spent a few boring days with Toby in Toby’s apartment, watching television and talking for endless hours to her friends on the phone, she  had decided that she couldn’t live like that anymore. One afternoon, she told Toby that she was going to take him up on his offer to go and meet up with her friends at On Nut for a few hours.  She said that in any case, she had to collect some things that she had left there, and would chat with them for a while and be back later. Toby was happy to let her go; he would await her return later that evening.

But by the time Ying had jumped into a taxi to make the thirty minute journey to meet up with her friends, she was literally bursting for a drink – after many days of abstinence.  Much as she knew she was in the wrong, she felt she just wasn’t ready to settle down to a life of domestic bliss with a middle aged man who she did not love and had little in common with. She had spent the best part of the past three years living the ‘high life’, and now, at the age of twenty five, she was at the very peak of womanhood; so as soon as she arrived at her ex flat-mates’ apartment, she flourished a stack of newly minted bank notes at them and invited them out for a ‘night on the town’.

Almost as an afterthought, she called Toby and told him she was dining out with her friends and would be back – ‘a bit later than planned – eleven at the latest, I promise, my darling….’ By midnight she was drunk out of her mind, and by one a.m. she had turned off her phone to avoid receiving any more calls from the frantic Toby. Eventually, at nearly four in the morning,  she managed to drag herself out of a taxi, stagger into Toby’s apartment, crash on his bed, still fully clothed  and didn’t come up for air until very late that afternoon.

The mind had been willing, but the flesh had been weak, and once she had made that first step towards doing her own thing, regardless of the calamitous effects it was having on her relationship, the flood gates had been opened, and her behaviour became ever more outrageous. She didn’t want to hurt him – she liked him and cared about him – but somehow she just couldn’t stop herself. Toby made it too easy for her, with his relatively easy acquiescence to her never-ending increasing requests to go out at night with her friends.

To be sure, every time she came home drunk, sometimes around three or four in the morning – sometimes later – and occasionally not at all, Toby would be waiting for her, very upset and he would bitterly remonstrate with her. But within twenty-four hours, all had been forgiven and forgotten and once the dust had settled, Ying only had to flash her most winning smile and beg him to let her go out yet again– ‘just for a couple of hours, darling! – I promise I will be back before midnight’ – and she was off for another drunken night of carousing with her friends.

She soon realised that whatever he now thought about her – and she knew that he had long since stopped believing everything she told him – he could never say ‘no’ to anything she asked of him. Even if he did occasionally put his foot down, she only had to sulk for an hour or so and he would soon change his mind.

He was just too easy and she was just too determined to go out and enjoy herself, especially as her taste for alcohol was becoming ever stronger. She had had a very hard life and she was now determined to make up for all those unhappy, terrible years in Sa Kaeo and Surat Thani – and even that terrible period in Bangkok when she had been living with Don. She would never forget Don, especially the manner of his death.

At first, Toby had tried to keep his temper in check during his confrontations with his drunken, errant girlfriend; but once he realised that Ying was going to continue to behave badly, over and over again, regardless what he said or what she promised, then he too would spend his evenings out – getting drunk in the ‘girlie’ bars of the red light districts of Bangkok. And two drunks, both with bad tempers, was an explosive mixture. The fights between the pair in the early hours became ever more acrimonious and inevitably turned violent. It became increasingly the norm for Toby to suffer minor and occasionally quite serious wounds from bites, cuts and punches inflicted by the drunk-crazed Ying.

From Ying’s perspective, she was continually amazed that despite all these frequent fights, Toby appeared to be more smitten with her than ever and he seemed to be prepared to put up with all her drunken, erratic behaviour. It seemed that however bad the fights were – and some of them were pretty nasty, often resulting in trips to hospitals or Toby having to replace broken furniture and smashed possessions – in the end, they always made up. Toby was always the one to apologise, even though he usually had every justification to claim being the ‘wronged party’. Invariably, he would try to cement the new peace between them by buying Ying an expensive present, or giving her a large wad of money in response to one spurious request or another.

Ying was becoming weary of these never ending fights, but she came to the conclusion that maybe it was a price worth paying to have her own way and to do what she liked for most of the time. After all, however badly she behaved, Toby continued to pick up all the bills, as well as providing her with a generous monthly ‘allowance’ and buying her expensive presents. Recently, he had agreed to meet the cost of completely rebuilding her mother’s family home in Sa Kaeo. ‘Just do this for me Toby, and I promise that I will never ask you for anything, ever again…’ Toby could barely wait to draw the cash from his bank account and hand it over to her.

But the drunken fights had grown ever more acrimonious and the gravity of the situation was brought home to both of them one day when Toby was told by the owner of his apartment that they had to leave, as despite many warnings, his neighbours could no longer tolerate the late night noise occasioned from  their  daily fights. So they moved to nearby house, where they were free to make all the noise they wished without disturbing the neighbours – and they proceeded to do just that.

Ying finally realised that the deteriorating situation could not continue forever and she had resigned herself to an inevitable break -up of the relationship. With this in mind, she was completely taken aback one day, when out of the blue, Toby suggested that they get married. He seemed to think that getting married would completely change matters between them – that somehow, once they were husband and wife, they would behave much better towards each other. At first, she rejected the preposterous idea out of hand, but when he kept insisting, she eventually concluded that she little to lose and everything to gain from such a marriage.

Ying knew that most Thai men, like Udom, never went through a legal marriage with their ‘live-in’ girlfriends because they knew that as long as they weren’t legally married, if and when they broke-up, they would have no legal or financial responsibilities to their common law wives – or to their offspring. So Ying finally concluded  that if Toby was legally married o her, whatever may happen in the future, he would at least have some obligations towards her. More than that, she realised that the occasion of a wedding would produce a wonderful opportunity to extract yet another nice little ‘pot of gold’ from Toby, in the guise of a wedding dowry.

Under Thai tradition, once Ying had lost her virginity and had borne a child from a previous relationship, she was no longer entitled to ask a potential husband for a dowry; no Thai man would ever have agreed to such a request. But Toby didn’t know any better, and Ying was sure he would agree to pay a dowry, so keen had he become to tie the nuptial knot.

*

She lay back on the bed, still thinking back over the past six tumultuous years with Toby. ‘Had he really gone for good this time?’ she asked herself. She hoped not, but she couldn’t really blame him. She knew that she had been the ‘Wife from Hell.’ Toby had really believed that once they were married, she would change her behaviour and become a dutiful wife. He was so stupid.  If anything, she had got even worse – ever since that wedding night – oh what a wedding! And poor Toby!

It was ‘The wedding of the Century’, as Toby used to jokingly call it. To this day she didn’t really know why she had agreed to marry Toby. Was it the money – the dowry? Maybe; but she knew deep down that she didn’t really need to marry him to get that money  as one way or another she would have still been able to wheedle it out of him. It was so easy to persuade him to part with his money. She smiled to herself, remembering that later, he had even paid for the dowry of both her younger brothers and even for her cousin, Tee, when he had gone through a short-lived, disastrous marriage. Of course, at the time they had been ‘loans’, but none of the money had ever been paid back.

So why had she married him? She had never loved him and she had still wanted to be free to go out and get drunk with her friends and screw around when the mood took her, so why did she put Toby though all that misery? She couldn’t answer the question, but she did know that she never wanted Toby to leave her. After six years, she had got used to having him around, as had her family –especially Mac, who now regarded Toby as his father.

But that wedding! What a wedding!

*

They had already done the ‘legal bit’ at a district government office in Bangkok, and now they were having the Thai wedding ceremony which was to take place at Ying’s family village in Sa Kaeo, and Ying wasn’t about to let the occasion pass without making the biggest possible splash that she could muster. She was marrying a very rich husband and she wanted her extended family, including a contingent from her father’s village – and the local villagers – to know just far she had come in her relatively short life.

The day commenced with over a dozen monks from the local Wat performing a religious ceremony inside the large, impressive newly built house that Toby had paid for. Dozens of family and friends had squeezed into the house to join in the long Pali ceremony. Khun Somsak, the village headman who all those years ago had Told Ying that she had to leave school and go to work as a house maid in Bangkok, had taken charge of the wedding proceedings. Ying and Toby were both attired in traditional Thai costume and they had to remain crouched on the floor for what seemed like hours while Khun Somsak and the assembled monks chanted countless prayers and evocations to the kneeling couple. The highlight of the ceremony, which was relayed by a PA system to the waiting crowd outside, was when Toby presented his new mother-in law with a massive dowry, consisting of neat piles of newly minted one thousand Baht notes, each one of which was counted out to the awe-inspired crowd, followed by the handing over of several ounces of pure yellow, Thai gold.

Ying’s three friends, Lek Gung and Gay had travelled to Sa Kaeo especially to attend their friend’s wedding, and when the morning ceremony and endless photograph sessions had finally drawn to a close, the three of them grabbed hold of Ying and they were soon stuck into the booze.

But the nuptials were far from over. The entire village and surrounding roads had been cordoned off for the evening wedding party. A huge stage had been erected, just outside the Ying’s family home and a large area had been cleared to provide space for hundreds of guests to sit down and dine. Dozens of dining tables had all been loaded up with plates of Thai food and bottles of Thai whisky and the scene was set for an evening’s drinking, dining and dancing to a very loud, live Thai band complete with the obligatory, scantily clad, female singers and dancers. Ying and Toby had exchanged their Thai traditional Thai costumes for western wedding clothes; Toby in a Tuxedo and Ying in a gorgeous, strapless, figure hugging, flowing white wedding dress that took everyone’s breath away. She truly looked like a beautiful Goddess.

But the alcohol had been flowing since early that morning, and as the night drew on, the bride and groom, along with most of the guests, became ever more inebriated. Ying later thought that it was a miracle that they had all made it through to almost the conclusion of the evening before trouble erupted. But when it eventually did break out, it did so with a vengeance. It was past two in the morning and the band had stopped playing; the stage was being dismounted, and most of the guests had already returned to their homes and fallen into a deep, alcoholic slumber. But a hardy few – including Toby and Ying, their immediate family, and friends from Bangkok – were still drinking steadily.

Ying could never recall exactly what started it, but at around 3 a.m. she was suddenly in the middle of a violent row with Gung, one of her Bangkok friends. Before long, just about everyone present had joined in, either supporting one side or the other. Whatever the original reason for the fight, it finally transformed itself into a fist fight when Lek accused Ying of sleeping with her benefactor – her ‘Patron.’ Ying bitterly denied it, but Lek claimed that her ‘patron’ had told her all about it.

The two women, scratching and punching each other like alley cats, had to be separated, whereupon the equally drunk and angry Lek and Gay, grabbed hold of Gung and they took off in search of some transport that would take them back to Sa Kaeo city, where they might find a bus back to Bangkok. The fight had broken up the last remnants of the party and once her Bangkok friends had departed from the scene, Ying had turned her wrath on her own family. Finally, when most of those had also stormed off in disgust, she turned her attention to her newly wedded husband – Toby.

Toby had been drinking steadily for the past two days and was extremely drunk, but up to this point he had been in control of himself and his temper. He had observed the events of the past hour or so and had watched in fascination as first one person, then another, had received the ‘drunken-Ying’ treatment; treatment that Toby was used to receiving on an almost daily basis.  But as soon as she had started on at him, all his pent up emotions exploded and he started screaming at Ying at the top of his voice, blaming her for ruining the wedding.

Before long, his new bride had punched him to the ground and was trying to inflict still further damage on him when Ying’s brother, hearing the commotion, returned to the scene and dragged her off. Ying’s mother, who also had a violent temper, came out from her room and screamed at her daughter to go upstairs and sleep it off.

It was probably through sheer exhaustion, more than anything else that finally persuaded Ying that it was time to call it a day, so without another word, she climbed the stairs, entered the bridal bedchamber and closed the door. Toby waited about ten minutes and then followed his bride up the stairs. He tried to open the bedroom door, but it was locked. He knocked once, then again, then again. Ying had heard him knocking, but she wasn’t about to let him in. She was too upset about her fight with Gung. She didn’t care about Toby – or the fact that it was supposed to be their wedding night. In her drunken stupor, all she could think of, and all that seemed to matter, was that she hated Gung with a purple passion and that she would never, ever, talk to her again.

*

‘That fucking wedding! I suppose I was in the wrong. Poor Toby!’ she admitted to herself. ‘It has been over three years since we were married – and what a marriage!’ She thought back over all the events that had occurred during their tumultuous marriage, trying to understand why now, after all they had been through, and just when she believed that they were getting along a bit better, that Toby should choose this time to leave her.

Toby’s theory that marriage might bring some semblance of order, even happiness, to their relationship, had fallen well short of the mark. Ying had never believed that it would solve their problems, as by the time they had celebrated their eventful wedding, she knew that she was not about to change her behaviour or her lifestyle. She was having too much of a good time. Yes, she wanted to be a good wife to Toby, but she also wanted to enjoy herself before she got too old. If this interfered with her wifely duties, then so be it. Anyway, Toby would never leave her – or so she had thought.

She did recall one particular occasion when she thought he had come very close to leaving her. It was just before a three week holiday she had with him in the UK. She had met a young farang at the gym she had been attending and they had quickly struck up a romantic – and soon after – a sexual relationship. Ying used to tell Toby she was attending English school whereas in reality she was having liaisons with this man – from Belgium – who knew how to satisfy a girl sexually; something that Toby was totally incapable of doing.

Upon her return from the UK, Ying immediately picked up where she had left off and the liaisons became ever more frequent. One day, she had popped out to do a bit of shopping and had left her phone back at the house. While she was out, her Belgium lover had sent her a text message, and Toby, hearing the text ‘ping’, had picked up her phone and read the incriminating text. In a state of total shock, Toby had then scrolled back through Ying’s messages and found many more from this man, all of them referring to recent sexual encounters in graphic detail. He had been devastated and he had proceeded to get very drunk.

Ying was sure that this would be the end of their marriage, but once the dust and the emotions had settled down a little, the stupid Toby had incredulously accepted her absurdly fanciful story; that the text messages were from a ‘nut case’. She said he was someone she had met only once through a friend and had never seen him again, but through that same friend, he had obtained her phone number. Since then, he had never stopped sending all those fictitious messages. She told Toby that the man was crazy and his messages were all lies. Only a fool could possibly believe such a cock and bull story, but Toby did – at least he seemed to. Maybe the truth was that he really didn’t want to know the truth.

Soon after this little contretemps, they moved out of Bangkok and took up residence in a grandiose,  two-storey house that Toby had been building in Pattaya. It was a very fancy affair, built in the style of a southern colonial house with a large, open plan ground floor, four massive, en suite bedrooms , a large pool and a separate, self-contained two-bed annex on the  opposite side of the pool. Now that they had their own home, Ying decided to bring little Mac, who was now eight, from Sa Kaeo down to Pattaya to live with them permanently. Toby had bought Ying a brand new car and for a brief period, Ying once again thought that she would attempt to settle down and play the dutiful, loving wife and mother.

But it didn’t last long. A pattern would develop whereby Ying would alternate between playing the good domestic wife – staying at home, cooking and generally supervising the running of the home for a couple of weeks, –  and then suddenly disappearing  – out on the ‘lam’.

At first, most of her ‘disappearances’ would be to the downtown Pattaya area -‘Walking Street’ and the like – where she would meet up with friends from Bangkok and go out and get drunk in the bars and clubs, sometimes returning home by dawn and sometimes not at all, especially if she found a likely looking man with whom she could enjoy a few hours of passion. On such occasions she would return in the late afternoon, or even two or three days later.

But she couldn’t stay at home for any length of time; she couldn’t stay away from alcohol; and she couldn’t stay away from other men. She was forever disappearing from the family home, only to return, days or even weeks later, exhausted after a riotous time in Pattaya or Bangkok with friends, and other men.

In spite of everything, since they had been together, she had enjoyed a few good times with Toby – especially when he had taken her on two luxury cruises out of Singapore. She had also enjoyed the holiday they had spent in the UK, when she had met Toby’s family and he had taken her to see all the sights: from London, to the Lake District to the Scottish highlands. But these occasions were becoming rarer and rarer.

She knew she was in the wrong; she knew that she was hurting Toby so much, but she just couldn’t stop herself. Maybe she had been through too many emotional traumas in her life and had too many mental scars inflicted on her to settle down to a ‘normal’ life of domesticity. There was little doubt that she had developed into a fully-fledged alcoholic and that this was at the very core of her unquenchable urge to ‘behave badly’.

Every time Ying disappeared, sometimes just for one night and sometimes for many days, she always returned home in trepidation, for she knew what would await her. There would be the inevitable rows – terrible rows – as by now, Toby could simply not accept his wife’s behaviour. He had come very close to catching her with other men on several occasions and had enough circumstantial evidence  -  text messages containing declarations of love and bills for phone calls to strange men in even stranger foreign countries – to fill a book.

But as long as Ying continued to deny everything and fight fire with fire – accusing Toby of his own drunken nights out and his own infidelities – some of which was undoubtedly true, then an uneasy, unhappy peace would eventually return to the household.

Deep down, she knew that her marriage was in bad shape and that sooner or later it would fall apart. She still did not love Toby, but she felt a huge empathy for him and worried about him and his failing health. She truly wanted him to stay with her until he grew old and she always hoped that once she had finished ‘sowing her wild oats’ that she would eventually settle down and take care of him in his old age. But right now she wanted to enjoy her life and have her drunken nights out and enjoy her occasional sex sessions with her coterie of younger men. She had tried hard, but couldn’t change the way she behaved. Sometimes she would stay home for weeks, even a month or so and play the role of loving wife, but then a friend would call her or come to visit and her resolve was gone and she was off.

Then, after yet another major traumatic fight, she persuaded Toby to invest in a small hair dressing salon in Pattaya. She reasoned that if she had her own business, she would change and become a hard working hair dresser and housewife and those bad old days would be gone forever. But the shop Toby agreed to rent and fit out for her was in the heart of the bar district, in Central Pattaya, and once she had opened up for business, her presences at the family home became scarcer than ever. She would stay at work until late in the evening after which, she would either go out to drink and dance with some of her staff or even with male customers that she had met during the day and had taken a fancy to.

After a year, she gave up the business, but that had little effect on her absences from the marital home. She had enrolled in a hairdressing school in Pattaya, and attended the school on most days and when she wasn’t at school, she was off to ‘hair shows’ and ‘hair competitions’ in Bangkok and elsewhere. At least, that was what she told Toby. Some of what she told him was true, but just as often she invented fictitious hair school events to cover her latest escapade with friends – both male and female. Indeed, at this time she was having quite a fling with the male owner of the hairdressing school, so being a student there was a perfect cover.

On top of all this, although she had never renewed her friendship with Gung since her wedding night, she had re-established contact with the other two friends, Gay and Lek, who by this time were working in an upmarket club in Bangkok that catered to rich young Japanese businessman. Lek was making good money from this work and occasionally she would bring a couple of customers to Pattaya where they would hook up with Ying and the four would enjoy a few days of drunken debauchery. Even Ying shuddered when she recalled one particular occasion, when she had told Toby she was popping into Pattaya to do a bit of shopping one afternoon and didn’t return home for a week. As planned, she had met up with Lek and her two Japanese customers and she had driven them all back to Bangkok to enjoy the special delights of the capital city.

This had been one of several occasions when Toby had actually packed a bag and left home. He had called her when she was in her car with the Japanese and he had detected a man’s voice in the background. He had known she was up to no good, but as ever, she denied it all, screaming at him for daring to doubt her and the whole thing had blown over – yet again.

Then there was the time when she met up with a young, very good-looking German who she had first met in Pattaya, the previous year. He had returned to Bangkok on holiday and she rushed to Bangkok to renew their ‘friendship’. Somehow, Toby had got wind of it, although as far as Ying was aware, he had no real proof, but somehow, he seemed to know everything that was going on. Maybe he had hired a Private detective. She didn’t know how, but she realised that he had discovered what she had been up to and as a result he had left her, yet again. Although he hadn’t taken many clothes with him, Ying was starting to think that he would never come back, as he was gone, in all, for nearly three months.

In the end, she had enticed him back by agreeing to meet him at his lawyer’s office to discuss the terms of a divorce. She had dressed in her most alluring, sexy outfit, smiled her winning smile at him, and when Toby’s lawyer asked him if he was prepared to consider one final try at reconciliation, Toby, as expected, caved in and agreed to return to the marital home.

What Toby didn’t know was that his lawyer had secretly been in touch with Ying and the two of them had agreed that they would encourage Toby to give up the idea of a divorce. But on top of this, they had also hit it off on a personal level, and Toby’s young, good-looking, Thai-American lawyer had become Ying’s latest lover.

‘Yes. Poor Toby – poor stupid fool’. She thought. He may have realised that something was up, but he had no idea of the full extent of it. But none of the countless men who she had slept with over the years had meant anything her. After Udom and Don she had never let herself become emotionally involved with any man again, but that certainly hadn’t stopped her ‘playing around’.

The only permanent man in her life was Toby and she really didn’t want to lose him. He had been good to her and he had always forgiven her – however bad she had been – and oh boy – had she been bad! Not only all her disappearances and all those men – but also all the harm she had done to him. There had been so many fights and on occasion, she had inflicted serious injuries on him, which had even required hospital treatment. She also shuddered to think of the times she had trashed so many of his possessions: his phone, his camera, his car, his personal papers – even his passport – and much more besides.

‘Was she bad?’ She asked herself. ‘Would she pay for her treatment of Toby in her next life? Would her karma catch up with her?’ She didn’t know, she couldn’t say.

But in recent months, they seemed to have found a truce in their perpetual wars. Whenever one of them got drunk, which in the past would have provoked a major incident; they had both tried hard to control themselves and avoid big rows. By and large, they had succeeded, and even when Ying had recently disappeared without warning, Toby had remained silent when she returned home a week later. She had thought that at long last he had finally given up and would let her come and go as she pleased, without any repercussions.

But she was wrong. She had mistaken his silence for acceptance, but now she realised that on the contrary, he had been simply awaiting his chance to leave her. He had moved out, and this time she felt in her bones that he had no plans to return – ever – just like Ying herself had done all those years ago when she had run away from Udom, in Surat Thani.

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PART TWO – CHAPTER VIII

‘Hello, Khun Ying?’

‘Yes. Who is that?’

‘This is Pattaya Police station, I am Lieutenant Somkid. We would like you to come here immediately.’

‘Why? Why? What is it? What have I done?’

‘You have done nothing – it’s your husband. We want you to come here. We would like to talk to you about your husband. He is in a lot of trouble.’

‘My husband! Not Again! He doesn’t live with me anymore. He left me ages ago! I can’t come – I’m not free!’

‘Khun Ying, if you don’t come here and help your husband, he will be in very serious trouble. He will go to jail.’

‘I don’t care! I don‘t care! Fuck my fucking husband! I don’t care what happens to him. I told him! I warned him! I told him last time that I wouldn’t help him anymore. I don’t care what happens to him!’

‘Khun Ying, if you don’t come here immediately and help him, your husband might even die.’

‘I don’t fucking care!’ Let him fucking die!’

She cut off the call, turned off her phone, and closed her eyes, praying that sleep would come back again and blot out the images in her mind.

‘Fuck Toby. Fuck him…fuck him… fuck him…’

Despite the air-conditioning, she suddenly broke out in a sweat. ‘Oh No, not again!’ she said out aloud. ‘Please not again…’

In spite of her antipathy, she suddenly worried about what horrors may befall her errant husband… her fucking husband. ‘Surely that fucking cop didn’t mean it literally? Why should Toby die?’

But she continued to fret. ‘Die ? No, surely not’… she had already seen too many deaths in her life to contemplate yet another one.

*

END OF PART TWO

Fare thee well, my beloved Bimmer…

I’m sad to report that it’s farewell at long last to my beloved ‘Bimmer.’ I had it collected last week and driven to Bangkok, where, hopefully it will be sold within the next couple of weeks.

In preparation for its departure I had a local car wash company clean and polish the dear thing and when I went to collect it, it might have been my imagination but it look better than it had when I first bought it three some 3 ½ years ago. The jet black body was gleaming in the late afternoon sunshine like the black obelisk in ‘2001, a Space Odyssey’.

I confess I almost changed my mind yet again and decided to keep it after all, but common sense prevailed and it has now gone forever, hopefully to a beamer lover who will love it like I did, and look after it even better than I did.

I know it was the right decision. The slow slung body is simply not suitable for many of the roads in Pattaya, let alone up-country and every time I went out I was taking a chance that I wouldn’t encounter some hidden pot hole that would destroy one of my recently purchased new rims. And as for journeying around Thailand – well the trip to Hua Hin wasn’t too bad, but when I drove to the North East recently, I put an additional, unnecessary  strain on this old head of mine by having to be continually on the lookout and slowing down for bad stretches of  road, which have proliferated since the recent floods.

And although I still enjoy the occasional rush of blood to the head and accelerate past everything in sight, such occasions are becoming few and far between. These days, I am pretty much content to crawl along with the rest of the traffic, rarely overtaking on two lane roads except when the line in front is extremely slow and it is very safe to do so.

I have put a deposit on a 4 door (double cab) Triton pick-up and all being well I will pick it up next month. I have opted for the Triton, as not only does it look pretty cool, with its slightly curved body design but also boasts a new, state of the art, 2.5 litre diesel engine that apparently has loads of oomph! It has the same engine as the Pajero, and according to a guy who has driven a 320D Bimmer and the Triton, it goes pretty much as fast! Whether it does or not is debatable, but I am sure that when touring up country I will be able to drive as fast as I did in my beamer – probably faster as I won’t need to slow down so often on the bad roads.

The Triton sells for 300-400k Baht less than the Pajero, and these days I have no need for a 10 seat vehicle. The double cab, which will comfortably seat 5 adults, is more than sufficient for my purposes and it is fitted with most of the mod cons that come with the Pajero. The ride will be a be a bit harder, but to be honest, the Beamer ride is not that great on most Thai roads, so I doubt I will notice much difference.

Once delivered, I plan to do a bit of personalising – including putting a nifty ‘cover’ on the back, that will open at the press of a button on the dash board, and I may change out the sound system, depending on the quality of the factory installed stereo. I’m also thinking about putting in leather seats, but need to check out the cost.

So all in all, although I am sad to lose my faithful Beamer which, let’s face it, has been in so many adventures with me, I am looking forward to a new, totally different driving experience. Added to which I will have a new warranty on a new vehicle as opposed to one that is rapidly expiring and will soon expose me to potentially high maintenance costs. Fingers crossed that I find a buyer for the Beamer. Anyone interested?

P.S. In case you were wondering, the slang term ‘Bimmer’ is the correct slang to use for a BMW car. Apparently, the use of the term ‘Beamer’ or ‘Beemer’ for a BMW car is an ‘abomination’. These two words should be solely used for BMW motorcycles.

If you don’t believe me, Google it…

Whither Thai politics?

I rarely comment on Thai politics, and since starting this blog back in July 2009, I don’t believe I have actually stated whether I am pro or anti Thaksin – whether I support the Red or Yellow shirts.

For a long time I admit that I jumped on the anti Thaksin bandwagon, and even now, I still believe he has been the most divisive and disruptive force in Thai politics for decades. But if we put the issue of Thaksin and his role to one side for a moment, it is a moot point  as to whether the leaders and policies of the ‘Red Shirts and the Pheu Thai Party  are any worse,  more dishonest and  more corrupt than the leaders and policies of ‘Yellow Shirts’ and  the Democrat Party.

I read a fascinating article in the local English language press a couple of weeks ago, which I would like to share with you.

Hopefully this wasn’t staged for television

You might say it was just a TV talk show and you couldn’t take it too seriously. But what Jatuporn Promphan and Suriyasai Takasila revealed about their personal ties was, well, quite revealing.

The handshakes between Jatuporn, the red-shirt leader, and Suriyasai, the yellow-shirt core coordinator, might have been forced by anchorman Woody for a sort of photo-op action shot. But if you listened closely, you might be have been able to reach some conclusions that no academic in-depth analysis could have offered you.

They were both smiling broadly throughout Woody’s morning show on January 5 on Channel 9. They even exchanged nice, warm words with each other.

Jatuporn says he knows almost every core member of the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) except its leader Sondhi Limthongkul. The reason is simple. When they were activists, they were working together as part of the student movement to oppose military dictatorship.

Jatuporn was at Ramkhamkaeng University. Suriyasai was attached to Kasetsart University. They belonged to the same group of student leaders in the heyday of young activism.

Suriyasai says one day at the height of the confrontation between the yellow and red shirts, he walked into a hotel coffeeshop and stumbled upon a group of red-shirt leaders enjoying a break. Veera Muksikapong was there. Jatuporn was also there.

“I greeted “elder brothers” Veera and Tu, (Jatuporn’s nickname), and we sat down for a friendly chat. I am sure that those who walked past us would have been very surprised at how we could sit down together,” Suriyasai recalled on the show.

In other words, both former student activists and now political provocateurs par excellence were telling the rest of the country that they had shared the same ideology as young students and that they were in fact fighting for the same cause that, for lack of a more appropriate term, is called “democracy”.

They both agreed that whatever their differences over political issues, they would avoid pitting, at all cost, their respective “mobs” against one another.

Why then did they part ways and become such arch-rivals?

Suriyasai said at one point that his message to the Yingluck government (“I hope Jatuporn will become a minister soon”) was that if it continued to concentrate on helping Thaksin Shinawatra, then it wouldn’t last. The premier would have to make sure that it fulfills its election promises.”

Jatuporn responded by insisting that the government is devoted to living up to its election pledges by promoting democracy, creating equality and economic welfare. Then, he added: “As far as Thaksin is concerned, whatever the government does won’t give him any treatment that isn’t enjoyed by the rest of the country’s 64 million Thais.”

It suddenly dawned on me that the two former student activists who had once fought alongside each other were in agreement on every major issue of the day.

Thaksin was the only reason that put them in two different camps, which have ravaged the country’s calm and peaceful political transition from military dictatorship to popular democracy.

Some yellow shirts reacted negatively to Surayasai for cosying up to Jatuporn, whom they consider their arch-enemy who cannot be forgiven.

Not surprisingly, some hardcore yellow shirts accused the former PAD coordinator of having “sold out”. Jatuporn said some red-shirts had criticised him for shaking hands with Suriyasai as well, but “I got less of it than he,” he said.

But logic and good sense, of course, should inform them that they owe it to the country to bury the hatchet by removing the source of the damaging conflict and renewing their youthful idealism and clear thinking to embark on a road together again to draw up a plan that will put the country back on a “normal” track again.

That is the least the former student activists, riding the crest of whipped-up public sentiments to shoot to national fame and attention, can do to return to their original purpose of activism of the student days: let no self-interest and political patronage cloud your determination to fight for democracy.

Hopefully, it’s still not too late.

Suthichai Yoon

The Nation

There is not a single country in the entire world where there are not many politicians who seek office simply to enrich themselves and make a grab for power to serve their own ends. Unfortunately, it goes with the territory. Thankfully, in most western countries – but by no means all – the ‘wrong-uns’ are usually in a minority and the democratic systems tend to weed out most of the bad apples over time.

What I believe is fair to say about Thai politics, is that the ’wrong-uns’ are by far and away in the majority, and all major parties are jam packed with powerful figures  who are using politics to enrich themselves and to exercise power for their own ends. This is a fact of life, and most educated Thais understand this very well.

So whether we are looking at Thaksin or Chalerm, or Suthep or Banharn Silpa-archa, or Chavalit, or whoever, we are looking at deeply corrupt politicians with an enormous amount of power and everyone, except maybe some of the badly educated working class, has known it for decades.

Even the working classes understand much of this, but the ‘patronage system’ in Thailand is alive and well and they will vote for the politician who they believe will look after them and their families better than anyone else, regardless of whether they are corrupt or not. Everyone and everything is corrupt! What’s new?

I happen to believe that Abhisit was not corrupt in the traditional sense and probably neither is Yingluck. It seems to me, that quite apart from the fact that they have no real financial need to be corrupt, they have also shown by their actions and personalities that they simply do not fit into that familiar ‘corrupt mould’.

If I am correct, it is quite ironic that in a country which is riddled with corruption, they have elected two consecutive leaders who are pretty clean.

But there are degrees of ‘being clean’ and there is no doubt that Abhisit, during his period in office, had to do to all manner of ‘deals with the Devil’ to stay in power, and it is even more obvious that poor Miss Yingluck is obliged to compromise her principles at the behest of her mighty elder brother.

But maybe it is a start – a move in the right direction – to have relatively clean leaders who  are admittedly required to dirty their hands to remain in office, but who knows, maybe over time, they can also start to wash some of the dirt of the hands of those around them.

One thing is for sure – it has never been more difficult for politicians to engage in overt corrupt practices. Once upon a time, it was pretty much an open secret that they were busy lining their own pockets, but these days, there are too many opponents who are wise to potential corruption and ready to expose and jump on perpetrators at the first signs that something may be going on.

As far as us ‘holier than though’ westerners are concerned, we only have to go back to Victorian times in the UK to find the existence of ‘rotten boroughs’ and many politicians effectively buying their seats in parliament; or look at the endemic corruption in American politics that grew up, largely as a result of Prohibition; so rather than deplore and overly criticise the corruption in Thai politics, maybe we should be thankful that at least there is a relatively stable democracy, however imperfect, and maybe, just maybe, over time it will slowly get better.

That day might come a bit sooner if a certain ex Montenegrin would just put the interests of his country first for a change and call time on his fanatical crusade to regain power.

BUTT…BUTT…BUTT…I Don’t give a hoot…

Mobi-Babble

I’m five days late on my ‘sobriety report’ but better late than never and I’m now pleased to tell you that my period of continuous sobriety now stands at 1 year and 1 month. I think that the longer I remain sober, the stronger I feel about remaining so.

The rainy season seems to have started unseasonably early around the lake and we have been having some horrendous, daily thunderstorms – both locally and in Pattaya – almost every day for the past week.

The dogs hate the thunder, but I love the rain as it waters all trees, flowers and grass and keeps the ambient temperature down to more tolerable levels. I guess it is the ‘storm before the calm’ as we slowly edge towards the hot, dry season in April when everyone will retreat into their air-conditioned rooms to get away from the 40+ degree centigrade afternoon highs.

‘A licence to Kill with impunity’

I guess there’s no particular reason why I should single out the blatant self-seeking hypocrisy on the part of Russia and China with regards to the latest showdown at the United Nations over Syria, as this kind of action is no better than we have come to expect from all nations –both east and west, when they feel their personal interests are in some way being in some compromised.

Yet somehow it sticks in the gullet more than most. Here we have the Arab League no less, unanimous in deploring the daily slaughter that is being perpetrated by the vicious Assad regime and we are told by the UN agencies have that ‘crimes against humanity’ are being committed on a daily basis; but because Russia and China hold strong trading relationships and positions of influence with the Syrian government, they have used their veto and refused to join the condemnation.

Let’s face it, even if the UN security council resolution had been passed, it would have had little or no effect on the crimes being committed in Syria – the imprisonment, torture and massacre of civilians, including women and children – but at least it would have laid down a marker. It would have sent a strong message to the Syrian authorities that they were on their own and that the UN strongly deplored what they were about

But instead of this, Russia and China used their veto on what was a fairly ‘toothless’ resolution, and even tried every diplomatic trick in the book to try and derail the tabling of the resolution, putting their own interests first and refusing to acknowledge that the events in Syria were tantamount to wholesale slaughter; all this because they want to maintain an inside edge in any future dealings with Syria and Assad.

And what have really achieved by this cowardly, self-serving act?  Many are saying they have handed the Assad regime ‘A licence to Kill with impunity’

Now I’m not suggesting for one moment that the USA, UK, and the other western nations are bastions of virtue and haven’t ‘dirtied’ their own diplomatic hands when the occasion has demanded it, but this blatant demonstration of self-interest by the Russians and Chinese in the face of the daily deaths of innocent civilians has got to be a new low, in the world of diplomatic machinations.

Consider this: Even Brazil and Pakistan, who are currently members of the UN Security Council, supported the resolution….

Trouble is a brewing in The Falklands

…and we all know why; for the very same reason as that which seems to dominate so much of the diplomatic tensions throughout the world : OIL.

It’s a bit like having yet another elephant in the room, this time, a large, very black one. Our little skirmish with Argentina, which was settled 30 years ago has suddenly been stirred up again, as soon as the oil companies started oil exploration in the territorial waters around the Falkland Islands.

Argentina, being a nation that has lurched from economic crisis to economic crisis has latched onto the current South American, Chavez–led hostility to the old colonial powers, and have seized their opportunity to raise these Anglo/Argentinian enmities yet again.

A good part of me says: why doesn’t the UK just sit down with the Argentines and come to some kind of compromise settlement, whereby Argentina receives an agreed percentage of the oil revenues and everyone goes home happy. All this constant conflict, with its associated stirring up of old enmities and hatred – to say nothing of the costs of sending expensive aircraft carriers to the other side of the world to defend our territories, would be a thing of the past.

It just seems tome to be somewhat ridiculous for so-called civilised nations in the 21^st century to still be fighting over the sovereignty of small parcels of land.

Of course, ‘pigs might fly’.

The Falklands conflict brings to mind the age-old argument about when is a conquering power entitled to lay legitimate claim to a territory? How many years must go by before a ‘de facto’ occupation becomes legal in the eyes of the world?

Maybe the South and North American nations should hand back sovereignty of their nations to the indigenous Indians. Ditto, the Australians to the aborigines, or the New Zealanders to the Maoris, and so on. I mean, none of this ‘new world’ colonialism happened that long ago, in terms of world history.

Then, of course we have the Middle East conflict where the Palestinians rightly claim that the Israelis occupied their home land and threw them out. But then the Israelis can point to much further back in history when they – the Jews  - had previously occupied the area that is present day Israel, for thousands of years.

Who has the better claim?  I think you will find that in general terms it will always be the ‘de facto’ occupier who has legality on his side, provided they have been there for at least a few generations. This is especially so when the local population, who have also lived in a particular territory for many generations, express a desire to belong to the ‘occupying’ nation rather than another, as is the case with Gibraltar, The Channel Islands and the Falklands.

The fact remains that although there are conflicting claims as to which nation first discovered the Falklands, the British first ‘occupied’ the then empty Falkland Islands territory in the seventeenth Century, laid claim to it soon after, and have have had a presence there and governed it continuously since 1833.

Argentina did not even exist as sovereign state during the period that The UK first occupied and populated these islands. Also note that there never did exist an indigenous population on the Falklands. When Britain ‘discovered’ it, it was devoid of all human habitation. Most of today’s Falkland Islands citizenry claim British ancestors, in much the same way as, for example, most Australian citizens do in Australia – but with one notable difference – there was, and still is an indigenous Australian population. (I’m not having a ‘go’ at  the Aussies, just pointing out how ridiculous the whole Argentine claim on the Falklands is…)

Today, The Falklands are a self-governing British Overseas Territory, with the United Kingdom responsible for defence and foreign affairs and the Falkland islanders have reaffirmed over and over again that this is the way they wish to remain.

Consider this: the Falkland Islands are some 250 miles off the South American coast. The British Channel Islands are a mere 14 miles of the coast of France.  Yet you don’t hear the French continually bleating about us handing back ‘their islands’ – and this from a country that detests the English probably more than any other nation, having been at war with us for a majority of the past thousand years, (See last week’s blog).

Why? Because the population of the Channel Islands prefer to be governed by Britain – it’s as simple as that, and the last thing the French want, is to govern a territory where the local population are hostile to the French and their culture and prefer to live a British way of life.

Mind you, as far as I am aware –there is no suggestion of any oil deposits existing in or around the Channel Islands, so there is no question of  ‘black gold’ rearing its ugly head to further harm Anglo/French relations; for if there was, who knows what the Frogs may be saying….

A Miscellany of Reviews.

For my sins, I have had to re-learn a lesson that I should have remembered from a long time ago: that if a movie doesn’t appear to be your ‘cup of tea’, and if it hasn’t had good reviews, then don’t ever dream that you will enjoy watching it.

So, completely forgetting this rule, I watched two films recently that were so bad that I wish I had done something completely different with my valuable time. To be fair to me, the first one did seem to have one or two good reviews – including one by The Daily telegraph, (who is usually quite reliable),even though it wasn’t my kind of movie.

It was the ‘The Inbetweeners’ the British, teenage ‘coming of age’ comedy which had started life as a hit BBC sitcom and had been transformed into one of the most successful box office British movies of 2011. I read the positive reviews, but still had no particular desire to see it until a good friend of mine told me he had seen it and it was hilarious.

Not being one to reject any genre out of hand, I decided to see what all the fuss was about. As it commenced, I was fully prepared to be entertained and amused by the silly antics of a bunch of testosterone-filled teenage boys on their first trip abroad. Indeed I confess that for the first five minutes, I really thought that this might indeed be the exception that proved the rule.

But unfortunately, an early scene when one of the spotty kids masturbated naked in front of a live sex web cam and was interrupted i9n mid -shoot by his mother and sister with the news that his Granddad had just died, turned out to be the high point of the film.

After that, it was downhill all the way, with barely another mirth–provoking antic throughout the remainder of the dire film to redeem it from being a banal, badly acted, badly-scripted, decidedly unfunny garbage. But maybe I am just a grumpy old sod…

The next film was ‘Hangover 2′, an American offering, which cost probably 100 times more than the ‘In Betweeners’ to make and also did amazingly well at the box office. At least with this movie, I could have no excuse for watching it, as every single review panned it mercilessly; and well should they have done.

For my sins, last year I also watched Hangover 1, which although fairly banal,  did contain some good, original humour and was well acted by the main protagonists. As those who have read about Hangover 2 or have had the misfortune to watch it will know, the sequel simply uses all the gags from the first movie and transplants them to some kind of crazy, make-believe Asian state, occasionally referred to as Thailand, (although the local people are referred to as ‘Asiatics’ not Thai), but which bears no resemblance to any country that I have ever had the misfortune to live in.

Not that this would matter if the film was entertaining; but it isn’t. It is total, unadulterated crap without a single redeeming feature. It is worse – much worse – than the ‘In Betweeners’ and trust me, that’s saying something.

Next time, I will remember my rules and trust my instincts.

Contrast these two pieces of  rubbish, which both made millions for their studios, with some of the excellent – nay, superlative fare  – that can be seen on television these days, and I sometimes wonder why I bother with feature movies at all.

Some time ago I wrote a critical piece about Australian TV dramas, and received a fair amount of flak from my Aussie readers for so doing. Well rightly or wrongly, I stuck to my guns over this view, but I am delighted to report that the Aussies have totally redeemed themselves by making a programme which I can honestly say is one of the finest pieces of TV Drama I have ever seen.

I am referring to ‘The Slap’, an 8 part Aussie mini-series based on the book of the same name.

The series was recently broadcast on Channel four in the UK and is deservedly up for multiple awards. If you haven’t seen it yet and you like your drama to be gritty, thought provoking, edgy and sometimes so realistic it is painful to watch, then go no further than ‘The Slap’.

It follows the lives of several characters who attend an otherwise innocuous 40th birthday party, when one of the guests controversially slaps a four-year old who is misbehaving. The resulting court proceedings blow apart lifelong friendships and family relationships and the ensuing story covers virtually the whole gamut of present day social controversies, including rape, infidelity, substance abuse, domestic violence, alcoholism, breast-feeding, cultural ethnicity, interracial marriage and so on.

I am sure my Aussie readers would be familiar with some, if not all, of the actors in this piece, but they were all new to me, and I have to say that the entire ensemble cast – including the kids – acted their socks off, without exception.

I will be picky and offer one criticism. I hated the intermittent comments made by a hidden, unknown, ghostly (ghastly!)narrator. The lines narrated were undoubtedly taken from the novel, where ‘omniscient narration’ can be an acceptable literary device; but in a piece of TV visual drama, it is simply a lazy, very old fashioned cop-out. Everything told to us by this ‘mystery’ narrator, could just have easily been included in the script and acted out by the players.

But I am being picky – good on yer Oz – I take my hat off to you, for a brilliant piece of relevant 21^st century drama.

By way of total contrast, I also commend the wonderful HBO series, ‘Treme’, to my readers. I have previous written about Series One, and I can now happily report that Series Two is even better.

Treme is a totally different viewing experience to a drama like ‘The Slap’, although it can be every bit as thought provoking and on occasion it can also work on your deepest emotions. But Treme, first and foremost, is a story of modern day New Orleans, its unbelievable music and the magical characters who inhabit it.

If you love music – from Cajun to blues to bluegrass to ‘bounce’ to every kind of imaginable jazz and God knows what else, then just relax and luxuriate in one of the greatest TV series ever made. It is quite unlike any other drama series you will ever watch, as more often than not, the myriad plots and lives of the inhabitants seem to go nowhere – but it just doesn’t seem to matter.

Because that is the true nature of life, especially in places like New Orleans, where most of the folk are dirt poor, where the crime rate is going through the roof and despite all the earlier promises of aid made to them following the devastation of their city by Hurricane Katrina, they have effectively been deserted by the Federal government,  .

At its core, Treme is about its music and the people who love it and make it – and music is at the heart of this incredible show.

If music is in your soul, then watch ‘Treme’ if you can.

BUTT…BUTT…BUTT…BUTT… I don’t give a hoot…

Here is the next completed chapter of my novel.

I am hoping that Part Two will be completed next week as it only has one more chapter to go.

My usual ‘Sunday Blog’ will be published, as usual, tomorrow.

A Lustful Gentleman

PART TWO – CHAPTER VI

Ying jumped up with a start as the ‘Sky-train’ screeched to a halt at Prompong Station and she barely made it out of the carriage before the doors snapped closed behind her. She desperately tried to gather her confused thoughts together as she slowly descended the long staircase down to the busy eight lane highway beneath. Reaching ground level, she walked the short distance along the noisy, smoke-polluted Sukhumvit Road to ‘Soi 33’ – the infamous side road that contained literally dozens of western oriented bars – one of the many red light districts in the heart of Bangkok.

As she reached the little side road where her new place of employment was situated, she wondered yet again what on earth she was going to do for money if today, as she fully expected, she ended up being shown the door after only one day of work. The previous day, her very first experience of working as a ‘hostess’ in a ‘farang’ bar, had been a disaster.

She had decided to take the job as a ‘hostess’ in this particular bar, just off the main ‘Soi 33’drag, in a large establishment called the ‘The Second Office’, as she thought it looked a bit classier than most. The décor was state of the art; the very large, well-furnished bar had multiple TV screens showing a variety of live sports events and the girls looked prettier and dressed much better – in their long slinky cocktail dresses – than in the other bars she had visited. Most of all, she noticed that the farang customers were mainly young, reasonably good looking, well dressed and – she surmised – had plenty of money; unlike many of the overweight, badly dressed, sweaty farangs she had seen in other nearby bars

But her first day at work had been pretty demoralising. She had been shocked at the number of girls who worked at the ‘Second Office’ and wondered how on earth they could all make a living. She had started work at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, along with maybe two dozen other ladies, where she was required to cram herself behind the large, circular bar with all the other hostesses and display her ‘wares’ in the hope that a customer would look favourably upon her and invite her outside to join him for a drink. She had felt degraded but realised that she would have to go along with the system if she wanted to continue working there.

Ying had been filled with increasing dismay as most of the prettier girls soon disappeared to the other side of the bar to sit with clients who obviously knew them. She watched them as they chatted away in English and ‘downed’ their ‘lady’s drinks’. She was dreading the moment when a customer might choose her to go and drink with him and then probably complain to her boss because she couldn’t speak any English. Her only alternative was to try and remain hidden behind the other girls, but if she did that, she wouldn’t earn any ‘drinks’ money or tips. She had manoeuvred herself into a perplexing state of confusion.

In the event, she had remained behind the bar almost until closing time when, at around midnight, a very drunk, very fat American had staggered in. By then, only had a handful of girls had remained, Ying being one of them. The drunk took one look at her and beckoned her to come and join him on a bar stool. She was terrified but did she was asked. The man had ordered her a drink and immediately made an ungainly grab for her breasts.

She instinctively pushed him away, whereupon he had called out to the ‘mama-San’ – Ying’s boss – who was sitting nearby. Ying feared the worst when the drunken man spoke to the mama-San in English, pointing towards Ying. She guessed that that he had complained about her, but it transpired that he wasn’t complaining; he was telling the mama-San that he wanted to take her home with him! When her boss translated this for her, she was horrified and backed away. Never in a million years would she would go with this drunken, ugly, smelly, fat farang, she had told her boss.

Fortunately for Ying, the ‘Second Office’ did not force the girls to go with the customers if they didn’t want to, although much pressure was often brought to bear if a regular customer wanted to bed a particular lady. Unfortunately for Ying, it transpired that the drunken American was indeed a ‘regular’, and the Mama-San was none too pleased with her ‘point-blank’ refusal to go with the man.

In the event, the drunk had paid his bill and left in disgust, but Ying was left in no doubt that her behaviour had not meet the approval of her boss. She was warned that her tenure at her new place of employment may prove to be woefully short-lived if she didn’t ‘play the game’ next time one of their ‘high rollers’ wanted her to go home with them.

And now, here she was, clocking in for her second day, fearful that this time around she would be shown the door if she refused any demands  by some ugly farang to go home with him. After changing into her figure hugging, low cut hostess-dress and putting the finishing touches to her make-up, she quickly joined the other girls behind the bar to and prayed with all her might that a handsome, young, rich farang would come into the bar and whisk her away into the night and a good time. She nestled herself between two larger ladies, with the vague plan that she would try to remain at least partly hidden until she saw someone who might fit her particular requirements..

She stood in the line, ignoring the gossip of the girls around her, and wondered how they could bare to work like this; week in and week out. She was already bored out of her mind and she had only been working there for two days. What a life, standing behind a bar for hours on end, waiting for some drunken, lecherous farang to pick you out, take you home with him and abuse you. She thought back to happier times, when she had worked with Gay at the Galaxy Club. It was much nicer working there, but she knew she could not solve her money problems at a Thai style night club; her last hope was to find a few rich farangs; how had it all come to this?

She had experienced so many ups and downs in her short life; her father was shot dead in front of her, then her family was kicked out of their home and they were forced to trek all that way to her granddad’s village; then her granddad died; then the happier years when she worked as a house maid in Bangkok, followed by yet more bad years with Udom in Surat Thani ; then her dear little Mac was born; their terrifying escape from Surat Thani; her happy, fun time at the Galaxy night club; and then Don…oh Don…oh Don…

***

She didn’t know how long she had crouched there, hugging her dead boyfriend’s body before she finally realised that she must do something. But what? What could she do? She was in turmoil and she couldn’t think straight.  Should she call the police? If she did, she feared there might be trouble. Don was a criminal – of that there was no doubt. ‘Maybe the apartment was full of stolen stuff; and what about the heroin? Where did he keep it?’ she frantically asked herself. ‘What happens if they find some hidden away somewhere? Maybe they will arrest me – maybe they will think that I am drug addict criminal as well’.  But she couldn’t just leave Don like this. ‘Oh dear, what a fucking nightmare!’

She went back into the living room and sat down and tried to compose herself, but within seconds she burst into tears again. Don was dead and it was all her fault. ‘If I hadn’t told him that I would leave him if he didn’t quit his drug habit, this would never have happened. Oh God, what have I done?’

Eventually, pure survival instinct came to the fore and a semblance of a plan slowly formed inside her spinning head. She remembered that her old friend, Paw, from the Galaxy night club, was a lawyer. Maybe he would know someone who could help her. After all, Gay had told her earlier that day that he was still in love with her, so surely he would do something. She realised that he might be her only hope of sorting out this mess so she frantically checked her mobile phone and breathed a sigh of relief when she found that she still had his number in the memory.

‘Paw – this is Ying. Do you remember me?’

‘Ying! Of course I do. How could I ever forget you? How are you, my dear?’

‘Paw, I’ve done something terrible. Don – you remember Don don’t you? Don is dead. I made him kill himself. Paw I need some help. Do you know any lawyer who can help me? I’m so afraid. I’m afraid to call the police, they might arrest me.’

‘Ying, where are you?’

‘I’m at my apartment.’

‘And where is Don?’

‘He’s here, with me.’

‘And what do you mean, you made him kill himself?’

‘I – I told him that I would leave him if he didn’t stop taking heroin, and when I came home tonight I found him dead – hanging by a rope, in the kitchen.’

‘Ying, does anyone else know about this?’

‘No.’

‘You’re all alone are you, with…Don?’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t do anything, don’t call anyone and don’t touch anything. Give me your address and I’ll be over straight away. Don’t worry Ying, my love; I will take care of everything.’

*

He had been as good as his word and had taken care of all the arrangements. He brought some people round to clean up the mess and remove all evidence of drugs and then he called a contact he had, a high ranking officer at Prakanong Police station, and had arranged for the body to be removed from the apartment. Ying had been in a complete daze – virtually on the point of a breakdown – and later could recall very little of what happened during the ensuing days as Paw took total control, and moved Ying and her belongings to his own house. He gave her a large bedroom to herself and arranged for his personal maid to look after her.

Ying slowly recovered from the shock of losing Don in such a dramatic fashion and she grew content to remain in Paw’s house and let him and his maid take care of her every need. This was the first time in her life that anyone had given her so much attention and she rather liked it. In many ways, Ying had now become Paw’s ‘minor wife’ and he behaved with her in almost every way as though she was really was his girlfriend: eating together at home , dining out and going to the cinema together, watching TV together, and much more besides. But there was one major exception; they never had any sexual relations.

Ying had steadfastly refused to let the liaison develop into a sexual relationship and Paw accepted it with equanimity. She knew very well that he was very enamoured of his young house guest and that maybe he harboured hopes that one day, he would be able to break down her resistance. But she also knew that Paw was a good, honourable man and that if he couldn’t enjoy her intimately then he would be content to steer her away from the ‘rocks’ that had so nearly smashed her young fragile life to smithereens. She understood that he was doing his best to bring some stability and meaning back into her life and she was very grateful to him.

After a few weeks, when Ying was still trying to get over the shock of what had occurred, she told Paw one evening that she would like to learn how to be a hairdresser, and asked him if he could help her find a suitable school. Her mentor was very agreeable to this idea as he felt it would take her mind off the recent tragedy and also provide her with a means to earn a decent living – away from the bars and nightclubs which would only lead her to yet further misery.

So Ying had attended hairdressing school and Paw paid the fees and gave her enough money on top of this to enable her to send some back to her family in Sa Kaeo. It was the start of a happy and stable period for Ying and during the two years she spent at the school, she forged some close friendships with like-minded young ladies.

Towards the end of her studentship, Ying had arrived home from school one evening to find that Paw had taken a strange lady to his bed. Her initial reaction was one of jealousy; how could he do such a thing to her? – but she quickly realised that she was being selfish. She had refused all his advances for the past two years, so who could blame him if he found someone who could make him happy in that way? But it was still a little disconcerting. If Paw found a new lady and fell in love with her, he might ask Ying to leave. What would she do then? She had no money of her own.

Over the next few weeks, nothing much changed, except that every now and then Ying would encounter a succession of strange women in the house who would quietly disappear the next morning. But then there was one lady in particular who had become a ‘regular’ and things started to get a little strained. Paw’s new-found bed mate wasn’t exactly overjoyed to discover he had a long- term, single, very attractive house guest, and Ying wasn’t exactly delighted to bump into the same young lady in her home at every turn.

In the end, Paw had grasped the mettle and he gently suggested to Ying that now her schooling was coming to an end, she should find a small room for herself, move out and get a job as a hairdresser.

Ying hadn’t been totally averse to this proposal as she felt that her life was being quite restricted by having to live with her benevolent and fatherly benefactor. Now that she was more or less over her tragic affair with Don, she wanted to be ‘free’ and start to enjoy life.

Two of her closest friends from the school were graduating at the same time as Ying and they resolved to set up home together in a small but nicely furnished apartment in the Bangkok suburb of On Nut. Paw had met Ying’s friends and agreed that this would be the best plan for Ying as her two friends could keep an eye on her.  Now that he had found himself a new lady to to come and live with him permanently in his house, he agreed that Ying that she should go and live with her friends and that she had his blessing. ‘It is time, Ying,’ he told her with a kindly smile, ‘that you learned to stand on your own two feet again.’

Ying had accepted the situation with good grace and thanked the older man for all his kind and generous help over the past 2 years. Paw eased the  sorrow of the ‘break-up’ by giving Ying a very generous sum of money to tide her over until she found a job, and assured her that he would always be there for her if she ever needed help or advice in the future.

Deep down, Ying knew that Paw still loved her, but that he was wise enough to realise that she would never be able to return his love. She hoped that he was content to have helped her over the worst period of her life and see her on the road to something better. She was very lucky, for she knew that there weren’t too many young ladies who had a wise and loving friend to call upon, should they ever need one.

*

Ying had duly moved in with her two friends, Lek and Gung. They were also young and very pretty and all three of them settled down to a life of fun. By day, they scoured the local hair dressing salons, in search of gainful employment and by night, they loved to party. They would get ‘dressed to kill’, go out on the town, get drunk and dance the night away at the most popular pubs and clubs in the area. They were the epitome of ‘good time girls’.

They all had a seemingly ‘bottomless pot’ of money. Of her two flatmates, one had a ‘patron’ who was the general manager of a five-star hotel, and the other had a French boyfriend who came to visit her in Bangkok two or three times a year and when he wasn’t in Thailand  he would send her  money for her ‘living expenses’. As for Ying, she had sensibly sent some of Paw’s money to her family in Sa Kaeo and the remainder was used to live on while she looked for a job.

The three had a number of things in common. They had money, they were young and beautiful, they had great dress sense, and they loved to party and get drunk. By general acknowledgement, Ying was the pick of the bunch. Now in her mid-twenties, she had grown into a very beautiful young lady. Her figure had filled out and she had legs most women would die for. They were so tantalisingly slim, with just the right amount of flesh on her upper thighs and it didn’t matter whether she wore one of her fashionable, micro mini-skirts, or put on a pair of skin-tight jeans, she would never fail to turn the heads of hot-bloodied men; and this in a city that was already overflowing with gorgeous ladies.

But not only was she the prettiest and sexiest, she was also the most ebullient when the three of them went for a night out. She had developed into a real ‘party animal’ and always had Lek, Gung and all the folk that gravitated into her orbit during the course of an evening’s merriment, in paroxysms of mirth.

Yes, she was the life and soul of every party but she was also the one who always became the most inebriated. Lek and Gung seemed to instinctively know when they had enough and either curtailed their drinking or stopped completely, but once Ying started to get a little tipsy, her consumption of alcohol would increase rather than decrease. On a typical evening out, she would start off by daintily sipping on her drinks, but by the time midnight had arrived, she would be gulping down glasses of neat whisky, or ‘chug-a-lugging’ bottles of San Miguel with a single swallow.

On many occasions she had become so drunk that her friends had to half drag, half carry her home in the small hours where she would invariably collapse, fully clothed on the sofa and sleep the remainder of the night and the next morning away. Sometimes, Ying’s drunken behaviour had resulted in heated arguments and even fights at late night venues and on more than one occasion, the three of them had been thrown out and barred from future entry to the club where the Ying–instigated trouble had broken out.

After a while, and before her money had become totally exhausted, Ying had managed to find a job at a local hair dresser. Like everything else in her life, she had started work with great hope and enthusiasm. Her bubbly personality and good looks soon made her a popular favourite in the salon, but the hours were very long and the salary and tips derisory. So it didn’t take long for her to realise that she was not going to be able to support her lifestyle, plus her family in Sa Kaeo, on such meagre fare, but not knowing what else she could do, she soldiered on in the vain hope that something would come up – maybe another ‘Paw’ to save her once more.

But no handsome young men had appeared on white chargers and after six months of working hard by day and drinking and dancing the nights away, her savings were exhausted, and her mother was calling her every day to send some money home. On top of this, she had grown very disillusioned with her career as a hairdresser; it just wasn’t going anywhere.

Ying’s final act of desperation had been to pawn the items of jewellery that Paw had given her so that she could pay her share of the rent. When the jewellery money ran out, she didn’t know what else to do, and was getting close to despair, when Gung suggested that she should try getting a job as a hostess in one of the better ‘farang’ bars.

She told Ying about a collection up-market of bars that were located in a soi off Sukhumvit road, in the Prompong district of Bangkok. Gung knew the area quite well, as her ‘patron’ was the manager of a nearby hotel. She told Ying that a lot of very rich farangs lived and worked in the area and that many of them would go to the Prompong bars when they finished work for the day. She even knew of several girls who had been taken out of the bars and had become wives to these rich foreigners.

Ying spoke hardly any English and had thought it was unlikely that any bar would want to hire her, but when she trawled the Soi 33 bars in search of work a few days later, she had found that many bar managers were willing to employ her, even though her English was more or less non-existent.

*

It was around 9 p.m. when she noticed an older man walk to the bar and take a seat almost opposite to where she was standing. She studied him. He was no youngster – looked to be in his late forties, tall and quite slim with the beginnings of a pot belly. But he looked very clean and was dressed quite smartly, in well-fitting jeans and an expensive looking, long sleeved shirt, with gold cuff links. He wasn’t particularly good looking but neither was he ugly and he still had a reasonable head of hair – unlike so many of the farangs who frequented the bars. Why on earth they thought they looked like God’s gift to women with their revolting bald heads she could never imagine.

He ordered a drink from a passing waitress but when she had served him and then sat next to him, hoping to strike up a conversation, he completely ignored her. Ying assumed that he wasn’t interested in the girls and just wanted to drink alone. But once the waitress had moved away, the man looked around the bar and let his eyes settle on first one first pretty lady, then another, before moving onto yet another, sizing up every available girl as though he was choosing a side of beef. At length, he spotted Ying, still watching him from the other side of the bar and for some unaccountable reason the two smiled at each other.

Ying immediately looked away in embarrassment, but when, after a few moments she stole another glance, she saw that he was still staring at her and as soon as he caught her eyes, he beckoned with his finger for her to come out and join him.

‘Well,’ she thought to herself, ‘I could do worse,’ as she made her way to the bar stool next to him. She wasn’t normally shy – not after all her experiences at the Galaxy and then letting her hair down almost every night Bangkok’s discos and clubs – but this was to be her first encounter with a farang, who didn’t speak her language, and she felt a bit out of her comfort zone.

For his part, Toby could hardly believe what he saw. The apparently shy girl who had been standing behind the bar was an absolute stunner and even though it wasn’t his normal ‘modus operandi’ to call a girl over, (he would usually wait for them to approach him), he wasted no time in beckoning her to come out and sit next to him at the bar.

For her part, although Ying certainly hadn’t found her ‘dream farang’, she soon discovered that she had found a man who could speak passable Thai, which relieved her of the worry of how she was going to communicate, and he seemed to be very kind. He told her he was fifty three years old – older than she had thought – about the same age as Paw. She wasn’t sexually attracted to him, but he didn’t look too bad and he was certainly a huge improvement on the drunken, fat slob of the previous evening. She sat and nursed her drink, smiled back at him and realised with resignation that if she was to pay her bills and keep her family from starvation, then she was going to have to make some personal sacrifices.

They sat together at the bar for about two hours; Toby buying round upon round of drinks for Ying and himself, and as the evening drew on, he even bought the mama-San a couple of drinks. Once he felt sufficiently emboldened by alcohol, he tentatively raised the subject of whether his gorgeous companion would consent to go home with him, fully expecting outright rejection.

Ying realised that this time around, she had no choice but to accede to her customer’s request – after all, that was what she was there to do. But she was still terrified at the very idea of bedding this middle-aged farang, so she decided to play her final ‘ace’. She used the age-old fib that had been used by thousands of women before her when they had been asked to go with a man that they do not wish to have sex with. She told Toby that her menstrual period had just started, although quite what she hoped she would achieve from this untruth, even Ying probably couldn’t have adequately explained.

Maybe she had a ‘second sense’ as to what Toby’s reaction might be, for as soon as she had told him the reason she had to decline his request, he made it clear that her menstruation was not going to divert him from his purpose. He told her that he would still pay for her to go home with him and that she could just sleep with him – only sleep – no sex.

She was more than happy with this arrangement, as she knew she would earn good money from Toby without having to ‘sell’ her body. So the deal was done, and as they drove down Sukhumvit Road on the way to Toby’s apartment, Ying suddenly asked him stop his car at a nearby 7/11. She rushed in and reappeared a few moments later flourishing a plastic bag containing a packet of sanitary towels. She had decided to make her deceit as plausible as possible.

But the plain fact of the matter was that her first ever relationship with a farang had commenced on the premise of a lie….

Vive La Difference

The recent spats between Sarkozi and Cameron and the general timbre of anti- British invective emanating from the highest French government sources has given me cause to deliberate on the long standing acrimony between the Brits and our Gallic cousins across the Channel.

Every time the traditional Anglo/French animosity hits the headlines, we often  refer to the ‘Entente Cordiale’ with much ironic mirth; but I wonder how many people realise that the ‘Entente Cordiale’ was actually a series of treaties signed between Britain and France in 1904 which was intended to bring to an end almost a thousand years of almost non-stop conflict between the two nations.

Indeed, from the time that William The Conqueror invaded our shores back in 1066, There have been more than 40 major wars between the two nations, including the ‘Hundred Years War’ in the 14^th/15th centuries and  a long  series of never ending wars between the late 1600’s and the early 1800’s which is often referred to as the second ‘Hundred Years War’. There are literally dozens of other  wars of slightly shorter duration, such as the ‘Nine Years War’ in the 17^th century and the ‘Seven Years War’ in the eighteenth century, all of which paint a picture of two nations who have been perpetually at war for a thousand years or more.

Victories and defeats have ebbed and flowed between the two protagonists over the millennia, and I wouldn’t attempt to count up the ‘score’ of victories and defeats to try to determine which nation has emerged the winner most often.

What I can say is that the successful invasion of England by William was certainly a very notable victory by the French, (although purists will claim that it was actually the Normans who defeated England – not the ‘French’ as in those days, Normandy was a separate State), and that the victory and the assimilation of the Normans into English society, transformed England in many fundamental ways and it became a better and stronger country as a result.

A similar thing had happened some thousand years before the Norman invasion when the Romans also successfully invaded our shores, also playing a major role in shaping England for the better.

 I have to say, with my undoubtedly biased ‘English hat’ on, that ever since William the Conqueror, a majority of the significant victories have gone in England’s favour.  I don’t wish to turn this piece into a history lesson, but I will just mention England’s famous victory at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 against numerically superior French forces, The Anglo French Wars of 1755 -1763 which resulted in defeat for the French in Canada ,and their resultant loss of Quebec and Canada to the English and the French Revolutionary Wars in which the various pro English, anti-French coalitions ultimately triumphed over  Napoleon and had him removed him from office.

Finally, we have  France’s ultimate humiliation – the wars which the  modern day French have still not got out of their system and also the wars which still bear the scars of long lasting enmity towards the English – the final defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, which concluded the Napoleonic Wars of the early nineteenth century, and marked the end of an era of French supremacy in continental Europe.

Many might also argue that Napoleon’s defeat signalled the ultimate decline of France as a major power and certainly presaged the decline of the French language as having a major role in world affairs and the emergence of English as the dominant spoken tongue throughout the world.

The French are a proud race and have much to be proud about in their nation’s history and achievements and have given much to the world in terms of art, literature, science, and technology but, sadly, they can’t seem to get rid of that huge ‘chip on their shoulder’. To this day, many French – especially those in power – resent us, dislike us and pour opprobrium upon us at any and every opportunity.

Through the years I have had degrees of personal interaction with the French. My earliest memory was of the very first time I went to those Gallic shores, when I was around 21 years of age. A day trip to France was my first venture, as an adult, abroad.

It was a day boat trip to Boulogne  - I forget from which English port – and it was so long ago, (1967), that it pre-dated the ‘booze’ cruises; it was simply a pleasure trip to spend a day in a French coastal fishing village and to sample a soupçon of French culture.

Accompanying me, was my new American girlfriend, (‘Mardie’ – about whom I have written in a ‘Mobi-Vignette’ and which can be accessed by clicking the  ‘Mardie’ tab above), and a middle-aged married couple who I was very close to in those days. The long ago trip sticks clearly in my mind for two reasons.

The first was when we arrived by coach at the port of embarkation, a British immigration official took one look at Mardie’s American passport and hauled her off the bus, almost frog marching her away to some distant building. She was gone so long that the entire coach load thought they would miss the ferry, but just in the nick of time a very flustered Mardie was returned to us.

She told us that immigration had informed her that her visa to stay and work in the UK would have become invalidated once she left the country and that she would have had to re-apply for a new visa in France. This would have proved impossible – especially on a day trip, but thankfully, in the end common sense had prevailed, and they had given her some kind of re-entry stamp which would mean her visa was not cancelled, (shades of Thailand, fifty years later).

The second reason that I remember this first excursion into the Gallic unknown with such clarity is because it was the first – and probably only time – that I put my GCE ‘O’ level French speaking to a test. After our disembarkation and a brief walk around Boulogne, we selected a restaurant and sat down for our lunch. As the only ‘French speaker’ amongst us, I took charge and asked for the menu from a young, very charming, pretty little French waitress.

Perusing the menu, I found to my disappointment that it was in English – but not to be outdone I insisted in ordering in French, to show off my linguistic prowess to my girlfriend. Looking down the menu, I decided to have English fare and ordered sausages, bacon, egg and chips. I used my best French accent and the lovely mademoiselle smiled brightly at me, indicated that she understood me perfectly and wrote my order down with great gusto. After this, my companions all boringly ordered their food by pointing at items on the menu.

Ten minutes later the meals arrived. She placed my order in front of me. It was a plate stacked with half a dozen large sausages and a pile of chips – but no bacon, and no egg – how could that be? I was sure I had ordered correctly.

Then came my companion’s food, all served correctly as ordered. I started to feel very downcast when suddenly another plate appeared next to my first plate, and on it, was half a dozen large rashers of bacon and another pile of chips. Before I could utter a sound, a third plate was placed next to the other two.

Yes, you’ve guessed it; on it were three large fried eggs and another pile of chips. The lovely girl looked at me with a broad grin and said those magical French words: ‘Bon Appetite!’ Not only my companions, but the entire inhabitants of the crowded restaurant all burst out laughing.

I put on a brave face and did my best to get through three meals, but failed miserably and it was many, many years before I was to live down my ordering ‘howler’ in Boulogne.

The next venture into my neighbouring country’s territory was many years later –the late 80’s or possibly early 90’s – when I went on a ‘bed and breakfast’ touring holiday of Normandy and Brittany with my then Thai wife, (wife number 4, ‘Noi’.)

We actually had a very nice holiday and the Normandy countryside was beautiful. I don’t know about today, but in those days, virtually nobody in that region spoke a word of English and we had a hilarious time getting by with the use of a English/French dictionary, my schoolboy French having been long forgotten and discarded. We stayed in some wonderfully ancient farm houses in very rural areas and encountered nothing but friendly, helpful locals during our travels around the region.

I also vividly recall our last day in France. We drove to the beach town of  Ouistreham, near Caen, in Brittany, early one morning, but our crossing wasn’t scheduled until late afternoon. So I parked up on the beach and we went into a local deli, bought some baguettes, cheese and cooked meats, plus a bottle of plonk and had a nice little picnic on the beach.

Noi wasn’t a big drinker, so I downed probably 80% of the wine, but still having time to kill, I decided to buy a second bottle and proceeded to down that as well. I only had a 1/2 mile to drive to the embarkation point, but nevertheless I was pretty tipsy when I climbed into the car, mid-afternoon, for the short drive.

Imagine my consternation when, half way into my brief journey, I encountered a line of very slow moving vehicles – and horror upon horror – a hundred yards ahead, I spotted a group of Gendarmes who were stopping and breathalysing every driver.

There was no way I could get out of the tightly packed line of cars and any attempt at an illegal  U-turn would be immediately spotted , so I dreaded what was about to transpire. I had visions of not only missing the ferry but being clapped in a French jail and possibly even losing my job; as by then I was a rising star in a UK-regulated insurance company where its financial executives are required to keep to the highest possible standards of legal probity.

As I inched towards the waiting cops, I could see my career disappearing into thin air and gritted my teeth, awaiting the expected instruction to get out of my car at any moment.  One of gendarmes looked at my English number plate, mumbled something to another gendarme on the side walk and the two of them grimaced at me  and waved me on.

I don’t know whether they were two of the very few Frenchmen who actually liked their Anglo Saxon neighbours or, more likely, decided it would  be too much hassle to arrest an arrogant ‘Ros beef’, who almost certainly didn’t speak a word of French. But I didn’t care; as far as I was concerned on that particular occasion, the ‘Entente Cordiale’ was alive and well.

A few years later I took the whole family for yet another holiday in Normandy, this time renting a lovely rural cottage for our stay, and once again we found nothing but friendliness, although our contact was minimal due to the fact that we spoke little French, and the locals –if it is possible – spoke even less English. It was a great holiday and we saw yet more of France, with its gorgeous chateaus and picturesque countryside.

There’s a saying that ‘the only thing wrong with France is its people’.         

That is a trifle harsh, but as the years have drawn on, despite my early impression to the contrary, I’m now beginning to believe there may be more than a smidgeon of truth in this.

Apart from my two family trips to Normandy and Brittany, I did spend a number of long weekends in Paris through the following few years with my wife and it was there that I first encountered that distinct lack of hospitality from our French hosts, not only in a general sense, but even in the tourist sector, where you might have expected them to be more helpful and friendly.

But not a bit of it; it was almost as though the entire population of Paris, including those working in hotels and in tourism, resented our presence there and went out of their way to make things as difficult as possible.

Although a lot of Paris seems to be one enormous monument to Napoleon, (which continually reminds us, – as if we could ever forget – that their greatest ever hero was ultimately defeated by those cultural barbarians from across the channel), it is nevertheless a very beautiful city.

I have had spent many enjoyable times, walking its streets, wandering along the banks of the Seine, exploring and admiring its architecture – and browsing in its incredible museums and art galleries, and all this, in spite of the French antipathy to me and other visitors. I well recall the irritation I felt on one particular visit, when on buying some postcards to send home, we failed miserably to find anyone who could tell us where to find a post office or even to buy a few stamps.

Even in England, where we are also famously off hand with our visitors, I don’t believe you will find such ridiculous, deliberate indifference to the needs of people who are spending their hard earned money in our country.

After those ‘romantic weekends’ with my wife, my subsequent involvements with the French and their country were all through business. In my exalted position as Financial Director of  major Insurer and re-insurer, one of the few ‘jollies’ that I allowed myself was attendance at the ‘International Insurance Taxation Conference’ which was annual event, each year held in a different European Capital.

One of the first such conferences I attended was in Paris, where once again, I renewed my love affair with the lovely city, but not its people. This particular event was notable for the ‘keynote speech’ on the first day of the conference, which was to be given by a very senior member of the French government.

At that particular time, The French government was going through one of its periodic ‘purging’ of alien (foreign) words in the French Language and had recently passed a law that were intended to help preserve the nature and propagation of their mother tongue. For a country who espoused ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity’ all those years ago, it was a bit rich that they were now trying to legislate on how people were allowed to speak.

The good minister prefaced his speech by a brief announcement in perfect, colloquial English, explaining that the recent law prevented him -a French citizen – from addressing us or, or indeed any conference or seminar in France, in a foreign language. It was clear from his tone of voice that he thought the rule absolutely crazy and apologised to us, before reverting to his mother tongue of the remainder of his lengthy address.

We all received an instantaneous English translation through our headphones, but what a farce! Remember, this conference was attended by predominately foreigners from around the world; USA, Australia, Latin America, South Africa and of course all the European states. One of the smallest contingents – I doubt they had more than 6 delegates – was from France itself.

So what sort of impression did the French convey to this veritable ‘United Nations’ of senior financial executives from the world’s major Insurance companies? Frankly, they made total arses of themselves, to say nothing of being a laughing stock.

A few years after this, my employers decided to open a branch in Paris, and not being a organisation to hide our light under a bushel, we chose as our location, a beautifully ornate, 18th Century renovated office complex, complete with chandeliers, original murals on the walls; an impressive period building that was once occupied by the composer, Chopin. The location, in the Place Vendome, couldn’t have been more prestigious, just across the square from the Ritz hotel, where only a few months previously Princess Di had taken her fateful journey.

As ever, Mobi led the initial charge into new territories and during the period when we were ‘bedding in’ our new French business, I spent a great deal of time in France, making frequent trips back and forth from London to Paris on Eurostar . We’d hired a number of highly experienced French insurance professionals and soon started to build up a healthy book of insurance business.

But our new French staff proved to be a nightmare. Strangely, the local manager, was a bit of  an Anglophile and proudly drove around Paris in his British Jaguar, but despite this professed love for all things English, he soon became completely unmanageable. He refused to respect any rules or company procedures – rules that all our other branches and subsidiaries throughout the world had no problems in complying with, and he continually acted outside his authority on business matters. It soon became clear that he was effectively trying to set his entire staff against the English bosses at their ‘head Office’ in London.

Eventually, he was fired but it took a long time to sort out the mess he had left behind and even longer before we managed to get the staff to understand that they worked for us, Brits – not for themselves.

I also had some first-hand experience of the incredible French bureaucracy and ‘red –tape’ when obtaining all the necessary licences and permissions to open the branch. As you might expect, in spite of  the EU supposedly being an insurance ‘free trade’ zone, where any member could set up a branch in any member state, the Frogs made it as difficult as they possibly could for ‘Johnny foreigners’ to invade their sacred territory.

I also found the labour laws amongst the most draconian I have found anywhere in the world, which, amongst a nightmare of rules, gave all staff unbelievably generous  pension and holiday benefits. But even worse was a crazy law that prohibited employees from working more than a certain number of hours in a day, even if they volunteered to work the extra hours and were rewarded handsomely for so doing. They even had ‘office hours’ police who would raid offices in an evening and arrest anyone found working beyond permitted hours!

And don’t ever try to get any business done – either government or private -during the long summer months, as everyone has left town. Paris becomes a virtual ghost city for 2 months, with most government departments closed and private companies running a skeleton staff who produce very little output.

I often used to wonder how on earth the French economy managed to stay afloat and how on earth they could afford their enormous social welfare state bills, and even to this day the French economy is still a bit of an enigma to me, despite recent events that suggest that it may finally be getting its comeuppance.

My final personal anecdote on matters French is a very memorable, chance conversation I  once had, with a man in of all places, a London West End theatre, about 15 years ago. He was sitting in a seat directly in front of my wife and I as we awaited the start of that magnificent musical – Les Miserables. The man was talking in fluent French to a youth sitting next to him and I remarked to my wife how odd it was that here were a couple of Frenchmen, coming to see an English musical based on a French classic story.

The man overheard me and turned around to inform me that he wasn’t French, but English, although he  lived and worked in France and his son was born there. We got chatting, and he told me that he lived ‘somewhere’ in central France, (I forget the name of the town), and that he lived there with his French wife and son.

I remarked on the problems I had been having in setting up my Paris Branch and he immediately launched into a tirade about how difficult the French make it for foreigners –especially the English – to do business in their country, in spite of the supposedly liberating EU regulations.

It was clearly something that bothered him a lot, and he proceeded to tell me chapter and verse on what bastards the French were and how they all went out of their way to make doing business in their country as difficult as possible. All this, despite the fact that he spoke and wrote fluent French, had a French partner and a French wife. He claimed that as soon as other businessmen found out that a local business had an Englishman on board, they would do everything they can to drive that firm out of business.

I have no idea how typical his experience was, and cannot recollect what line of work he was in, but such was the vehemence of his argument that it has stuck with me ever since, as some of what he had to say certainly struck a chord with my own business problems in Paris.

Don’t get me wrong, there have been some famous, successful collaborations between the English and French and at the top of the list would be the Channel tunnel and also right at the top would be the only commercial supersonic airline ever to be brought into regular service, the never to be forgotten, Anglo/French ‘Concorde’.

But I well recall the fuss over the name of the plane and the French getting their way and insisting that the Concorde be spelt with an ‘e’ at the end of the name; and then their insistence that they should have the honour of flying the very first commercial flight. All pretty childish nonsense, and of course us Brits, as the victors over Napoleon, rose above it all and humoured their pathetic nationalistic urges.

Yes, I’m afraid the French have never forgotten or forgiven us for putting one over them at the battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo and even within my own lifetime we have had to suffer the indignity of one of the 20th Century’s favourite French sons, General De Gaulle, playing the rabidly anti-British card on a number of occasions on the world stage.

Those who have studied WW2 history will know That de Gaulle, as leader of the Free French forces, was domiciled in England throughout most of the war and was given huge support and assistance by the Brits and the Yanks. As soon as the invasion of France had begun in 1944, De Gaulle, against prior agreement, shot over to France and caused all manner of problems for the allies by acting unilaterally and refusing to cooperate and follow orders. (Shades of my French insurance manager).

As the war was being won, De Gaulle pushed himself forward as the ‘French Hero’ who had single-handely liberated his country and promptly forgot and ignored all the help and support that had come from the allies. He was once told by a friend: “General, you must not hate your friends more than you hate your enemies.” De Gaulle himself stated famously, “France has no friends, only interests.”

In fact, he treated Eisenhower and Churchill so shabbily that even his own French people eventually disowned him and sent him into the political wilderness in 1946.

But he was to return to power in 1958 and created the Fifth Republic, steadfastly rejecting requests from Britain to joining what was then the EEC in 1963, uttering the single word ‘non’ into the television cameras at the critical moment, a statement used to sum up French opposition and belligerence towards Britain for many years afterwards and refusing again in 1967 when British PM Harold Wilson renewed our attempts to join.

Although Britain was eventually permitted to join the now much tainted European EU club, the French have rarely ceased their snapping and sniping at us at every opportunity, both real and imagined.

These days, the French are saddled with yet another egotistical, anti-British President, (in the true Napoleon/ De Gaulle tradition), who is little better at leading his country than the notoriously inept Berlusconi, who was recently removed from office in Italy.

Back in December, Sarkozi famously said to Cameron: “We’re sick of you criticising us and telling us what to do. You say you hate the Euro, you didn’t want to join and now you want to interfere in our meetings,”

Good, bad, tainted or otherwise, the EU is a club and its members are required to act with a degree of decorum with each other. They are certainly not supposed to speak badly or criticise each other’s policies or to pass derogatory comments on member state’s economies in public.

Then, later in the same month, the French government launched a concerted campaign of criticism against the British economy in some warped attempt to deflect plans on an expected downgrade of France’s credit rating.

The French Minister of Economy, François Baroin, described as “very worrying” the situation in the UK, assuring everyone who cared to listen that their country was much in a better situation.

“French economy is better than the British right now,” said Baroin, noting that the UK has “a deficit of Greece” and “a higher level of debt than the French”.

François Fillon, the French prime minister, said that Britain was in a worse economic position than France and the country’s central banker indicated that this country’s, (Britain’s), credit rating should be downgraded.

François Baroin, then stepped up his attacks saying: “You’d rather be French than British. In economic terms, France’s economy is in better shape than the U.K.’s,” he said, repeating a line of defence used by other French officials in the days ahead of Standard & Poor’s decision, on whether France would keep its triple-A rating.

The Bank of France governor and the French finance minister then claimed that the U.K. should be the country to lose its highly-prized triple-A credit rating, not France.

His comments echoed those of Prime Minister Francois Fillon and central bank chief Christian Noyer, who both pointed to comparative weaknesses in the U.K. economy. Mr. Noyer even said the U.K. should be downgraded before France.

 Mr. Noyer said in an interview with regional French paper Le Telegramme. “A downgrade should come first for the U.K., which has a greater deficit, as much debt, more inflation, and less growth than us, and collapsing credit.”

All these anti- British, ‘un-club-like’ half demented rants had absolutely no effect on Standard and Poor, and France’s credit rating was duly downgraded.

And finally, back to Sarkozi who, fighting for his political life, decided once again to launch a broadside against Britain’s economy in some kind of misguided attempt to rally his wavering popularity. He stated that Britain is a country with “no industry” as he set out “shock measures” to reinvigorate France’s faltering economy.

When he announced he would increase VAT by 1.6 per cent, a journalist made the point that there had been an increase in prices in Britain after VAT rises,  Sarkozy claimed: “The United Kingdom has no industry any more.”

If you refer back to an article I wrote back in October last year, (http://tinyurl.com/6p9lcjg), on the subject of ‘Made in Britain’ where I pointed out, just how much industry Britain still has, although admittedly much reduced since its formative, highly industrialised years.

In 2009, (in which the latest comparable figures are available), manufacturing, as a percentage of GDP, was 11 per cent in the UK – the same as in France. UK industrial production as a share of GDP was 15 per cent, compared to 12.5 per cent in France for the same year.

Sarkozi was telling fibs. He knows the Brits are ‘true gentlemen’ and he assumed he could get away with his little lies, in the same manner that he has pretty much got away with all his snide comments about the Brits ever since he has been in power.

Can you imagine the outcry in France if  Cameron or any British ministers made similar remarks about the French? Another 100 years war maybe? Actually, I don’t think the last one has  finished yet. 

Maybe it would have been better for our peace of mind if we had let Napoleon win at Waterloo….

Nah… that would never do…

BUTT… BUTT… BUTT… I don’t give a French fig or a British hoot…

Mobi-Babble

Last year I posted a selection of snaps on my blog which I had taken – on what was then a very short daily walk – no more than ten minutes max – usually up to the nearby 7/11  and back home again.  So I have decided that is time to publish a more  comprehensive pictorial narrative of the area in which I live and where I take my daily walks.

These days, our (my and Noo’s) daily exercise has expanded to encompass two, much longer, alternative routes for our daily walk. The first route takes us in a southerly direction, up to the 7/11 and then into the grounds of  Wat Khao Por Thong – which has some very attractive buildings and some lovely trees –  out the other side, to walk around the Lake to the Rendevous bar/restaurant complex. The return leg simply retraces our steps, and this walk probably takes us about 45 minutes.

The alternative route takes us briefly around the lake in a northerly direction before taking a right turn away from the Lake, then right again on a little lane, parallel to the lake along a pleasant, leafy traffic free- diversion, before once more joining the lakeside road again.

The outward leg finishes in the area where the long boats are stored, opposite the Lakeside Restaurant. The return leg takes us past the ‘Fishermans Rest’, and thence back home, a journey which, walking at quite a steady pace, takes us around 40 minutes.

Upon reaching our home, we collect the three dogs and take them for a 10- 15 minute walk around the village paved roads, so by the time we have completed our day’s exercise, we have been walking for nigh on an hour.

It has been a good work-out for me and I have now lost about 10 kilos in weight and feel a lot fitter. I know that the first tranche of weight loss is always the easiest and, as expected,  my weight is now stubbornly staying at around 90 kilos.  I would dearly love to lose at least another 8 kilos – ideally 10 – to get me back where I was some 10 years ago, but I know it is going to be tough.

I am ever more careful with my diet, but I am now coming to the conclusion that the next phase of my weight-reduction efforts will require me to start jogging. I found out many years ago that there is nothing like jogging to get the pounds off stubbornly tubby mid-riffs. You can try every type of diet/exercise plan till you are blue in the face; you can hire personal trainers and do all manner of aerobic exercise on all manner of high tech machines, but all that is really required is a daily jogging routine of at least 25 minutes and a sensible eating routine– no cakes, sweets, deserts etc, no sugared drinks, and avoiding excessive fat in food.

So next week I will try to do a bit of jogging, starting off with just a minute or two – intermingled with my daily walking – gradually trying to increase the jogging time. The last time I embarked on this path I was 54 years old, and now I am 65 so it might prove a bit more difficult to achieve, but I won’t know if I don’t try. Either way, I now accept that if I am to get fit and stay fit, I must allot an hour of each day to some form of exercise which hopefully I can continue to do, well into my old age.

Mobi’s Lakeside photos.

I took these pics below over a couple of days, and  hopefully it gives you a better idea of  why I have a particular fondness for this beautiful lake and for this little ‘neck of woods’.

Wat Khao Por Thong

and it’s magnificent tree…

Any ideas, anyone? Noo is terrified of them...

We have passed this poor mutt many times, always sitting in the same spot...

Looks like a nice country home - from what I can see of it

It has a gorgeous, leafy, English-style garden

Back to the Lake

I had to cross the road to get the boat in my shot - it is soooo long...

A lakeside sheltered seat, one of many being placed around the lake.

Canoeing anyone?

Nice restaurant: Good ambience, good food, but slightly pricey and the service leaves a little to be desired…

A recently landscaped area of Lakeside

A 'Thai' karaoke Bar...

'Something' under construction - I hope it turns out better than it looks right now...

11 Kilometres to Pattaya City

Memorial to one of the many bikers who have tragically died in accidents on this road

One of the very first bars by the Lake, and also with one of the best views

One of the Lakeside 'Mansions' - and also, like most of them, up for sale...this one, a cool 23M Baht!

One of the upmarket, Lakeside housing 'villages'.

As the sign says, this road takes you eastwards away from the Lake to yet another Wat and a nearby village.

This ‘Chippy’Started off life as a Mini- market, graduated to a ‘cheapo’ beer stop, and now has the best fish’n'chips around the Lake – enormous portions too….

Yet another, Lakeside 'village'.

and another ...

Back in Mobi's village, taking the dogs for their evening constitutional...

Noo, Yoghurt, Somchai and Cookie

Poor Cookie, resting her aching hips...

BUTT…BUTT…BUTT…I don’t give a hoot!…

Today, I am publishing chapters 1 through 5 of ‘Part Two –Ying’ of my novel.

As mentioned in my last blog, I have now re-indexed the novel and I have broken up the story into much shorter chapters. The original Chapter One, is now ‘Part One – Na’ and now contains 11 separate chapters. These can be found in their entirety bu clicking the above, appropriately titled  tab. It is the same text as before, with maybe some very minor, mainly syntax amendments, so no need for those who have already read the old ‘Chapter One’ to re-read it – unless of course you wish to…☺

‘Part Two – Ying’ is not yet complete, and of the five chapters published below, chapters 1 through 3 were previously published as part of the old Chapter Two, and chapters 4 and 5 are completely new.

My new chapters are generally around 3,000 – 5,000 words in length and this makes it easier for me to set myself achievable targets. I seem to be someone who needs definable targets for all aspects of my life, otherwise, procrastination sets in.

After much experimentation, I have settled into a good routine of publishing two blogs a week, (except occasionally when I am out of town or some other event takes up my time), and I am now aiming to write a minimum of one chapter of my novel per week – possible even two on some weeks to compensate for those weeks when I may fall short.

Hopefully, if I stick to these targets, I will get my novel well and truly finished by mid-year. Let’s see.

I think I have mentioned this before, but in case I haven’t, I will publish newly completed chapters of my novel on days other than my regular blog days, so tomorrow I will publish my semi-weekly blog, as usual.

Anyway, here are Chapters 1 – 5 of  ‘Part Two – Ying’; I hope you are enjoying the story so far….

A LUSTFUL GENTLEMAN

PART TWO – ‘YING’

CHAPTER I

Ying turned her little Jazz into her driveway and drove slowly up the long driveway and under the carport. The car stereo was blaring out so loudly that when she opened the front door of the car, it sounded like one of those mobile discos; the ones that drive along Pattaya’s roads at night, blaring out music with such ear-splitting intensity that bystanders can barely even think, let alone hear themselves speak. The deafening pop music reverberated harshly across the peaceful, still night. Until Ying’s abrupt arrival, the only sounds to be heard were those of the toads in a nearby pond, emitting their repetitive mating calls.

She cut the ignition and suddenly the world returned to its state of somnolence and once more the toads held pride of place in the humid night air. Ying unlocked the side door to the house, dumped her handbag on the dining table and then summoned up one last burst of energy to climb up the central staircase, enter her enormous bedroom and collapse, fully clothed, on her bed. She lay there for a few minutes, unable to move. She had been drinking but was not wholly drunk – she had drunk just enough to make her woozy and very sleepy.

It had been a very long day. She had been woken before 8 a.m. that morning by the girl who usually opened her hair dressing salon, with the news that she was sick and would not be able to make it in to work that day. As a result, Ying had only had about four hours sleep and it had taken all her will power to drag herself out of bed, take a quick shower before jumping into her car and make it to her salon before the regular opening time of 9 a.m.

She had spent the whole day there and at around 8 p.m. when the final customer had finally left, she had driven to a friend’s house where they had spent the next seven hours playing cards and sipping Bacardi Breezers. By three a.m, Ying was down about three hundred Baht and she decided to call it a night. She would have to get up early, yet again, to open her shop in the morning.

She roused herself briefly – just long enough to pull off her jeans and top before collapsing once more onto her bed in her underwear. She lay there for a few minutes with her eyes closed, but for some reason sleep wouldn’t come, a problem she often encountered when she was over-tired and feeling tipsy. She was so tired but her mind kept going round and round.

What sort of life was this? Living in this huge house virtually all alone? It was far too big and it was a daily battle to keep it in in a half way decent state on a minimal budget, while at the same time trying to start a business that was struggling to break even. It was all a bit of a nightmare; now that her assistant was ill, so she wouldn’t even get a decent night’s sleep.

But the longer she lay there, in her heart she knew that on this day she would never make it to her salon much before noon. She was just too tired. She idly speculated on how many customers she might lose if she had yet another unscheduled closure. It had been difficult enough to attract customers in the first place, and for sure, if any of her regulars came in the morning and found her closed, they would not come back. There were simply too many other hair salons in the vicinity for them to remain faithful to a place that kept closing without warning. What a mess!

She curled up with her favourite cuddly panda in the enormous four- poster bed, but still she couldn’t sleep. It was a strange journey indeed that had brought her to this point in her life: thirty four year’s old, living in a huge house, with a nice car in the driveway, but almost perpetually broke. Her estranged husband, Toby, barely sent her enough money to cover the utility bills; she knew that he was also financially distressed and very soon, even that cash stream would probably dry up. There was no way they were going to be able to sell their jointly owned house in the foreseeable future. The market was dead – no one was buying. It was a veritable ‘albatross’ around both of their necks. If they succeeded in selling it, they could both move on with their lives, but as it was, they were both broke and unable to make the clean break that they both yearned for.

Finally, she dozed off. She drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep for a few exquisite minutes when she was rudely awakened by the screeching sound of a Thai rock song, piercing the blessed silence of the early morning. She slowly regained consciousness, wondering for a moment where the music was coming from. Then she knew; it was coming from her phone – her mobile phone was ringing.

She reached out blindly, grabbed hold of the phone and without looking at who was calling, she put it to her lips. ‘Hello.’

‘Hello, Khun Ying?’

‘Yes. Who is that?’

‘This is Pattaya Police station, I am Lieutenant Somkid. We would like you to come here immediately.’

‘Why? Why? What is it? What have I done?’

‘You have done nothing – it’s your husband. We want you to come here and see us about your husband. He is in a lot of trouble.’

‘My husband! He doesn’t live with me anymore. He left me ages ago! I can’t come – I’m not free!’

‘Khun Ying, if you don’t come here and help your husband, he will be in very serious trouble. He will go to jail.’

‘I don’t care! I don‘t care! Fuck my fucking husband! I don’t care what happens to him. I told him! I warned him! I don’t care what happens to him!’

‘Khun Ying, if you don’t come down her immediately and help him, your husband might even die.’

‘I don’t fucking care!’ Let him fucking die!’

She cut off the call, turned off her phone, and closed her eyes, praying that sleep would come back again and blot out the images in her mind.

‘Fuck Toby. Fuck him…fuck him… fuck him…’

Despite the air-conditioning, she suddenly broke out in a sweat. ‘Oh No, not again!’ she said out aloud. ‘Please not again…’

In spite of her antipathy, she suddenly worried about what horrors may befall her errant husband… her fucking husband. Surely that fucking cop didn’t mean it literally? Why should Toby die? But she continued to fret. Die ? No, surely not…she had already seen too many deaths in her life to contemplate yet another one.

PART TWO – CHAPTER II

Ying was sitting cross legged, at one end of a huge, roughly hewn wooden table cum workbench, which served as part cooking area, part sleeping area, part drinking area and part living area; which has such a ubiquitous presence in the rural Thai villages. It was the central meeting and gathering area for the occupants and friends of any particular abode.

This particular ‘family bench’ was probably around two meters in length by about one and a half meters wide and covered the entire shaded area in front the modest, two room single storey wooden house that had been the only home Ying had known for the entire eight years of her young life. It was a home that she shared with her mother, younger sister and two younger brothers.

Barely ten minutes ago, she had arrived home from her long, daily walk from school; but already she was hard at it, preparing the vegetables for the family’s evening meal which she would soon start cooking for the five of them – possibly six, if her father decided to stay and eat with them.

She looked across to the far end of the table where her father was also sitting cross-legged in an alcohol-fuelled conversation with one of his drinking cronies from the village. Both of them were well into their ‘cups’. Ying had noticed one empty bottle of Mekong whisky on the ground near to them and a second bottle was already half empty. The two men sat facing each other on the table, the space between them occupied by the whisky bottle, along with a dirty ice bucket and some empty soda water bottles.

Her father snarled at his daughter, ‘Ying! Get me another bottle of soda!’

She jumped up and ran to the side of the house where a half empty case of soda bottles was standing and grabbed a couple of bottles and quickly delivered them to the two men.

The drunken man barely acknowledged her existence as she put down the bottles and returned to her cooking chores. Mama would soon return from the rice fields where she toiled daily at her back- breaking, twelve hour shift in the flooded paddies – up to her chest in the warm, mosquito-ridden water. Ying’s two brothers and baby sister were inside the crudely built house, watching a small black and white television in the corner of the room. They would all be very hungry.

As poor as there were, there weren’t many families in her village who enjoyed the luxury of a television, and on most evenings, a large crowd of villagers would descend on their humble abode for a couple of hours to watch the nightly ‘soap operas’ put out by the only two Thai Channels they were able to tune into from their somewhat isolated neck of the woods.

Ying wasn’t sure whether she should be grateful or resentful of the fact that her father was one of the ‘big wigs’ in the village and had been able to provide them with a coveted TV. She knew well enough that there were many occasions when they wouldn’t see him for days – sometimes weeks – when he would disappear, without warning. On such occasions, the sparse food money he occasionally gave her mother would dry up completely. Sometimes, they wouldn’t eat for several days and it was for this reason that her mother had recently started to work in the paddy fields, as a sort of protection against the vagaries of her common law husband’s largesse.

One of Ying’s friends from the village had told Ying that her father had several other ‘wives’ in a nearby village and that when he disappeared, he would go and stay with them. She wasn’t sure of the truth of these stories, but suspected they were probably true. She did know for sure that her father was not a very nice person. Often, he would return home very drunk and pick a fight with her mother, beating her mercilessly. On more than one occasion her mother had been so badly beaten that they had to call for a doctor to treat her injuries. He had even hit Ying and her brothers on the odd occasion, so whenever they realised that he was particularly drunk, they would do their best to keep out of his way. But no one would dare to say a word to him about his brutal behaviour. He was a very powerful, well-connected, ‘mafia-type’ figure and everyone seemed in awe of him. No one had the courage stand up to him.

Ying could see that her father was getting very drunk and feared that it wouldn’t be long before trouble started. She wanted to warn her mother to stay away but she didn’t know how to go about it. If she left off from her food preparation, her father might get angry; he was so unpredictable. In the end she did nothing; she just sat there, working away and hoped that something would happen to take her father away from their home before her mother arrived back from work.

She couldn’t believe her luck. Almost at the very moment that she wished something would happen, a motorbike drove slowly down the narrow track which led to their house. She could clearly see one of her father’s friends driving the bike but she didn’t recognise the young man on the back. She assumed it was another member of her father’s ‘criminal-gang’. ‘Good,’ she thought, ‘maybe they are all going off to do a ‘job’ somewhere.’ That’s what usually happened when his low-life friends came to see him in the late afternoon.

The bike came to a halt outside the house, less than a meter from where her father and his drinking companion were sitting, but they didn’t get off. In fact, both men remained seated and the engine remained running. As Ying watched, she heard the man on the front yelling something angrily at her father, but he behaved as though nothing had happened. Deliberately ignoring the shouts from the motorbike driver, Ying’s father picked up his whisky glass to take another sip. As he put the glass to his lips, the angry driver shouted something to the youth behind him, whereupon the young pillion passenger lifted his right hand to reveal a handgun; the dark metal glistening in the late afternoon sun.

Although Ying hated her father, she suddenly felt a jolt of panic and revulsion at what was about to happen. But before she could even shout out a warning, the youth fired three shots – one after the other – at almost point blank range, into her father’s head and body. Her father had been so drunk that he hadn’t even seen the shots coming. The smoke was still clearing as the driver snapped his bike in gear, raced the accelerator and skidded his tyres on the dusty ground as the two killers sped away, out of the village.

She instinctively rushed over to her father’s slumped body, hoping against hope that he might have survived the violent attack, but one look at his head told her that it was all over. The bullet had taken half of her father’s face away and Ying stood transfixed, aghast at the grizzly sight. She started screaming, becoming hysterical as the villagers emerged from their nearby homes and rushed over to see what all the noise was about.

Into the midst of this commotion arrived Ying’s mother. Quickly taking in what had happened, her mother grabbed hold of her, and led her towards the house, just as her other children were emerging to see what was going on.

‘Go inside! All of you!’ her mother shouted, ‘and stay there until I say so,’

‘But Mama…’ Ying started to protest.

‘No, Ying, go inside and look after your brothers and sister.’ She shouted loudly at her.

Although Ying knew her mother to be a kindly woman who loved her children dearly, her hard life and difficult circumstances had given her a nasty temper. Woe betides anyone who tried to cross her or gainsay her when her ire was roused – except of course, her now deceased husband. But Ying always did what she was told when her mother was in this kind of mood, so she led her younger siblings back into the room and back to the television, dreading what disastrous effect this tumultuous event may have on their family’s fortunes.

***

#In her wildest dreams, Ying couldn’t have imagined quite how catastrophic the after effects of her father’s untimely death would actually turn out to be.

She stayed away from school on the day following her father’s killing, as had her mother from the rice fields. There were many things to sort out, least of which was the cremation of her father’s body. Her mother had no money to pay for a funeral and was wondering what on earth she was going to do when the problem was solved for her by the appearance of her husband’s elder brother and sister, who lived in the next village.

Ying had only seen her ‘in-laws’ once before – when her father had invited them to a big party he held in the village. She doubted her mother had seen them very often either, as on that occasion they had been very unfriendly and had virtually ignored them. So she had expected the worst when they suddenly turned up, but her misgivings were soon assuaged when she heard the brother tell Mama that her father’s family would assume full responsibility for her father’s funeral arrangements.

‘Mama, that’s god news. Now you can stop worrying about it.’

‘Ying, go inside the house, I have some things to discuss with these people,’ she told Ying who once again felt aggrieved at being dispatched away from the centre of action.

She reluctantly walked into the house and tried, without success, to overhear what was being discussed. But it wasn’t long before she realised that whatever they were talking about, it wasn’t good news. She could hear her mother’s raised voice and the responding loud voices of her father’s relatives. She knew that things were not going at all well.

At length, she heard her Mama shout out in anger and after a long pause, she started to cry. She heard the man bark something back at her mother and then there was a long silence. Ying sat, waiting for somebody to say something, becoming ever more fearful at what might have transpired between them, but no sound could be discerned. Eventually, she gingerly peered out of the house; all she could see was the sight of Mama, her head in her hands, weeping quietly to herself. There was no sign of the others. They must have gone.

‘Mama, what has happened? Where have they gone? Did they refuse to pay for father’s funeral after all?’

Her mother looked up bleary eyed at her daughter – incredibly mature for her young years. ‘Funeral, my love? Why yes, child, they will pay for the funeral, don’t worry about that.’

‘Oh that is good news Mama,’ Ying said with a smile. Isn’t it?’

‘Yes, my child, it is good news. But I’m afraid that we have to stay away. They have told me that we are not allowed to go to the Wat. If we do, then they will refuse to pay for the cremation.’

‘That’s terrible Mama, why won’t they let us go to father’s funeral? I don’t understand.’

The tired woman looked at her eldest daughter. She wasn’t sure if Ying would understand. ‘They don’t want us there, my child, because they say that I am not his real wife and that you and your brothers and sister are not his real children. They say that his real wife lives with them in the next village and it would bring a big shame on his family if we go to the funeral. They said that nobody wants us there.’

Ying tried to absorb all this confusing information. ‘What does it mean?’ she asked herself. ‘Why can’t Papa have two wives? I don’t understand. What does it matter if we go to the Wat and pay our respects to our father?’ She considered everything for a few moments, before finally speaking, seeking to reassure her mother.

‘So we can’t say goodbye to Papa. Never mind, Mama, please don’t cry. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, he wasn’t a very nice man, was he?’

Her mother looked at her daughter, lovingly. ‘No Ying, you are right; he wasn’t a very nice man,’ before bursting into a new flood of tears.

‘But Mama, Mama, if he wasn’t very nice, why are you crying? We don’t have to go to the Wat. It’s not so important. Please Mama, please don’t cry.’

Eventually, her tears stopped and she dried her eyes. ‘Ying, my child, I am not crying about your father’s funeral. Yes I want to go. He was an unkind and selfish  man, but  he was the only man I ever loved and her bore me four beautiful children – but that is not why I am crying. You don’t understand.’

‘Try me Mama, try me. Why then?

There was an even longer silence before the distressed woman finally explained the bombshell news to her daughter. ‘Because, my child; because Papa’s family have told me that we must leave our home. They say it belongs to them and they want it back.’

‘Leave our home! They can’t do that! Where will we go? Surely Papas’s family wouldn’t be so cruel to us…’

‘Yes, they would, my love. It belongs to your father and I wasn’t married to him – not properly – and they want it back. They don’t care about us. They hate us.’

‘Oh, Mama, why are people so bad? When must we leave?’

‘Tomorrow!’

‘Tomorrow! We can’t leave tomorrow! Where will we go?’

‘I don’t know, my love, I don’t know where we will go. I have no money to go anywhere.’

‘Then you must refuse to leave Mama, you must tell them we have to stay here until we find somewhere to go.’

‘I already told them that. That man – your uncle – he said if we don’t leave by tomorrow evening, he will bring the police and have us thrown out; and he means it, I know he does.’

‘But Mama, where will we go?’

‘I don’t know, Ying, I just don’t know…’

PART TWO – CHAPTER III

Ying sat with the rest of her fellow-villagers on the hard benches at the village Wat and stared at the ground.  Around her, the adults held their palms together in prayer and joined in the resonating incantations being chanted by the saffron robed monks, who were seated in front and to the left side of them on a long bench. The somnolent drone of the incomprehensible Pali prayers had almost caused her to drop off to sleep, but without warning, the chanting momentarily stopped and she looked up, wide awake once more.

At the centre of her deeply tanned, Issan face that was already showing signs of promised beauty to come, her cavernous, deep brown eyes, were transfixed on a point several meters in front of her. She stared at the raised plinth at the far end of the temple grounds, where, hidden from view, her beloved grandfather was lying in a large casket dressed in his finest traditional Thai clothes, awaiting his journey to the next life.

It was just yesterday that she had arrived back from school and was in the process of getting changed to join her mother for her late afternoon session in the nearby paddy fields, when her brother had come running into the house, with a message for her to go quickly to her grandfather’s home. Her worst fears had been confirmed; Granddad’s disease-ridden body had finally given up the unequal struggle  in his seventy fifth year on this earth – a worn out, skeleton of a man, who had lasted a lot longer than anyone could have reasonably expected, for he had been sick and infirm for several months.

To Ying, he was one of the few souls who had shown her kindness during the past few years of her brief but careworn life and although she had been expecting his death for some time, it came as a huge shock when she had rushed into his primitive room and found the poor old man, stiff and cold, lying on his dirty worn out mattress, his tattered, soiled clothes reeking of death and decay.

The next twenty-four hours had passed in a blur, and now here she was, at the village Wat, attending the last rites before her poor Granddad’s body was incinerated in the primitive crematorium.

She remained seated as the as the villagers around her rose to walk over and form a line in front of the plinth to pay their respects to one of the doyens of their humble village. ‘If it hadn’t been for Granddad, God knows what might have happened to me and my family when we arrived here from our previous home, some four years ago,’ she pondered to herself,

*

She would never forget that long journey of some twenty kilometres from the village where Papa was viciously murdered, to the village where her mother’s father – Ying’s grandfather – still lived. It had been in that village, some twelve years previously, that Ying’s father had first met her mother and had taken her away to live in his own village near to the Cambodian border, where his four children were subsequently born.

It seemed only yesterday that they had made that long, arduous trek, the five of them dressed in tatters, carrying all their worldly possessions, either balanced on their shoulders or piled perilously high on a primitive, two-wheeled cart, which they had borrowed from a neighbour. The trip took two exhausting days to complete, and at long last, the family had made it back to the place where Ying’s grandfather had made his home and where, some twelve years ago, Ying’s mother and father had first met.

Ying knew from her grandfather that Mama was originally from Chaiyaphoom, in the North-east of Thailand and that being desperately poor, she – along with many other Issan folk – had migrated to Sa Kaeo province to find work and start a new life. Thus, many villages in the area had become almost entirely populated by ethnic Issans, who all spoke Issan in their daily lives and had brought their Issan culture with them to this little part of Sa Kaeo province. But Ying’s father was an ethnic -Khmer, as were a majority of Sa Kaeo residents, given its proximity to Cambodia.

Ying then started to realise that there was another, more sinister reason why her mother and her family had been so hated in her father’s, Khmer-centric village. Who knows? It might have contributed to the reason he was killed, such was the hatred and distrust between the two cultures.

When they had arrived back at Granddad’s village some four years ago, they found him still in reasonable health, but eking out a poor existence as a field labourer. However, he did own a small plot of village land, which he had been smart enough to buy at a give-away price some years ago, when the previous owner had been desperate for money. Ying’s Grandmother had been dead for many years, and since then, he had lived alone in a small, makeshift house on stilts, which he had built himself. After his wife passed away, his needs were modest and he informed his daughter that she was welcome to take the remaining part of his unused land for her family to live on.

***

Ying was still rooted to the bench, now the only one left seated. ‘Come on Ying’, a village elder called out, breaking her reverie, ‘Come and pay respects to your Grandfather before we burn him’.

She rose as if a trance, without offering a word of acknowledgement, and joined the end of the line; but her mind was still in the dreams of yesterday.

*

The very next day after their arrival, her mother had gone to work in the rice paddy fields from dawn to dusk to earn sufficient money to feed her family. They now had to fend for themselves for much of the time; they had no money to build a house, and for many months the family had to make do with a few rusty sheets of corrugated iron, kindly donated by neighbours, which was fashioned into a lean-to.

Ying had returned to her village school and despite the harsh conditions under which she lived and the responsibilities she had to endure during the evenings and weekends, she continued to make good grades. Not only did she have to look after the family but she often had to join her mother working in the rice paddies to supplement their meagre income.

Ying’s mother may have been illiterate, but she was a canny woman and she soon realised that the land given to her by her father was worth more to her than just a place to build a home on.  So after months of battling through frustrating, bureaucratic ‘red tape’ at the local government offices –  particularly problematic given her illiteracy – and with the help of some village elders, the desperate mother finally succeeded in transferring Granddad’s parcel of land into her own name. 

She was then able to borrow some money from the local government bank, lodging her newly acquired land as security and utilised the money to build a rudimentary house for her family to live in. It was more of a shack than a house, but it did put a solid roof over their heads, and did provide them with a proper, albeit very basic, toilet. This was to be Ying’s family home for many years to come.

Since then – several years in fact – life had settled into a hard but relatively uneventful routine. Her younger sister and brothers had started school and her mother had continued to keep the finances afloat by her daily labour in the paddy fields. She knew that Mama was for ever having financial problems and sometimes she had to borrow money from her neighbours to keep up the payments up on her bank loan. Mama’s constant fear was that the bank would seize her little bit of land and render the family homeless yet again.

***

At the tender age of twelve, little Ying, could not devote too much of her precious time thinking about such matters. She had too many other burdens on her young shoulders: surviving day to day, keeping up with her schooling, working with her mother and having a major role in the care and upbringing of her young siblings.  Even as she stood in line at her Granddad’s funeral, she fretted that they had now taken two days off from the paddies and they must get back to work tomorrow, or by the end of the week, there wouldn’t be enough money to buy food.

At length, the formalities – unusually brief, due to the family’s lack of funds to pay for something more ostentatious  -  drew to a close, and her dear, worn out Granddad was sent on his way to his next life with puffs of black smoke bellowing out of the tall chimney, high above her head.

She wasn’t a particularly spiritual person – what girl is at that age – but on impulse, she closed her eyes and sat silently in prayer, begging ‘whoever may be out there’ that her Granddad be granted a better life the next time around. She felt sure that he deserved it as he had been a virtuous man and had made much merit in this life, now sadly at an end. When she eventually opened her eyes, she looked around and was surprised to find that everyone had gone. There was no sign of her mother and siblings, so she assumed that they had left her to her prayers and already taken off for their trek back home.

Overcome with grief but still dry eyed, Ying started to take the long, hot slow walk back to her home when just as she walked out of the Wat grounds, she was unexpectedly intercepted by the local head man – the Kaman of the village. He was Khun Somsak, the final arbiter of all village matters and the political ‘tool’ of the provincial party bigwigs. Ying knew him to be a strict, but fair old man and she surmised that he had decided to come over and pay his respects.

‘Sawasdi, Khun Ying,’ the old man started, ‘Do you have a moment? I would like to talk with you.’

‘Yes, of course, Khun Somsak, is it about my Granddad?’

Not exactly, Ying, come, follow me to my home, and we can have a quick chat.’

Ying dutifully followed the man to his own home, near the Wat, where she was bidden to take a seat in the porch, while a maid brought out a welcome glass of cold water for her.

‘Ying, your mother has asked me to talk to you on her behalf.’

‘Why, Khun Somsak, is something wrong? Has something happened to my Mama? She seemed fine at the Wat.’

The old man was silent for a few moments; not a man for quick repartee or unconsidered responses. ‘Yes… and… no… my dear. Yes, something is wrong, and no, your mother is perfectly well, as far as I am aware.’

‘Then what, sir?’

‘Ying, you are aware that your mother has problems making the monthly payments on her bank loan?’

‘Why, yes, of course, she is always talking about it and worrying herself silly.’

The old man remained silent.

‘Oh no! No!’ she suddenly exclaimed. ‘Don’t tell me we are going to lose our home again. This is too much – not now that Granddad has died. What will we do?’ she asked him, almost in tears.

‘No, Ying, the bank is not foreclosing – not yet, at any rate. No, the problem is that your mother has borrowed a lot of money from people in the village and she can’t pay it back.’

Ying thought about this for a while. ‘So what can I do about it? Why are you talking to me?’

‘Because your mother asked me to and because I think I have been able to find a solution to your family’s financial problems.’

‘So…this solution – it involves me?’ she enquired, fearing what may be coming next.

‘Yes, my child, it involves you, but please don’t be scared. We are not going to sell you to a massage parlour or anything like that. We are poor folk but we are not so bad as that.

‘Ying, my child, your mother has asked me to tell you that we have arranged for you to go and live with a family in Bangkok, to work as their as their maid and as a nanny to their children.’

‘Bangkok? I… I don’t understand…’

‘Ying, I have some friends who know a very nice family and they live in Bangkok and they need a young live-in maid. I am sorry, but it seems to be the only way out of your family’s money problems. The family will pay you a small wage and they will send it home to your mother to help with her daily expenses.’

‘But…what about my school?’

‘I’m afraid that your school days are all over, my child. You can already read and write – very well I hear – so that will hold you in good stead. Now you are grown up and you must help your family by going to work in Bangkok.’

‘But…what about my family? If I go to Bangkok, I won’t see be able to see my brothers and sister any more, will I?’

‘Well maybe one day you will be allowed to go home for a few days. You will have to discuss that with the family after you start work.’

Ying sat for a long time in silence, trying to absorb all these sudden and unexpected changes to her life. No more school – no more work in the paddy fields – no more looking after her family – no more village life with her friends…It was almost too much for her to take in all at once.

But the longer she thought about it, the more puzzled she became. It didn’t make sense – surely the money she would earn as a maid wouldn’t be that much more than she could earn in the paddy fields. And if she left home, who would look after the children? Who would cook their meals? If her mother had to do everything, then she would have to stay at home and she wouldn’t earn any money to buy food. What about the bank loan and the money she owed in the village? How was all that going to be paid back on a maid’s salary?

The canny old man seemed to sense what was going on in Ying’s young, over-active brain. ‘You are wondering how your mother will pay off her debts, aren’t you?

‘Yes, how did you know?

‘Because I know that you are very smart young lady. Well Ying, here is the crux of it all. We need you to be a very good girl and promise that you will stay with this family in Bangkok and work hard for them until you are eighteen years of age. Can you do that?

‘Well…yes… I suppose so… but why?’

‘Because the family have very kindly agreed to give your mother enough money to pay off all her debts, and in return, you must stay with them and work for them for six years, until you are eighteen. Is that OK?’ Can you do agree to that?

‘Agree? Why yes, of course. I have no choice do I?’

The man looked at her in silence.

‘But what happens… what happens if they are cruel to me and beat me and don’t feed me… what then?’

‘Don’t worry Ying, they won’t do that. They are good people, you have my word.’

‘And Mama? Will she be able to stop working in the paddy fields?’

He smiled at her concern. ‘Yes, Ying, you mother will have enough money to give up her work and stay at home. Your salary should be enough for the family’s daily needs, once she no longer needs to make the monthly payments on her bank loan.’

There was little more to discuss so she thanked the old man for his intervention and help in this matter, bade her farewells and walked slowly back to her own home.

Ying found her mother sitting cross legged on the ground outside their little home, waiting patiently for her return. She looked at her deeply troubled mother. Despite her tender age, she was not completely ignorant of the toll these past few years had inflicted on her mother; toiling in the hot, unremitting sun, up to her knees in muddy water, with her back bent at acute angles. This had left her with permanent back problems and severe arthritis. The child could see that Mama had been experiencing difficulty in getting about, even though she was still only in her forties. But to Ying’s young, but wise eyes, her poor Mama looked to be in her sixties.

Her mother looked at Ying, terrified what her eldest daughter might have to say.

‘It’s OK, Mama. You can stop worrying. I will go to Bangkok, and you can pay off the loans and stop working in the fields. I have agreed to everything.’

Her mother looked at her with tears in her eyes, and Ying knew that her Mama hated doing this to her daughter. The Kaman had told Ying that there was no time to be lost if Ying was to take up the position in Bangkok, so both of them were also distressed at the imminent departure of the family’s eldest daughter.  

Like most Thais, Ying’s family weren’t particularly demonstrative, but on sudden impulse, she crouched down next to her Mama and hugged the disconsolate woman closely to her chest. ‘It’s OK, Mama – it’s OK; everything will be just fine.’

Her mother remained stiff and motionless; her moist, myopic eyes, transfixed on a nearby mangy dog which lay spread eagled on the hot dusty earth. As she stared, the dog’s shape slowly faded from view in the ever lengthening shadows of a fast approaching dusk.

PART TWO – CHAPTER IV

Ying was very hungry and utterly exhausted.  It was 4 am and it was over twelve hours since her last meal and she had been cradling little Mac, an increasingly exhausting weight in her arms, for the past four hours. Thankfully, he had finally stopped crying, but she wasn’t too sure how much longer she could manage to nurse her tiny, malnourished, four month old baby.

But more than hunger and fatigue, Ying was wracked with fear. She was  terrified that at any moment Udom would suddenly appear out of the of the early morning gloom on his ancient motorbike , spot them at the bus stop and drag them back home. There was still about two more hours to go before the Bangkok-bound would arrive – assuming it was on time, and these next two hours would be the most nerve wracking of all. It would soon be light and there was an ever increasing chance that Udom would wake up from his drunken stupor and come looking for them.

Ying couldn’t even contemplate the idea of having to return back home with her son. She had suffered enough and was determined to get away from the violent, uncaring Udom for good. This was the third occasion over the past week when she had packed her meagre belongings and tried to creep out of the house with Mac at the dead of night, after Udom had fallen asleep, but on each of the two previous occasions, the baby had started crying and effectively put paid to her plans. Fearful that Udom would wake up, she had returned to her mattress on the floor.

But she hadn’t given hope, and finally tonight, Mac had remained asleep and she had succeeded in getting out of the house without waking her dreaded common law husband to make the long, arduous, three kilometre trek to the bus stop , carrying baby Mac in her aching arms.

She was so tired that she couldn’t stand up any more, so she decided to find a patch of grass, off the road verge where she and baby Mac could lie down and rest. That way she could hide from the prying eyes of Udom until the bus arrived; but the problem was: she might fall asleep and miss the bus.

This problem was hopefully solved when she was joined at the bus stop by two middle aged women and she decided to ask them if they would let her know when the bus arrived. They looked at her with a quizzical stare, but nodded their somewhat offhand assent, so without further ado, Ying slumped on the ground behind a large bush and put her baby gently down beside her, where he thankfully remained asleep.

She wasn’t at all sure if the women would indeed do as bidden but she couldn’t stand up for another moment and knew that she had no choice but to place her trust these women, and if not them then in God. Even if they didn’t call her, she would still probably hear the bus arrive; for at least she could now be sure that it would stop at the bus stop to pick the two waiting women.

She lay down, so tired, but her mind was in a whirl. What a mess she had made of her brief life, and what sort of reception could she expect when she went back to her home in Sa Kaeo with a new born baby and no money? Her mother had been relying on her and she had let her down so badly. If it wasn’t for baby Mac, sleeping blissfully at her side, she might well have decided to end it all.

Where had it all gone so wrong? She asked herself.

***

It had all started off so well. The family in Bangkok had been very kind to her and she soon found that her new job as a house maid and nanny to two young children had been ‘child’s play’ when compared to the arduous manual work she had been subjected to, back home in Sa Kaeo. She had been treated fairly, and as promised, her employers had regularly sent money back to Ying’s mother so that she didn’t have to return to the back-breaking work in the paddy fields.

In the early years of her time in Bangkok, Ying had managed to make a few brief trips back home to visit with her family, but as the years passed and the needs of the children became more demanding, her visits home became rarer and rarer. But she didn’t really mind, as her employers had treated her almost as part of the family and they would take her with her whenever they went away on holidays, or even out to eat on evenings and weekends. Ying grew very fond of them, especially the two young girls, who were more like younger sisters than ‘employers’.

But it all changed one day, soon after Ying’s sixteenth birthday, when she met a young, very handsome young cook, who worked in one of the restaurants which her employers liked to frequent on Sunday evenings. The restaurant was only a short distance from her home and once the acquaintance was struck up, the two had many late night, clandestine meetings, when the young Udom had finished work and when Ying’s employers were fast asleep.

This had been Ying’s very first romantic experience and with her hormones raging like never before, it wasn’t long before she had fallen hopelessly in love with the good looking, fast talking, twenty-one year old lad from Surat Thani, who was determined to take the lovely young virgin to his bed.

During the  next twelve months of their secret courtship, Udom found several opportunities to do just that, and by the time Ying had reached her seventeenth birthday, she felt that she couldn’t live a single day without seeing her beloved Udom. This was proving more and more difficult as the family had started to suspect that something was going on with the young teenager in their midst. They had discovered that she was in the habit of disappearing late at night and as a consequence, they kept a close eye on her, effectively preventing her from meeting up with her boyfriend.

The family had no idea who Ying had been sneaking out to meet late at night, but were determined to stop it, whoever it may be, so Ying had to satisfy herself with brief meetings with her lover whenever the family decided to dine at the restaurant. The two of them had discussed the problem, and Udom’s solution was for the two of them to run away together, but so far Ying had resisted. After all, she still had another year to run of her work contract with the family.

***

The family had nearly finished their meal and Ying was running out of time to do something. She looked around the table; the two girls were gorging themselves on ice cream and their parents were sitting back in their chairs, watching them lovingly through sleepy eyes, their stomachs bursting from the mountain of seafood they had just finished eating. It was Sunday afternoon and the happy, contented family were about to go home after their weekly foray to their favourite seafood restaurant.

Ying, who by now been part of this family family for the past five years, was also feeling full; but more than that, she was feeling extremely anxious that she wouldn’t have a chance to see Udom. It had been such a busy afternoon and the restaurant had been packed, which meant that it was all ‘hands to the pump’ in the kitchen and poor Udom hadn’t even had a chance to think about Ying , let alone spend a few minutes with his beloved.

In desperation and fearing that they would soon be on their way back home, she told her employers that she was going to the toilet and hoped against hope that as she passed near the kitchen, Udom would gain sight of her and come out to join her for a few precious moments. At first, she thought that she was destined to miss him for yet another week when, just as she was returning to the table, the young man appeared from nowhere, pulled her quickly into a small store room and soon they were in a fierce embrace.

When she was able to come up for air, she looked at her young, slim and startlingly handsome lover.

‘Oh my darling I have missed you so much,’ Udom whispered to her as she clutched him, shaking with emotion.

‘Me Too, sweetheart, I was afraid we wouldn’t see each other today. Oh Udom, I don’t think I can stand this much longer’

‘You won’t have to my love’

‘Why? What do you mean?

Ying, do you love me – truly?

‘You know I do?’

‘And do you want to live with me as my wife?’

‘Yes, yes, you know I do, but it’s impossible! You know that. How can I go away with you? I still have one more year to go of my ‘contract’.’

‘Ying, if you really want to come away with me, I will find a way.’

‘But how? I’m not running away – they might send the police after me.’

‘They wouldn’t do that, Ying, You have been a very good maid to them and their daughters; they would never send the police after you. In any case they wouldn’t dare. They can’t hold you against your will; that so-called contract is illegal.’

‘Oh Udom, I don’t know. They have been very kind to me and I love them. I can’t do anything bad to them.’

‘Leave it to me my love, I will find a way.’

With a quick peck on Ying’s cheek, the young man rushed off back to the kitchen where, Ying assumed, he had to complete his cooking shift.

But she was wrong. She returned to the table and was helping the children to gather up their things, when to her astonishment, Udom walked over to the table, as bold as brass, and addressed her employers directly.

‘Good evening sir,’ he said to the head of the family. ‘I would like to introduce myself. My name is Udom and I am a cook at this restaurant.’

The middle aged couple stared at the young man in silence, feeling somewhat taken aback by this brash and unexpected approach by a member of the kitchen staff.

‘You are probably not aware of this sir, but I have known Ying, your ‘employee’, for over a year and we are betrothed to each other.’

Although initially taken aback by this surprising news, Ying’s employer soon gathered his composure. ‘Well young man, we suspected that Ying was up to something late at night, but we had no idea that the culprit of her attentions was you…’

‘Yes, sir, it was me, Udom, isn’t that right Ying?’

Ying stared at him in embarrassment, not knowing what to say.

‘Is this true, Ying?’ the children’s mother joined in, ‘do you know this man? Have you been seeing him behind our backs?’

Ying realised that she had better tell the truth. ‘Yes, madam, I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid it is. Udom really is my boyfriend.’

Her employers looked at each other in astonishment, wherupon the man asked her: ‘So how long have you two known each other?’

‘Exactly one year sir,’ Udom replied quickly, ‘and now we want to get married’.

‘Married!’ the couple exclaimed in unison.

‘Ying, you want to marry this man?’ the woman asked her.

‘Yes, madam, I do. I love him very much.’

‘But you are so young, what do you know about love? What about your mother, Ying? Does she know about this?’

‘No, not yet, but I will write to her and let her know.’

‘Well, Ying and Khun Udom,’ the man said at length, in a harsh tone of voice, ‘these marriage plans are all very well, but Ying still has one more year of her work contract with us remaining, so whatever plans you two may have, they will have to be put on ice at least until then. Come on Ying, we are going home, it’s getting late and the girls have to go to bed.’

***

If only those plans had really been put on ice for year, Ying ruminated ruefully; I might not be in this unholy mess today. But unfortunately, Udom was like a man with a mission and he had been determined to have his beautiful bride and to bring her down south with him to Surat Thani where he planned to open a small restaurant.

Within days, Udom had made representations to Ying’s family at their home and, unknown to Ying at the time, had made some scarcely veiled threats that he would report them to the police of they didn’t let Ying leave with him.

The family had sat down with Ying to discuss her plans and asked her if she was sure she wanted to go with Udom. When she had assured them that this was what she wanted, they tried in vain to persuade her to postpone her plans for year, just to make sure she was making the right decision; but Ying told them her mind was made up and she wanted to go straight away. Eventually, with some reluctance, they gave her their blessing and wished her luck in her new life, making her promise to keep in touch.

*

As she lay in the long grass, her gaunt frame cuddling her baby, she wished that she had listened to them and taken their advice. She thought at the time that they had just wanted to keep her and get another year’s work out of her, but now she realised that they only had her best interests at heart.

How foolish she had been; and what about her mother and her own brothers and sisters? She hadn’t been in touch with them since she had moved south with Udom, some two years ago, and she hadn’t sent them any money. She had always intended to, as soon as the restaurant had got itself established, but Udom had soon put paid to that by adamantly refusing all requests for cash to send home, in spite of  his earlier promises.

‘How had her mother managed these past two years?’ she wondered to herself. God forbid that the crippled old lady had been obliged to go back to work in the paddy fields! ‘What are they going to say when I get home? Maybe Mama will disown me and refuse to let me stay. What will I do then?’

***

At first, the plan had seemed so exciting and promised so much for her future life. Things had started well enough. Udom borrowed some money from his parents and he leased a run-down restaurant in Surat, where the two of them worked hard to get it back on its feet. Udom would do all the cooking and Ying would do just about everything else; from getting up at the crack of dawn to take a bus down to the local market and buy the produce, to preparing the food, to waitressing, to washing the dishes and clearing up at the end of the day.

It was hard work and Ying had no time for herself. By the time they closed up in the evening, she would be exhausted and would immediately collapse into a deep sleep as she had to get up very early every morning to do the day’s shopping. At first, business was very slow, but over the weeks and then months, it grew steadily and they were just about able to make ends meet. But every time Ying asked Udom for some money to send to her mother, he made an excuse to postpone sending any – citing the need to buy more food in or some essential, maybe a new item of cooking equipment.

Although Ying fretted more and more about her mother and her family, she was now totally committed to the relationship and lived in hope that business would improve to the point where Udom would be able to give her some money to send back home. Six months after she had moved to the south, Ying’s commitment became even more cemented. She discovered she was pregnant.

As soon as she told Udom that she was carrying his baby, he seemed to lose interest in her as a lover. She still had to work from dawn to dusk to support his shaky business, but as soon as the restaurant was closed up at night, Udom disappeared into the nearby town and wouldn’t return home to the small hours, reeking of cheap, Thai whisky.

*

Ying drifted off to sleep for a few minutes in the long grass but woke up a few minutes later as her dream turned into the usual recurring nightmare; the one where a drunk Udom was  beating her baby to death.

*

She had already suffered much in her life, but somehow she had always managed to remain stoically cheerful, but the past year’s events had really started to drag her down to the point where she despaired of ever finding any happiness. She was carrying a baby, had to work like a slave, and received no affection or care from the man that she still deeply cared about, but who was obviously taking his pleasures elsewhere.

The pregnancy had duly gone to full term, despite the harsh conditions in which Ying was living and working and she delivered her son, Mac, at the local hospital, with the minimum of fuss. Udom had been out enjoying himself when Ying had been rushed into hospital one evening by some concerned neighbours, and Udom had only managed to make it to her bedside by the following morning, when he had arrived home drunk in the early hours to find her gone. He immediately checked them out of the hospital and took mother and son back home and put the young mother back to work in the kitchen.

If Ying thought that life was difficult before, she was now finding her daily existence almost unbearable. From the day she delivered her baby, Udom had forced her back to work in the restaurant. He warned her that if she didn’t work, there would be no food for her and baby Mac.

So work she did, much as before, but now she had her baby to take care of at the same time and life became ever more desperate. Unfortunately, things were to get even worse. Udom’s increasing propensity for alcohol had reached the point where he would drink during the day, while working in the kitchen.

The result of this was that he was becoming more and more violent towards his family. The slightest mistake or failure to do things exactly how he wanted them done would result in a hard slap and even the occasional punch to Ying’s delicate face. Even the young baby was not spared. Sometimes, when Ying was too busy working to take care of the baby and stop him crying, Udom would grab the baby, hold him out in front of him and shake him violently.

Ying was terrified that Udom might do permanent damage to the baby, or even kill him in a drunken fit of temper. She decided that enough was enough and that she had to get out of this miserable, loveless and abusive relationship. How to get out? It was a problem. Now Udom was drinking during the day on a regular basis, he didn’t go out very often, as it was cheaper to drink at home. By late evening, when the restaurant closed, he would usually collapse in a drunken stupor and sleep the night away.

She had managed to secretly save enough money to buy a bus fare to get herself and her son out of the south and back to Sa Kaeo. She knew she wouldn’t be welcome back home and she knew that her mother would be very angry with her, but she had nowhere else to go. The problem was how to leave without  Udom discovering what she was up to and preventing her from going? He would be lost without her as he would have no-one to do all the work that his ‘wife’ was doing for nothing. Even if she proved physically strong enough to get away from him, she could never do so carrying a young baby, barely six months old. Udom might grab the baby and make all manner of dire threats in order to keep her there with him.

She resolved to wait until Udom went out one night, but day followed day and week followed week and he never went out; he just drunk himself to sleep every night at home. In the end, Ying gave up waiting and had decided to take a chance when he fell asleep.

***

Dawn had broken and the two ‘runaways’ were entering the most vulnerable period of the early morning. What would she do if Udom discovered them? She was far too weak to fight him, and there was no one around who could help her. As tired as she was, she couldn’t sleep and she hoped and prayed that the long awaited bus would arrive soon. Please God, don’t let it be late. She lay on the ground and stared through the bushes at the road beyond, determined to stay awake, now that the time to go was drawing ever closer…

*

Suddenly, a loud thump crashed through the early morning stillness and she awoke with a start. She opened her bleary eyes and made out the sight of a bus, revving up its noisy diesel engine – its filthy smoke billowing out of an ancient exhaust. She was so sleepy that it took a few moments before she fully realised what was happening. The thump had been the sound of the bus door closing and the revving engine meant that the bus was about to leave! As she wearily scrambled to her feet, she heard the unmistakeable crunch of the engine being put into gear and before she could so much as shout out to them, the bus slowly moved away from the bus stop.

Ying panicked. She left Mac where he was lying and rushed out into the road in time to see the bus moving off into the distance. She tried to run after the bus, screaming and crying at the top of her voice, in the futile hope that someone might see her or hear her. The bus kept gathering speed and she knew it was hopeless. She kept running, but after a few steps, she tripped on a pot hole and fell head first onto the middle of the tarmac.  

It was the final straw – she knew that all was now lost; she lay prostrate on the road, breaking down into uncontrollable sobbing, with her eyes tightly closed in a desperate attempt to shut out the world and her desperate situation.

*

Her mind was in a whirl; it seemed as though she had been lying there for an eternity when she was suddenly brought back to harsh reality by someone’s hand, gently touching her shoulder. She turned over to see two men looking down at her anxiously.

‘Are you all right Miss?’

She looked at them, terrified for a brief moment that they may have some connection with Udom, but one of them had a sort of uniform and they both looked very concerned for her.

‘Yes,’ she replied, between, sobs, ‘I think so. Who are you?’

‘Miss, were you waiting for the bus?’

‘Yes, I was, but how do you know? Anyway, it’s too late, it’s gone, and the next one won’t be along until tomorrow. Oh my God what will I do?’ she cried, and once again tears formed in the corners of her eyes.

‘Miss, Miss, come on, sit up.’

She looked at them through her tear-filled eyes and slowly sat up.

‘Now,’ the man in the uniform said, what do you see, along the road, in the distance?’

She looked and she saw and her heart gave a leap of joy. There, barely visible in the far distance of the morning gloom was the distinct outline of a bus, stationary in the centre of the road.

‘But…But… I don’t understand… how could you have heard me?’

‘We didn’t,’ replied the young uniformed man, who Ying now realised was the bus conductor, ‘you can thank the two women who we just picked up. They told me about you sleeping in the bushes with your baby, but in the rush to get on the bus they had forgotten all about you, so they persuaded the driver to stop. Then they asked me to come and get you.’

Ying could barely take it all in. ‘Oh I don’t know how to thank you,’

‘Just get your things – and your baby  -  and hurry, we are already late!’

‘My baby! Oh My God! My baby!’

She needn’t have worried. Little Mac was still fast asleep where she had left him and five minutes later, she wearily but thankfully climbed on board the ancient bus, quickly settling herself and Mac into her single seat.

Her eyes brimmed with tears yet again; but this time they weren’t the tears of sorrow and despair, they were tears of relief and happiness that at long last, she was now safely on her way out of Surat Thani and away from the malevolent Udom, hopefully forever.

PART TWO – CHAPTER V

Ying sat alone at the far corner table of Siam Coffee shop, staring out of the window onto On Nut Road, wondering if her friend, Gay, was still coming, or whether had she been stood up. She couldn’t really blame Gay if she had decided not come, as after all, she hadn’t been in touch with her friend for several months. She had more or less dropped her like a stone, ever since she had stopped working at the Galaxy Night Club and moved in with Don.

She suddenly realised what a good friend Gay had been to her, and how kind she had been when she had first come to Bangkok looking for work. If it hadn’t been for Gay, helping her through those first difficult weeks, who knows what might have happened to her – a timid, vulnerable 18 year old girl, with no experience in the wicked ways of Thailand’s notorious capital city.

*

It had been more than a year since she had once again taken the bus from her Mother’s home in Sa Kaeo and made the journey to Bangkok in search of work to support Baby Mac and the rest of her family. She had embarked on this journey to Bangkok only a few weeks after her emotional arrival back at her family’s village, following her perilous trip from the South of Thailand. She had used up the last of her precious savings to hire a tuk tuk to take her and Mac from the bus terminal in Sa Kaeo City to her family’s village, some fifteen kilometres away, and had been dreading what the reception would be. But she needn’t have worried.

Ying’s mother was a hard woman, but she was also a compassionate and loving mother. She had taken one look at her half-starved daughter and grandchild, arriving in the back of a rusty, smoke-belching tuk-tuk and she hobbled over to them at a surprising turn of speed; literally lifting the two of them out of their seats and hugging them to her ample bosoms, with her tears flowing down her gnarled, sun blackened cheeks.

Ying was as thin as a rake and barely weighed 40 kilos; her baby was also very thin and undernourished. Her brothers and sister had gathered round to comfort their eldest sister when they saw her state and learned of the ordeal she had been through and within a short while, her entire extended family – aunts and uncles and cousins who lived nearby – also came to welcome her home and to hear of her exploits during the past few years.

Ying’s mother had managed to make ends meet by once again borrowing money on the small piece of land that she owned and it soon became clear to Ying that the money was fast running out and that something had to be done as a matter of urgency. She had been home for three weeks when she came to the conclusion that it was going to be down to her, yet again, to bail her family out. But what could she do? Where could she find work?

This dilemma had been temporary put on hold by the unexpected arrival of Udom in the village. Ying had never expected for one moment that Udom would find out where her family lived, much less bother to follow her there. It transpired that within days of Ying fleeing, Udom had been obliged to do a ‘moonlight flit’ from the restaurant himself due to mounting, unpaid debts and he had gone to Bangkok to obtain Ying’s address from the family she used to work for.

Ying locked herself inside her mother’s house and refused to speak to him, but he refused to leave and spoke to Ying’s mother who eventually agreed that she would try to persuade Ying to come out and settle things between them.

After much coaxing, Ying had eventually emerged from her home to confront her now despised ex-partner.

‘Ying,’ Udom began, ‘I am so sorry for everything. I know I treated you very badly and I promise I will change. I have learnt my lesson; please come back to me. I will treat you properly and take care of little Mac. I swear I will. Give me another chance, I beg you…’

‘No! Never!’ she had shouted angrily back to him. ‘You treated me like a slave and nearly killed my baby!’ I will never forgive you….’

‘Please Ying,’ the young man begged, please come back to me, I love you so much…’

‘Love me! Love me!’ she had shouted in an ever shriller tone, ‘You don’t know the meaning of the word. Get out! Get out of my village and keep away from my family!’

‘Please Ying…. Please…’

She had taken an enormous risk to get herself and her baby away from his drunken clutches and she was not about to go back. ‘Udom, It’s all over! I never want to see your ugly face again. I hate you. If you don’t go now, I will set the villagers on you.

Udom quickly realised that he wasn’t going to get anywhere with Ying and he left the village the same day. But it took another week or two before he gave up completely. After all, despite her thin stature, Ying was flowering into a very beautiful young lady and he now regretted the way he had treated her. He realised that he was still in love with her and desperately wanted her and his son back with him. Every two or three days he would return to Ying’s village in the vain hope that time would heal Ying’s anger and that she would eventually relent and return to live with him.

*

As she waited for her friend, she sipped on her cold cup of coffee and reflected on these recent events with a grimace,  Udom had  finally realised that he was wasting his time when, on the last occasion that he came to try and change her mind, his beloved had already long gone.

Later, Ying’s sister had written to her to tell her that when Udom had realised he was no longer there, he had broken down in tears. Then he had started drinking and became very drunk, threatening her mother with violence if she didn’t tell him where her daughter was staying. Eventually, the villagers got hold of him bodily and threw him out of the village and nobody had seen him since.

*

While all this aggravation had been going on with Udom, one of Ying’s many older half-sisters, on her father’s side, had come to visit her and told her that her best chance of work was to go to Bangkok. The sister had taken one look at Ying and realised that Ying was fast becoming an exceptional beauty and that it wouldn’t be hard for her to find work in Bangkok’s burgeoning nightlife industry.

‘With your looks, you won’t have any problem finding work in one of the night clubs that cater to the rich Thai businessmen,’ she had advised Ying.

‘But…but what will that involve? I couldn’t face having to sleep with them! I can’t do that! It would be terrible!’

‘Don’t worry; you won’t have to, not if you don’t want to. You will get a small salary and if you are popular with the customers – as I am sure will will be with your looks – you can earn a lot of money from drinks and tips. Some of those millionaire Thais can be very generous.’

‘But what will I have to do?’ asked Ying naively.

‘Do? You just sit with the customers and chat to them.

‘Is that all?’

Well you may have to let them hold you sometimes, and if you have a special customer, you may have to let him kiss you sometimes, but that’s all’

Ying had shivered to herself. ‘Sounds horrible!’

‘Horrible!’ her sister repeated, ‘well, maybe, but it’s better than starving. Mind you, if I had your looks, I would be looking for a ‘sugar daddy’; some rich elderly man who would put me in a nice apartment and look after me and my family; but of course, for all that, I would have to sleep with him whenever he wanted

‘That sounds terrible! The innocent young teenager replied. I can’t imagine sleeping with a man who I wasn’t in love with….’

*

That conversation had occurred only fifteen months ago and oh, so much water had flowed under the bridge since then, she thought to herself. She had decided that Gay was definitely not coming and was about to call the waiter and pay the bill, when the door flew open and in came her errant friend.

Gay was in her early thirties, but still a very good looking lady; she was  born and  bred in Bangkok with a good figure, slightly fleshy but still exciting, sexy legs, and an attractive, well-proportioned face; but her most attractive attribute of all was her silky, white skin – so admired and sought after by many of the night club’s clientele.

Gay had met Ying late one evening when she had taken pity on her. She had spotted her when she had come into the night club where she was working to speak to the manager. The young girl  had been dressed in a dirty, ill-fitting T-shirt, with cheap, baggy jeans and tattered flip flops, revealing blackened feet and dirty broken toe-nails. The clothes had done Ying’s skinny frame no favours and no one could be blamed for assuming that the girl had just emerged from one of the many slum markets to sell ‘who knows what’ wares.

It was clear that Ying had been asking for a job and it was also clear that the manager was telling her in no uncertain fashion that there were no jobs at th Galaxy Night Club for the likes of riff raff like her and that she had better be gone – sharpish  -  before he set one of his bouncers on her. Ying had started walking towards the door, when Gay hurried over and asked her where she was going?

‘Going?’ Ying responded, almost in tears. ‘I don’t know where I’m going. I was told that I could find work in this area, but I’ve been wandering the streets for hours and nobody will even give me the time of day?’ she said, looking desperate.

After Gay had managed to take a closer look at the young girl, her earlier suspicions were confirmed. Underneath all those terrible, ill-fitting clothes, the young lady standing in front of her was quite a beauty. ‘Why hadn’t that stupid manger realised that?’ she asked herself. ‘Look, she said to Ying, I know you don’t know me, but my name is Gay and I work here as a hostess. Is that what you want to be? A Hostess?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I do, but nobody will talk to me.’ I must have been to half a dozen nightclubs around here and always the same answer – No! Get lost!’

‘That’s because they are all stupid and can’t see how pretty you are. Listen, what is your name and where are you staying?’

‘Staying? I’m not staying anywhere. My name is Ying; I just arrived from Sa Kaeo this morning and haven’t found anywhere to stay yet. I was hoping to find a job first, but now I don’t know what to do…’

Gay had been working the Thai nightclub circuit for almost ten nears and the experience had hardened her, but like so many of her ilk,  she was still a glutton for a hard luck story. In fact it was probably this ‘compassionate’ side to her nature that had led her into so many disastrous affairs and meant that she was still working for drinks and tips at a time when her looks were starting to fade and she should have long since settled down with a steady boyfriend.

‘Look Ying, I think you are a very pretty young lady and I’m sure you can get a job here or in one of the other clubs in the area, but nobody will look at you when you are dressed like that. You just don’t look like a hostess.’

‘But these are the only clothes I have.’

Gay looked at the desperate girl for a few seconds.

‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If you want to wait outside for me, when I finish work tonight you can come home with me and I’ll see what I can do about finding you some work tomorrow.’

Ying looked at her new found acquaiantance, and instinctively realised that she really wanted to help her and was probably telling her the truth. ‘That’s very kind of you. Do you really think I can get a job?’

‘I’m sure you can, I just need to make you more presentable. Now, promise that you’ll wait for me; I usually finish work at around 2 a.m. but I’ll try to get away early tonight.’

She opened her handbag and pulled out a hundred Baht note. ‘Here, take this and go and get something to eat and be back outside the nightclub at midnight. And wait for me. I’ll try to come out as soon as I can and then we can go back to my room.’

Ying looked at the woman in astonishment. She couldn’t believe that someone was actually being kind and helping her.

‘Come on, take it, I have to get back to work.’

She thrust the money into Ying’s reluctant hands and rushed off back to her customer, thinking: ‘She’ll either get herself a good meal and then disappear for ever or, if she’s got any sense, she will be waiting for me when I finish work tonight. It’s up to her, but either way, I wish her well. She looked so unhappy –  so desperate…’

*

Gay sat down breathlessly opposite Ying at the small table and apologised for being late.

‘You know how it is Ying, I had a very late night,’ she added with a smile.’ Now what’s all this about? You’ve finally found time to meet up with your old friend again then have you? She asked, still smiling.

‘Oh Gay, I am so sorry. I know I have been selfish and unthinking,’ Ying responded. ‘I am so sorry; I should have called you before. I wanted to call so many times, but something always came up and I kept putting it off.’

Gay looked at the friend who she hadn’t set eyes on for many months. She was as beautiful as she remembered and it would seem that her dress sense was as good as ever. She was dressed like a fashion model; truly looking like a million, very sexy and desirable dollars, but one look at her eyes and Gay knew that Ying was in a very unhappy state of mind.

‘Ying’, she said, ‘do you remember that first night we met – when you came to galaxy looking for work?’

‘How could I ever forget,’ Ying answered with a weak smile, temporarily putting all her troubles to one side. I was so innocent and shy and I was dressed in those awful clothes. I can’t bear to think what may have happened to me if I hadn’t met you. You were so good to me.’

*

Her mind went back to that awful night when she had waited for two hours outside the club, slowly losing all hope that Gay would eventually appear and wondering where she was going to spend the night as all her money was gone; she was completely broke. Then much later, her tears of happiness and relief when Gay had finally emerged, full of apologies and whisked her into a waiting taxi to take them back to her little room about two kilometres away.

The two girls had fallen asleep almost as soon as they had arrived at Gay’s room, but the following morning, Gay filled her new found fiend full of food and then proceeded to find some clothes from her overflowing wardrobe that would suit the young, budding hostess. It wasn’t easy, as they were of different heights and Ying was so emaciated that almost everything seemed to hang off her, but eventually, with a bit of creativity, they found a flimsy white top and a very short jeans miniskirt that transformed the ‘upcountry rice picker’ into a gorgeous, very alluring slim young lady with smooth, slim legs that seemed to go forever.

Gay then took Ying to a nearby beauty salon where the staff went to work on Ying’s long, but unkempt hair and transformed it into glistening, black silky tresses and although her young, flawless complexion didn’t really need it, they applied delicate, understated makeup to her quite exquisite face.

The Galaxy manger didn’t even recognised the badly dressed kid of the previous evening and immediately offered her a job

*

‘Gay,’ Ying said, recalling that day, ‘you have been such a good friend; I don’t know I can ever thank you.’

‘There’s nothing to thank me for,’ Gay said. I would have done the same for anyone. You looked so sad and desperate when I saw you that night. Besides, I was being selfish – I was doing it for me, not you; I am a Buddhist, I was making merit for my next life,’ she said with a cheeky grin.

Ying laughed with her, but Gay knew that there was an underlying sadness in her eyes. ‘Ying what happened? We used to be so happy together at the Gay, do you remember?’

‘Of course I do, Gay, yes they were good times,’ she answered, thinking back to those happy, crazy, fun-filled first months she spent as a nightclub hostess.

You remember ‘Paw’? Gay asked, referring to one of Ying’s regular customers.

‘Yes of course I do.’ How is he?’

‘He’s fine. He still asks about you. I think he’s still in love with you. And… Don?’

‘Yes Don,’ Ying replied with a shudder, her smile suddenly vanishing.

‘Don – is he still with you?’

‘Yes Gay, he is still with me.’

There was a long silence between the two friends; both of them thought back to happier times.

*

At first, Ying had been extremely shy and tried to avoid having to sit with the customers but after a few days, she slowly got into the swing of things and started to understand what was required of her as a hostess. There was no obligation for her to go home with a client or to a motel for a ‘short time’ – although many of the girls did just that to supplement their income – but she was required to sit with customers and let them hold her hands, occasionally cuddle her and even, on the odd occasion, kiss her. She had found this quite distasteful when she first started working, but within a short while, after she had discovered the joys of alcohol, she found it easier and even enjoyable to smooch with the better looking ‘clients’.

She was young, very pretty and her figure was starting to fill out after the years of semi-starvation in her village and at Surat Thani. She was fast becoming a highly sought after lady at her new place of work. Many customers would go there, specifically to spend a few happy hours in the company of the delectable Ying, only to leave disappointed, as she had already been commandeered for the evening by another customer who had beaten them to it.

Most of the club’s clientele would buy a bottle of premium grade whisky or brandy  to drink with her and after a few weeks, Ying found that she was more than capable of holding her own – drinking glass for glass of whisky – or brandy – with her wealthy customers.  Ying had started to acquire a real taste for alcohol.

Even without sleeping around, she was earning good money from her ‘drinks’ and tips so for the first time in more than two years, she was able to send a small amount of money home to her mother. But it wasn’t enough and her mother still had the loan hanging over her head. Ying didn’t know what to do as she had no intention of selling her body for money.

She had been working as a hostess for about three months when, apart from the countless men who tried, without success, to make her their special girlfriend, she had realised that she was becoming quite serious with two – very different – Thai men. The first was in his early fifties. He was a lawyer and he owned his own law practice in the nearby district of Prakanong. He admitted to Ying that he was married, but had long since separated from his wife.

He was a very kind, gentle man who was more of a father-figure to Ying than a boy-friend. In fact, he was so eager to give advice to this naïve young lady who had little or no experience of life outside of Sa Kaeo, that almost from the start, she called him ‘Paw’, the Thai word for ‘father’. Ying’s real father had been shot dead, right in front of her, when she was eight years’ old and she was certainly in need of an older, wiser person to steer her through the ‘pitfalls’ of life in Thailand’s teeming, exciting and sometimes dangerous  capital city.

Paw wanted Ying to come and live with him at his house in a soi off Prakanong, and effectively be his mia noi – minor wife. He told Ying that he would take care of her and treat her very well. Ying had already told Paw about her family’s financial troubles back home in Sa Kaeo and Paw had promised to pay off her mother’s debts, if she agreed to go and live with him.

Ying wasn’t sure what to do. She had grown quite fond of this likeable, kindly old man, but she could never love him – he was just too old for her. But she wanted to help her poor mother and her younger brothers and sister back home in Sa Kaeo, and this seemed like a heaven-sent opportunity to do just that. Paw was obviously quite well off and she was sure that he would keep his promises. She just couldn’t bring herself to make that final jump.

In the event, she came to a somewhat different decision a couple of weeks later. The second significant man in her life was a very handsome young man called Don. Don had fashionably long hair, was tall, slim and dressed in the latest styles – beautiful, skin tight, silk shirts which showed off his slim, athletic torso and the latest fashion jeans. He used to come to the club several times a week with a group of friends, similarly attired and the girls would almost fight each other for the chance to sit with these fun-loving, big spending, handsome young men.

Don had long since made a bee-line for Ying and within a short time he was totally smitten. He was determined to make her his ‘own’ and single-mindedly set about winning her with a diligence and determination that belied his reputation as a playboy. Before he met Ying, Don had always played the field as far as women were concerned but Ying had changed all that.

Ying had been flattered and was literally swept off her feet by this crazy, attractive youth who seemed to be the very antithesis of the dour, spiteful Udom, her first lover. When, one momentous night, Dom implored Ying to leave her job at the nightclub and come and stay with him as his girlfriend, Ying took little time in jumping at the opportunity, but not before she had broken the sad news to Paw, that she had fallen in love with another man.

Paw had seen Don at the night club with his friends and had suffered pangs of jealousy as he watched Don and Ying together, their hands all over each other, clearly infatuated. But he tried to keep a sense of perspective about it and realised that he would be no match for such a person. He wanted Ying to be happy, but he was concerned about her plans to stop work and shack up with the young man. He warned Ying that although he didn’t know Don personally, he had seen such people many times at clubs through the years and he could tell the type. He felt sure that Don wasn’t all that he purported to be and warned Ying to be very careful.

In truth, Ying knew very little about Don’s background, or indeed what he did for a living, but that didn’t seem to matter in the whirlwind that overcame her as she packed her belongings and moved in with Don at his apartment, off Sukhumvit Road.

The problems first surfaced when Ying asked Don for some money to send back home to her mother. Don immediately lost his temper and screamed at her that he wasn’t going to support her family. She had then burst into tears, whereupon Don calmed down, came over to where she was sitting and put his hands over her shoulders, to comfort her. He seemed full of remorse for his outburst and told Ying that he would ‘see what he could do’ to find some extra money for her family.

But more rows were to follow, and although the two were clearly crazy about each other, there were issues between them which forever got in the way of a happy relationship. For one thing, Don was very vague about his family and background, and was even vaguer about what he did for a living. He seemed to go out at strange hours and return at even stranger hours, refusing to tell Ying where he had been and what he had been doing.

This would inevitably result in rows, as Ying was extremely jealous and feared the worst. Don would usually solve the problem by taking Ying to bed and totally mesmerising her with his incredibly energetic, sexual prowess. They would make love for so long that in the end, the two were too exhausted to fight any longer.

*

‘So what’s happened?’ Gay asked at last. ‘What’s going on between you and Don? You are obviously not happy. Has the bastard got another girl friend?’

‘Another girlfriend? Ying repeated, absent mindedly. ‘No, Gay, not a girlfriend… nothing like that.’

‘What then?’

‘What  then…’ Ying repeated, thinking back…

*

For many months, life had stumbled along for Ying; a mixture of heady highs and depressing lows. Highs when she was with her man, in bed making love, and lows when he disappeared, sometimes for days at a time, leaving her stuck in the apartment, wondering if he would ever come back again. It didn’t take Ying long to realise that whatever Don did for a living, it almost certainly wasn’t legal. She could see by the hours he kept, the snatches of telephone conversation she overheard and other tell-tale incidents – like Don returning after an absence of two days wearing brand new clothes and  flashing bundles of money, some of which he would begrudgingly give to Ying to send home.

Ying could have learnt to tolerate this topsy-turvy lifestyle if it hadn’t been another, more sinister event. One morning, after a night of passion, she awoke to find her boyfriend injecting heroin into a vein in his left arm. She was horrified and berated Don for doing such a terrible thing. But Don just smiled the smile of an addict who was rapidly getting ‘high’, and fell fast asleep.

Later, after Don had returned from yet another two day absence, she raised the subject of his heroin use with him, but he laughed it off, telling her that it was a ‘one off’ and assured her that he had never done it again. She didn’t really believe him and sure enough, two days later, she found him in the bathroom ‘shooting himself up’ once again. This time, a row ensued when Ying tried to take the syringe away from Don and in the end Don became violent, grabbed Ying by the hair and threw her out of the bathroom and locked the door.

From then on there had been an uneasy truce between the pair. Don would continue to take heroin and Ying had become withdrawn and quiet. She was scared to intervene any more but was even more scared of what was happening to Don and their relationship.

Don had changed. He was no longer the fun-loving, caring young man who had asked her to go and live with him. He was either away from home, getting up to ‘God knows’ what?’, or he stayed at home, sleeping the days away and ‘high’ on heroin for most of the time. They barely made love anymore and Ying feared for herself, her family and her boyfriend’s sanity.

Then today, when Don had ‘come down’ from his latest dose of heroin and before he injected another one, she had sat him down and tried to talk to him. She told him that they couldn’t go on like this anymore. She still loved him but couldn’t bear to see him like this. Don told her that he loved her and would try to quit. She informed him that if he didn’t quit she would leave him – her mind was made up.

Don had become very emotional. During his brief, ‘sober’ state, he knew that he was destroying himself and their relationship.

‘Ying, I love you and I can’t live without you,’ he had told her.

‘Don, think very, very hard about what I have said. I mean it Don, I will really leave you if you take another shot of heroin. I just can’t take it anymore.’

‘I will try; I promise,’ he had replied. ‘If you leave me, my life is over,’

‘Then you know what you have to do,’ she had said. ‘I am going out to see my friend Gay. We haven’t seen each other for so long. When I come back, I hope you will still be free of drugs.’

He had looked at her – a desperate, frightened look on his face, tears forming at the corners of his eyes and he told her he would try his best to do what she had asked of him.

Without a backward glance, Ying picked up her bag and left the apartment, for her date with Gay, leaving Don to contemplate her ultimatum.

*

‘Don… I’m sorry Gay, I don’t think I want to talk about it.’

‘But you look so unhappy, Ying.’

‘Yes, I know; but today we had a long talk and maybe it’s Ok. Maybe everything will be fine now. Anyway, I’ll find out when I get home. Now, what have you been up to? Come on, tell me what’s been going on with everyone at The Galaxy over the past few months. I’m dying to know,’ she asked with a slightly forced smile.

Gay told her that she had taken the day off from work so that they could spend the afternoon and evening together, talking about old times. She related to Ying about her former friends who were still working there, and about the ones who had left because they had found regular boyfriends or had become mia nois (minor wives) to older, rich business men and about the many, regular customers who still enquired after her.

When they were completely ‘coffee-logged’ they adjourned to Gay’s room nearby and continued to catch up on gossip. It was one of the happiest few hours that Ying had enjoyed for quite a while. For a short period of time, she almost forgot about Don back in their apartment, fighting his heroin addiction.

So it was after ten when Ying made the journey home. She was dreading what she may find, as she had a strong suspicion that Don would not have the will power to stay away from the heroin.

But nothing could have prepared her for what she did find. She opened the front door and the apartment was in darkness. There was no sign of Don in the sitting room so at first she assumed that he must have gone out. But then she heard a familiar noise coming from the kitchen. It was the sound of a kitchen ceiling fan revolving on its axis in the corner of the room,

‘He must have forgotten to turn it off’, she thought to herself as she wandered into the kitchen.

She snapped on the light and almost fainted in shock at the sight in front of her. Her beloved Don was hanging from a short piece of rope, his head at an ungainly angle, his feet dangling about nine inches from the floor, a kitchen chair upended a couple of feet away. He was dead. He had hung himself. She stood and stared at his limp body, with the whirring fan rattling back and forth, slightly ruffling the dead man’s hair as it passed a particular point in its rotation.

‘Oh No! Don! Don!’ she screamed. ‘I didn’t mean it! ‘You can do what you like! – I don’t care! – I love you, Don! Please, please don’t do this,’ she screamed, with her tears streaming down her cheeks. She rushed up to him and grabbed him around the waist, trying to pull his body to the ground, failing miserably.

His neck wouldn’t budge from the rope that tethered him, so she just clung onto him, wailing a terrible wail of grief, as the whirring fan continued its inexorable course – across the room and back again – intermittently ruffling the hair of the two bodies; one still full of frantic, distressed life and the other – cold and ugly – hanging in untimely and premature death.

***

Mobi-Babble

Last Saturday, two Brits, both in their thirties, were killed in separate accidents while riding their bikes, without helmets, on the Darkside.

I am currently discussing this subject in Thai Visa as, ironically, I had only recently started a new thread to point out the dangers of driving at speed – without helmets – on a dangerous road that has an increasing amount of traffic on it, when news of this double-tragedy came to my attention.

I was also prompted to raise the subject of reckless drivers as every day, when I take my afternoon walk, I pass by a memorial stone set on the grass verge, in memory of yet another English motorcyclist who died on this road a few years back.

So it was with no great surprise but with much sadness that barely two days after I started the thread, I learned that two young men ‘met their ends’ on what is fast becoming an accident black spot for irresponsible farang motorcyclists.

In the first accident, the man attempted to overtake at the same time as  a pick-up truck was coming in the opposite direction towards him. He clipped its side mirror, resulting him losing control, falling down onto the road where he was crushed under the wheels of  10 wheel truck which was following on behind.

I wonder why he would attempt to overtake on a dangerous two lane road, when there was an oncoming vehicle, making the manoeuvre even more risky than it already was. He was in such a hurry…

The second accident involved a man who was staying in Pattaya ‘proper’, but had driven out to the lake on his bike to get drunk at one of the Lakeside bars. On his return journey, he ‘met his maker’ although I have no detailed information as to precisely what happened.

It is a small world, for I discovered yesterday that this particular unfortunate victim had been living with one of my ex-girlfriends. Some of you may recall her; a lady, (who I called ‘Tan’), from Nakhon Sawan, who I had a short, but very tempestuous and traumatic affair, back in April, May and June, 2010, all faithfully recorded in my blog at that time. You may recall that I got pissed and she dumped me. Now that’s something new, ain’t it?

I have nothing but painful memories of Tan as I was very fond of her, but I wouldn’t wish the death of a loved one onto my worst enemy and I do hope that she manages to get through this difficult and sad time in one piece.

A Lustful Gentleman

For those of you who may be interested, at long last I have been making some progress on my novel and a couple of days ago I wrote around 4,000 new words after spending a day or so ‘getting back into it’ and reminding myself where I was at. Now I have recommenced, I am resolved to keep the momentum going and hopefully I will be publishing some new ‘sections’ soon.

I am currently reading Tolstoy’s ‘Resurrection’ which I will comment on when I have finished, (along with Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’, which I finished reading recently), but in the meantime. I will just mention that I was interested to note that Tolstoy had started a new chapter, every time there was to every ‘break’ in his narrative, usually every 2-3 pages.

So, as I am sure that Tolstoy knows best, I have decided to adopt a similar format for my  novel. Currently, my chapters are quite long and contain a number of natural breaks – marked by asterisks – occasioned by ‘time shifts’, either forward or back, and I shall now covert these breaks into separate chapters. As you will see, the original lengthy chapters will now be changed to ‘parts’: ‘Part 1 is  ‘Na’; ‘Part 2,  Ying’; ‘Part 3,  Toby’, and so on.

A post script… to my piece the other day on the valiant Captain of the Costa Concordia

After his retirement, Winston Churchill was cruising the Mediterranean on an Italian cruise liner and some Italian journalists asked why an ex British Prime Minister should choose an Italian ship.

“There are three things I like about being on an Italian cruise ship,” said Churchill.

“Firstly their cuisine is unsurpassed, secondly their service is superb and then, in times of emergency, there is none of this nonsense about women and children first.”

‘Nuff said…

Two Film reviews

1. Tinker Tailor Soldier, Spy

As some of you may know, I am a life-long fan of John Le Carré and he is one of my favourite 20^th Century authors – although he is still going strong in this, his 70^th Year!

‘Tinker’ was a classic of the cold war spy genre and it wasn’t long ago that I watched, (and wrote about) the BBC 1979 adaptation, which I enjoyed very much, although I found the back ground music somewhat grating.

So it was with great anticipation that I sat down to watch the 2011 celluloid version of Le Carré’s classic.

On the whole I did enjoy it and I think I will probably watch it again as I feel it is that rare kind of film that requires more than one viewing to fully appreciate its ‘finer points’

I have to say that if I hadn’t read the novel and recently watched the BBC version, I doubt that I would have had much idea about what was going on. The film is a ‘film noir’ to outdo all ‘film noirs’ and I think you would have you be a bit of a clever-clogs to really follow all the nuances of the convoluted plot if you hadn’t previously read the book or seen the BBC adaptation.

But given that I had and I did, I managed to follow where the film was going – just about, as they did change some of the finer points of the story line, and I found some of the scenes quite breath-taking in their ability to evoke to bygone age and atmosphere.

I am also now devoted fan of Gary Oldman who gave a masterful portrayal of George Smiley, but I do feel that most of the other main characters were pretty one dimensional. Not the actors’ faults, as they were all top drawer, and did their best with the material at hand, but more a fault of the scrip and the film itself. The exception to this was Smiley’s wife, who we only ever caught the briefest glimpses of, yet in some indefinable way, we somehow knew all about her.

It is a ‘patchy’ piece of work – brilliant in parts and sometimes baffling, but never, as some have asserted, boring. The plot moves along in brief ‘snapshots’ of dialogue and action and as a consequence, sometimes you have to be pretty quick-witted to fully appreciate what is actually happening.

Overall, it was an enjoyable ‘ride’, and I particularly loved the scenes of the spooks’ 70’s ‘office Christmas party’, which were so evocative, grotesque and somehow, almost scary.

I also loved the ending, but I won’t spoil it for you.

Oh… the music is just totally brilliant!

2. George Harrison – Living in the material World

I will always go out of my way to see the work of certain actors and directors – a select few, who, in my opinion, can do no wrong.

By way of example, I will always watch an Al Pacino or a De Niro film – even if it is a bad one,  as by their very presence, they will somehow drag it out of the mundane and make it a pleasurable experience.

One of my favourite directors is Martin Scorsese and to me, he can do no wrong, ever since I saw Taxi Driver all those years ago. Since then he has followed up with masterpieces such as Goodfellas, Casino and Gangs of New York, to name but three of many. Recently, his production and directorial contributions to the TV series, Boardwalk Empire has elevated it to the echelons of all time TV greats, such as The Sopranos.

Scorsese also has also directed a number of notable documentaries through the years, almost always connected in some way to his love of music and music performers. His latest, about the life of the Beatle George Harrison, is a feast for the eyes.

To any Beatles fans, lovers of popular music, or just someone interested in the life and times of this fascinating and talented man, then this documentary is a ‘must see’.

I sat down to watch it at around 10 p.m and sat transfixed, hardly realising that the clock was almost at the hour of 2 a.m by the time the final credits rolled down the screen – along with a few tears rolling down my cheeks…

There is no narrator and no quoting of dates or facts, just a cinematic account of the life of George, from his earliest days in the Beatles right up to the day of his death from cancer in 2001. The story is ‘told’ through mainly previously unseen footage and magical interviews with so many friends and family who knew him and lived through those life and times with him.

I have a new respect for Paul and Ringo who clearly gave very honest, heartfelt and sometimes surprisingly vulnerable accounts of themselves and their relationships with George and their times with him – both good and bad. And there many others; Eric Clapton, John Lennon, both of George’s wives, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Tom Petty, Phil Spector, Yoko Ono, Jackie Stewart and so many more.

Some of these people were interviewed especially for the film and other interviews were taken from archive footage, much of it never seen before. And at the top of the list of interviewees is George himself, speaking from his very early Beatle days, almost up to the time of his death.

George was a fascinating man who lived a very full life, from his music, to his film production, to his love of cars, to garden design and to his almost fanatical involvement in Indian mysticism and trans-meditation. Through the years, this quiet but obviously highly charismatic character acquired  an incredible array of devoted friends from all walks of life.

I particularly loved the videos of the impromptu sessions shot at Bob Dylan’s home recording studio in New York when members of the ‘Travelling Wilburys’, (George, Tom petty, Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne and Roy Orbison), collaborated on a new song . It is pure magic.

But there again, there are so many magical moments

This wonderful documentary is a film not to be missed.

BUTT…BUTT… BUTT…BUTT… I don’t give a hoot!…

Mobi-Babble

When I went to the UK last August for my daughter’s wedding, I made a point of keeping ‘mum’ about my current relationship with Noo as I feared they would despair of me and think that the ‘stupid old git’ is making a fool of himself yet again. 

In fact, strange the tell, my dear old octogenarian friends in Barnwell seemed to know me better than my own family as they were immediately dubious about my claims of living alone and  I soon confessed all about my latest attempt at romantic bliss. As ever, they were most supportive and wished me all the best.

However, this didn’t persuade me to take my family into my confidence, but I did realise that sooner or later I would have to break the news to them, especially as both of my daughters had expressed a desire to come and see me in 2012.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I was having a web-cam chat to my brother on Skype and as luck (or lack of it) would happen, Noo walked past where I was sitting and my brother asked me:

‘Who is that?’

‘Who is what?’

‘That lady who just walked behind you.’

‘Oh…oh…her?…she’s… she’s the maid…’

‘Didn’t look much like a maid to me…’

‘Oh…really?…’ I answered with a grin, ‘Oh well, I might as well come clean, it’s a fair cop bruv.’

I told him all about Noo and also said that my daughters didn’t know about her but that I was planning tell them, ‘soon’.

As with my friends from Barnwell, my brother’s reaction was completely  supportive and he wished me well in my new relationship.

‘It’s your life, Mobi, if it makes you happy, then go for it.’

Fast forward to a few days ago when I received a ‘Twitter PM’ from my eldest daughter, (note that this ‘old git’ is well into the technological age), advising me of her plans for her and her husband to come out for a visit in early April.

So I decided that the game was up and I’d better come clean, and if they both disowned me in disgust, then so be it; but as my brother had said, it is my life and if Noo makes me happy, that’s what matters most.

So I fired off a long email telling the two of them how long Noo has been with me (nearly 15 months now), and all about her.

Well of course I needn’t have worried as both my girls are wonderful, good hearted  people and, I like to think, they still  care a bit about their old man’s happiness. They both wished me well and expressed a desire to meet Noo in due course. God bless’em!

Wither those with power over us….

If the wrecking of the Corncordia wasn’t so tragic, it would be almost laughable.

Here we have the captain of an ocean going cruise liner, responsible for upwards of 5,000 souls, putting everyone at risk by manoeuvring his giant vessel into shallow, rocky waters to salute a colleague, then lying to the passengers about the severity of the situation and failing to take immediate measures to ensure their safety; and finally – crime upon crime – deserting the sinking ship, long before all the passengers had been rescued.

Then he made half the world’s population almost fall off their chairs in apoplexy when they learned that claimed he ‘tripped and fell into a lifeboat’ by accident.

The truth is still to come out concerning the Moldovan blond bimbo who was cavorting with Captain Francesco Schettino on the bridge during the minutes before his cruise liner foundered on rocks.

She had no cabin – yet when asked, she claimed ‘I had a cabin coupon in my pocket’…, and it has been reported from many sources that the Captain had been drinking copious glasses of wine during the period leading up to the accident.

Well I have no idea what rules, if any, govern the consumption of alcohol, when in charge of an ocean going vessel, but if you or I had been found over the limit on dry land in our car, after a major accident, we would have been locked up for the duration.

By all accounts, the good Captain was a bit of a ‘maverick’ and enjoyed living the high life, which is evidenced by the presence of a blond bimbo on the bridge.

I ask you, in all seriousness, is a man who likes to change his ship’s course to salute a colleague; a man who is a known ‘budding Casanova’ – one who has bimbos cavorting with him on the bridge – the kind of person who should be in charge of a ship carrying 5000 people?

What was the selection procedure that led to him being appointed captain? In my day and age it would have involved something we used to call the ‘personnel department’ but has long since been re-named with the ridiculous and euphemistic term; ‘Human Resources’, as if by changing the  name, that somehow makes them better, and more skilled.

If you ask me, the opposite is true. In this politically correct age, I very much doubt if any thought was given to the ‘character’ of the candidates and the ‘gut feel’ of traditional  personnel professionals. If it was, how could such a flamboyant man with a maverick personality ever have been elevated to such a responsible position? 

It doesn’t take much wit to understand that the type of person who is put in charge of such vessels should be a steady, careful, conservative, safety -conscious mariner, who at all times could be relied upon to place the safety of his passengers above all else, and who had a record of selfless and dedicated behaviour to his chosen career and who could be relied upon to act decisively and bravely in a time of crisis.

Clearly, Captain Francesco Schettino had none of these attributes, and why is it that the so-called professional ‘human resource experts’ didn’t spot this?  Appoint him as First Officer or Second Officer – fine; but as captain of a giant ship?  Never!  Maybe they just didn’t care or maybe they weren’t consulted!

It wouldn’t surprise me if the recently retired Captain, who Captain Schettino was trying to ‘salute’, had a hand in his appointment, and this was his way of returning the favour. In any event, is changing a  ship’s course just to blow your horn for a friend on shore, the type of behaviour that anyone wants from a ship’s captain?

God help us all….

More of the same…

And just so that you don’t think this is an anti-Italian rant, (although I have plenty of material, what with that arrogant, criminally insane, sex-crazed idiot Berlusconi; one of the worst western leaders ever to grace the international stage), here is nice little home grown screw up, which potentially could affect the lives of thousands.

In the UK, A senior police officer has been reprimanded after a dossier of documents detailing security plans for this year’s London Olympics was left on a train. The documents, which detailed Olympic security plans, including contact details of senior police officers, were found by a commuter who handed the documents to The Sun newspaper.

Apparently, “The Directorate of Professional Standards”, whatever they may be, have been informed. (Sounds like something out of a Harry Potter novel).

What I would like to know is how can a person be appointed to a position of such responsibility be capable of doing such an incredibly foolhardy and scatter-brained thing as to leave highly confidential documents, which potentially could place lives at risk , on a public train.

What on earth was he doing even reading such documents or displaying them when travelling on public transport? Even if he hadn’t put them down and forgotten about them, who can say that he wouldn’t be mugged and have the documents stolen, or maybe someone sitting near him may have been able to photograph some of the information from their mobile phone?

It’s just plain, honest to goodness, common sense. If you are carrying highly sensitive documents in a public place, you keep them well concealed about your person at all times.

And all that happened was that the officer was ‘reprimanded’. As far as I am concerned, he should be hung, drawn and quartered; then maybe some of the other idiots in similar positions of responsibility may think twice before being so careless with the State’s and people’s secrets.

And this is by no means the first time this sort of gaffe has occurred. How many times have we read about classified documents or tapes being left in taxis, or stolen from the back seats of cars, or even recovered from rubbish bins in public parks? And what about the UK Police Chief who walked into No 10 showing the whole world the details of some highly classified information he was carrying in his hand?

Has everyone gone completely barking?

And on top of this, how about the following ‘data protection gaffes’, all of which occurred in just one year, 2011.

• The Co-operative banking Group apologised after details of 83,000 customers of its funeral planning service were accidentally published online. It blamed the episode on a contractor…

• A hospital was forced to admit that patient records had been subject to “unauthorised access and disclosure” after being sent to the Philippines for transcription…

• A division of NHS North Central London had 20 of its laptops stolen from a storeroom. The laptops contained 8.6 million patient records, reported to have been unencrypted, and that the incident was only reported to police three weeks after the laptops went missing.

• Powys County Council were fined a record £130,000 after sensitive information relating to child protection case was mailed to the wrong recipient.

I understand that humans are fallible and that mistakes will happen, but when it comes to highly sensitive information, don’t you think it behoves those responsible to take all steps necessary to ensure that proper procedures are put place and that the right people are put in charge of ensuring the safety of the state and it’s citizens’ confidential information?

It seems to me that the whole world is becoming cavalier – with our lives and with our personal information – be it Italian Captains who want to show off from their bridges or mindless and criminally careless British public servants; all no doubt a bi-product of these politically correct times where common sense often takes a back seat when it comes to appointing the right people to the right job.

BUTT…BUTT…BUTT…I don’t give a hoot!…