Bangkok Breaks
Smashwords edition
Text by
John Ord
eISBN 978-616-222-057-9
Published by www.bangkokbooks.com
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Text & Cover Copyright© John Ord
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Arrival
As soon as we bumped onto the asphalt, the anxiety tight around my chest began to loosen and, with every skid and shudder of deceleration, a little weight of worry fell away. There was a silly nine-hole golf course wedged between the two runways and, relaxing in my seat, I half waved at a couple of guys leaning on their clubs and watching us land. They seemed unfazed by the thundering planes and sweltering heat. Probably because other flights had transferred to Suvarnabhumi, the place looked quieter than usual. I felt clear, serene, relieved, as I shuffled towards the door: a short tunnel would soon release me, after eleven tedious hours, into Don Muang airport Bangkok.
Hot, hot, hot: fucking hot. And fucking humid too. Is there a hotter, more humid city on the planet? Probably, but I’ve never been anywhere quite so, well, fucking hot and fucking humid. Too hot to swear at, really, but it can’t be helped. There’s air conditioning, there has to be air conditioning, there’s no city without air conditioning, but all of those heat exchanger things, stuck to external surfaces everywhere, are continually and tirelessly sucking the heat from inside and pumping it outside, out into the city: inside often cool; outside always hot and always humid.
Still, it surprises me every time I come here: I get off the plane and straight away it’s warmer, closer- like a summer’s day in the UK, maybe. Not so bad at all, then, and I think that I’ve arrived, that I’m over it. But I’ve forgotten that the airport is a kind of industrial decompression chamber. Eventually, I step out through the exit door and there is a rush of heat, a sudden embarrassing flush, an irresistible embrace, the heat... I feel my bones getting warmer. Someone tried to label the city as ‘The Big Mango,’ but mangoes are refreshing and sweet and this place is neither of these things.
After the fuss of the airport I stood quietly for a minute or two in the sunshine. It was good to be back. I wondered if I should pay a little bit extra to get an official taxi into town but decided against it. In Thailand, that little bit extra can be made to go a long way elsewhere so I dodged the ramps, barriers, drains, ditches, got to the highway and flagged down a taxi by a bus stop.
Thailand: unsafe; edgy; visceral. Or so some people will say. There might be a taxi story. Example: a man gets in a cab at the airport, accepts a drink from the driver as a kind of welcome to the country and wakes up, a couple of hours later, to find the cab parked in the middle of nowhere and his cock in the driver’s mouth. I can’t remember who told me that one but it ended there- that was it. What happened next? Was the guy enraged, disgusted, delighted? Was he then beaten up and robbed or dropped off at his hotel for free? Who knows? But you’re told you really shouldn’t hail a cab on the street outside Don Muang unless you want trouble. Personally, I’ve had very few problems.
‘Thanon Khao San’, I said and sat down in the cool. After a stop-start ten minutes, we were up onto the expressway and speeding along above the congestion. We passed billboards, the Moh Chit bus terminal, lots of lumpy, misshapen tower blocks, a grim looking mall, more billboards, some familiar roads leading to familiar places, that ridiculous wicket-shaped building, Chatuchak, of course, some more billboards and then turned right, away from the business district, towards the older parts of the city.
The flight from the UK had arrived in the morning. I think it’s the best way to do it: if you arrive at night then you go out drinking, end up asleep all the next day and it seems to take ages to get back to something like normal hours. I didn’t want to waste time getting back to normal hours. It never used to bother me but then I’d started to worry about getting up in the afternoon- about wasting time generally. I was still only twenty-nine then but there’s this carpe diem idea, like in that crappy Robbie Williams film. Bullshit of course- you can’t go seizing every fucking day- but it’s a recurring, pestering anxiety. Someone I knew up in Edinburgh had said that, just like that, after her thirtieth birthday, she was afraid of heights. Stuck in traffic on one of the daily commutes over the Forth Road Bridge, she looked at the walkway next to the road and was frightened. She had never walked across the bridge, one hundred and fifty feet above the dark and icy firth and suddenly understood that she never would. Through the straining steelwork she watched a ship plough upstream towards her then disappear from view, way, way down below. She felt ill. You get old and you get scared, you worry, and it’s a physical, organic thing that you can’t do anything about. I’d thought we had more control.
Anyway, I will get the overnight flight, sleep for a bit of the morning when I get in, spend the rest of the day trying to keep awake and have a night out that isn’t too late. In the back of the taxi, my forehead against the window, I stared happily at the hustle and dust and failing concrete as, having left the elevated highway, we made our way through the streets around Dusit.
Dae was there behind his little desk, as ever, at the hotel apartment block. He’s very thin, Dae, in his fifties and fit. He’s a proper person, as well, or looks it- white shirt, dark trousers, smart shoes or sandals. His hair is neat. A lot of people here are smart.
‘Hello Andrew.’
He put his book down, stood up, and we did the casual-familiar wai thing. I said hello and asked him how he was doing.
‘What are you reading?’
‘Oh history,’ he said as he handed me a key, ‘King Taksin, Bangkok a long time ago.’
I didn’t know him.
‘Where am I?’
‘Top floor at the back. Are you tired?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘some sleep and I’ll be fine.’
‘Bananas?’
He gestured to a bowl of the little Thai fragrant-type bananas on top of his desk.
‘No thanks, no thanks. Very good to be back here, Dae, very good.’
I don’t, or I didn’t, smoke too many cigarettes but, to make an occasion of arriving, I lit one sitting on the balcony. The heat was great. Then I really was very tired. I turned the fan on, but not the air-con, left the outer door open and just the mosquito screen shut and fell onto the bed. I was asleep in a couple of minutes.
‘What are you thinking?’ I’m back on the plane and wrestling with the door- it had seemed a good idea to heave it open and jump out.
‘What?’
‘I said, what are you thinking?’
It was me, or someone who looked like me and spoke like me. It was a me two, a better me, a calmer me, and he was sitting smiling in the seat nearest to the door I couldn’t open.
‘Oh.’ I sat down on the floor. All of the other seats were empty; there was just me and the other me. ‘I don’t know, what are you thinking?’
‘That Woody Allen film and the guy who wants to swerve into the headlights of the oncoming traffic. He was an idiot wasn’t he.’
‘Right. I was thinking of, I don’t know, Rambo? First Blood- where he dives off the cliff.’
Other me rolled his eyes and sighed, ‘Rambo,’ and I didn’t know what to say.
Then I leant on the door and it popped open and I was out, falling towards a distant earth but soon falling through branches of thick pine, tumbling in full green brushes and then I was walking, not falling, and the bristles were soft and warm and furry and then I woke up.
It was half an hour after I’d fallen asleep and I was hot and sweaty. I closed the door, turned off the fan, switched on the air con and slumped back onto the bed. There’s something about the humidity-air-con combination that enables me to sleep like a stone. I stopped being for a couple of hours.
Some Things About Staying
The guesthouses on Khao San road are famously cheap, unreliable, fun, scummy, cosy and other things. Mainly, they’re cheap- really cheap. Regularly I’d get a room for less than a fiver a night. It would be basic, and not very clean, but just a place to sleep and shit. For a young traveller this is ideal but it wasn’t that long before I got pissed off with it. There are too many things that can go wrong, for me, in a guesthouse, too many encounters with inconvenience; I don’t want to come here and have the place I’m staying in contributing too much to the experience. I want somewhere where I have some space, some quiet and some privacy and you don’t get these things on Khao San road.
And in a guesthouse, there will be cockroaches. You are in bed, happily dozing off, then skitter-skitter-skitter. You have to sit up, get accustomed to the gloom, squint and then open your eyes wide and there it is- a big chestnut-shiny cockroach under the mini sink. It’s smelling you out with its spindly antenna and daring you to take it on. ‘Yes, you find us repulsive,’ it says, rasping and disgusting, ‘but you are fucked and we will always be here.’ Now you have to work out how to get to something solid enough to beat the little bastard to death before it can dive back into its den or, even worse, somehow scramble onto your foot or your leg or something. I’ve tried bleach, alcohol, the pressurised-can-and-lighter flamethrower but, eventually, I realised that only a solid shoe, and never a flip-flop, will make sure. You’re sleepy and slow but it has to be done, you can’t just leave it, so there’s a brief tumble of desperate action. Crushed and dying, ‘...there are many, many more of us, countless billions...’ it says. Cockroaches are outside of the Karma cycle thing.
One time I stayed somewhere where the manager-man kept touching me all the time. At first I didn’t worry about it, it was fun, but it soon started to bother me. It’s just the way things are but, for some reason, I got all wound up about it. Stupid but back then I didn’t know. He would grab my wrist, pat me on the shoulder, arm, put his hand on my chest and, this was the weirdest, he’d sort of place his palm on my arse. It wasn’t a pat or a pinch, he just sort of applied some pressure- a push on the arse. And didn’t care that I was with a girlfriend. ‘Leave my arse alone,’ I’d mutter, smiling, grimacing, as we’d squeeze past him in the little lobby to get up to our room, ‘leave my arse alone!’ Wouldn’t be a problem now but it put me off.
Some other time I was robbed. Was it called Clifton’s Inn? I stayed at a Dennehey’s somewhere once. I can’t remember. Anyway not much was taken but it was aggravation. Luckily it wasn’t my passport, just some cash and a camera, I think. And a watch. If your passport goes then you’re fucked: bureaucracy awaits. But you are paying a fiver a night or less and there are people here earning less than three hundred dollars a year. I heard that fact once and I use it whenever I can, usually to impress backpackers: some people in Thailand- think about just how little this is- earn less than three hundred dollars a year. It’s probably true too- some of those farmers up north or right down on the Malaysian border can’t be on much. So- robbed, but security isn’t going to be high, is it? And it was probably a dirty farang who took the stuff. Don’t leave things lying about and don’t get too attached to anything. At the time, Danny said,
‘It is you who are owned by the things you cannot give away.’
Or maybe I heard that in a film. If it was Danny it wasn’t what I wanted to hear.
So I don’t stay in a guesthouse but in a cheapo serviced apartment-type hotel. The place I use is Moon Palace a few streets away from Khao San. It’s not a palace but I get a bigger room, a bathroom with a tub, some cupboards, air con, a balcony and all the other things I want. I can have a joint, get pissed and won’t be pestered. It’s not as cheap as a long-term deal in a guesthouse but it’s not expensive, not expensive in Western terms. Highly recommended.
Out And About
Five o’clock. I’d slept longer than I’d wanted to. It was good though. The room had got quite cold and I pulled the thin blanket up to my eyes. I felt better. Outside the noises had changed. Late afternoon is the best time of day.
Before dozing off again, I got out of bed and stood on the balcony for a bit. I got some bathroom stuff, adapters, chargers for bits and pieces and my phone out of the bag. I didn’t have much. After a shower I switched on the TV and sat down in my little armchair. In shower technology, Thailand really is so much more advanced than the UK- bathrooms generally. We’re shit.
There were no messages or missed calls on my UK sim card. I put the Thai card in and ‘missed calls 10’ was displayed. The earlier calls were very old and from numbers I knew; I’d probably spoken to them all since. The remaining calls, and there were six of them, were from the same unknown number and were recent- the last one from just a week before. I guessed that it could have been someone in the UK, because the number wasn’t displayed, but it could have been anyone. I can’t be arsed calling back when there’s a missed number that I don’t know. I’m not important; I’m not significant. I will never be called about anything important; I will never be called about anything significant. I got dressed and headed out.
Khao San really is good fun- just fantastic. It’s a short street with limited traffic and knock-up stalls and carts jamming the edges of what tarmac there is. A narrow, irregular pavement, usually thick with channels of people, winds between the stalls in the road and less impermanent places that cling to and stick out from parallel rows of crumbling concrete buildings. Though you’d think it from the middle of the carriageway, these buildings don’t define the limits of Khao San because alleyways and corridors lead off the main road under, through and between the concrete, timber and corrugated iron to an endless warren of hidden courts, alleys and complexes. Everyone passes through the place on their way to everywhere else in Thailand and South East Asia. In the main it’s the usual white people, Americans, Europeans and so on, but then there’s Russians, Japanese, Africans and others. And lots of Thais, some trying to make money, some trying to have a good time spending it. There are hotels, restaurants, cafes, bars, pubs, night clubs, shops selling every good and service you might want and all kinds of pleasant and unpleasant sights, sounds, tastes, sensations and smells. Why am I trying to describe it? Most people seem to have been there, at least for a couple hours. Everyone has some idea of what it’s like. People who’ve been coming to Thailand for decades regret its current state. But then they would wouldn’t they.
Quite hungry after the little walk among the stores and shops, I stopped at Dee Bar. I didn’t recognise anyone. You had to walk up a short flight of stairs to get to a seating area built from wooden decking and from which you had a good view up and down the street. I remembered the stairs as being wooden too but they were now made of steel.
‘New stairs?’ I said to the waitress who nodded at me as I chose a place to sit.
‘Yes. Fall down last week. No,’ she tutted, ‘fell down, fell down.’
I ordered a beer and a pork omelette with rice.
Not long after I’d finished eating, Dave arrived.
‘Andrew?’
‘Dave.’
‘Hey, how’s things? Imagine finding you here. Fancy that.’
He sat down opposite me and, smiling, we shook hands.
‘Having a…’ I said as I motioned towards my beer.
‘Alright then yes I will.’
I ordered another two.
He hadn’t changed. It hadn’t been long since I’d seen him, though. He looked well. He always looked well.
‘Really, Andy, it’s good to see you. How are things going?’
‘Same old, really, Dave. The usual and that. Working, saving, coming out here, working, saving, coming out here.’
He nodded and smiled and then gave me a look that was parody of genuine concern.
‘What the fuck was that for?’ I said, laughing. ‘I’m fine, really. Money er, good times and all…’
He raised his hands and rolled his eyes.
‘…Jesus Christ, you arsehole. What are you doing anyway, still at that school?’
‘Yes, still ‘Mr Dave,’ but now head of the English department, my friend. Impressed?’
‘Genuinely. Genuinely impressed.’
‘Thank you. Meyk’s doing alright as well. Managing to sell a few things to some of the design shops. And we moved, as you know- quite a nice apartment. It’s all good.’
He was obviously happy and I was happy for him. I still wanted his girlfriend though. She was Meyk and she really was beautiful, just great. After all this time, I was reconciled to a future in which she and I were going to remain nothing more than friends but, well... not really. It wasn’t obvious, it wasn’t brazen and stupid but it was something that had to be managed. She was fantastic, but it was dealt with, under control. He’d probably mentioned her name to see how I reacted and, I’m happy to say, I reacted as anyone would on hearing of the health and happiness of a couple of friends.
‘Well cheers to both of you,’ I said and we raised our bottles.
Dave called a couple of people we knew and I spoke to them on his phone. It was good to hear familiar friendly voices. We drank a bit more and caught up on what had been happening since I was last there. It was dark before I’d noticed the sun going down. The street was getting busier. Blooms of electric light hovered above and among the crowds. Thick, unruly curls of smoke wound upward from flame grills and burners down on the road.
A few beers later, Danny and Elsa arrived. They were old friends. They were very upset that I hadn’t told them I was coming and I apologised and smiled and bought them some beers and told them how glad I was to see them. The alcohol was getting to me and I was feeling warm and amused. Soon the bar was quite a lot busier and there was a film on the giant screen that dominated the bar on the side away from the street. It was some Hollywood guff, pirated, about people who could receive, from beings outside our world and beyond our regular consciousness, impressions of events distant in time and or space. Or something. It was dull and a bit too loud, but somehow contributed to the relaxed atmosphere of the bar. Lots of nationalities, lots of different languages, lots of different cares and problems but, in a bar in a city in a country thousands of miles from our homes, we were happy, at ease, comfortable with each other. I realised that I was in that elated, overly emotional stage of early drunkenness and decided that, what with the flight and heat, I would be better heading back. The others’ night was just beginning, really, but they let me go after telling me they’d call the following day with some kind of plan.
The crowds had thinned a bit but I still had to step up and down kerbs and dodge under strings of lights and between bodies to make some progress. I was drunk and happy and in no rush but, just as I was getting out on to the main street I stopped still. Something was watching me or I felt something was watching me. I turned and thought for an instant that something had ducked out of my line of sight. Was there a shape that had disappeared behind a stairway? My pulse had quickened and I could feel my heart beating. Was it a minute I waited? There was nothing, though, nothing there. I laughed at myself and headed away to my room, only stopping to get a bag of fish balls. You get them stuck on wooden skewers in a transparent plastic bag, mixed up with a sweet chilli sauce. Very tasty
Dae wasn’t about at Moon Palace so I went straight up, got the jeans off and sat in a pleasing gloom on the balcony, finishing off my food. I scrunched up the empty bag and looked out over what I could see of the city. Maybe down there in a grimy alley or dungeon a devil of some kind was listening for me, sniffing, scratching, waiting for me to step out into the street again so he could pursue me on my aimless wanderings. My eyes were closing and my head was getting heavier. The phone rang. I didn’t realise at first. I’d forgotten what it sounded like, but it was definitely mine. Back in the room, I couldn’t find it. Eventually I reached into the back pocket of my jeans, folded up on a shelf in the cupboard, and fished out the phone. Number withheld. I pressed answer.
‘Hello, hello, hello?’
‘Oh… Hello?’
‘Yes. Hello. Hello,’ I said.
‘I’m sorry for my surprise but I had not expected my call to be answered.’
‘Well it has been answered. By me.’ I didn’t recognise the voice. It was male and sounded older.
‘And are you Andrew Wright?’
‘Correct. That’s me.’
‘Oh excellent, fantastic…’
‘And you?’
‘Of course. I’m very sorry for not introducing myself earlier but, after the trouble I’ve had trying to contact anyone who might be able to help me in a matter which, not to overstate things, is of great importance to me, and has caused me not inconsiderable anguish, finally speaking to you is a great relief and I am immediately excited about the prospect of some success.’
‘What?’
‘I am Dr Simpson. My son is a friend of yours, William Simpson. You and I met, if you remember, at William’s twenty-first birthday party and we have, I believe, spoken at several occasions since, perhaps most recently when you stayed at our house when visiting William a summer or two ago.’
William Simpson, Will, I remembered and, despite the tiredness and the alcohol, yes, I remembered his dad too. I wasn’t prepared to remember too much about him right then, though, as it would have required much mental effort. I had no idea why he was calling but was more interested in sleeping than finding out.
‘Oh yes, er, Dr Simpson. I do remember, yes. How are you? Well?’
‘Yes, Andrew, I’m well, or rather I should say only that I am in good health as, unfortunately, there are other matters, of which I have given you some hint and with which I hope you may be of some help, that are having a severe and deleterious effect on my wellbeing. But now I realise that it is a gross abuse of all decorum immediately, and in the very first words I address to you, even to hint at whatever problems I have and any hopes that you might ease or eliminate them completely, and for that I apologise and ask your forgiveness. My impetuosity and my impatience are flaws with which I must always contend.’
‘Ugh...’
‘So yes, I am well Andrew, and you? You are in Thailand?’
I took a while to answer.
‘Yes, fine thank you but it is late here- and yes I am in Thailand- and I’ve had a long day and… Listen, Dr Simpson, could I call you back maybe sometime or something? Would that be a possibil…’
‘Of course, Andrew. I understand completely and regret not thinking of the lateness of the hour out there before picking up the telephone. May I call you tomorrow at a more convenient time? In the afternoon, perhaps, Thailand time? At around five pm? I would very much appreciate it if we could settle on a particular time as I am very keen for us to speak.’
‘Yes, six then, Doctor, that would be OK. I’ve got to go.’
‘Thank you, Andrew, thank you very much. I look forward to our conference tomorrow.’
‘Yes, bye now.’
I pressed the red button on the phone and fell into bed. Again, I slept like a stone.
Saturday Afternoon
The World Trade Centre, Maaboonkrong, Siam Centre, Discovery, Paragon, The Malls Ramkhamhaeng, Bangkapi, Central Chitlom, Panthip Plaza, Gaysorn Plaza, Emporium, Seacon Square: all shopping centres of varying degrees of vastness and sophistication where, on a Saturday afternoon, you can have a good time wandering and watching.
Probably not such a good time in Panthip, though, unless your idea of a good time is stocking up on porn DVDs.
‘Sexy movie?’
‘No thank you.’
‘Sexy movie?’
‘Really, no.’
‘Sexy movie?’
‘No.’
‘Hello, hello?’
‘What?’
‘Sexy movie?’
‘No.’
And so on... It had been the place to get software and gadgets and things but had become more and more porn. And it’s not phrased like a question- there’s no rising tone at the end- it’s just ‘sexy movie:’ a command, invocation, incantation, the magic word. No cash was ever conjured from me though- I’d never had access to a DVD player for a start. I suppose people have to make a few baht but Panthip had become a chore.
Of course it might seem perverse spending time in a shopping mall when you’re in a big vibrant city but, you see, you can’t really roam the streets in Bangkok. There are markets and places with things to see on the street but, if it’s very hot or very wet, then you want to be indoors, in the air-con. That’s generally where everyone else is going to be.
That Saturday, I went to possibly my favourite Saturday afternoon place, The World Trade Centre or ‘World Trade’. I’d got up at about ten and read the Bangkok Post, sat on the balcony, called some people. Plans were made to meet later that night in a hotel bar in Ploenchit. I got a bus down to the Skytrain station and then the train to Siam Square and walked the rest of the way from there. The rainy season was coming to an end, so it wasn’t as hot as it could have been, but still I was beginning to sweat at the end of the short walk from the station. Once inside World Trade, I got something to eat up in the food hall, and worked my way back down the floors over the next couple of hours. The CD shop had gone- I’d never found a decent music place in Bangkok- but the bookshop was still there and I bought a Nation. There were gems, banks, guitars, clothes, things to eat and drink and, of course, lots and lots and lots of good-looking women. Quite a few foreigners about too.
Later in the afternoon, having splashed out on a t-shirt to wear that evening, I bought an iced coffee and sat in the warmth on the steps of the plaza outside the centre. The sun was declining behind me and bronze reflections rippled in the glass of the tall buildings beyond Naryaphand. Someone was fiddling with the audio equipment on the stage at the far end of the annual World Trade Beer Garden. The traffic fussed on Ratchdamri. People laughing, eating, chattering, meeting, parting.
I was mildly ecstatic. There was nothing to do; there was nothing that needed doing; I was alone, quiet, relaxed while around me the earth was going about its business. That there was an earth, that there were things that existed and that there were other people that also existed, this was to me something inexpressibly wonderful. I was in the middle of it, I was able to feel it, to have some kind of dumb appreciation of it… Euphoria without alcohol. Were these the feelings that meditation or other techniques of relaxation were supposed to produce? Was the experience the same as a moment of spiritual enlightenment- that somehow different state of consciousness reached by those who are able to let go of the current, the immediate, the imperative?
Sitting there at that moment, I decided that I must be a spiritual person, a person with heightened senses, a holy person. But then it struck me that it was more likely that I was a person with some kind of disorder: maybe I wasn’t well. Or maybe I just needed a burger.
The phone rang. It was five and I’d forgotten completely the call from Will Simpson’s father the previous night.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello, Andrew?’
‘Yes it’s Andrew, Mr Simpson, Dr Simpson. How are you?’
‘That’s fine, Andrew, I’m very well, thank you. And you? Having just arrived, I presume you must still be feeling the effects of the travelling. I don’t get jet lag myself, or rather, I don’t allow myself to get jet lag, as I believe that, if you discipline yourself in the correct way, that most annoying of the unpleasant corollaries of modern international travel can be avoided completely.’
Now I was sober, and no longer ecstatic, I remembered Dr Simpson with a bit more detail. I remembered he was hard work. He was tall with expansive hair and, I think, an accountant or something. I think he had his own accountancy practice. He was certainly very rich and gave the impression that his family had been rich for some time. They were a posh family. He was the kind of person who could wear red trousers- conspicuously red- without a second thought. He was hard work.
‘Well I’m feeling very well right now, thank you, Dr Simpson. I’m sorry about last night but…’
‘That’s quite alright, Andrew, please don’t…’
I listened distractedly and said my bits when required. We’d met only a few times. He was talking and talking. I asked about Will and, after quite a pause, he made his way to the reason for the call.
‘The reason I’ve been trying, these last four months, to contact you, Andrew,’
‘Yes?’
‘…is that I would like to ask you for some help in a matter relating to my son, William.’
Another pause.
‘Well the thing is,’ and then I think he even said ‘er,’ or ‘um,’ ‘he’s in Thailand, and I had been speaking to him but, after certain things were said, we stopped speaking and we now haven’t spoken for a degree of time. He told me very little of what he was doing over there but I fear that he has become, how should I say, attached.’
Pause.
‘Will is an accomplished young man and a young man with a brilliant future ahead of him but, and of this I am certain, his future will not be brilliant if he remains there. He must come back, back to England. We have prepared for him a number of opportunities and now is the time for him to return here and take advantage of them. Of course I understand that he is at the age at which men like to travel and see the sights of this world, as it were, but, over there, I fear he has become somewhat, well, distracted and, when I was speaking to him, I detected in him the growth of a certain coarseness which caused me great concern. His mother and I miss him very much and we would like him to come back to England.’
Now a silence that meant I had to say something. I said nothing.
‘Nope,’ I said to myself, ‘shut up.’
The silence continued. Those television interviews where the interviewee, discomforted by an ongoing, expectant pause from the interviewer, suddenly feels required to blurt out some desperate and unexpectedly revealing elaboration. Not me- I wouldn’t elaborate. I’d sit there, staring into the camera. That’s the plan, anyway.
‘I’m not quite sure I understand what you are asking me to do, Dr Simpson.’
He talked for some time about the work he’d done to get Will high-level meetings at a few banks, or other financial institutions, and might even have suggested something about a political career, but I didn’t quite follow.
‘Andrew, you are someone William respects; he will listen to you. I would like you to find him, to try to persuade him to contact me and, if you are willing, to do your utmost to correct his thinking, to convert him.’
‘To convert him?’
‘Well, yes, Andrew, because it is my belief that, after having spoken to you briefly but with a deal of understanding, you are a person who would, given the strength of the opportunities before him, find my son’s dissipation as iniquitous as I do.’
‘OK, OK, Dr Simpson…’
The words were entering my ear but when they got to my brain they became bright little balloons that floated about aimlessly, bumping into each other- jumbled, bulbous... Would my next words be of some help to me or would I regret them? Could I be quick enough to come up with something that would do, for now at least?
‘...but it’s been a while,’ I continued slowly, ‘since I last saw Will. I mean we don’t really keep in touch and I, er, I don’t know where he is now.’
As I said this I found myself pretending to look around the plaza for the missing Simpson with an air of hopeless resignation.
‘It would a great kindness, Andrew, if you would simply take time to consider what I have said.’
‘Well, I can do that… Maybe I can call you? But calling from here can be, well… Do you have an email address?’
‘Yes, I do have an email address. I could, I think, manage to send a text message to your phone with the address. Would that be a good idea?’
‘Yes,’ I was thinking that mailing would be a lot better, ‘that would be great. I will contact you soon.’
‘This really is very decent of you.’
‘I will be in contact with you very soon, Dr Simpson.’
‘Henry, please Andrew, call me Henry.’
‘OK, Henry, thank you, good bye.’
I pressed the red button on the phone and stared, bemused, at the screen as it gradually faded from orange back to an empty grey. What the fuck was that all about?
Saturday Night
On the trip back to Moon Palace I tried to understand the conversation I’d had on the phone. I gave up before we’d got to Anusawaree. I would think about it some other time.
Shit, shower, shave, couple of beers and a cigarette on the balcony, new t-shirt and I was back out again heading down to Ploenchit. I decided on the way that I would give up smoking. Ciggies are maybe eighty pence a pack in Thailand so, when you think of all those people killing themselves in the UK at over a fiver a go, you feel obliged to carry on puffing but, I was thinking, I’d have to give up sometime. Then I remembered that there were five cartons back in my room. Shame to waste them. I’d see how it went.
It was around eight when I got to the bar. Dave was already there with a beer. He got one for me and we sat down over by a window. The place was the usual higher-class hotel bar sort of thing with chrome and pale wood and expensive drinks. There weren’t too many people about. There’d probably been a launch and some famous pop stars and ‘high-so’ types had turned up and, for a month or two, it had done good business. Then everyone had gone somewhere else. Now there were Western expats with their Thai colleagues or friends, tourists and the occasional, peculiarly out of place, older Thai bloke.
‘What are we doing here, Dave?’
He laughed.
‘I don’t know. Crap isn’t it, really.’
‘Well…’ I looked around.
‘Yeah.’
There was a piano in one corner.
‘There’s a piano. Bit of a worry.’
‘Alright alright, I said we’d meet Meyk over on Sarasin a bit later on.’
‘Well OK then. Cigarette?’
Dave smiled, ‘No thanks, given up.’
That’s right- he’d told me the previous night.
‘I told you last night!’
‘Bastard.’
‘I don’t feel much better, if that’s any consolation, and I think I’m fatter.’
‘Yeah, that’s it, fatter,’ I said, after looking him up and down, ‘that’s what the difference is- much much fatter. Fat as fuck.’
Dave and I first came to Thailand when we were twenty. A group of us had become friends in university and, in the first summer holiday, had decided to travel. Bangkok was the place to head for. Dave and I weren’t impressed with the whole idea of broadening minds and experiencing other cultures but we were impressed with Thailand and came back again and again. He ended up with a job here and stayed. It obviously suited him, too. He laughed easily, was relaxed and I’d never really seen him angry and Thai people love foreigners who are like this: lose your temper here and everyone will think you’re an arse. I cringe now myself when there’s some Westerner getting all annoyed and having a go at someone. But Dave is calmness itself; he’s ‘cool spirited’, as opposed to ‘hot spirited’ as I think they say it in Thai. I’m not bad but can’t help but get agitated sometimes- surely it’s not good to just keep it all in there... festering... squirming? I suppose you have to let it all go, let it wash over, through, out of you… Or something like that.
‘Dave…’
‘Yes?’
‘Iniquitous means bad, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘Doesn’t matter, read it somewhere.’
We had a few more beers, a cocktail and then headed out. I was looking forward to a good night so I gave the hotel’s guard-whistle-man a hundred baht for hailing us a cab. He was very pleased. From getting in to getting out, our driver didn’t look round at us once.
It was ten, the traffic was fine and we were at the little row of bars on Sarasin in less than five minutes. The street was fairly busy, though, and it took a while to check by phone where we were supposed to be going and then negotiate our way into somewhere called Bar Silver. The building was familiar but I couldn’t remember ever being to the place as it looked now. Then we were inside, and so was Meyk. She looked the same, but better. Was she twenty-seven? Among Thais it’s often the case that those Thai people who have some kind of Chinese ancestry, with quite pale complexions and black hair and eyes, are regarded as especially attractive. I never really saw that one. Meyk was typically Thai, with darker skin, a rounder face and dark, but not black hair; I thought she was beautiful, very beautiful. And I could be in her company for as long as she’d have me.
Then there she was in front of me, and we were doing a little wai and not hugging or kissing or anything and I’m sitting down between her and one of her friends and she’s smiling and were talking a bit and she’s laughing a bit and seeming to be happy to see me. Of course I’m smiling and trying to be worthy of being in the same bar in the same city…
Well, not really. I wasn’t quite that rapt. No, really, I was very relaxed and OK with things and it was genuinely good to see her, even though I knew I’d never be getting much closer to her.
‘So how’ve you been? What’s been happening? How’s things in Bangkok?’
‘I’m doing OK, Andrew, and it’s good to see you back again. Always coming back you, aren’t you?’
I made a thoughtful face.
‘Well I think that it’s always better to come back than always to be… staying away. And I really missed this, er, place?’
There was nothing interesting or very funny that I could think to say, but it’s not what you’re saying, is it, that matters? It’s the other things that are communicated at the time, or it’s from the tone, the way you use your eyes, expressions, the tokens of understanding, those signs of interest, attention- it’s from these things that we appreciate the quality of a relationship, isn’t it? Well, no matter how or why, we got on really well and, I thought, if I’d managed to get to her properly before Dave then things would have been different. She really had a great fucking arse.
‘You still doing those jug things?’ I asked.
‘Those jug things?’ She pulled an exaggeratedly confused face.
‘Hmmm. No don’t recall doing any ‘jug things.’ Though I suppose you might mean my exclusive ceramic tableware?’
‘Yes, that was it, ceramic tableware- pots and jugs and stuff. Did I ever say I made a tile in school once? I put a design on it with a pencil and then a sort of painty substance…’
‘A glaze?’
I was such a tit.
‘Well if you’re saying that’s the technical term for it then, yes, a ‘glaze’. Anyway, then I heated it up till it went hard and shiny. I’ve probably still got it somewhere. I should’ve brought it over for you to have a look. It was quite the thing in class.’ She laughed.
‘Some other time, maybe, Andrew.’
‘No, Dave was saying you’d sold some things?’
‘Yes, they’re stocking some pieces from my Cornstalk Porcelain project in a shop in Emporium. Impressed?’
‘Meyk, that’s great.’
I was really happy for her and could tell she was proud of herself. Overwhelmed by her all round desirability, I couldn’t think of any other things to say.
‘You could have sent me a fucking plate or something.’
It got later and we all carried on talking and laughing and drinking. At around midnight, Meyk announced that she’d had enough and was heading off home. Her friends were going too so there was a prolonged leaving and, eventually, I was left, standing at the bar, with Dave. We were both fairly drunk.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘d’you want to make a night of it?’
‘I suppose so, thinking of going on somewhere?’
‘Yeah, let’s dance!’
‘Um, OK.’
We said cheers in Thai, downed our drinks and headed out to the street to get a taxi to a club in a soi off Sukhumvit- even-numbers side, I think. Dave had a card already with a bottle of Chivas on it so we got a table, some mixers and ice and carried on where we’d left off.
‘Never been here before,’ I shouted above the music, ‘what’s it called?’
‘Imagination. Great name.’
Maybe it was a sex bar of some kind but it wasn’t clear. I concluded that rarely were these things black and white in Bangkok and this seemed, at the time, a very wise observation.
Half an hour later there were two girls at our table- Nat and Noi. They were both good-looking and probably students, I thought. We impressed them with our Thai and bought them drinks and had a dance. Nat wanted to go to New Zealand, for some reason, and said she liked trip-hop.
‘You ever been to Bristol?’
‘Many times, many times...’ This wasn’t true. ‘I used to be a DJ in Portishead. You know- where the band got the name.’
‘I know, I know,’ she narrowed her eyes and looked at me sideways, ‘but I think you bullshit na’.
We laughed but, even though I was drunk and in a very good mood, I couldn’t help feel momentarily sad at being found out so soon.
‘No bullshit na krap,’ I said, smiling, and poured another round of drinks.
We got more drunk and danced some more. Things were going very well with Nat but, after coming back from the dance floor with her at around two, we found Dave asleep at the table with his face in a paper tray of chicken knuckles and Noi nowhere to be seen. Nat wandered off with her phone to her ear and I shook Dave and slapped his shoulder.
‘Dave! Dave! Wake up you idiot. We’re in the fucking club man, wake up.’
I was quite drunk too but not as drunk as Dave. Eventually, after shouting ‘Dave!’ in his ear repeatedly, he came round, with pieces of chicken stuck to his face.
‘Eh, what?’ He sat up. ‘Oh fuck, I think I’d better go home.’
‘Alright, brother. Come on, let’s get a taxi or something.’
‘Strobe lighting! I think I’m going to be sick!’
I called a waiter-mixer-man over and sorted out the whisky and the bill. Nat came back and explained that Noi had had to go somewhere else. I told her that Dave was drunk and I was going to get a taxi.
‘You go home too?’
Me going home? I’d thought I was but, hold on, maybe I wasn’t. Maybe I hadn’t expected to see Nat again though, thinking about it, she did say she was only going to find her friend. Was I very lucky? Hold on, hold on, is Dave OK to get home on his own? I had to try to think quickly.
‘Me? No no no, I was thinking of staying here or trying somewhere else. I have to help my friend with the taxi- two minutes.’
I pulled him up off his chair and, with Nat following behind, her phone to her ear again, helped him out of Imagination and into the street. Of course- take him home in our cab and then go on somewhere else! Of course! Why hadn’t I thought of it? There was a taxi a couple of minutes later and we got in. The guy’s air con was a bit knackered and he had the windows half open. Nat was quiet in the front seat and I watched the city rush past with Dave half-asleep and mumbling on my shoulder. At his apartment block, I helped him onto the step outside the main reception. I was going to take him up to his door but he wouldn’t have any of it.
‘No. No. I’m fine. Well, I’m drunk, but I’m fine. Leave me here. I’m fine. I’m fine.’
I stood there outside his apartment, the cab waiting.
‘I’m going up now.’
Unsteadily, he turned around and went through into the building, announcing in Thai to the guard as he passed, ‘I’m a little bit drunk, a little bit drunk Pi Jo but never mind, never mind, tomorrow I will be not drunk.’
Nat was in the back of the cab waiting for me. She told the driver where to go and then put her head on my chest. I put my arm around her. It had gone two but it was still warm and I was drunk and happy and with a woman and on the move and loving everything.
The apartment was somewhere up Ekkamai. As the cab left us on the road outside, she said,
‘Two minutes, na? Don’t want them to see. Code is four-three-two-one, room two one three. Get… don’t know… Chivas tee market na?’
Up the little flight of steps she skipped and I lit a cigarette. Clearly I hadn’t managed to give up... some other time. With a bottle of scotch from the little shop on the ground floor, I got through to the lobby and took a lift up to the second floor. She opened the door as I knocked.
It was only a little room with a bed, some furniture, a telly, a door through to a little bathroom and a door leading, it looked like, to a little balcony. There was a low light from a lamp on the floor in the corner by the balcony door and, next to it, a fan nodded quietly left and right. We kissed straight away and the booze got put down somewhere. It was all urgent and breathless. Clothes were pulled off and scattered and we were in bed and, well… camera pans slowly away and lingers on a paper bird, suspended on a string, as it spins up, then flutters back down, then spins up again in the breeze from the fan… screen fades to black… moving. I suppose I could just say we fucked but that wouldn’t be quite right: I’ve made a nicer thing in my head about it. On top of her, dizzy and excited I said ‘funny how things turn out.’
So, very pleasant and we both lay quietly afterwards, falling asleep. But, without warning, a knock at the door. An insistent knock. Nat sat up and made a sign for me to be quiet. She was looking at the crack of light at the bottom of the door to the corridor.
‘Heeya,’ she whispered, annoyed.
‘Andrew, sorry sorry na, but you go now. Please. Please.’
She was up and giving me my clothes and gesturing for me to get up. There was a serious look on her face and she was definitely pissed off. I was becoming less drunk and thought about resisting but, if I’m honest, I didn’t mind being kicked out too much- always better to wake up in your own bed on a Sunday, even if it is in a hotel. There was another knock at the door, and this time louder.
‘Nat, open the door.’ It was a male, Thai, voice speaking Thai and it sounded like he wasn’t used to being kept waiting. ‘Nat. Nat! I know you’re in there. Open the door.’
Nat answered with a sleepy sounding, ‘What? What? I’m asleep. Who is it?’ as she was bundling me onto the balcony.
What am I supposed to be doing? Hiding on the balcony? This is ridiculous.
‘Tell him to go away.’
‘Please Andrew. I can’t. I can’t. I try make him go. Quiet, quiet, please.’
She closed the door on me.
It’s four o’clock in the morning and, having got bored and annoyed listening to the voices from inside the room, I find myself struggling down a drainpipe on the outside of a Bangkok apartment block. Drink will do this. I make unhappy progress and eventually lose my grip and footing five feet or so from the ground. My ankle twists as I land and I collapse into something with thorns. There is restrained but vehement swearing as I pull myself up and hobble through the waste ground behind the building to get back to the road. This scrubby area isn’t well lit and, just as I’m turning the corner of the block I look back and see a pale shape in the distance. It’s moving, rocking back and forth slightly and is big- bigger than a man. I’m in pain but have stopped and am trying to work out what it is. Is it looking at me? It’s not, is it? Is it…? Yes. I think it is, it’s an elephant- an elephant. I think. It’s probably seen all this before. ‘Stupid monkeys,’ it’s probably thinking. I smile, say sorry to the elephant for disturbing it and eventually make it back to the road to find another taxi. My ankle is throbbing dully, my new t-shirt has got a couple of holes in it and my arm and side are all scratched but, sitting in the back seat as Bangkok rushes by again, I’m happy.
It must have been getting on for five am by the time I got back to my room. I closed the door and immediately was asleep in my clothes on the bed.
Fish
It was one in the afternoon when I got up. On my balcony, it was hot, but not very very hot. A plate of fat noodles and pork arrived from the restaurant downstairs and I ate slowly, staring at nothing in particular.
A good start to this trip, then, I was thinking: drinks, friends, a decent bit of food here and there and, that’s right, I’d even got laid on the first real night out. Yes, an honest fuck at the first attempt, if there is any such thing as an honest fuck. Probably they are all honest or maybe equally dishonest. Anyway, it wasn’t a straight exchange of money for fuck, is what I mean. The whole thing in Thailand is set up for the paying fucker so it’s not as easy as you’d think for the farang who has an issue with this to find other arrangements. A nice Thai girl, no seediness, no doubts, all proper and well-defined? Not so straightforward, you see, so I’d done well.
Nat was, I thought, nice, though I wasn’t totally convinced. It took some time for me to make out a proper picture of her in my mind. Unsurprisingly, I might have overestimated her beauty at the club but I didn’t think she was anything less than, well, nice. Hmm, that wasn’t great; could I be no more enthusiastic? I told myself I was being cautious. Now, I’d got her phone number but did she take mine? Did I say I’d call? Should I call? Lots of questions. Some might argue that getting thrown out of her bed when some other man had come calling was a reason not to get in touch. It was a good point but then there might be all kinds of reasons for that, let’s not get all righteous. Things are rarely black and white in Thailand and, anyway, who the fuck says what someone else should or shouldn’t be doing? Righteous people, righteous idiots, that’s who. People should mind their own fucking business sometimes.
For a couple of hours my mind idled over this, that and the other, and I read bits of the Sunday paper. Sometime mid afternoon I called Dave and we talked briefly about the night before. He was just getting over a headache and said he found half a fish ball in his shirt pocket.
‘Do you remember the girls?’
‘Not really, um, no.’
He wouldn’t be going out that tonight and I didn’t feel up to it either. I was still quite tired.
‘Couple of beers in and a DVD, maybe.’ I said to him.
‘Take it easy, Andrew.’
So I did. After it had got dark, I called Nat. I’d convinced myself that it was definitely worth trying to keep in touch, at least.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello, Nat. It’s Andrew.’
There was a pause.
‘Oh hello, how are you?’
‘Fine, thanks, and you, are you doing OK?’
It sounded like she didn’t want to be talking to me. A rejection...
‘This your number, I can call you back?’
Here we go…
‘Yes.’
‘OK, I will call, bye.’
‘Right. Bye then.’
Christ, I must have been bad. I was briefly upset, properly upset, with sadness and everything. But then she’d said she would call me back. But then that wasn’t going to happen, was it... Rejected again. There’d been a job interview, once, and it was good job with career prospects and good money. The man asked me what I saw myself doing in a year’s time and I’d thought I was supposed to be aggressive and eager and ambitious- all of that kind of thing- so I told him I’d be doing his job. He was from the HR department, though, he said, and I wasn’t applying for a job in HR. I was right back at him saying things about success and management and promotion and responsibility and lots of other bullshit. He was very pleasant, upbeat even, but it was clear that I was stupid and going no further with the organisation. I didn’t get the job but did get a letter regretting that there were very strong candidates and thanking me for my interest. Nat wouldn’t be taking me on either. I doubted I’d get a letter.