The Slapper

Kurt and I had been out together on the Friday night in Soi Cowboy just looking around and having a few drinks. Kurt was always good for a laugh and although I had not known him long we were becoming good friends. I struggled a bit with his thick German
accent but he was a good sport and we had quite a lot in common. He was a long-term ex-pat like me although he was a bit older than me.

Kurt’s wife Pim and my wife were old friends from their college days in Isaan. They hadn’t seen each other for many years but had now renewed their friendship because purely by coincidence, we had recently become neighbours.

On the following Sunday morning the phone rang, it was Pim. She was in a dreadful state because Kurt had been involved in a road accident the night before and he was dead. It turned out that Kurt had crashed into a container truck while on
his way home and had died of head injuries in hospital a few hours later. He was forty seven.

We went straight round to Pim’s house. Of course, she and the children were inconsolable. Twelve year old Willy and ten year old Lisa thought the world of their dad and now he was gone. Everyone was devastated.

Family and friends tried to console Pim and the children over the next few weeks but only time would heal this kind of grief.

Like a good German, Kurt had taken care of his family responsibilities very well and all of his personal affairs were in order. His house was paid for, he was well insured and had put some money aside for the children’s education.
The German government would also contribute to the children’s welfare. At least, Pim would not have any financial worries.

A few weeks after Kurt’s death Pim began to go through a transformation, a sort of reinventing of herself. At forty-three years of age she was still a good-looking woman but hardly in the first flush of youth. However, she started
to grow her hair longer, her make-up became more and more garish and the plunging necklines and short skirts she chose to wear made her look more and more like a hooker.

She lost interest in her children and stopped sending them to school. They are now thirteen and fifteen years old and have not attended a single day of school since their father died three years ago.

Her house became a refuge for every waif and stray and it was not unusual to find three or four young prostitutes of about eighteen or twenty years of age staying there because they had nowhere else to go. These girls were Pim’s new
friends and she embraced their way of life enthusiastically.

Every night Pim would get dressed up and go out on the prowl with her new, young friends looking for men.

At first I thought it was some kind of reaction to losing Kurt that would pass but as time went by Pim turned into a regular Thai prostitute. She was stubborn with it. She would not listen to reason from her friends or her family. Her only
interest was to snare the next falang and extract from him the maximum amount of money. This was strange because she really did not need the money. It all seemed to be a game to Pim and she liked to play it.

I really do not know if Pim had done this kind of thing in her younger days or not. It was not the sort of thing Kurt and I ever discussed but I was frankly amazed at the way Pim played these punters like a true pro. She has three guys that
I know of sending her money from various European countries at the moment.

The kids got used to being left alone all night. Willy is a bright lad who will be able to find his own way in life. Lisa will most probably end up a bar girl in Cowboy or Nana. Her only role models are her mother and the young whores who
share their house periodically. Pim doesn’t seem to care what happens to either of them. In the months after Kurt’s death, Lisa would frequently turn up at our house around 11.00pm clutching her blanket and asking if she could stay
the night. It was a heartrending sight and of course we always took her in.

They had the chance of some education when their father was alive but Pim obviously saw sending them to school as a pointless waste of money. I genuinely felt sorry for all of them.

I cannot help but I do wonder why this happened. Pim’s circumstances, sad as they undoubtedly are did not force her into this way of life. She consciously chose it.

Why would an outwardly respectable woman choose to do this?

I don’t know what will happen to her in the future. If she carries on as she is, she will end up a washed up old slapper, which will only make Kurt’s untimely death even more of a tragedy.

I don’t have much time for Pim these days but I am polite to her whenever she calls round. The wife has given up trying to talk to her about changing her lifestyle. These days, Pim looks more like a hooker than most hookers. She is
now forty six and her looks are starting to desert her. To me she looks a sad sight. I feel sorrow and anger whenever I see her but I don’t say anything.

We westerners blunder into Thailand and dilute the Thais’ precious culture but could it be that we westerners somehow save Thais from themselves too? Could it be that when we are no longer there to uphold decent standards the Thai
mentality is simply not capable of maintaining these standards by themselves.

Apart from the innate corruption, lying, cheating and scamming, could this be another reason why Thailand will never be a developed country? What kind of Asian Values are these?

Do these people have no self-respect?

Union Hill

Stickman's thoughts:

This is a bloody sad story. Those poor kids, what a tragedy. Yep, she's a slapper alright.