Thailand’s Best Known Farang Part 2

The opening piece in last week's column was the first part of the interview with Bernard Trink, Bangkok's Nite Owl. What follows is the second half of the interview. It is important to note that the responses from Mr. Trink are his opinions, and I might not necessarily agree with them!

When I moved from the World to the Post, it was really funny because I kept the same desk, same typewriter (not the one on his desk now which was sold) which finally imploded. When I moved, they said that now as you are part of the Post, there are certain things that you can’t do. First of all, I was doing play reviews. They said you must understand that if we already have someone doing something what you did, you can’t do it. I lost the play reviews. I used to have pictures of gogo dancers, pages and pages. It wasn’t a column as you would think as in a single page. It was like a 6 page weekly supplement. The World was a daily tabloid. It was in competition with the Post for years. We had this Prime Minster Phibunsongkrham who was pretty much a dictator who said that Thailand should go with America during WW2. Even the Japanese didn’t go that far. The Japanese occupied the country but they were satisfied to leave it neutral so the Americans wouldn’t bomb it but they could move their supplies through it. There was also a police chief called Phao who was Phibunsongkrham's police chief. He could best be compared to Himmler, a fascist! Any opposition to the government and the guy would disappear and usually a body would turn up. Phao realised that he had this well deserved but poor reputation and he tried to figure out a way to improve his rep and it occurred to him why no start a newspaper which would only write good things about him! And that is how the World started. He got an American who had been in the OSS which was before the CIA. The most famous OSS was Jim Thompson, the silk king. His name was Darrel Berrigan. Berrigan and General Pow got together and he was offered to start the paper and he said why not.

The defining moment in the column was the restrictions put on me when we moved to the Post. Family newspaper and all of that. Then, mothers would say that they would hide the newspaper on Friday or remove my section and they said I ought to be ashamed of myself! The list of restrictions and censorship. Don’t write this. Don’t write that. For example, I knew a woman who had a massage parlour and she invited me to check out all of these massage girls. She hired all of these girls and the girls were asked what we do. Every girl said that they do everything. She told this to the customers who asked. The customer was told that and took her up to the room and then the girl would start by saying I don’t do blowjobs. I do not take it in the ass. The customer did not come for everything else and said he came specifically for that. The owner was not to blame because he had only told him what she had been told by the girls. The owner came up with the idea that I should check out what they did and didn’t do, and do a report on it. I would go once or twice a week. I hate to mention their attitude, how good they were. As I was writing this I evolved my own Trinkisms, my own vocabulary.

Was that to conceal things?

It was to conceal from mother with daughters and to reveal to the husbands. Once they caught on to what I was talking about. For example if I wanted to say that she gave a blowjob, I would say that “be sure to check out <her number”> Go for the specials. Anyone reading special would catch on. Extra specials meat she would be more intimate. The Post said I couldn’t do this. The freedom I had with the Bangkok World was being chipped away by the Post and you can’t do this. You had the Outlook girls complaining to the editor. He is saying that these girls from upcountry want to be prostitutes. Girls are too nice for that and anyway all bars are brothels. He shouldn’t do this! Well, the editor would bow down to them and say to me that you really shouldn’t say this. Bit by bit, over the years, the column became tamer and tamer. I protested. We can’t have it, I was told. If you want to give up the column, there is someone else who can write and they will be more PC. In the last few years I became a shadow of what I had been when I started it. As I said, I changed it periodically. I couldn’t sneak in the stuff I wanted it put in. Finally, I was told we didn’t want this column. It is an insult to decent families. That was basically it. When I went to the internet.

Is your online column any different to when you wrote it in the Post? I mean, you can now write what you want without anyone else telling you what is and isn’t ok, yeah?

I could write anything I want and I am starting to do that. I’m still feeling my way. It is the sort of thing that you can write what you wish. But of course the main drawback of the internet is the reduction in readers.

How well is the online version of your column doing?

The question is vague. Let’s just say I wish I had a greater readership online. There were a few things involved here. Having spent years writing about bars and restaurants and authors who had sent me books and they would praise me to the key for mentioning them favourably. These same people who gave me the idea that they would follow me to the end of the earth, to death. It wasn’t just the usual we like your stuff. It was more “if it wasn’t for your column” we wouldn’t buy the Post. They would complain if they couldn’t find the Friday issue and would complain that they felt bad. There was adulation which was fine, you can’t knock it. These people, when I went from the paper to the net, for the most part they did not follow me. So here you have people praising me to the sky and telling me that they will follow me to the end of the earth, well they didn’t follow me to the net. A very small fraction did and that was a defining moment in my life. The realization that this great bunch of followers weren’t there when I turned around! There I as racing along on a horse and there was no-one behind me! A number of them said lots of luck but we won’t pay for it. Yeah, great, I thought. So, how are you going to call me the greatest thing since beer and at the same time refuse to pay 480 baht a year to read me? This is the thing I am waking up to, the realization that all of these praising – and praise doesn’t even begin for some. Some were hateful too. Those people refused to pay for it. How much are you paying at 480 baht for 52 issues? So I haven't got nearly the readership I would like to have and also need to have. It is my income now. I’m not really keen to go back to English teaching. I’ve done it and it is fine. There are things in my past but there is nothing I want to go back to. I was in the army in the Korean War. I hardly want to go back to that.

What about writing a book?

Everybody says this. Let me put it to you this way. Keep scrapbooks, or at least my wife does. If you can imagine, this is an exaggeration, but not by much. If you can imagine scrapbooks from the floor rising almost to the ceiling which I would have to look into to remember all of these things I have written. As I say, the column used to be 6 pages long. It is the most daunting thought I can imagine. I have many memories on the top of my head but a great many are locked up in the scrapbooks. When I was still writing for the Post, every chapter ends Friday and begins the following Friday. There is so just so much I have done. Again, it may not be a good parallel, but why don’t you thumb through the encyclopedia Britannica and why not write something. I keep them at home, more or less piled up. It is frightening to look at them from the outside and think do I really have to get into them. To write a book I would! You sort of back away from it. But that is it. Again let us suppose I read all of these scrapbooks, let us suppose I write the book. How many people would be interested?

Jake Needham sold more than 25,000 copies of Big Mango.

I don’t know the guy. He wrote the first book which was all right. It wasn’t great but it was good. What I didn’t like about it – I reviewed it – was that writing about Thailand or Bangkok, he missed the mystique of the place. It is very easy to say that Bangkok is the same as New York or the same as London. Thailand’s not. It has got this Buddhist thing, the temples the monks. There is a whole different feeling. I know New York.

What about the Bar Philips character?

To begin with, I’ve been in a number of novels under various names and generally the authors change it around in some way that it is me but it is not me, that sort of thing. The sort of thing that says you go about and you catch a drink. What I didn’t mention to you, but I don’t drink in bars. I want to keep a clear mind. I don’t want to feel obligated to the bar which I would feel if they gave me anything from beer to JW Black. I don’t drink in the bars. The character that Jake Needham wrote about was me drinking in bars and acting like me, but not like me.

His impression of you?

He doesn’t know me! Its like there’s the guy at The Nation, James Eckhardt. He’s got a burr up his arse about me. This sounds funny but I have come across this a few times with different people. Do you know the main complaint about me?

No.

They want to be me! They don’t say it in so many terms but they want to be me. I can’t because you’re you and I am me but I still want to be you. This bothers people. It is psychological and I am not a psychiatrist.

Do you think you are the most famous farang in Thailand?

Yes, that is fair. You see this other fellow writing some column at The Nation gave my net address and he made a mistake so I never answered his first piece in the column. The next time I wrote him an email and said you can say whatever you want but at least get the facts right and I gave him the corrected website for myself and he printed it. He said Trink wrote me a nice letter and pointed out his mistake for which he apologized. What bothers me is that the Post never gave my address, but rather misleading information that I had retired. Thank you for showing an interest but that guy is not here. The funny thing is I still do book reviews for the Post!

Book reviews. You read two a week, pleasure, work or both?

A combination. I can see two to three movies a week which I review. Is it pleasure? Work? It is both. It is not one or the other.

You still come in here everyday?

Until they axe the typewriter or move the desk or something like that. I mean, whenever I come in, I look at the typewriter to see that it is still here! Yeah, same work environment as before.

What is your typical daily routine and how much part does work play in your life?

Again, the same answer as with the books. For me, work and pleasure are the same. I have arranged it that way. It didn’t just happen so whatever I do it is a combination of both. I make my rounds, read the books, see the movies, go to Pattaya one weekend a month.

It sounds like an ideal lifestyle.

I wish there was some money involved. It didn’t just happen. I made it happen.

Do you do much online yourself in terms of trawling message boards, discussion forums etc? Do you read any of the other columns or Bangkok based websites?

No, in fact the forum which used to be part of my online site has stopped. My attitude is I’ll read what you have to say but I’ll answer it if I think it should in the column, not in the forum. I don’t belong to any discussion groups. Occasionally I’ll look at something, could be Nanaplaza and the other one Nanapong. But very rarely. A large part of it is that I do not want to be influenced by what other people are saying. When I go to Pattaya I do not like to read the Pattaya Mail which is a good paper because I might find myself paraphrasing the Pattaya Mail in my column.

Like I did when I started the column I used your Trinkisms without even realizing.

I don’t mind at all. In essence what brought us together, getting readers sending me stuff, could be famous sayings by famous people or long pieces but unsigned. The reader would sign his name but have said that they found it or they had picked it up but wouldn’t tell me where it originated which is how I ended up inadvertently using something of yours which I would have attributed had I known. Someone sent me a poem which I thought was a nice poem so I put it in the column and a woman in the States sends me a letter, hahaha, you are now going to have to pay me 200 dollars and I want my money or I’ll call the police! Of course who sent it to me wasn't about to say where it had originated from. We sent a reply saying that of course they could call the police and asked her which office in Florida they would complain to. She must have checked this with her lawyer and she came back very contrite. I‘m sorry but it is intellectual property. We sent her a token amount, much less than what she had demanded. I use that to say whoever sent it to me never sent a name. Normally, I think in each case when I make a quote and I know it has come from someone I’ll attribute it to the author. What I like to do often is quote from books I have read. I try to be interesting. It doesn't only have to apply to prostitutes. If there is something really worth putting in, I’ll put it in. The writer might decide the paragraph I took out was against the law and I should be prosecuted but that never happens.

Do you prefer the 2004 version of Bangkok or the version that greeted you when you first arrived?

To begin with, both farangs and Thais have some noting that the past was idyllic and the present is terrible. The Thais usually point to the Bangkok of Rama 5 and say wasn’t that the great period to which my response is, yes, it was marvellous. Women were not allowed to go to university. If you don’t mind that I certainly don’t. Men won’t go back that far but they will go back 30 – 40 years and I remember that period well. It wasn’t idyllic. What I do remember amongst many things was it was infested with mosquitoes because the klongs were not cleared. They were not just troublesome. There were swarms and it became a joke. I remember that. That was unpleasant. Another thing was the roads. There were fewer roads at that time and they were narrow. Today we have these wide roads. At that time if you wanted to, I like to travel by bus. I don’t have a car. I would take buses and the bus would go to Prakanong on Sukhumvit and the problem was to cross the Prakanong River the traffic going one way was stopped so the traffic could come from the other direction because the road was so narrow. The traffic on this side would then be allowed to go. This is unknown today. You still had traffic problems for that reason. Not as many cars as today but still quite a few. Another thing was when they had streetcars, what do you call them, trams. The streetcars were single tracked which meant that you would go and then after a few blocks there was a little siding and there would be a street car which would be coming the other way and would wait for yours to go around the siding and stop. They were very slow, very cheap but they had it. The point is that the roads were so narrow that there were traffic jams, but mainly because the streets were narrow. The big advantage of those years were the much lower prices. I remember when a small bottle of Singha was 8 baht, about 40 years ago. ’62. I remember when a girl for the night was 100 baht. It depends. Fairly good girls. Brothels were cheaper. That was the whole night.

Did your earnings go further then?

Earnings were so low that you didn’t have money to throw around.

Back in '62 what would a monthly salary be?

I can’t tell you typically but for myself 500 baht a month. Really. 500. Which is why I say I did the supplements and the other pieces, and the other columns because they paid extras. I remember when samlor rides were 12 baht. Of course it was a question of distance. 12 baht for a normal ride. The taxi drivers were always surly. Prices were low and salaries were low. It was not idyllic. Streets flooded whenever it rained. This is before the pipes were laid for sewers but they were inadequate. I would walk in floods up to my knees which was not unusual. I wrote a piece once on waking New Petchaburi Road with water up to my crutch and cars were abandoned. Same as now, I did everything at night. I looked up and I saw the moon and stars and it was like an empty landscape. There no people around, just a flood. You wanna go somewhere, you walked, and floods were very common. Now there are many cars, many buildings. You know at that time, the height of the building was determined and it could not be higher than the Palace. Now of course there can be skyscrapers. The telephone system at that time was a joke. You’d pick up a telephone and you’d hear a Chinese sing song music and when you dialed there was one theatre called the Odeon in Chinatown and it only had 4 digits. You dialed 4 digits and you’d get the future. There were no telephones in the streets. If you were walking in the street there was no where to make a telephone call from. I remember I walked half of New Road in Chinatown looking for a telephone to make a call and someone directed me into a Chinese temple which had a telephone otherwise there weren’t any. The place was primitive in many ways. There were things they didn’t have. I remember Central Department Store when there was just one. It was a glorified shophouse. In the book section books were piled on the floor.

What does the future hold for you?

I don’t want to retire. It is not like why don’t you retire and sit back in a rocking chair and look at the scenery. That’s not my thing. I want to work as long as they’ll let me. That’s it. To continue what I am doing which obviously the Bangkok Post is not interested in apart from the books and I hope the net picks up so I can get some money out of it but I don’t expect to. I don’t intend to return to the States to retire. I may go back to see my kids who live in Los Angeles. It is not something I can’t wait to do or I want to do. If I go, I go. If I don’t, I don’t. I’ve settled here and I never did pick up the language. Don’t have the ear for it. My wife is my dictionary. But wherever I go there is somebody, usually Thai, who can translate. If I want to interview dancers or something they’ll do it. They’ll be the interpreter. I used to review Thai movies regularly but they sickened me. There is only so much vapidity you can take. They have definitely improved but with very few exceptions, they have a long way to go.

Any final message for your fans?

When I was writing the column for the Post and it was online at the Post, I was getting 30,000 hits a month. I’m still at it. Please give the address of the site. I don’t want to stop. I’ve given just a fraction here of what I have been through for 40 years. The main problem is so many of my readers do not know where to find me. The editor of the Post completely mystifies me.

Farang or Thai?

A combination, but mainly Thai, also farang. Please spread the word of where I am.

What about that medallion around your neck?

The medallion was given to me 30 years ago by a Philipino singer. It is Greek. On one side is a Nite Owl and the other side is a Greek figure head. The Nite Owl medallion.

And so the interview with Trink ended. It was late at night, my blasted laptop kept crashing and perhaps there was a bit of kreng jai on my part, not wanting to take up all of his time. We chatted for close to two hours and and I really felt I only got a fraction of his story out of him. I might go back and try and interview him again in the future.

Please note that his column can be found online at: idontgiveahoot