The Fastest Man In Thailand

As usual, as we were wont to do, one night back in July '97 a friend and myself were sitting outside at the Blue 2 beer bar on Pattaya beach road, downing a few brews, enjoying the warm weather and the relaxing pace of our holiday after working our asses off back in the "real" world. After they torn down the Black Mouse beer bar, a favorite hangout beer bar of ours for a couple years, a lot of the help that we have become friendly with went to work at the Blue 2. So, naturally, we started hanging there whenever we get over, for a few nights anyway, just to see our friends.

We were all sitting around drinking and playing games. I do okay at Connect Four, but am expert in the Jenga wooden blocks game, and can beat most paying it, even the expert bar lasses, and I enjoy, and am fairly lucky, playing the dice board game as well. The girls love to play, and do like a little competition as well. They do lead a boring work life really. Sanuk is the true name of the game here though, and anyone can be a winner if they apply themselves correctly. The bar next to us (for the life of me now I can't remember the name of it … -Chang Bar maybe?) was having a birthday party for one of its bar girls. As the party wore on the girls were getting drunker and bolder, singing along with a band hired for the occasion, which had set up on the sidewalk, or what there is of on anyway, dancing on the tables, and urging each other on to show some tit and ass. Some of the girls were knockouts, and my friend and I were having a good ol' time watching this merriment, and doing a little urging on of our own. Some of the lasses were getting pretty outrageous, and the party was definitely rockin'!

All of a sudden the lot of the ladies jumped up and start yelling, and pointing down the street. My friend and I stood up and walked to the curb to look at whatever the hell it was they were pointing at. Now, here comes this young white guy running like hell right down the middle of the street, dodging traffic without missing a step, baht busses flashed past him, motorcycles with drunken farang blasting by missed him by centimeters, voices in Thai and farang cursed him as he fled swiftly down the soi. He dodged them all, going full-tilt boogie, just a-pumping his legs as fast as they could go. He was flying, his longish hair streaming behind him and a look of utter determination was plastered on his face. I turned to my friend as the kid passed, and said "Damn, that's the fastest I've ever seen a white boy run in my whole life!"

We laughed, wondering out loud to each other what the hell that was all about, when the girls all start screaming again, and pointing down the road where the kid had just come from. "What the fuck?" we say in unison, and turn again to see what this new ruckus is all about.

Here comes a young Thai guy, running like a crazy bastard down the street, screaming his full head off, and waving a huge, gleaming, and obviously recently sharpened axe over his head, trying to catch up to the speedy white kid, and obviously intent on creating some serious mayhem if he ever catches up to the guy. You should have heard the little ladies screaming and urging him to greater efforts. Blood thirsty little she-devils!

Well, the cops showed up a few minutes later, but we never did hear if anyone was caught (or killed or maimed). We turned back to our beverages and our games, and the birthday party antics. The ladies were abuzz, and chattering excitedly and laughing. My friend and I laughed and joked about how that should be made into an Olympic event. The axathon, or something to that effect. Much more exciting than some of the events one finds in the Olympics.

We settled back and relaxed, watching the girls and the nightlife fall back into its routine, and swigged off our beers. A momentary cool breeze sighed through the palm trees, whispering seductively in a secret language known to those with an open and fun-loving heart. Small luminescent seashore waves lapped and caressed the crushed-opal iridescent sands and rainbow hued seashells, glittering in the moonlight, in an alluring tune of age old sensuality, faintly tickling our ears like a butterfly's eyelashes, barely heard, yet present, and effectively soothing. The sparkling, blinking, multi-colored Christmas tree fairy lights that adorn the beer bars of Pattaya gleamed in reflection in our eyes as we laughed and toasted each other with our condensation sweating chilled beer bottles of Kloster, "Cheers! Chok Dee!" and aided in setting a holiday fantasy mood here on the beach in the raunchy bars of Pattaya, Thailand. Every day is Christmas in Pattaya it seems. It's Christmas, even in July. There's a scantily wrapped present under every tree and bush, it seems, and Santa gives even to the bad little boys and girls. I believe because, even though we are at times naughty, most of us are nice at least. The band, which had stopped during the excitement to watch the show in the soi, started playing again their umpteenth version of Hotel California, or maybe it was Another Brick in the Wall, or Smoke On The Water, or Black Magic Woman.

A pretty lady came over and began giving me a shoulder massage, and another started playing around with my friend's blonde leg hairs. This is the life. This was what we had returned for about the twelfth time already. The festive airs swirled around us. The beers took their effect. The tinkling laughter of pretty petite women and the charming opiate of sanuk overwhelmed our senses, and our sensibilities.

We marveled together at our seeing the Fastest Man in Thailand, and drank it all in.

Stickman's thoughts:

While I am sure it was a great laugh at the time, it might have been nasty if the Thai guy had caught him. Cursing the white boy would have been the last thing on his mind!