Stickman Readers' Submissions April 2nd, 2013

A Rather Long Goodbye



Having finished with yet another Thai girlfriend and finally learnt from experience I decided my thirty year sojourn in Thailand was about to come to an end in 2009. The British pound had reached disturbingly low levels after the attempt by Blair and Brown to turn the country into a Socialist paradise imploded and all but bankrupted the country. I was expecting Asia to go bang first so was caught out with all my dosh in Sterling but at least had sold my UK house at the top of the market (had it rented out for twenty years and lived off that money in Thailand) and could buy another property at the bottom (hopefully) of the market. BTW I believe that all markets go boom and bust so Asia will definitely have another crash – figuring out when is the big question!


If I'd timed it right I could have made about fifty-percent profit on the currency market but at the time the pound was skidding to almost parity with the Euro so instead it was either buy in the UK or get turned over by buying in Euroland. No way was I changing the money into baht, not least because the ex-girlfriend had already rung around my UK family complaining and threatening as her Thai husband had lost serious face when I deserted her without paying her off.

He Clinic Bangkok


Even paying cash it takes four to six weeks to buy a house in the UK (the lawyers can do it in a week if they are buying for themselves…) so I had some free time after snagging a nice four bed detached residence in Torquay for 200k, about as far south as you can get and still be in easy commuting distance of London and its airports. I could have stayed with family (the couple who were still talking to me) but decided a visit to Thailand was in order, a cheap flight on Eva Air working out about the same as staying in a UK hotel for two weeks.


Usually when travelling to Thailand without a girl waiting for me there was a frisson of excitement at the endless possibilities but not this time. Seemed that at the tender age of 59 I had really learnt from experience and as soon as I landed in Bangkok I wanted to go back to Blighty! All the excitement of the huge city seemed to have run out for me and almost immediately paranoia set in about the ex's Thai husband hunting me down and giving me a beating. There is nothing quite like the rage of a Thai man who has been done over by a farang – in his mind I owed him a couple of million baht and the idea that I was the actual victim (even though I had enjoyed almost free sex from his wife for three years) a concept that would have ripped apart his whole delusional existence.


The ex had previously had some problems down in Pattaya and refused to visit the resort so I headed down there, fairly sure that I would not bump into her. Because of this I hadn't been there for a few years but had spent about three months living on the wrong side of town (Nakula) so knew the resort quite well from bopping around on a motorcycle. The big change was lots more Indian and Russian families cluttering up the tourist areas but you only have to go back a few hundred metres from the sea to get away from them. Remarkably, prices for sex were still reasonable (500 baht ST or 1000 baht LT if you could speak Thai) but most of the women were too skanky to interest me.

CBD bangkok


In two weeks I managed to find two girls who were attractive enough to bar-fine. In my mind I was only willing to indulge in babes who were both younger and more attractive than the ex who had been 35 years my junior and hot in ways that made some movie stars look mundane (and didn't she know it!). Their enthusiasm only lasted until the morning when I handed over 1000 baht and the lack of generosity produced some lovely scowls as if their very being was threatened. No point paying any more as it just goes to their Thai boyfriends. To be honest, I wasn't full of enthusiasm myself – after so long in country it was easy enough to read what was going on behind their lovely eyes and it wasn't an inspiring song.


Of course, being nearly sixty I would have to be senile to expect girls with minds of teenagers to think any better of me. Basically, despite the attractiveness of these babes I was totally burnt out on Thai women and couldn't really be bothered. It has to be said, though, that lurching through the myriad go-go bars and drinking plenty of Chang was a very entertaining way to spend an evening compared to the dullness of a British pub.


The heat and pollution of Bangkok beckoned for a week and then a flight back to Blighty to hand over the dosh for the house. After about six months in the new abode, congratulating myself on a job well done in escaping Bangkok, the joys of a Siberian winter combined with sudden boredom set in and I was sorely tempted to phone up the ex! After banging my head against the plasterboard walls of my nearly new house I convinced myself that I should do Air Asia to Kuala Lumpur and thence to Clark Airport, try my luck in Angeles City. Later, Air Asia decided to stop the London to KL flights so this relatively cheap way of getting to Angeles no longer exists – thankfully!


I'd previously done a few visa runs to Manila, a city with areas of poverty only some dire African shit-hole would be proud of and some really dreadful pollution mixed in with an even denser heat than even Bangkok offers. In fact, I would say that Manila has yet to catch up with Bangkok of thirty years ago and lacks the manic buzz of the Thai capital. For some reason, a huge number of Filipino men like to spend their days lounging on street corners with violence filling their ill-bred countenances.

wonderland clinic


I know, I know – it's kind of okay if you rent a condo in Makati and go everywhere by air-conditioned taxi and manage to have a play that gets the local babes going. For tourists, prices in the bars are rather high and the attitude of the women has never inspired me. Angeles City is at least cheap in the same way that Soi 6 in Pattaya is cheap. The big difference is that Angeles does has genuine virgins on offer for a thousand dollars but the couple of attractive ones I saw seemed to be under the power of the mamasans who had probably done the old trick of lending their parents money and expecting a massive payback.


Bear in mind that the cops are often married to the mamasans or have some kind of involvement with the bars, their snouts are in the trough in a much more direct way than in Thailand – it's very easy to piss off the wrong person and life is even cheaper than in Thailand. At that time, Manila cops (as in a truck full of the bastards armed with machine guns) were coming to Angeles to do raids on the bars and sometimes taking farang off to the cop shop for doing nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.


Thai girls seem a lot tougher than Filipinas in that they can survive the neon without much physical disintegration whereas the Filipinas get ripped apart emotionally and physically in a matter of weeks – the only women I bought colas for claimed to be virgins or on the rag! Some of them may have been saying that because they didn't want me to bar-fine them but the only girls who showed any sexual interest were far gone, no-hopers unless you were a first-timer who didn't know the score. I managed to do three weeks in Angeles without any sex – is that a record? Just not interested in what was on offer.


Kuala Lumpur is a relatively civilized city but I was astonished to find that some of the bar areas had Thai hookers and their pimps. I caught one of the pimps trying to photograph me! WTF? My paranoid mind immediately jumped to the conclusion that the ex's Thai husband had put the word out! Gone are the days when the Thais confined themselves to stealing assets of foreigners that are actually in-country – there are fairly direct connections within the neon between the pimps and the Mafia, and Thais are all over the world now. If they think you have stolen money from them (by not paying for sex) and think you have a nice stash abroad they will come for it one way or another – if they can! Sneaky bastards!


Anyway, I escaped KL and got back to Blighty without incident and home was a welcome relief. I turned sixty and as mentioned elsewhere on this site the female prospects are pretty dire. I was stalked by some old biddy who had taken a shine to me after I greeted her with a mere good morning a few times. I changed my route only to have her pop up and demand to know where I had been. I say old biddy, she may have merely been in the lower sixties, and she wasn't in the least fat – I am sure Phet would've been in there like a shot – but my mind was fixated on twenty-something babes who basically wanted nothing to do with me. One of my next door neighbour's is a single fifty year-old women with odd hair and a ruined body who also seemed to have taken a shine to me and I have to leave the house at random times to avoid too much involvement as in the past I have ended up at war with my neighbours who took affront at my living in Thailand and occasionally turning up with a divine babe for a couple of weeks. Don't need the hassle, these days.


The pound gradually recovered against the Euro, I went to Cyprus, Spain and Malta for some much needed sun and a look around. Plenty of heat, surprisingly lovely sea-fronts and yet despite all the problems of the Eurozone not a hint of the edginess you'd find in Asia. Plenty of hot women but the entertainment zones didn't get going until late when I was safely tucked up in bed (I think my liver is recovering due to the relative lack of alcohol and has taken control of my sleep patterns – the liver spots on the back of my hands have almost disappeared!). Given the choice and proper recovery of the pound I wouldn't mind a bolt-hole in Malta but the lack of female prospects throws me into inertia.


During the next year or so I managed to purge my life of all my memories of Thailand. Selling all the mementoes I'd acquired over the year, tearing up photos of past girlfriends (as well as frying the computer files) and even chucking out the Laotian and Isarn music tapes (remember them?) I'd acquired in the distant past. If you raided my house you would find nothing of Thailand in it, other than the disgruntled visage of this writer – it's as easy to spot a Thai newbie (big grin, eyes shining with anticipation) as it is an old hand (scowl, ruined eyes)


And yet?


Eva Air offered a cheap flight to Thailand just as another dire winter was about to set in. I tossed a coin and lost. The Taiwanese air hostesses were incredibly hot with the most gorgeous eyes I'd ever seen, as if in purging myself of Thailand I was seeing them for the first time. Bangkok still had a song of madness that stirred my mind but hustling through Patpong, Nana and Cowboy didn't really inspire – some lovely flesh hiding ugly or even dead souls but lots of obviously ruined women with backgounds as dodgy as the pimps who were hanging out in the area. Was I willing to pay 2000 baht short-time for any of these lovelies? Nope – not meanness but the knowledge that most of the money would go to their Thai boyfriends and making any kind of face for those bastards just wasn't going to happen.


Could I recalibrate my mind to countenance an affair with a Thai lady of a more sensible age but with no neon connections – someone in the 40-50 year age range? In the end, I decided I couldn't be bothered with all the hassle! So three weeks in Bangkok was kinda of fun with all the buzz of that energy and all the things to see and the endless vista of twenty-something office gals who contrasted demureness with sexual allure. I'd first come to Thailand at a time when straight Thai women wouldn't have much to do with farang and the bar-girls were young, cheap and very hot – and actually quite lovely in the way they didn't realise just how attractive they were. Somewhere along the line the bar-girls got rather horrible (though sometimes still hot) and the straight women became more available but I was probably already too old to get my hands on decent young women and too set in my ways with regards to bar-girls. Short story, I f..ked up!


A day before I was due to return to Blighty I was walking down the corridor to my hotel room and I spied a partially opened door that spilled out light and shadows of Thais watching the corridor. I stopped to peer through the gap, convinced that the ex's Thai husband was in there! After a minute of watching the room I walked off to my own room and as soon as I closed my door there was an almighty clang as the other door was slammed shut – the violence of the noise rumbling through the building seemed to me to be that of an enraged pimp who had been done out of his money.


I got my gear together and checked out a day early and hustled over to a short-time hotel on Soi 5 that was full of a strange sexual energy and even odder noises. The rather handsome male porter offered to give me a massage but he looked about twelve and I immediately concluded that it was another scam to take me down. By the time I got to Blighty I was both relived and quietly enraged! All the times I'd been done over by Thai girls flitted through my mind in a cascade of images and if I still had any photos of them I would've laid them out and stabbed them with a knife. Repeatedly!


Rage can be corralled into energy… I wrote half a Bangkok novel in a blur and then spent a year sorting it out and finishing it off. Bollywood or Hollywood beckons! Well, at least an eBook… for the moment Bangkok Sex can be found at https://www.smashwords.combooks/view/300048
and will be soon be available from Amazon Kindle and Apple iBookstore.





Stickman's thoughts:


Very nice! Please do write more!

nana plaza