Phuket 1998
I got yellow fever in 1997 on a short holiday in Phuket. That’s why I went back to Phuket the next year, as have so many romantic boys before and after me.
The next year I found myself there during the low season with me the last customer in a quiet restaurant sitting and chatting with the keeper, Nat. I told her about my Thai darling lady leaving me because of her boyfriend back in the north. I had travelled all this distance from Europe because of my romantic dreams about a very cute, but as I was soon to find out, impossible massage girl.
Me and Nat ended up in my room, staying together. Nothing special, just a disappointed farang man and a Thai woman willing to listen. Two days later I went back home to Europe.
Six months later I got a telephone call from Norway and it was a man speaking. There was a girl who wanted to talk with me. It was Nat visiting her restaurant partner married in Norway. Jussi, can you come over here? The phone call came on a Saturday evening and I was a bit drunk so I agreed without hesitation.
Four days later I met her at a ferry terminal in Norway. She was sitting in Ola's car with his family. I could not recognise her. During the spring she had spent 36,000 Thai baht in Bangkok for liposuction, to please me. She looked so different. Long hair and sexy, not the fatty I had first met 6 months earlier.
We had a wonderful week at Ola’s summer cottage. Driving around in the countryside by day and parties every evening. I had bought a car full with summer wine from France when I returned home to Scandinavia early May that same year.
And later that summer she visited me in my home country for a couple of weeks. What a great time, splendid Thai food, a hot, slim, sexy girl giving all her attention to me. In late disco nights I felt 19 again, not the 37 I was.
Yellow fever never stops, just the ladies change. In early winter 1998 I was on my way back to Phuket, this time for 4 months. I was supposed to do some distance work for my university but….
The first night I arrived Ola picked me up from the airport and he brought me directly to their restaurant. Everyone hugged me and I had a nice meal and a few drinks. No worry, we will bring your bags to the hotel….relax, man!
Nat gave her attention to all the customers in the restaurant and especially to an elderly man from Spain. I thought she was a very nice hostess but later when I asked her to go home with me she told that she needed to sleep with this man from Spain. He gives me so much money and only needs sex once or twice a week… I need the money, she said. Take my car and go to Bangla and enjoy yourself with the girls. After two days I have time for only you when he goes back to Spain.
What a bombshell for my aspiring love! I had made so many arrangements to be able to work at distance and stay 4 months with Nat, and this is my welcome on the very first night!
Anyway I drove away with her car to Patong but was furious, and I even had a minor accident.
I think without this Spanish welcome my time in Phuket would have been very different. Daytimes me and Nat enjoyed time together. We went to seaside restaurants to eat and shopping for groceries for her restaurant at the markets. She really cared for me and I could use her motorbike and car and eat for free at her restaurant.
But I could not forget nor forgive her cheating. It made me a heavy drinker and heavy monger during my 4 months in Phuket. I will not lie though….they were the 4 happiest and craziest months of my life.
Later I realized Nat was just thinking about me and her. She wanted the money to make a good future for us. Building us a house without having me to contribute with money. She really loved me. But so different is western and Thai thinking. Had I been a Thai man in my mind at that time I might have been the happiest man in the world.
Nowadays Nat lives in Europe and has her own successful business over here. She has also built a big house in Phuket. She was born to be a winner….but me?
