Greng Jai (cont) 5
So, I have thousands of pounds in the bank and in travellers’ cheques from the aforementioned bank loan (that I had zero intention of ever paying back) and I am a grizzled sex tourist veteran with the thousand yard stare of three whole weeks in-country. I’d earned my stripes in the shit, man! You weren’t there, man! You just don’t know the shit I seen, man!
Anyway, enough of all that. I’m at a barber (VERY risky in Thailand, as I’m sure you’re all aware) and I’m unsure of where I’m going next. Can’t go to Samui as my brother warned me against going there .. fuck knows what shit he pulled (apart from the credit card and fake passport scams, of course) or enemies he made there, but I’m definitely not going there to find out. In the barbers some Thai woman, who now lived in Denmark, is back home for a holiday and tells me of Koh Chang, in Trat region. She said it was where many Thais went for their holidays and that it was not known so much/ advertised so much in the west. This being late September/ early October 2006. Not one to piss on the Universe’s cornflakes, that made up my mind and off I went.
After 12 days in a big hotel in Bangkok, then 7 days in Pattaya and having been through approx. 15 different hookers in that time I made up my mind to now watch my budget a bit more. Not stay anywhere too fancy, still go with hookers, of course, that went without saying, really.
Koh Chang is the second biggest island in Thailand. Behind Phuket (where I’ve never been, and don’t fancy going even though only a few hours by road from where I now am .. or am now, whatever! Fuck!) It still has a horse-shoe shaped road around most of the island. The road does not complete the entire island and probably never will. Although it’s always “going to happen soon.” The whole west coast is the main touristy area and the east is more for Thais, or was, I was there again a few months ago for the first time in 10/ 11 years and the east coast side is now more touristy than it was back then.
White Sand Beach is the first main tourist spot on the north west of the island. Fuck me! Is this a tourist brochure, for fuck’s sake? Get on with it! (Monty Python ‘The Life of Brian’ – funniest movie ever!).
I go to rent a beach bungalow recommended in The Bible (Lonely Planet .. it was a book .. big sheets of paper stuck together with words on that we used back in the black and white TV days of my youth!). I rented the room from a stoned looking Thai guy that was playing guitar to one of those Farang back-packer type girls who I (still) hate! She had on the usual fisherman pants, beads, pleated hair, etc whatever. And she was telling him how amazing he was! I went through to my new bungalow, possibly Apple Bungalows, and there was sand on my supposedly fresh bed. What the fuck? I know I’d resolved to live more frugally after Bkk and Sin City, but I literally had thousands of pounds and an O Visa (ahh, forgot to mention that, so many people said I should never have got that visa, but I sent away to Hull and that’s what I got .. I was 33 years old. It lasted for 3 months then, I’m sure. Fuck it!) with no end date or return ticket (another thing that I’m sure freaked some people out as I should never have got in the country, or some expat wisdom/ Thai Visa forum shit like that). But, sand on the fuckin bed? Checked back out and went somewhere else nearby, a bit more up-market .. like me! Sure it was called Bamboo Bungalows and it was near the water/ beach .. as most things in Koh Chang are, really.
First night I head to the main disco ..The fuckin Sabay Bar!! Still there, so it is. A famous institution on Koh Chang. At that time it had an upstairs with a smaller bar and pool table and balcony that over-looked the dance floor and downstairs’ larger bar area. There was a live band with a female singer with a good voice. But, like most live act places in Thailand, it was good for once a week at most .. as they sung the same fuckin set .. every fuckin night! Covers, of course, with some of the words correct and even coherent, at times. Anyway, the first night there I meet a “normal” Thai girl, or so I think, as I’ve only been going to the girly bars before this, so I have no real idea of the “freelancer” scene.
A Thai girl with a very, probably, too thin body and long black hair .. of course, duh! … tapped me on the shoulder and used what was probably a standard trick for her, she had a 20 baht note in her hand and asked if it was mine. Pretty good move, really. Her name was Nam. “Like water?” I asked, impressively. We talked and drunk beer and .. danced? Fuck knows if I danced TBH, but I am a very good dancer, just add alcohol!
We went back to my bungalow and had sex. She was VERY boney! I mean VERY fuckin boney. I’d been with a skinny girl for ten years back home, but this Thai chick’s pelvis bone actually hurt when we were fucking! I paid her the required/ standard 1K baht and she left. I think I was surprised the next day when she asked for the money, but paid anyway to get her to leave. Then I realised what a free-lancer was. We exchanged numbers and agreed to meet again. Happy coincidence .. it was her birthday the next day (yawn!) and I took her out for a meal. The first and last time I ever went for a meal with a hooker. I don’t think back then that I knew it wasn’t her actual birthday as was only in the LoS for three fuckin weeks and The Bible didn’t/ couldn’t mention EVERY fuckin lie that could/ would pass a bar girl’s lips, but I just remember being absolutely bored fuckin stiff as I watched her happily ravage a huge fish down to the cartoon Tom and Jerry skeleton. Like a fuckin piranha, she was, ironically. Barely any conversation out of her, but she looked happy and that’s what mattered on her “birthday,” after all.
We go back to my bungalow that night, but we don’t have sex, for some reason. But, on waking the next morning she still demands 1K baht! Fuck that! I tell her no and explain how we didn’t actually even have sex. She tries to pull another new (to me) bar girl trick and tells me she is friends with the police and she will call them. Even to a fairly FNG, in-country a mere 3 weeks, this seemed like a fuckin stretch! What? You’re going to call the police and tell them that you, a prostitute, didn’t have sex with someone, but now you want money for sleeping over in his bungalow after he’d paid for a meal etc for you? Have fuckin at it, doll! “Phone them then!” I stood and waited.
I did however call a Thai woman friend of a new friend, Martin from Sunderland, who I’d met on my first ever day on a moped and forgot they ran on petrol. He bought me a bottle of gasoline, we exchanged numbers and determined to meet up for beers and women. That fact actually does throw my memories out of whack for the timeline, as I now think it was pissing down with rain a few of my first nights and it wasn’t my first ever night out that I met skinny, boney Nam. Impossible, really. Anyhoo .. Martin’s friend Ant spoke to this Thai bar girl and explained to her somehow to fuck off and leave this Farang alone. She left, sans 1K baht, and that was my first bitter taste of just what could/ can/ will / does go wrong when dealing with hookers in Thailand.
A happy ending to this episode, if you’ll pardon the Thai pun, is that maybe a month or so later when I was on the overnight train to Chiang Mai with daft Irish Nick (more stories) from Monaghan, Nam called me. Probably no such thing as blocking calls back in the day, and it was just that: a straight phone call from one (probably Nokia) mobile to another. No WhatsApp, Line, etc. I had seen her at the Sabay Bar again and we just gave each other daggers and didn’t speak, so she knew I was still around the island. She must have been drunk, desperate or skint but she called me whilst I was on the way to Chiang Mai and asked if I still stayed at the same Bamboo Bungalow as we’d met at before .. of course I do, I said. Come round and see me, I’ve missed you, it’ll be great to see you again!
Karma’s not just a bitch, it’s a mirror!
That’s all for now, not wanting to bother you anymore.
Greng Jai, and shit!
The End (for now)
Rabbie Burns
