Visa Run - Pattaya to Sihanoukville (3 page)

The old man had one of those safari-type waistcoats that have enough zips and pockets to take the contents of a small house and the girl had hung it over the back of his wheelchair. After changing a wad of cash that would have impressed even Richard Branson, she slid a fat wallet into one of the compartments of the jacket and the couple turned and made their way along the cracked sidewalk. The state of the pavements in Pattaya are not really conducive to smooth wheelchair travel and a rubber wheel caught in one of the many small holes that pocked the cement slabs. The girl pushed hard, and the wheelchair jumped several inches into the air as the wheel jerked free. The pair laughed over the unexpected bump together as they walked on, and the girl reached a hand around a thin shoulder and caressed a bony hand reassuringly, giggling like a schoolgirl.

The couple would not have been quite so jolly had they known their recently re-stocked wallet had fallen from the old man’s jacket pocket and now lay unnoticed in the hole in the pavement that had caused the jolt and the resulting amusement. I looked around me. Nobody had seen the wallet fall except me.

I reached down and picked it up. It was more of a small bag than a wallet, really. It had fallen open, and apart from the recently cashed roll of Thai baht in one compartment, there was a stack of US hundred dollar bills, several credit cards, a passport and some visa paperwork. I sighed. It would have been so much easier to have given the wallet back if it had only contained a few thousand baht. By the look of it, this wedge would have paid Jai off in full and still left me with enough cash for a couple more months in style in my favourite country.

I must admit, I was a devil’s prod away from pocketing the lot. But I must be one of the good guys after all, because what I actually did was to walk up to the Thai girl pushing the wheelchair and tap her on the shoulder. The pair of them were so grateful that it almost made up for my only being rich for the ten seconds it had taken me to decide to give them their property back.

The old man in the wheelchair told me his name was Ron, and his girl was Nan. Ron was well into his seventies. He was as thin as a rail and did not look like a well man at all. The blanket on his lap covered legs so thin and wasted it was obvious he would never walk again. Despite his illness, his bright blue eyes still shone with life when he thanked me.

“That could have been nasty,” he told me gratefully. “We’re on our way to Jomtien to renew my retirement visa. My passport and paperwork are all in the bag, as well as a good deal of money.” He shook my hand. His own liver-spotted fist was so brittle I felt it would have snapped if I have been one of those wankers who give it the macho treatment and for some inexplicable reason try to crush the hand of anyone unfortunate enough to meet them.

Ron smiled a gappy grin up at me and told me what a good bloke I was. Then with shaking hands, he withdrew a large wad of Thai baht from his wallet and offered it to me. For a split second I thought about taking the money, but realized in an instant that to have done so would have been almost as bad as if I had swiped the lot when it had fallen to the ground in the first place.

“No thanks,” I told him, attempting to appear much more charitable than I felt and trying very hard not to gag on the large lump that a bad case of unequivocal greed had left in my throat—“don’t worry about it.” Ron put his money away and this time he told me I was a great guy and one of the world’s gentlemen. In the circumstances, I felt no embarrasment in agreeing whole-heartedly with him. The old man’s face was shining, and now that tempting wedge was safely out of sight, I was beginning to feel suitably impressed with myself and pleased that I had given him back his wallet after all.

“Please come and have a drink with me at my condominium,” Ron almost begged me, giving me the card from what I knew to be an expensive apartment complex a
songthaew
ride away. “I really would like to thank you properly.”

Looking at the poor old boy, I guessed he must be pretty lonely.

Before they left, Nan pulled me to her generous bosom for a big hug and I got squashed up against several ounces of twenty-four Karat gold and a couple of kilos of prime Thai breast.

“
Chai dee mak
,” she told me, and left a purple lipstick mark on my slightly embarrassed cheek. The couple then continued on their way, this time keeping a better look out for any potential wheel-traps. Despite Nan’s flattering words, I wasn’t so sure I really was all that great-hearted. The truth was, I had been gnat’s pube away from walking off with the lot, and could only surmise that it must be a long association and healthy respect for the forces of Karma that had stopped me from doing so. On another day, or if I was more in need, I don’t know.

Having cashed enough travellers’ cheques to prepare Jai’s wage slip and disengage the proverbial monkey from my back, I returned to face the music, the volume of which by now, had reached deafening proportions.

You could be forgiven for thinking it should be easy to pay off a Pattaya bar-girl. Simply put a good wad of cash in her hand and tell her to make sure the door doesn’t hit her arse on her way out. Unfortunately, things never seem to be quite that simple. I had reckoned without the ‘I will do my best to turn up at the most inconvenient moments and fuck things up for you’ tradition of the Thai bar-girl.

As all
farang
sex-pats know, this is an age-old Thai hooker custom and involves your ex-girlfriend turning up (smiling and friendly, of course) at the most inopportune occasions. The girls with the most impressive timing always manage to arrive either just after, during or slightly before their ex-boyfriend is about to partake of a shag. Nobody really knows the reason for this phenomenon, but it is presumably connected to the fact that a
farang’s
previous girlfriend doesn’t like to see anyone else getting money that she might have had herself if she hadn’t decided to jump ship. After we parted, I tried hard to enjoy my new-found freedom but during the next three days, every time I invested time and money in some female company, there would be a knock on the door, and there would be Jai, grinning innocently and assuring my latest girl that I was simply a friend. She would hunt around for a non-existant hairclip or brush, then before leaving, she would give me a far more intimate kiss than she had ever done during the time she stayed with me. Of course, the current mood was then broken. During this comparitively short space of time Jai cut short more sex sessions than the coitus interruptus method. I was later told that the motorcycle lad opposite, now Jai’s boyfriend, was phoning her every time I arrived back at the apartment with a girl. That’s some sense of humour.

On the fourth day after we had broken up, I’d had enough of Jai’s inconvenient visits and I devised a fiendish plan. I arranged for my latest girl to come around to the Happy Home ten minutes after myself, by which time I had entered my room then sneakily put the key back in the little wooden rack in reception without anyone noticing. The idea was, the counter girl would see the key and tell Jai, in all innocence, that I was out. That way I would not have to ask a Thai to lie to another Thai for a
farang
, something they really don’t like doing. Lying amongst themselves and to other
farangs
is fine, of course.

“We all tell lies if it makes somebody happy rather than sad,” an ancient Isaan lady told me on my first visit to Thailand, and a quarter of a century later, I don’t doubt her.

Feeling rather clever and sure that my devious skulduggery with the key would ensure a Jai-free fuck, I eagerly awaited the appearance of a girl who did unimaginable things with strings of razor blades and pens and whistles at the Hot and Cold gogo bar. Her name was Lek, which means small in Thai, and which her tits were not. She was also an expert markswoman with a dart gun that she operated with great skill from between her legs and rarely missed a balloon.

Fifteen minutes after Lek’s arrival at the Happy Home, things were progressing nicely. Lek was as malleable as her attitude on stage had led me to believe she might be, and I could tell that I had been fortunate enough to stumble upon one of those girls who really enjoy doing what they get paid for. We had showered together, and Lek had kindly soaped me down several times, presumably to make sure I was nice and clean. She was now showing me—extremely energetically—that her pussy had other uses besides writing ‘Welcome to the Hot and Cold gogo bar’ on beer mats, playing tunes on a whistle and bursting balloons.

Suddenly, disaster struck. I heard a sound—it was like a little gasp, really—over by the door. I looked over Lek’s shoulder (I’ll leave it up to the reader’s imagination from exactly which angle) and there, framed in the open doorway stood Jai and the counter girl. Considering her job, Lek showed a modesty that was surprising as she leapt up from a very interesting and not very flattering position and pulled the only sheet around herself with a scream. This left me totally defenceless and the counter girl put her hand over her mouth and stared between my legs and squealed; whether in mirth or admiration I know not to this day. Jai looked at me, smiling as sweetly as any virginal schoolgirl.

“Sorry darling,” she apologised in Thai, fluttering her eyelids at me demurely and giving me that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth look. “I will come back when you are not busy. I didn’t know you had an old prostitute in your room.” Of course, that was the last time Lek ever spoke to me.

When I sarcastically thanked the counter girl later that day she assured me how the calamity had not really been her fault at all. Shortly after Lek had arrived, Jai had turned up and stood in the lobby calling the poor receptionist a liar when she told Jai I was not in. Confident that I really was out—due to the presence of the key I had so craftily replaced—the insulted counter girl had led Jai to my room and thrown open the door to show her just how honest she was. So nobody really came out of this scenario with much credibility or dignity at all, apart from Jai’s motorcycle taxi-boyfriend and his mates in the rank opposite. They all thought it was the funniest thing any of them had ever heard and nearly pissed themselves laughing every time I left or entered the apartment for several months afterwards.

It didn’t help my case that this was the second time in recent weeks I had unwittingly exposed myself to the counter girl at the Happy Home, and I guessed by now she was probably getting used to it. Before Jai arrived on the scene, one of the girls from the Pump Station Bar used to come and see me whenever she wasn’t too busy. Toy was a bit of a nutter but great fun to be with; one of those childish, thirty-something Thai girls who have never really grown up.

It was allegedly Toy’s birthday. The evening before I had returned from picking up an old mate from the airport in Bangkok. The flight had tired him out, so instead of travelling back to Pattaya we checked into the Crown Hotel and had a night down Soi Cowboy instead. I say allegedly her birthday, because I have known Thai bar-girls to have four or five birthdays in a single year. It is a peculiar social phenomenon that might have something to do with the tradition of friends and customers pinning large denomination notes on an orchid garland worn around the birthday girl’s neck. Anyway, Toy left in the morning to go to the temple for a birthday
tambon
, or merit-making session. It was very early, and the rest of the residents of the Happy Home were still fast asleep. As it was a special day I called to Toy when she was at the end of the deserted corridor and did my very own naked ‘Full Monty’ dance for her, complete with the famous ‘helicopter whirl’ once so famous on the oil rigs of the North Sea. Toy appreciated the joke and went off to the temple, laughing.

Later that morning I went out to post some mail and the little counter girl asked me if I was intending to do anymore dancing as she had enjoyed it very much and would like to bring her friend along to take a look. I was confused until she pointed out the new security camera system that had been installed whilst I was in Bangkok. The cameras looked down the corridors of every floor and were monitored by the receptionists twenty-four hours a day. I just hoped they didn’t make tapes. If so, I expect to see myself performing the ‘helicopter whirl’ on the internet anytime soon.

That night I decided there was not much point in trawling the bars for yet another shag for Jai to sabotage, besides which, the very next day I had to wake up early to embark on the hated visa run. Because of this, I thought I would go and call on Ron, the old man whose wallet I had recovered. He had seemed so keen for some company he had been almost desperate, and I had felt sorry for him. I retrieved Ron’s card from where I had tucked it in the corner of the mirror that I had taken to staring into lately, trying hard to convince myself I had not become a complete old Pattaya Potato just yet.

“Why not?” I thought to myself, looking at the card. Despite his frail state, there had been something in the old man’s bearing that had appealed to me. Perhaps I wondered if I would have been so brave as to travel the streets of Pattaya if I had been in such a bad way. Or maybe I simply thought there might be a few free beers on offer, which undoubtedly, I felt I deserved. Whatever the reason, just for once I decided on a change from the usual happy hour blunderings around the bars that were offering the cheapest beer and whose girls were wearing the least clothes at the time, and I went to say hello to old Ron. And that I suppose, is where this adventure really started.

C
HAPTER
T
WO

Ron was obviously quite a wealthy old fellow and the inside of his comfortable condominium was surprising and fascinating. He told me he was born within sight of the ocean in Portsmouth and when he was just fourteen he had become a Merchant Seaman. Ron said he had always harboured a boyhood desire to travel on the ships he used to see coming and going in the busy port and in those days this was the only way for a lad like himself to see the world. The old man had served in both the British and New Zealand Merchant Navies and had somehow managed to wangle a pay-off and a pension from both.

The walls and cabinets in Ron’s spacious apartment were decorated with the souvenirs and treasures of a lifetime at sea. I looked around his condominium with interest. African tribal masks and ebony carvings of fierce warriors glared at me angrily and beautifully woven South American blankets were casually thrown over the chairs and the sofa. Hundreds of intricately carved seashells and bone and ivory scrimshaw pieces covered the many shelves that the sailor had fixed up around the rooms, and a huge, weathered piece of driftwood with a magnificent watercolour of a steamship depicted on its grainy surface dominated one wall. There were also scores of old nautical photographs in frames as well as many paintings of old-fashioned looking boats and ships hanging around the old seafarer’s home.

Ron showed me a faded old sepia photograph of himself in a silver frame with two sailor shipmates and their girls. They were all sitting together on a low wall overlooking Manila Bay. The sun was just beginning to set over the ships in the water and the horizon on the calm South China Sea.

“I was twenty-five way back then,” the old man told me wistfully, shaking his balding head sadly. I studied the snap carefully. There was no doubt that Ron was easily the most handsome of the trio of young sailors, and he looked stronger and fitter than I had been at that age. The prettiest of the dark-eyed Filipina girls had her arm around his slim waist and was gazing up adoringly at the dashing young seaman.

A gigantic pair of shark’s jaws grinned savagely at us from above the television; the teeth were so large they looked like a set of white knives and the gaping mouth looked wide enough to take a small bicycle.

“I caught that fish off the coast of Malindi in fifty-five,” the old man reminisced. “It was so ferocious it took the three of us five hours to bring it in to the boat.” As he began to tell me about the past battle with the sea monster, Ron noticed my continued interest in the snap of the Philippine sunset and smiled wickedly, suddenly looking a bit like that old shark himself.

“And that little beauty came from near the dockyard at Manila bay in sixty-two,” smiled Ron, his bright blue eyes lighting up at the memory. “And believe me, she was almost as wild as the shark!” The old man laughed so loudly at his recollections he startled me, and Nan gave a squeal when he slapped her ample rear as she bent to pour us both another rum and coke.

Ron was dressed in nothing more than a sarong he had wrapped around his thin body, and he apologised to me for being shirtless. He told me that the cooler he could keep himself these days, the more comfortable he felt. As well as the colostomy bag I hadn’t noticed before that was attached to the old man’s gut by a plastic tube, I also saw his incredible collection of tattoos for the first time. The retired sailor’s body was almost covered in the faded designs, and I studied them with interest. Bare-breasted mermaids and geisha girls fought for space with tigers and dragons on his chest, and a three-masted galleon sailed on blue waves beneath the red setting sun on his back. I also counted the names of at least half a dozen different girls in hearts and floral motifs on his now skinny arms. Some of the tattoos were crudely done, but many were beautiful works of art. I asked Ron where he had obtained them, and he gave that booming laugh again.

“Singapore, Mombasa, Portsmouth, Bombay, Brussels; name any port in the world, and I’ve probably had a tattoo done there,” he reminisced. A large, fouled anchor decorated Ron’s stomach near to where the tube from the colostomy bag entered his body, and he patted it sadly.

“Looks like this anchor’s down for good now, though,” he finished reflectively. “This old wreck will not be making another voyage.”

During the next two hours, I became aware I was listening to a man who had been there, done that, and bought the T-shirt in almost every imaginable port and red-light district in the world. Ron never bragged, in fact, it was almost as if the old man was talking quietly to himself rather than to me. His gruff, throaty voice took me on a journey on the grimy steamships and rusting cargo vessels of days gone by and he remembered trying to move containers so cold they were frozen to the deck, and leaving the ship for a twenty-four hour liberty in a country so hot all the sailors’ shoes stuck to the melting tarmac. He told me about shy, dark-eyed girls for sale in the cages of Bombay and about brassy professionals in red-lit windows in tiny cobbled alleys near medieval churches in Amsterdam. He spoke of wahines from the Pacific Islands with flowers in their black silky hair, and Kenyan girls as black as coal whose clitorises had been brutally circumcised at puberty. The old sailor treated me to his resounding laugh again when he told me about the night he and his shipmates were tricked by a trio of lady-boys from Singapore’s Bugis Street who would have fooled even a sober expert. Even when Ron had finally left the Navy at sixty years old he had continued his travels around the globe, unable to settle down after a lifetime at sea. Curious, I asked him where his favourite place had been.

“Wherever I was going next,” he told me with a wink.

As Ron spoke, an excitement and love for all those far-off places that had not been dimmed by the years shone through the frail old man’s conversation, and I realised I was in the company of a true traveller and adventurer. Listening to the old seaman, it was with some embarrasment that I realised just how set in my own ways I had become. The sad thing was, I hadn’t always been such a boring stick-in-the bar, and when I had first come to Asia at the age of twenty, I too had thrown myself into the great adventure with relish. Back then it had always been me who had jumped on a rattling bus and travelled to Isaan at the mere mention of a bar-strip where the girls were not yet as mercenary as those in Pattaya. I explored the crazy US military base towns of Olongapo and Angeles City in the Philippines alone back in the early eighties when none of my mates had the bottle to come with me. And when I first took a bumpy bus journey down South all the way from Bangkok to Hat Yai, the town had been a dusty, quiet frontier town where sex-starved Malaysian husbands nipped over the border away from their wives to sample the cheaper and much more accomodating Thai girls. Back when I first saw Lamai and Chaweng beaches on Koh Samui, they had been nothing but strips of golden sand boasting a dozen ramshackle twenty baht a night huts, where the few backpackers who visited the island could grab a few hours sleep before continuing to get stoned under the now long-gone palm trees. The Samui beaches were so quiet in those days it was possible to make love to your Thai girl on the deserted sands at night without anyone either knowing or caring. Sadly, if you were to try this nowadays, the boys in brown would soon have something to say about it.

Pattaya was such a great place in those early days it was inevitable that it would soon begin to grow out of all proportion and when the city did start to develop, it did so with a vengeance. It wasn’t long before comfortable, budget accomodation with hot water showers and cable TV began to replace the mildewed rooms of guesthouses with their squat toilets and ‘bucket and chuck it’ washing facilities. Cheap cafes and restaurants started to serve up tasty, affordable all-day breakfasts and pie and chips, and the stalls selling
khao pad khai
and noodle soup were quickly forgotten. McDonalds and Pizza Huts opened, and big supermarkets sprang up almost overnight and all us sex-pats started buying packaged meats, sandwich fillers, cheeses and convenience foods with which to fill up our new fridges. So many bars were built, if things were planned properly it was possible to stagger around a circuit of cheap drinking establishments populated with attractive, almost naked Thai girls all night long. In Pattaya, Happy Hour can last forever if you know where to go.

Back on that evening I spent with him, Ron assured me that Pattaya’s unerring ability to gratify almost any human want, need or perversion instantly is the very reason why Joe Bucket and so many others like him become so bored and lethargic. The old sea-dog reckoned the city has become so comfortable and convenient over the years there is now very little point for most guys to go anywhere else, and as everyone knows, familiarity with a place often leads to discontent. I think the old man was right. This would also explain how the previously rural side of the Sukhumvit Road where white egrets and mynah birds used to follow buffaloes through the green trees in the flooded fields to catch the fish and frogs their plodding hoofs disturbed has now turned into something that looks like a 1970s British housing estate.

“And it’s all happened because Pattaya is the only place in the world where it ain’t ridiculous for a bloke to spend loads of money on a holiday and stay in bed all day and night,” the old man said with a wry smile. Knowing the Pattaya of old, I had to agree with him.

Listening to the old sailor, I realized everything he said was true. Although it is undeniable that much of the original magic Pattaya used to possess has disappeared with the progress of the years, the city has become a home from home, where if your wallet can stand it, everything you could possibly want is readily available. Anyone who lives in Pattaya today will tell you it is increasingly hard to work up any enthusiasm for an uncomfortable bus or train journey for a trip to an unknown up-country town that might be crap when you are leaving a comfortable room, all your mates, the FA cup semi-finals, Sunday’s special half price cottage pie and chips and several thousand willing Thai females behind you. Like one of her bar-girls, Pattaya has evolved to become so agreeable to the resident
farang
male that she now injects even the most adventurous traveller with her very own form of contented apathy that makes it almost impossible to leave her. And listening to Ron, the sad fact was—like so many
farangs
before me—I knew that I had become as spud-like as any old Pattaya Potato almost twice my age.

Not so the old seaman. Up until six months ago when he had fallen ill, Ron told me how he had continued to travel and never spent more than a couple of months in any one place. But sadly, even old sea-dogs have to give it up sometime, and a small stroke in Cambodia had been the start of the serious health problems that had finally curtailed the old man’s wanderlust. So now the retired sailor planned to live out what remained of his life in the comfort of the pleasant condominium he had bought in Pattaya where there are plenty of good hospitals close by, nursed and pampered by the ever-willing Nan, who he had first met when he was in the navy and had known for years.

“I’ve got no family, so she’ll get the lot when I go if she behaves herself; and she knows it.” Ron confided in me as Nan went out to the kitchen for some more ice for our drinks. “They say it ain’t possible to buy love in Thailand and that’s probably true,” he continued, “but if you have enough dosh you can certainly buy affection and someone to look after you, and when you’re a fucked up old git like me, that’s worth having.” When I saw how Nan looked after Ron I was convinced he had secured himself a good deal. Even if the impending inheritance explained Nan’s concern and willingness to do anything for the old man, she genuinely seemed very fond of him. She fussed around him constantly whilst I was there, making sure his drink was just right, straightening the pillows and blankets around him and checking the foul plastic bag that hung on the hook on his wheelchair. She even found time to roll up the old man’s spliffs for him, and every so often Ron found the strength to grab a handful of ample rump or breast and she didn’t seem to mind that either. Compared to my friend’s father, who had by now no doubt progressed onto muttering ‘Gingangooly’ back in the old folks’ home in England with his wobbly mates, I reckon Ron had the best of it. He was no fool, and Nan behaved herself impeccably. I had realized by now that beneath the frail exterior of the old man was a strength of will that would have sent his nurse packing should she have been anything less than perfect. Whoever cashed in this old seadog’s inheritance was going to earn it.

Ron asked me if I had ever been to Cambodia. Slightly embarrased, I told him how I had only ever been there on visa runs and invariably turned straight around at the border and re-entered Thailand immediately, always in a big hurry to get back to the comfort zone of Pattaya. Everything was taken care of for you these days, and plenty of excellent companies offered comfortable minibus services to the border and back again. Knowing how everything was far too much effort for Pattaya Potatoes, they even filled in the required paperwork for you. Some of them even chucked in a full English breakfast and discount tickets for drinks in selected watering holes along Walking Street. These days, the most efficient companies got you over to Cambodia and back to Pattaya with a new visa stamp so quickly you barely knew you had left the country, and that was the idea.

Ron listened to me telling him about my previous lightning-fast visa runs and he shook his head.

“I can see you’ve been in Pattaya too long now, Joe,” he told me. “You’re going stale. I think it’s time for you to spread your wings again and see something new.” The old man paused, then picked up his drink. He took a generous gulp of rum and coke and looked at me hard over his glass. This time he nodded. He reached for a battered old cigarette case on the table in front of him, and withdrew and lit up a large, sweet-smelling marijuana joint which he offered to me.