Bangkok Hard Time (2 page)

Renting motorbikes and driving on the left side of the road was something quickly mastered, in an adolescent fashion. Hanging out in a Thai noodle shop, drinking Thai beer or whiskey with a few buddies, then jumping into a
tuk tuk
(an open three-wheeled taxi) for a ride to the American Teen Club or often a visit to the two-dollar ladies of the night on Soi Sap became standard weekend activity.

Discovered years before by some of the long-term American expat boys, Soi Sap was a short lane located in the heart of the meat slaughterhouse-and-packing plant district of Bangkok’s notorious Klong Toey slum. When night fell, many of the plants, warehouses and adjoining edifices were used as bordellos. Young, unsophisticated upcountry girls new to Bangkok and speaking very little if any English were engaged there, some packing meat by day, others “entertaining” by night.

They would eventually be out on the street with frizzy, bleached or dyed hair, white makeup, rouge and red lips, looking worn from dancing in the bars or working in one of the many massage parlors in order to earn bigger repayment for the Thai madams who had sponsored their introduction to the money-making opportunities in the Big City. But for now, they were young girls our own age with long silken black hair and flawless skin like rose gold butter.

The
farang
school girls at ISB had no delusions that their boyfriends were not frequenting this place and others like it, but for the most part it was a topic that was swept under the rug. The American boys dutifully escorted the American girls around town with the memory of Thai girls dancing in the back of their minds.

The ever-present American GIs, strutting around with the older Thai girls on their arms, would ogle your round-eyed girlfriend with obvious envy while not daring to speak to her. It was not because they feared you, but because they knew that she must surely be some US Marine Colonel’s daughter. The non-fraternization policy between enlisted personnel and military dependents to which the GIs had learned to adhere on military posts Stateside proved even stricter for them in an overseas deployment. Thus we young dependents were having our cake and eating it too.

The American kids mostly shunned the entertainment venues frequented by the GIs. Only a few of the bad boys from ISB ever ventured into the areas of Bangkok where the soldiers on R&R from the war in Vietnam were spending their short respite from the horrors of war. For two weeks, the GIs would typically indulge in women, whiskey or whatever to forget the threat of pending doom upon returning to the field of battle back in Nam.

Many of the bars catering to the soldiers were racially segregated by choice of the clientele. Some had only white patrons while others had only black patrons. Others still would have only Korean GIs as their customers, another only Australians.

It was always more comfortable for us to go to the bigger bars that had the regular assortment of guys like us. We could walk into a bar and easily pass for American servicemen since most of the GIs were barely older than we were. The unearned respect that the Thai hosts granted us was palpable and easily enjoyed by those of us who engaged in this ruse. Though whenever a problem arose that called for the intervention of the US Military Police, we were happy to present ourselves as the children of either US Army “General Whatshisname” or Air America pilot “Captain Whomsoever” and the problem usually went away quickly. The US MPs did not want to risk any possible backlash from messing with the children of their superiors over some small infringement of regulations. Right or wrong, we were quick to take advantage of the preferential treatment granted to us by the status of our fathers.

Normally, the MPs were called on by the Thai police to handle any infraction or an altercation involving more than one or two
male farangs.
Sometimes the need for action was more immediate and could not wait.

My precious brother Steve and I were on our way home from one of the after-school judo classes that our father had arranged for us. A few months earlier, the three of us had attended a Thai boxing (Muay Thai) match at Lumpini Stadium. When we implored our dad to let us learn Thai boxing, he said that we were not yet ready for the intense level of training required to safely participate in that endeavor. Instead, he had enrolled us in extracurricular karate classes at ISB and the judo classes across town.

It seemed odd that we were living in Thailand and studying the martial arts of other Asian countries. Dad had been a champ on the Army boxing team earlier in his Army career and now as a Green Beret colonel, his judgment in this matter was accepted by his recalcitrant sons … and correctly so.

On that particular evening, the taxicab delivering my brother and me from the judo class to our father’s house passed an intersection where a cab carrying three US soldiers was temporarily stalled. For some reason, my younger brother suddenly shouted out, “GIs eat shit on a stick!”

We had already forgotten his impromptu insult until ten minutes later when the same previously stalled taxi pulled up next to our cab at a major intersection with the highway leading to the airport. Three GIs jumped out of the cab and started reaching for my brother, who was sitting in the back seat. I had been sitting in the front seat but I exited while profusely apologizing for my brother. One of the GIs punched me in the face and split my lip open. After returning his punch, everything briefly went blank for me. I awoke bloodied on the hood of the cab.

In those days, the traffic lights of Bangkok’s major intersections were manually controlled from small nearby police huts. When I had regained consciousness, I happily noted that Steve was standing nearby behind two Thai cops. Amazingly, another officer was successfully attempting to restrain the three GIs all by himself.

I heard the relatively small Bangkok police lance corporal offer the three towering GIs a choice of speaking with the American MPs or going to a Bangkok jail. As I clearly remember, his exact words in broken English were “You speak MP or go monkey house … up to you.”

The threat was well taken. The GIs backed down and whiningly appealed to him, saying that they were US Air Police heading for a flight back to Korat Air Force Base. I am not sure, but I think they may have given him some money, because after determining that I was not suffering from a life threatening injury, the Thai officer collected everyone’s identification information and sent us all on our various ways.

The distraught taxi driver carried us to our compound and before being paid for his trouble, he had a protracted conversation in Thai with our father. A doctor at the nearest hospital stitched my lip and lamely reset my broken nose.

Meanwhile, Dad went to the traffic light control hut involved in the incident to speak with the Thai cops and their superiors. The next time the cab we were riding in stopped at that same intersection weeks later, the Thai police corporal there was now wearing the three-stripe insignia of a sergeant. We exchanged waves and smiles.

I was never sure what happened to the GIs, though I surely know that Colonel Cole was pissed off with his sons, since he grounded us for starting a fight.

Mademoiselles was a restaurant and bar on Sukumvit Road in close proximity to ISB. The bar was a regular after-school hangout for many of the bad boys. Some of them liked to call themselves IFAT which was variously said to stand for either “I Felt A Thigh” or “I Fight Any Thai”. The former was a more appropriate appellation, since they were much more likely to be loving on young girls than fighting with Thai men.

Just around the corner, a vacant lot on Soi 14 was the usual location for frequent after-school fights. One boy would challenge another (usually over the affections of a girl), and the show was on.

A few rear-echelon GIs stationed in Bangkok were also regulars at Mademoiselles, hanging around with some of the IFAT. Despite the slight age difference of only a year or two, it seemed creepy to some of us that soldiers wanted to hang out with high school kids. It was often thought that perhaps they were trying to get into the social circle in order to gain access to the round-eyed girls, but the gals from our school rarely if ever patronized this bar.

As the country lies not too far from the equator, the sun beats down unmercifully on cloudless days in Thailand. Early one afternoon, it was sweltering even for Bangkok at the end of the hot-dry season. Mademoiselles and the two noodle shops on either side of it were filling with schoolboys, who were turning up to witness the outcome of the most recently arranged juvenile slugfest. One of the IFAT boys had challenged a new kid to a fist fight to determine just who was who.

Mack was the first American student wearing long hair to arrive at ISB that spring. Many of the girls thought he was cute, and when he made a play for one of them, who had until then been dating someone else, the fight became inevitable.

And so it was on that oppressively hot afternoon, as the noodle shop owners smiled while scrambling to fill drink requests, that a character-defining story played out. By the time Mack reluctantly showed up, sober and tardy, to answer the challenge, most of us in attendance were quite inebriated, no doubt to the shop-owners’ greedy glee.

The empty lot out back was soon filled with drunk, sweating, testosterone-charged boys anxious to enjoy the outcome of the upcoming match. Bets were made and the match commenced.

The IFAT boys emerged from the backdoor of Mademoiselles with a couple of their GI buddies in tow. Three sheets to the wind and emboldened with cheap Thai whiskey, Mack’s challenger, who was a one-trick pony of a fighter, tried his classic “sucker punch” technique. Missing his mark and falling on the ground due to his intoxication, he was helped by another member of the gang who stepped in for him and proceeded to hurt Mack.

However, one of the spectators that afternoon could not stand by and remain simply a passive observer. This guy, William, was typically seen as a sober over-achiever and never considered one of the bad boys. We were all very surprised when he involved himself by walking into the middle of the fray.

With one punch from William’s huge right hand, Mack’s second antagonist was on the ground as well. For some reason, one of the GIs that hung out with the IFAT felt compelled now to become involved as well.

Assuming a martial arts stance that he had learned in Army basic training gained him nothing but a fat lip. Upon rising, he unfortunately repeated his previous mistake and this time received a broken nose for his trouble. At that point, he stayed on the ground and the fighting was over.

Though he had not even broken a sweat, William calmly walked back to the noodle shop and purchased an ice-cold Green Spot orange soda. Oddly enough, a much too early rainy season-style deluge had begun to fall at almost the same time.

William’s friend, Phil, was a Korean-American and one of the ISB kids who had arrived that year from the International School of Saigon when the dependents of American military and related support groups had been evacuated in anticipation of a Communist-led offensive in the South.

Phil protected me once from a drunk R&R frontline GI who was prowling at Thermaes Bar on Sukumvit Road, near our school. This soldier was clearly looking for a fight and had zeroed in on me, thinking that I was a young, rear-echelon Bangkok GI. When I beat a hasty retreat to the booth where Phil was sitting, the GI followed.

Phil was a small, slightly built boy who was a martial arts expert. He stood up and sternly but softly spoke to the GI in Vietnamese. No one but Phil knew exactly what was said, but the meaning was nonetheless somehow conveyed because the GI stepped back and left the bar. I had just learned that sometimes simply showing the heart to calmly speak up is enough. In the years to follow, this lesson would serve me well.

Spring break that year brought the introduction of another avenue of fun. At the Teen Club one evening was a former ISB student who had returned from California to visit for two weeks during his freshmen year college spring break. Other ISB acquaintances were among our group on what proved to be a life-altering evening for me.

A number of kids were hanging around him, possibly to get an idea of whatever it was they thought they were missing by being stuck in Bangkok. He humored them for a while, answering questions and telling us about hippies and the hippie free love ethos, which at that time was a recent cultural phenomenon, but one that had hit America after most of us had come to Thailand. Scoffing at the notion that we were missing out on anything, he admitted feeling the same way until he went back to the States, where he had rapidly changed his mind and become homesick for Thailand.

When asked what it was in particular that Thailand had which the States did not have, his answer, which sounded silly and flippant, was “Thais and Bahn Pee Lek”.

“What is a Bahn Pee Lek?” I asked.

“Come on and I will show you,” he said. “There is reefer there,” he added.

I had only vaguely heard of reefer before. In Thailand, it was called ganja. Three of us left with him and we all piled into a taxi which he negotiated for us in what sounded like fluent Thai.

Not ten minutes later, we turned into a darkened Soi 18 off Sukumvit Road. It grew darker still the further down the lane we went, until he directed the taxi to stop in front of a small, dilapidated, tin-roofed shack and told the driver to shut off the motor and lights.

“Bahn Pee Lek … House Mr Lek,” he announced, adding, “Wait here, I’m going to run in for a minute.”

He returned in five with an unopened package of Thai menthol cigarettes. The brand name was written in English (Falling Rain) on one side and in Thai (
Sai Phon
) on the other side. Once back in the taxi, he explained where we were now heading, which I did not know since he had told the driver the destination in Thai.

Very shortly thereafter, we arrived in front of the Grace Hotel, a taller building off Sukumvit Road. We got out and followed him to the elevator, which transported us to the roof. The air was heavy, but thirteen floors above the harsh light and the traffic noise below, a light breeze made things more pleasant. Looking in any direction, the view was that of a huge jungle with city lights threaded and sprinkled below the rainforest canopy. Unlike today, only a few dozen widely separated buildings rose high above the trees of this jungle cityscape, which appeared to stretch all the way out to the horizon.