God Bless Cambodia

by Randy Ross

  The waitress returns. We all put on our “the-food-sucks-in-this-country” smiles.

  I realize I have a lot in common with kids this age: apathetic friends, weird grooming habits, constant partying, and trying to get laid. These common interests may serve me well applying for jobs at companies populated with twenty-somethings. On the other hand, my interests haven’t changed much in twenty years. Maybe this is why women my age call me immature. I order another beer.

  Back at the hostel, everyone disperses except for Adler, who hovers near me.

  “Want to visit the National Museum tomorrow morning?” He’s still clutching his little guidebook.

  “I’ve got some stuff to do,” I say. “But thanks anyway.”

  As I walk toward my room, he calls out: “How about Chinatown in the afternoon?”

  I feel bad blowing him off. But I’m wiped out. It’s not just jet lag. For the last eight weeks, all I’ve done is try to meet new people. Wooing and entertaining strangers is like making cold calls around the clock. ABC: Always be closing. I pour energy into people who vanish after an hour or a day.

  The next morning, I consult the hostel front-desk manager:

  “Is there a gym, a health club, nearby?”

  “Siam Health Adventure on Soi 7, very close, twenty-five baht taxi.”

  Outside I flag down a cab.

  “How much to Siam Health Adventure on Soi 7?” I point to the meter on the dashboard.

  “Meter no work,” the driver says.

  “The guy in the hostel said it would be twenty-five baht.”

  “OK, thirty-five baht.”

  “He said twenty-five baht.”

  “OK, we use meter.”

  “As long as it’s under twenty-five baht.”

  “OK, thirty baht.”

  “Forget it, I’ll get another cab.”

  “OK, OK, twenty-five baht.”

  I write the price, twenty-five baht, in my pocket notebook and show it to the cabbie. He smiles, nods, and off we go.

  Instead of watching the road, the driver watches me in his rearview mirror. I flip through Pittman’s guidebook to a section on Bangkok transportation. “Vehicle accidents are a leading cause of death for foreign tourists.” I close the book and look out the window at the street signs for Soi 33, then Soi 37, then Soi 40.

  “Excuse me, are we going to the Siam Health Adventure on Soi 7?”

  “Today king’s anniversary, much traffic, we go this way.”

  I hold up the piece of paper to the rearview mirror and point to the price.

  “OK, OK, twenty-five baht,” he says.

  The driver pulls over on Soi 42, gets out, and opens my door. The sign on the store in front of us says, “Lik Lik Jewelry: Diamond Sale Today Only.”

  “You want diamond for wife? Lik Lik, very fair, very cheap. Come, come.”

  “I don’t want any diamonds. I want the gym.”

  He closes the door and off we go.

  Soi 40, Soi 33, Soi 22, Soi 15.

  The cab pulls over in front of Lik Lik Soapy Massage. He opens the door.

  “Is this the Siam Health Adventure?”

  “Many beautiful girl. Special massage for special customer.”

  “If you don’t take me to the gym, I’m going to call the police.”

  He points down the street to a sign: Lik Lik Muay Thai and Romantic Foot Massage.

  The guidebook includes a warning about the Bangkok taxi hustle.

  “I’m not interested in kick boxing or massage or anything else from Lik Lik,” I say. “I want the Siam Health Adventure on Soi 7.”

  “Same, same,” he says. “Siam Health closed for queen’s birthday.”

  “The emergency number for the tourist police is 1155, right?”

  I hold up the guidebook, which has the phone number listed in large bold type.

  “OK, OK, Siam Health Adventure.”

  Five minutes later, we pull up in front of a building called Ginger Towers that advertises luxury apartments, a shopping mall, underground parking for 700 cars, and four floors dedicated to Siam Health Adventure.

  The driver gets out, opens my door, and smiles. I offer my I-feel-guilty-for-something-I-can’t-explain smile and give him thirty baht.

  The cab ride is only a warm-up. Bangkok scammers are waiting for me at every turn.

  Scam #1: Siam Health Adventure

  The decor is polished steel with pink and blue neon. Techno music throbs in the background. A sign says, “To Your Healths.” The reception desk is manned by a half-dozen young women with name tags that say, “Member Relations Officers.”

  One of them peels off to take care of me. She says the one-day rate is 800 baht, about twenty-six dollars, almost two nights at the Sukhumvit hostel.

  I counter: “How about 800 baht for twenty-four hours, so I can come in tomorrow morning too?”

  “I check my manager,” she says.

  After ten minutes, she returns and takes me to a room of small tables, the deal-closing room. The officers and other customers are Thai. I’m the only farang in the place.

  “We have male and female steam rooms,” says the member relations officer. She caresses her ring finger, which is devoid of a wedding band.

  “We first club to offer pole-dancing classes.” She makes a pole-climbing motion with her hands.

  “Our spa give Swedish massage.” She smiles a smile that could mean many things.

  “Look, I’m only in town for a couple of days,” I say. “But I might come back to live, and if I do, I’ll join this club, and you’ll get a big commission and be able to buy an apartment in Ginger Towers.”

  “OK, 800 baht.”

  We’ve agreed to something, but I’m not sure what, so I ask for that something in writing. She whips out a business card and scribbles something about two days.

  In the free-weight area, I talk to a local guy with an expensive-looking haircut.

  “Mind if I ask how much a membership is here?” I ask.

  “Six-hundred-thirty baht a month.”

  Scam #2: Soup

  Outside the hostel there’s a soup cart. The hostel manager says a bowl should cost thirty baht, about a dollar.

  The wooden soup cart rests on a pair of dusty mountain-bike tires. The proprietress ignores me and pets a mangy dog. A shelf open to the Bangkok air displays greens, cellophane noodles, and balls the color of mushroom caps. The food preparation area is wooden, worn, and covered with deep gashes. In Thailand, take Azithromycin.

  In the center of the cart sits a boiling stock pot filled with dark liquid. Only eat food that is thoroughly heated. I decide if she accepts twenty-five baht, we’ll have a deal.

  “Sa-wa dee krab,” I say with a little bow. “How much?”

  “Forty baht.”

  I smile. “Twenty baht.”

  She smiles and returns to the dog.

  No deal, no soup.

  Scam #3: The Kid

  A block from the food cart, a little kid offers to read my palm. Instead of giving him cash that he will no doubt spend on drugs and hookers, I offer him something that he really needs: a cookie from a nearby bakery shop.

  He goes right for the most expensive item in the display case, a sixty-baht éclair. The counter guy wraps the pastry and smiles. The kid smiles. I smile.

  Outside, I stand with the kid waiting to see the joy on his face when he bites into the pastry. We stand in silence. “Eat, eat,” I say. Suddenly he doesn’t understand English. He points to a hole in his shirt and then points to a Lord & Taylor’s across the street. I smile. He smiles. “Good luck to you,” he says. “You will have many wives and childrens.”

  “Good luck to you too,” I say.

  As I walk away, the kid stands on the corner and waves to me. He still hasn’t opened the package. Probably going to share it with his little friends.

  I mention the pastry incident to the hostel desk clerk. He shakes his head. “Him return cookie to store and share money with counterman. But y
our intentions good.” He flashes me a “you’ve-been-had-by-an-eight-year-old” smile.

  Blog Entry: October 17

  Bangkok

  Loving the land of Singha and sex-change surgery. Imagine me showing up to my college reunion as “Randi” instead of “Randy.” I’d be a hit.

  Some of the language I’ve picked up:

  Sa-wa dee krab: Hello, I’m a Westerner, please charge me double.

  Kap kuhn krab: Thank you, carrying all that cash was straining my wallet.

  Pet-pet, mahk-mahk: Hot and spicy. Proper usage: “Can I get the Swedish massage, pet-pet, mahk-mahk?”

  In Bangkok another night, then off to Vietnam.

  Still haven’t received my new liver. Let’s get on the stick, people.

  Again, that e-mail address: rburns@rburnsworld.com

  —Burns

  When I awake the next morning, the linoleum floors in my single room seem lumpier. The rusty window bars seem rustier. The Buddha-themed wall tapestry looks as if it was a door mat in a previous life.

  After using a nail clipper to trim a splinter on the headboard, I open my day planner and review today’s options:

  • Wat Pho, a temple that houses the humongous, remarkable, serenely luminescent, 150-foot-long Reclining Buddha.

  • Snake zoo with Adler.

  • Sex show at Soi Cowboy.

  Sights, snakes, or breakfast strippers. Nothing appeals to me. But what would appeal to a woman on Match? I imagine updating the travel section of my profile with “the Garden Route of South Africa, the Olympian Zeus in Greece, and the giant Reclining Buddha of Thailand.” Adventurous, cultured, spiritual. The women will be all over me.

  I hop the Skytrain to a ferry up the Chao Phraya River, and in an hour, I’m standing outside a large walled compound. Wat Pho spans twenty acres and has sixteen entrances. But that seems to be the only two things the guidebook, my tourist map, and the hostel desk clerk agree on.

  Pittman recommends an east entrance on Sanam Chai Road. The tourist map recommends a west entrance on Maharat Road. The hostel deskman recommends a south entrance on Chetuphon Road. I’m standing on a road called Thai Wang facing east or north or maybe south. My eyes start to burn from the sooty air.

  To my left, a tour leader addresses a crowd of Western tourists.

  “Wat Pho, or Wat Po, is sometimes abbreviated Wat Phra Chetuphon Vimolmangklararm Rajwaramahaviharn.” He laughs at his own joke and continues. “This wat is home to ninety-one religious structures called stupa and chedi.”

  My guidebook says there are seventy-one structures known as pagodas. The tourist map says there are ninety-nine structures, including some called prang.

  The tour leader continues: “The wat includes a main chapel, called Phra Uposatha or Phra Ubosot or simply bot.”

  The crowd starts to rub their eyes, thumb through their guidebooks, and scratch themselves.

  “The Reclining Buddha is housed in a sanctuary, pavilion, shrine, or temple called a viharn, vihara, vihaan, wihan, or wihaan.” The crowd looks as confused as I am. I follow them through a nearby entrance.

  Inside Wat Pho, the tour leader rattles on about stone monuments called Lan Than Nai Tvarapala. I scan the grounds: sword-wielding statues; dragon-faced statues; multiroofed temples with curlicue spires; corncob-shaped monuments festooned with burnt orange and sea-green tile. The tour leader refers to the grounds as “wondrous” and “magnificent.” A less erudite person in a fussy mood might call the place “garish” and “cheesy.”

  I pay fifty baht and follow the group to the hall of the Reclining Buddha. Everything about the exhibit is long as advertised, starting with the line and the humongous, remarkable, wooden shoe rack. “Please find a cubby for your footwear before entering the hall,” the tour leader says.

  Do I really want to leave my ninety-dollar Keens in this rack? A uniformed guard is watching over the shoes, but what if he’s in cahoots with the local shoe thieves like the little kid and the pastry clerk? Everyone in the group puts their shoes in the rack. I do what they do.

  Just then, a Westerner exits the exhibit, gives the rack a once-over, and stomps over to the security guard. “My blue Crocs are gone,” he tells the guard.

  “Look again,” the guard says.

  The Westerner combs the rack. No blue Crocs.

  “Look again,” the guard says.

  The American spots a pair of orange Crocs—in another section of the rack—looks around quickly, and takes them. I immediately retrieve my Keens from the rack, hide them in my daypack, and get back in line.

  Behind me: a young Western couple, and behind them, a young Asian couple. Another couple in front of me and another is exiting the exhibit. All young. All paired off.

  I put on my Keens, head for the exit, and walk away, walk away. I came. I heard. I saw enough for a Match entry.

  The Chao Phraya River is the muddy color of a thirty-baht soup. Small craft zip around like water bugs swirling murky water in their wake. From the dock, I watch a couple in a gondola-shaped boat with a canopy. The man puts his arm around the woman and kisses her ear. Their Thai boat driver steers using the six-foot handle of a Mad Max contraption that chugs and spews like an old V8. The woman brushes the man’s throat with a long-stemmed rose.

  Enough already with the couples.

  The only other person on the pier is a young Asian woman wearing a frilly, yellow dress. Perfect breasts jockey under the frills.

  “Excuse me. Do you know which boat goes to the Central Pier, near the Skytrain stop?” I ask.

  She flips her hair, straightens a pleat, and answers in a dark brown voice, “This one does, honey.”

  I take another look at her. There’s something boyish about this lady. Or rather, there’s something ladyish about this boy. I look the other way.

  As the ferry departs from the dock, I find a spot on the railing next to a Western woman wearing a T-shirt that says “Colorado Buffaloes” with all the words spelled correctly. Her Tevas are tapping to imaginary music. Long hair, long legs, long everything—what Pam, the American twenty-something, will look like in twenty years if she’s lucky. The woman glances at me. Then she gives me a second look.

  “Having fun?” I ask.

  She points to another gondola-shaped boat ferrying yet another couple on the river.

  “They’re having fun,” she says. “Reminds me of Venice.”

  “Me too.” I give her the once-over: no earrings, no watch, no adornments of any kind. She must have read the tips about not wearing flashy jewelry around Bangkok. Or . . .

  “Are you an artist?” I ask.

  “Well, I did study art history.” She turns toward me and gives me the once-over: plastic sports watch, worn daypack, tropical-weight painter’s pants. “Don’t tell me you’re a painter,” she says.

  “During my Renaissance phase, I dabbled in matte, satin, and if the muse was with me, high-gloss.”

  “You’ve never been to Venice, have you?” she says.

  “Does this mean you’re not going to loan me 500 baht?”

  “I already blew today’s budget at Wat Pho.” She turns to watch the couple in the gondola. The lonely, romantic type. This could work.

  “Hope you didn’t fall for the old Wat Pho disappearing shoe trick,” I say.

  “I hired a guide who told me not to put shoes in those racks. He said people from Cambodia go there to steal stuff.”

  “Not just from Cambodia.”

  She says she’s from Denver, likes to ski, and works for a software company. I double-check her fingers for a ring or a tan line. She’s clean.

  Now what? Ask her out for a drink when we dock or maybe dinner later? Hey, I know a really crappy restaurant on Khao San Road.

  She eyes another gondola boat with another happy couple and resumes tapping her Tevas. She’s starting to drift; I’m losing her.

  I try to recall a past experience to apply to this one. The Greek ferry encounter didn’t turn out so well. Anika and the h
ot tub? Another maritime disaster.

  Maybe I just need to be more forceful, more confident, like the Brits who wanted Pam and went after her. I think of the Thai taxi drivers, the member relations chick, the eight-year-old kid with the pastry. Bangkok isn’t for nancy boys. Bangkok is for closers.

  I tap her on the shoulder. “So, how long you traveling for?” I ask.

  “Two weeks.”

  “Do you have a job waiting for you back home?”

  “Yeah, job, dog, husband. The whole nine yards.”

  This is the second ringless woman with a husband in a month. Married teases, hostel birds, part-time hairdressers, and mad Russians. What’s with the women on this trip? I still have an unopened thirty-six pack of rubbers. Pittman’s guidebook has been wrong about a bunch of things, but he couldn’t have goofed about something this major. Is it me?

  Across the Chao Praya, another gondola boat glides by with two men arm and arm. I glance over again at the ladyboy: restless breasts, slim with biceps as large as mine. He’s really not bad.

  I’ve never had a homosexual experience, but I’ve come close. In third grade, I slept over at cousin Joey’s house. Early in the morning, we woke up and started wrestling. Then he challenged me to a duel. In our variation of mano-a-mano combat, each warrior had one weapon, a half-inch penis. We rubbed the tiny heads together until one got so red that its owner (me) surrendered. But this was a one-time event, never to be repeated. Too painful.

  Then, in my early twenties, I hitchhiked from Boston to LA, and went right to the beach. Four hours later, I was sunburned. This was no cute little pink New England-style sunburn; this was the real deal. I developed huge blisters on my legs that sloshed when I walked. The next night, I felt worse rather than better, so I started hitching back to Boston.

  The first car that stopped was a poppy-yellow VW Beetle. The driver had long, blond hair and a beautiful face like Sharon Stone’s. Except the driver was a guy, a pretty guy. I got in.

  He glanced at my legs and said, “That doesn’t look good, my man, why don’t you stay with me and my girlfriend for a couple of days.”

  At his place, the girlfriend made dinner and went to bed. Then he took out some beer, and then he took out some weed. As we partied, I thought: This guy is OK. He’s sharing his home, he’s sharing his food, and he’s sharing his party supplies. So I took out a bottle of Percodan that I had been saving for special occasions. Percodan was a prescription painkiller known to induce feelings of well-being and camaraderie.