Visa Run - Pattaya to Sihanoukville

by Peter Jaggs

  As I walked past the last house on the left side of the track a small monkey on a chain startled me as it leapt from its hiding place underneath a broken, bamboo table where it was shackled and made a grab at my beach gear. The links of the monkey’s rusty chain rattled as they slithered across the dirt and then pulled tight as the animal attained the limit of its tether and reached for my towel with black, claw-like hands. I gave a loud yell and jumped back in shock and two small Cambodian boys who were hiding in the branches of a nearby tree waiting for just this to happen laughed and squealed in delight as I sheepishly trudged on down to the beach with my heart pounding. I didn’t think the incident quite so funny. As a boy I always dreamed of keeping a monkey for a pet, but after more than twenty years in Asia I know just how vicious the little bastards can be and now believe they are much better off in the wild. In Lopburi, my friend Little John and I had watched the huge, one-eyed leader of the troop of famous monkeys that have taken over the Thai town grab a screaming, yowling kitten and fuck it up against a low wall with every appearance of great enjoyment. When he had finished the fickle Simian rapist picked up his hapless victim and hurled the poor creature five floors to the ground below from the rooftop where the crime had taken place. While we were there we also noticed that none of the Lopburi cats had tails; the owner of our guesthouse told us how the fun-loving monkeys delighted in biting them off. I had only been in Lopburi for ten minutes before one of the monkeys pissed on my head from above where he was sitting on one of the wire grills that protect all the windows and rooftops from the monkeys’ wanton vandalism. Far more sinister was the story told to me by a monk in Hua Hin. When I asked him where all the monkeys that used to beg food around the bottom of Chopstick Hill had gone he said they had been driven back up the rocky hill away from the tourists since one of them had snatched a baby from a push-chair and torn it limb from limb whilst the screaming young mother looked on helplessly.

  The wide, sandy stretch of Victory Beach was almost deserted and I settled down on one of the half-dozen wooden sunbeds that belonged to a tiny beach bar called Cafe de Mar. I thought this rather a grand name for a establishment which was little more than a large shelf stacked with bottles surrounded by a rickety bar that looked like it had been knocked up out of driftwood. The Cafe de Mar stood in the shade of a huge, wispy tree that looked like some kind of conifer. There were also some coconut palms along the beach but it looked as though they had almost blown down in a storm and someone had propped them up on wooden stands so they were now growing almost horizontally. Although the gnarled trunks of the trees were leaning at weird angles, the crowns had already turned upwards and were growing towards the sun once again. Sun-beds and umbrellas had not taken over Victory Beach yet and there were no Jet-Skis so it was still pleasant, but I wasn’t too sure about the real airplane that someone was apparently turning into an internet cafe. I had just settled back with a banana milk shake and a novel when two small boys carrying trays containing carved seashells came racing across the sand towards me.

  “You buy one!” You buy one!” They both clamoured. The larger lad—and obviously the leader—elbowed his smaller competitor roughly out of the way and he went sprawling into the sand, his half-dozen shells scattered around him. “You buy one from me,” the bigger boy insisted, and placed his tray directly in my lap where I couldn’t ignore it. Like most of the kids I had seen around Cambodia so far, both little boys were ragged and barefoot and they looked as brown and hard as baked chestnuts.

  “Steady on!” I said to the bigger lad, waving an admonishing finger at him. “You’re twice the size of him!”

  “No problem, he my brother,” the rough young enterpreneur assured me as if this made his violent behaviour totally acceptable, and he gave his sibling another hard clip round the ear for good measure just to show everything really was OK. The little boy in the sand looked up at him and laughed. There was now no doubt about it. Just as I had suspected when watching the street kids play-fight in Koh Kong, and when watching the boy on the boat enduring his mother’s spiteful pinches, these Cambodian kids were incredibly tough.

  The elder boy helped his brother up with a yank on the little lad’s shaggy hair and pointed his finger behind me.

  “And this is my sister,” he said, and I turned around to face one of the most beautiful Asian girls I have ever seen.

  The girl was around seventeen and wore a white, broad-rimmed sunhat that set off the cascade of jet-black hair that fell around her slim, shapely shoulders. To attempt to describe her any further would be to do her an injustice; she was simply perfect. She immediately took over the sales pitch from her young brothers who shut up at once, recognizing that their sister stood far more chance of persuading a horny foreigner to part with his money than two snotty-nosed little boys. The lovely girl could speak English very well and simply to keep her around for a while I purchased two crappy bead bracelets I didn’t want, a ring which fell apart the next day and a key chain made from a seashell that I had absolutely no use for whatsoever. I unashamedly paid an extortionate price for the rubbish items just to see the girl smile. After fleecing me in the nicest possible way the Cambodian beauty gathered up her wares and floated off down the beach like a dream.

  When she had gone her young brother immediately plonked his tray back in my lap—obviously very jealous of his sister’s success—and tried to sell me a shell.

  “You buy one,” he told me firmly, and looked at me accusingly as I watched his sister’s erection-inducing buttocks undulate enticingly under her tight sarong as she walked away.

  “Tomorrow,” I told him, dragging my eyes away reluctantly from the young girl’s behind. The boy seemed unwilling to let a deal slip by without more solid confirmation and he stuck out a small hand.

  “You promise,” he ordered me, adamantly. To shut him up I agreed, and shook his hand, marvelling at the strength of the little fellow; then he grabbed his young brother by the ear and they both shot off across the sands after Miss Sihanoukville. Poor kid. We both knew full well however long he lived, however hard he tried, and whatever business courses he completed he would never possess the attributes necessary to put him in the same sales league as his sister. In fact, I tried to wriggle out of the deal we had made, but I was forced to buy a handful of his shells in the end as he was obviously going to make life unbearable for me until I kept my promise. As for his sister—after I had been in Cambodia for a while and when the gorgeous girl decided I had bought enough crap and was not a complete plonker—she relaxed enough to tell me something about herself.

  “My name is Jorani, which means ‘radiant jewel.’ I am nearly eighteen years old and I was fortunate enough to be born very beautiful. My husband, Heng (meaning lucky), is twenty-eight. He runs the little bar under the big Casurina tree opposite Snake Island where I first saw you. The bar cost nothing to set up because the land is owned by a friend and the wood we used was washed up during a storm. I bought the first bottles of drink with money I made selling trinkets to the tourists. It is a lucky place and many farangs come to cook themselves in the sun there and swim in the sea. Of course, I always tell people on the beach that I am not married—especially the men—because this is better for business. I earn more money than my husband’s bar does, simply by selling the souvenirs I make and cutting the finger and toe nails of tourists.

  My best customers are the farang men who come to our country to have sex with Cambodian and Vietnamese girls in the Chicken Farms and the new bars that are opening up around town and on Victory Hill. When they see me—just like you did—they will usually buy a bracelet or two for a price that it would take a good Cambodian craftsman two days to earn. I spent two years teaching myself to speak English with the help of an old phrasebook a backpacker left in the trash-bin in a room of a guesthouse after he had checked out. The cleaning girl salvaged it and I bought it from her for fifty cents. That book changed my life. Being able to speak English—together with my looks—allows the farang men to
engage me in conversation. Many of them do so just to see if there is a chance I might be desperate enough for money to have sex with them. They also often want manicures just to keep me around.

  Some of the really ignorant men try to touch my breasts and bottom as I work but when they do this I stop what I am doing and leave. I make sure that they pay me first, of course. Last year a smelly, fat Englishman got very angry when I would not take no for an answer and told me to fuck off and hit me across the face. I told Heng and he found out that the same farang had been bringing very young girls back to his room and doing bad things to them. A little later the farang was found dead with his throat cut on the beach outside the bungalow he had rented. I don’t know who did it and Heng says he doesn’t either and refuses to talk to me about it any more.

  Some of the men think I am a poor, naive Cambodian girl and try to trick me into coming to their rooms by telling me they would like to marry me and make me rich. Of course, not all the farang men are bad. Many of them are just having fun on holiday and want to talk to a beautiful Cambodian girl who can speak English very well.

  There are many farang women on Victory Beach too, and I paint their nails and braid their hair. Some of them ask me bad questions and seem very interested to know just how far a lovely young Cambodian girl will go with the tourists in order to earn money. Heng gets very angry about this and says they do this in order to make themselves feel better because I make most of them look and feel like hairy white elephants. There are a surprising number of lesbians amongst the travellers and these women are often worse liars and gropers than the men. There are also plenty of good-hearted foreign girls who simply want to make a Cambodian friend.

  I will smile and say anything the tourists want to hear so long as they continue to give me money. When I was very young, my family were so poor we did not have enough to eat and were always hungry. I never want to be like that again so Heng and I stash all the money we make in a metal box and keep it in a secret hiding place in case the bad times ever come back again.

  I have three brothers; two are the little boys you met by the Cafe de Mar. They are not gifted intellectually, but my eldest brother is very smart indeed. My two younger brothers work with me selling souvenirs on the beach but of course, they never do as well as me. Because of his intelligence we send my eldest brother to school. Books, pens and education are expensive, but we are hoping that when he is older he will be qualified enough to earn a lot of money for our family. Father is a motodop driver downtown. I bought his second-hand motorcycle with money I earned selling trinkets, giving manicures and being nice to farangs on the beach.

  Heng does not make so much money from the bar. It wasn’t so long ago that he made more money selling marijuana than drinks as most of the farangs that used to come here were backpackers who were very careful with their money. But during the last few years the type of tourists that are coming to Sihanoukville have changed and the bar does better now. Sometimes we are lucky enough to have rich farangs on visa runs from Thailand adopt the bar and when this happens we do very well as they are often good spenders.

  I love my husband and one day we would like to have children, but at the moment this is not possible. When I’ve had a child my perfect looks and body will never be the same again and at the moment, this is where most of my families money comes from. All the farang men want to buy the souvenirs I make and talk to the beautiful young Cambodian girl with the flawless face and figure, but when I’ve had a baby, my breasts will start to sag a little and my face will not be so fresh due to lack of sleep and it will be a different story. In the future there will be plenty of time for a child, but right now I need to work and accumulate as much money as possible for my family in case the bad times ever come again.”

  When Jorani and her brothers had left I settled back on the sun-bed and ordered the first beer of the day. When he brought me the drink over the friendly owner of the little bar handed me a gigantic spliff—no doubt hoping to persuade me of the quality of his product in case I might be interested in buying some later. He left the joint with me and walked back to the makeshift counter of his bar. The openness to smoking marijuana in public in Sihanoukville had already surprised me, although I wondered how long it would be before someone decided the town was getting enough tourists and they could afford to start the lucrative profession of bust-bribes, such as has happened in every other puffing haven in history. From the sweet-smelling smoke that hung in the air in many of the bars and the fragrance that drifted from many a sun-bed on a Sihanoukville beach, I could see it wasn’t happening just yet, though.

  Not surprisingly, after I had demolished most of the goliath roll-up I felt no inclination to move whatsoever, so I stayed on the beach until evening. At sunset, seemingly almost in an instant, the sea was suddenly full of hundreds of small, colourful wooden fishing boats that sailed out into the setting sun from the nearby fishing village for their night’s work. As the flotilla drifted out of sight past a giant, rusting container ship that was passing by and behind the tree-covered islet they call Snake Island, the gentle waves the boats created lapped around the bottom of my sun-bed. I happily blew out a final cloud of purple smoke and drained the last drops in a can of Angkor beer. I watched a small pair of doves billing and cooing to each other in the delicate foliage of the Casurina tree and wondered if it might be possible to find a girl as lovely as Jorani amongst the bars on the hill. When I paid Heng the three dollars it had cost me for the day’s entertainment I now knew for sure that old Ron had been right all along. This visa run and the old man’s mission were not going to be the nightmare I had anticipated, after all.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Just as I was gathering my things together and preparing to leave the beach, I was surprised to see a monk in a saffron robe walking towards me. During the day, for want of anything to do, I had constructed a large model out of sand on the beach in front of me. It was not the usual sandcastle I’d made, but a likeness of Angkor Wat. I had based the model on the picture woven into one of the bracelets Jorani had sold me and I was rather proud of it. The three spires of my illustrious sand temple rose out of the beach in what I considered to be a most impressive manner and I had built a large wall around my masterpiece to protect it from the incoming tide. In fact, I hadn’t had so much fun on a beach since a day spent building sandcastles with my Dad on a bucket and spade holiday in Clacton-on-Sea when I was eight years old.

  The monk stood in front of my masterpiece and regarded it thoughtfully and nodded his shaven head and smiled at me. He looked to be around forty years old and was very well-built and good-looking with twinkling black eyes; it transpired he had much more of a sense of humour than I imagined a monk might possess. I was taken aback when he spoke to me in Thai and he seemed delighted when I answered him in what turned out to be his second language. Later I realized there were plenty of Cambodians around Sihanoukville who could speak Thai, but to get them to do so was another matter. I never discovered why the Cambodian people were so reluctant to converse in the lingo of their neighbours, but there was no doubt that in my time in the country plenty of people understood me when I spoke Thai to them but feigned a complete unfamiliarity with the language when I was sure they really understood every word I was saying.

  The monk told me his name was Rainsey and when I asked him what this meant he seemed pleased.

  “My name describes the way the rays of the sun retreat from the Lord Buddha,” he told me proudly, pointing a strong, brown finger up at the orange disc of the setting sun. “This means I will always be a traveller.”

  Initially I was trying very hard to be respectful when talking to Rainsey but he soon put me at my ease when I asked him why the small offshore islet I had been staring at from my sun-bed all day was called Snake Island. Stupid question. Rainsey looked at me as though I were a bit simple and answered me a touch sarcastically in a voice one might use when speaking to an idiot.

  “I think it might be because there are many snakes
out there,” he told me seriously. Then the fun-loving monk gave up trying to keep a straight face and burst out laughing and slapped me hard on the back in what I deemed to be to be a most un-monklike manner.

  I asked Rainsey about the beautiful, wispy trees that grew in such abundance around the beaches in Sihanoukville instead of the ubiquitous palm trees that are much more common in the coastal areas of Thailand. He told me they are Casurina trees and said if I should ever be caught in a Tsunami or a tropical storm I could do a lot worse than to take refuge up one. Unlike the shallow-rooted palm trees the Casurinas are deeply anchored into the ground and rarely blow over even in the most terrible of weather. The slender, conifer-like trees are planted as wind-breaks by the Cambodian people and Rainsey told me how they helped to save the lives of many desperate people during the famine years as they exude a sticky gum which in a pinch, is edible. All day long the wind whispered through the willowy branches and I found the sound soothing and restful. Rainsey explained to me how from February to April the trees are paricularly striking because they become laden with small, red buds covered in a darker red fur. He also told me how the local fishermen use the bark of the trees to dye their nets a colour that is almost invisible to the fish. So this was the wonderful Casurina tree I had spent all day lying under, that shielded The Cafe de Mar from the scorching rays of the tropical sun.

  I asked Rainsey why he had decided to become a monk. I couldn’t help thinking that with his good looks, superb physique, close-cropped hair and aura of fitness he looked more like a professional sportsman than a devotee of Buddha. Rainsey sat down on the sun-bed next to mine and told me something about his life. Despite the aura of well-being and serenity that surrounded the monk, his dark eyes filled with tears as he spoke.