Visa Run - Pattaya to Sihanoukville

by Peter Jaggs

  My lack of good fortune in locating Ron’s girl was matched only by my equally pitiful attempts at getting to know the Cambodian girls better. Joe Bucket was learning a lesson. In Thailand, wangling cheapies and freebies had become almost a way of life and my ability to speak Thai enabled me to get myself both into and out of countless sticky situations, many of them pleasurable, and some not so. To date—here in Cambodia—the only lovers tryst I had enjoyed so far that could be regarded as any kind of a triumph at all had been a ten minute shag with a five dollar taxi-girl in the Chicken Farm. I had been sneering at the ‘newbies’ to Thailand who blundered into diabolical positions with the bar-girls for years now, but Sihanoukville had already made me realize it was not only stupidity that dropped blokes in the shit with the Pattaya girls but sometimes simply lack of familiarity with the city and her people. Of course, it was undeniable that some of the Pattaya punters were just plain dumb.

  I was rapidly getting the message that I was neither as clever nor attractive to women as I liked to think. The ruses that had become second nature in Thailand just didn’t seem to work in a strange country where I couldn’t make myself understood; and it was plain that I only did so well with the Pattaya bar-girls because I had made a detailed study of the species and their language for the past twenty-five years. Suddenly, over here in Cambodia, I was not the know-it-all man about town anymore but simply another stupid farang on a visa run. Yet strangely enough, despite my recent lamentable track record with the Sihanoukville lasses, I was amazed to find I was thoroughly enjoying this lack of understanding and even all the mistakes I was making. I was surprised to find myself becoming aware that perhaps you don’t need to know a place and its people inside out to have a great time there after all.

  There was certainly no question that the bar-girls in Cambodia were less street-wise than those in Pattaya. In the old days on the Eastern Seaboard, a Thai bar-girl thought she was doing well if she managed to score a buffalo or a bicycle out of her farang. Nowadays, most of them think they are under-achieving unless they have been given a house, a car, a motorcycle or all three—and admitting to your friends you haven’t got the latest mobile phone in your pocket is tantamount to saying you don’t possess a vagina.

  Incredibly, there are an increasing number of farangs in Pattaya who are coming up with the goods. It never ceases to amaze me how so many mean bastards—who when previously married back in their respective countries never bought their ex-wives anything more expensive than a birthday box of chocolates—seem to lose all sense of reality. They present their latest Thai girlfriends with up-country townhouses, four-wheel drive pick-up trucks, Honda Wave motorcycles and gold jewelry. I can only put this phenomenom down to some strange form of hypnosis, although I have been told how many Pattaya girls employ the services of a spirit doctor to cast a spell over their farangs in order to part them from their wordly goods. I don’t laugh like I used to when people tell me this anymore. Whatever the reason, it is a fact of life that Thai pussy seems to turn the head of even the wisest, and as many of the farangs who come to Pattaya these days don’t seem too blessed in the brains department to start with, what chance do they stand? I can only assume that for these guys, happiness is a happy penis and to hell with the consequences.

  Although the Vietnamese girls around Sihanoukville seemed fairly street-wise, in comparison the Cambodian girls downtown and especially on Victory Hill were definitely still relatively naive compared to their Pattaya counterparts. For example, the way most of them still goggled with fascination into the television sets some of the bars boasted showed they hadn’t yet endured a lifetime of the idiot box. Fifteen years ago the Thai girls were very much the same. Very few of the Cambodian girls had mobile phones yet either, but there was no doubt the obsession was coming. A little later on, a girl I took back to the Crazy Monkey from the Mosquito Bar was in such a hurry to get down the mobile phone shop to spend the money I gave her, she barely remembered to pull her panties back on, which I thought was rather sad.

  One of the nicer things about Cambodia was that the girls still lived off the local diet and therefore most of them still retained those lovely, slim figures that were so common to the Thai bar-girls just a couple of decades ago, before many of them started porking up on fast food and beer with their farang boyfriends. Looking around me in some of the bars in Soi Seven and Eight these days, I can’t help wondering if the Far East isn’t becoming the Fat East.

  The first girl in Cambodia who I attempted to give the old Joe Bucket charm to was not in fact, a Khmer at all, but Vietnamese. I found her—or rather she found me—in a quiet little bar run by yet another dodgy Frenchman and his Cambodian side-kick at the top of the bar-strip. The two bosses seemed to spend all their time playing cards together and almost coming to blows in the corner. The music was good and the beer was cold and the small bar offered a good starting point for the nights’ entertainment where I could watch the world go by. I was doing just this one evening when I felt two slim arms encircle my waist, then someone blew softly into my ear. I turned around and there was Khwan.

  I should probably have known better. Back in Pattaya I would never have fallen for the Vietnamese girl’s charms, but this visa run had become an adventure and I was enjoying doing some of the things I hadn’t experienced for years. In my defence, there was no doubt that Khwan was undeniably beautiful. Her high cheekbones were framed by hair as black as ink that was cut into a short, sexy style and her large, dark eyes and perfect cupid’s bow mouth twinkled and smiled at me as she listened to my every word with rapt attention. Her firm breasts jiggled around nicely when she laughed at my feeble jokes and the hand that slipped into my lap beneath the table caressed me with a tenderness and technique that ensured any reservations I’d harboured were immediately lost under the flow of my rising libido. That’s how things appeared to me after eight Angkor beers and a couple of gigantic spliffs anyway.

  Looking back, perhaps I could have been a bit more suspicious. If I had taken the time to look a little harder I might have noticed the graphite hardness in those shining, black eyes and also might have wondered how Khwan could speak English almost as well as myself. What the hell did it matter anyway? I was on holiday, and all the lads back in Pattaya—most of whom had probably been no further from the border than the Chicken Farm at Koh Kong—had assured me you never paid a girl anymore than fifteen dollars in Cambodia, anyway. In fact, Jim the Perv assured me that Keeniaw Kevin even managed to barter the price down to two bucks on occasions, so I wasn’t at all worried at the impending expense. I had been searching for Psorng-Preng for seven days now and it was getting somewhat tedious. At the risk of offending the more sensitive reader, I decided it was high-time Joe Bucket had some action.

  I have to hand it to Khwan. She was a total professional and within an hour she had convinced me she thought I was the nicest bloke she had ever met. Of course, I’m not a complete idiot and I knew her companionship would eventually have to be paid for, but the way her eyes sparkled and the sound of her endearing laughter rang out as she told me about some of the weirdoes she had met during the course of her chosen career (which she had to do of course, as her poor old grandpa was very sick and needed money for hospital bills) sucked me in completely.

  I listened with amusement as with a complete lack of embarrasment, Khwan told me about the astonishing selection of perverts, spankers and dildo-wielding fiends a girl in her profession was bound to come across. I shook my head in astonishment when she told me about the customer who insisted on wearing full combat gear—including a helmet and boots—whilst he was in bed with her. I guffawed my appreciation when she revealed the story of yet another punter who could only achieve satisfaction if both partners involved were equipped with rubber diving masks and snorkels. And I sniggered in bafflement when Khwan put her dark, fragrant head close to mine and whispered the tale of the deviant she never even had to touch, but who got his kicks by merely watching her strut around his bed making chicken no
ises with a large cockerel’s feather protruding from the crack in her shapely buttocks. I was no innocent, but I honestly hadn’t realised there were so many freaks in the world.

  It wasn’t long before I was totally enraptured by Khwan’s unique combination of honesty, beauty and coarseness and I began seriously considering spending the whole of my visa run with this fascinating girl.

  Perhaps I should have smelled a rat when Khwan insisted we walk the long way around back to the Crazy Monkey instead of past the bar-strip. Maybe I should have been a little suspicious when knowing glances were exchanged between the French owner of the bar and his Cambodian henchman as we left. Possibly I should have remembered the old chestnut that tells you to remember when things seem too good to be true they probably are; and certainly I should have had the prudence to fix a price with the freelancing good-time girl before we set off for my room.

  It is always easy to be wise following the event, but after a gallon of beer and a couple of joints, when a cool, slim-fingered hand slips into your own and a sweet voice whispers, “Come on darling, let’s go to bed now,” Joe Bucket’s caution is inevitably thrown to the winds.

  It would only be fair to Khwan to relate how nothing went wrong until after the main event. The Vietnamese bar-girl’s body was simply perfect and she looked even better than she did when decorated with her rather classy looking clothes. She made love with a feeling and attentiveness that seemed to back up her interest in me in the bar, and I was now sure I would ask her to stay with me until I returned to Pattaya. However, when the deed was done (and with a lot of clever tricks, Khwan made sure it didn’t last very long) and I was preparing to curl up next to this beautiful girl in a haze of post-coital satisfaction, Khwan quickly began pulling on her clothes.

  “That will be thirty-five dollars, please,” she told me expressionlessly, as she wriggled that perfect little behind into a pair of pants so tight they could have been painted on.

  I sighed and reached for my wallet. Unless I wanted a major scene, I knew it was pointless to argue with Khwan, even though I knew I was being ripped off in the nicest possible way. Salt was further rubbed into the wounds in my ego when the contents of my wallet revealed only twenty dollar bills and Khwan took advantage of the situation to quickly pluck two of the notes from my fingers.

  “I’ll give you back five dollars in the bar tomorrow,” she assured me, as I unlocked the side door for her. Then, the artful bargirl gave me a quick peck on the cheek and disappeared into the blackness of the deserted street.

  “I won’t be seeing that again,” I called after her, just to let her know I wasn’t a complete cretin. The only answer was the sound of her happy laugh as it rang through the quiet of the dark night and of course, that was the last I ever saw of her.

  I did turn up in the bar at the end of the strip as usual at my normal time the next evening but not surprisingly, there was no sign of either Khwan or my five bucks. As I sat there sipping on a beer, the tough Cambodian barman approached me. He spoke English quite well, although he mixed his words up a bit and his grammar was all over the place.

  “You looking for Khwan?” he asked me, with some interest.

  “No, not really,” I answered ambiguously.

  “That is good, because she is now the girlfriend of Didier,” he told me, naming the violent looking French gangster I’d seen knock out the hapless beggar with one blow on my first night on The Hill.

  “And he tell me if he see you with she again, maybe he cut off your testicle,” he finished.

  Ah well, perhaps I’m better off out of that one after all, I decided, taking a large gulp of beer and lighting up a Sihanoukville special. After all, I have always been very attached to my ‘testicle,’ and at least I’ve got a good story to tell the boys back in Pattaya, I consoled myself.

  As did Didier’s Vietnamese girlfriend. No doubt added to the stories she had told me about the fowl fetishist and Private Pervert—and the guy who gave a completely new meaning to the phrase ‘muff diving’—Khwan would tell her next victim the tale of Joe Bucket; the English fool on a visa run from Pattaya, whom she had blagged out of forty bucks.

  My next attempt at purchasing a night’s female company on The Hill was equally disastrous, but for completely opposite reasons to the debacle with Khwan. I didn’t bother for a while after that. After blowing forty bucks on a ten minute shag that would have cost my pal Keeniaw Kevin two dollars down at the Chicken Farm, I was slightly reluctant to take the plunge again. Besides, I was thoroughly enjoying Sihanoukville by now and I was content to retire to bed every night with nothing more than a healthy buzz that was brought on by a good deal of Angkor draft beer together with Victory Hill’s own particular brand of herbal cigarettes.

  I also fancied I cut rather a dashing figure as a bit of a detective whenever I produced Ron’s photograph. Feeling like that fat bloke on NYPD Blue with the moustache I would whisper, “You ever seen this girl?” out of the corner of my mouth; something I’d wanted to do all my life. No matter that all my sleuthing so far had produced precisely nothing, it gave me a magnificent excuse to be stumbling around the bars all night besides the usual less laudible reason of getting pissed drunk.

  However, a week after the street-wise gangster’s moll had taught me a lesson I wouldn’t forget in a hurry, I was at it again. I found myself sitting next to a girl in the Shark Bar who was so sweet and charming I knew immediately I would never be able to resist her. Her name was Kanya, which means beautiful virgin, and just like her name, she looked nothing like a hooker at all. Kanya couldn’t speak a word of English but this didn’t seem to matter because she smiled at me every time I looked at her and clung to me limpet-like, in a way the far more cynical bar-girls in Pattaya had ceased to do for years. She was around eighteen and the delightfully shy expression on her fresh, sweet face contrasted sharply with a pair of tits hidden unsuccessfully under her loose clothing that would have put Miss Pattaya Wet T-Shirt to shame.

  I couldn’t believe my luck. Besides Psorng-Preng, Kanya was exactly what I hoped I might find in Cambodia. I’d only bought the girl an orange juice and she had put her arms around me and showed an ardour and eagerness which I had almost forgotten and that would have taken at least a purple note to produce in Pattaya these days. In fact, the lovely young girl had me reminiscing about those long-gone, halcyon days of my early twenties a quarter of a century earlier. Back then, the Thai bar-girls were not quite as acquisitive as they are today and Joe Bucket was the youngest and best-looking guy in every bar and not the greying, middle-aged ruffian with a burgeoning beer gut the past twenty-five years have turned him into. My appearance didn’t seem to bother Kanya though, because her soft brown arms encircled me as if they would never let me go, and every time I left my beer long enough to look at her I was treated to a smile which would have melted the heart of even the most cynical of Pattaya bar-hoppers.

  There was a lady-boy working in the bar whom I had become friendly with simply because I had tipped her a couple of times. Her name was Putrea, which apparently is a kind of Cambodian plum. She could speak English and had helped with a couple of impromptu translations during my intrepid detective work in looking for Psorng-Preng, so I had given her a couple of bucks.

  Now, I have been fooled by lady-boys before in Pattaya and two particular occasions spring to mind instantly. Once, after a night’s revelry, I awoke in a strange bed to find myself sleeping next to a naked girl who had her back to me. The sheet had fallen away from her during the night and she had shining, waist-length hair and a gorgeous, tight little behind. Smiling complacently to myself, I snuggled up closely to my unknown new girlfriend and slipped an investigative hand around her shapely back to find a small, perky pair of breasts. The girl sighed throatily and wiggled her small rump closer into my crotch. So far so good. Anticipating a bit of morning delight, my hand wandered further down her flat stomach until I discovered a penis that was equally as small and perky as those knockers. I have never been a morni
ng person but the speed with which I arose from the bed, threw on my clothes and disappeared out of the door would have impressed even the most diligent firefighter on night-call.

  My second serious encounter with a woman of the second category was possibly even more alarming because it lasted longer. I became totally besotted by Joy, a gorgeous creature who worked in a bar in Soi Eight. Joy was one of those girls passing farangs nearly fall off their motorcycles to look at. For several nights I visited the bar where she worked but Joy resisted all my attempts, both financial and amorous, to get her into my bed. Eventually, in despair, I asked her what the hell was wrong with me. Was I really such a no-hoper›?› I asked her miserably.

  “I’m a lady-boy, you idiot!” Joy told me, letting on at last. “And I know that you think I’m a girl. I don’t want you breaking my nose in the shower when you find out—it cost a lot of money!”

  Still I didn’t believe the sexy young girl. Eventually, in a fit of pique, the pissed off katoey led me to the back of the bar when there was nobody about, grabbed my hand and shoved it up her dress and down the front of her panties. Yes. There was no doubt about it. What I encountered under the skimpy, frilly underwear left me in no doubt that Joy was at least honest.

  This story does have a twist to it. Three years later I was walking down Soi Diana Dragon when I heard a voice calling to me. It was Joy. She was sitting alone at a table outside the new, expensive hotel recently built there.