by R. A. Lang
I also needed to borrow a white, long-sleeved shirt. I could have bought one back in Bangkok, but I wasn’t told in time. They went all around the village collecting white shirts until I finally tried one that almost fitted, but it had to do. The finishing touch was a silk sash that rested on my right shoulder and draped down to my left hip.
We were ready to start the ceremony. I was taken away from Wi and made to walk to the entrance of the village. There, quite a congregation of family, relatives, and friends who were waiting outside joined me. Once we got to the entrance of the village, we turned to prepare for the slow walk back the way we had come. I was made to hold three pampas leaves and three tiny candles, like the type you’d find on a birthday cake.
The music started, and the slow walk back to the house began. I was shaded from the sun by an umbrella held above my head while others played instruments: harmonica, guitar, panpipes, and bongo drums. I felt like all eyes were focused on me, which they were. I tried to walk a little faster to get it over and done with, but each time I tried to speed up, I was made to slow down. The walk back to Wi’s parents house felt like hours instead of around twenty minutes.
Finally I made it back to the house. There, I found one of Wi’s sisters waiting at the entrance to the house. As part of the ceremony, she had to traditionally hand wash the dust from my feet before I stepped onto a banana leaf to enter the house. I had no idea how much trouble Wi’s family had gone to to make all the professional arrangements. I’ve often thought how good they’d fare on oil and gas projects!
As I made it back to my starting block, I was surprised to see so many people already sitting around on the wooden floor. I was ushered through the crowd and made to kneel down alongside Wi. She looked more beautiful than I could ever have imagined. She was in full national costume, including a slim-fitting handmade silk dress with a pink and white Thai orchid in her hair.
It is very bad manners to show the soles of your feet in Thailand, and I found it almost impossible to kneel down normally because there were people behind me, sitting against the wall. I had to try to sit to the side, but because it was such an awkward position, my ankles hurt against the wooden floor. Whatever position I tried, I felt pain, so I decided to cross my legs. Unfortunately, I couldn’t maintain that comfortable position for the following four hours with my anklebones on the hard floor.
Wi’s uncle began reading from a thick, handwritten book while everyone kept quiet.
I don’t think I’ve ever kept quiet for four hours in my entire life, but I was afraid to breathe at times. Towards the end of the ceremony, I found out the purpose of the white wool that had been draped on the flower arrangement.
Everyone in the room began to place money in our hands and securely tie a strand of wool around our right wrists. I felt guilty about accepting the twenty baht ($0.65c) donations from all the poor rice farmers, but it was all part of the ceremony, a bid of good luck for our future together. With our rings exchanged, it was all over; thank you Buddha!
After the four long hours on the hard wooden floor, I managed to pass through the pain barrier several times until I lost most of the feeling in my lower legs and feet. When it was time to stand up, I couldn’t. The Thai people understood and found the situation highly amusing.
They all helped me to my feet and kept me steady until the blood rushed back into my muscles. The pins and needles feeling didn’t take long to disappear and I was able to go back outside where we spent the rest of the evening. I kept myself active slapping mosquitos and swatting the flies, as there were many chickens amongst us, not to mention Wi’s father’s four cows next to the house.
Wi’s father had only the four cows remaining from his herd but I was to add to them later.
Wi was the only one who could speak English, so she regularly joined me to ask if I was alright. Everyone else was speaking Thai to me, to which I could only nod my head, smile, or laugh.
The next day involved the final part of the wedding ceremony. We went to the local village temple to give the three monks an offering. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the size of the village temple. It was big enough to house the entire population of the village and still have plenty of room to spare. It was quite a sight with its huge wooden roof, which would no doubt last for generations.
Again, it was time to kneel down and cover the soles of my feet for yet another hour. Fortunately, the time passed quickly, and I welcomed the time to go to the three monks and make my offering. The congregation of onlookers joined us, which was very comforting. They were all there for me.
On the walk back to the house, I called Carolina back in Venezuela to tell her what I’d been up to. Carolina was more surprised than upset, and she seemed understanding. She knew there was no real point in waiting for me; she had to continue her life. I explained that my Thai marriage did not include the signing of any documents, so no laws had been broken. I later learnt that my Venezuelan wife has posted photos of her new-born daughter on Facebook from her live-in boyfriend!
She said she’d pursue the divorce that the second lawyer had initiated in Venezuela. Two days later, she called me to let me know that the second lawyer, as expected, had done nothing. Thus, the second three thousand dollars had been another wasted investment.
Wi’s place in Sakon Nakhon was the main area of Thailand where they ate dogs, but thankfully, the King had made that illegal. I was busy looking for another contract in Southeast Asia in order to stay close to Wi, and was lucky to secure a staff position in Kuala Lumpur to work on a 138-kilometre subsea pipeline.
With contracts signed, off I went to Kuala Lumpur for the first time.
Chapter 18
Malaysia
After arriving in Malaysia in February of 2007, I found myself back in Italy after just ten days and back in Japan two weeks later. I could only stay in the company-provided hotel for a week so I needed to find an apartment quickly. It didn’t give me enough time to get to know Kuala Lumpur so I chose the first apartment, which was high enough away from the mosquitos. Mosquitos don’t normally fly higher than the fifth or sixth floor and the apartment I chose was on the twenty-fourth floor in a place called Mont Kiara.
Mont Kiara wasn’t the ideal location as the apartment block was at the top of a long steep road and over half an hour walk from the nearest shops. In the heat and humidity, it wasn’t a pleasurable trip to get the beginning of the most urgent essentials.
Once I had bought all the usual accessories, which were rarely found in a rental apartment, Wi quit her job in Bangkok and joined me. Wi didn’t need to use the air conditioners in the daytime while I was busy working, so she kept them off all day to save on expensive electrical bills! Even though we lived on the twenty-fourth floor, it was still too hot and humid for me, even with the windows opened to have a through draft. Wi would close all windows and switch on the air conditioners half an hour before my return every day.
After a few more weeks, I was able to buy a new car from a local dealer situated in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, near the twin towers. All was fine until I tried to drive it back to Mont Kiara. Malaysia’s roads were very unforgiving and if you missed your exit, you were in immediate trouble, as there didn’t seem to be any means to make a U-turn and try again.
The day I took my new car back to the apartment took me almost three hours instead of a brief thirty minute drive. I was stuck on a highway heading in an easterly direction towards the coast without any way to turn around. Eventually, I was able to flag down a taxi, which led me home.
Wi was an amazing cook. A friend of mine, Terry, who lived lower down the same road, would often join us when we went down the road to a local bar and Wi loved to cook for him. Terry was already in his middle sixties and Wi called him uncle Terry. One time, Terry’s son docked in Malaysia off a nuclear submarine and Wi invited both her uncle Terry and his son for lunch one Saturday afternoon.
I, together with Terry and his son, sat watching an action movie while Wi remained i
n the kitchen all afternoon producing course after course of Thai cuisine. Wi brought us many little dishes during the afternoon, each one different from the last. We’d gone through at least twelve courses until we couldn’t manage any more and had to ask her to stop cooking.
Wi was not just the best choice of companion; Wi was also my closest possible friend. She never stopped fussing around our rented apartment, which was just up the road from a place called Sri Hartamas, just twenty-five minutes from the centre of Kuala Lumpur.
Wi was forever putting things away in drawers so I couldn’t find anything. I’d arrive home from work and look for my telephone charger so I could simply plug my mobile in before doing anything. My charger was never in the wall socket where I’d left it. I needed to ask Wi every day where my charger was, and Wi would reply, “Drawer darling, in drawer. Charger must live in drawer, not floor.”
Laundry was another issue. My clothes from the day before were always washed, dried, ironed to perfection and aired every day, even though I could have waiting a week.
During our time together in Malaysia, I discovered that Wi wasn’t actually her real name. I knew Thai people liked to be called by their chosen nicknames, such as Nok, Lek, or Hoy, because their original names were often too long.
When I originally asked Wi to write down her name and phone number back in the salon she worked on Sukhumvit Road, she wrote Wi because W and I were the only letters she knew in English. Her real first name was Vipaporn, which she has since changed to Narawadee because her favourite monk told her it was a luckier name. The monk was no ordinary monk, as I later discovered; he was the personal monk for the royal family.
Through Wi, the monk would send warnings to me of events that wouldn’t be good for me and advised me to avoid them, whenever possible. For some strange reason he knew all about the voodoo in my life before, back in Venezuela. He warned that voodoo would repeat itself in my life with life-threatening consequences. He warned me to be careful and warned me about a large black woman who I’d later meet. He also warned me of the need to have a major operation in the future, but that I would survive it.
He had explained to Wi my past, which I could never have done due to the language barrier that existed at that time before Wi later took up English lessons to increase her vocabulary.
Even though I was pleased that Wi had accompanied me in Kuala Lumpur, Kuala Lumpur was not a very good move for Wi.
Wi couldn’t walk down the road to the local gym without cars pulling up alongside her trying to proposition her, and Malaysian, Indian and Indonesian construction workers used to follow her along the road until it got so bad that she remained in the apartment like a prisoner the whole day.
As Wi didn’t have a residential visa, she needed to fly back to Bangkok every thirty days, and then return for another thirty. This was a welcome break for her and sometimes she’d stay a few days, visit her friends, family etc., before returning back to Kuala Lumpur.
As a product of all the flying I had done, I had found that I had vein thrombosis in a most personal place. Whenever the vein filled with blood, the vein would become like a hard piece of plastic, raised and terribly uncomfortable. I went to the local clinic and a lady doctor was on duty. After her brief examination she referred me to a surgeon just three days later. The local clinic was actually a part of my apartment’s complex and conveniently located on the ground floor.
I met the surgeon and he prescribed a course of blood thinning drugs just to see if they would clear the suspected blockage in my vein. A week later I returned in just the same condition, so he informed me that I needed to have surgery.
The surgery was booked for a week later and I took a taxi to the hospital, which was positioned in a very beautiful part of Kuala Lumpur where the surgeon practised. Unfortunately, it was a Saturday and Wi had only flown to Bangkok the night before, so I was alone. At the hospital, they were all very professional and prepared me for the surgery under just a local anaesthetic. I couldn’t believe my best friend was going to be cut while I was still conscious! I was prepared for surgery and left to wait in a very cold area, which felt like hours. The air conditioners must have been on full, and I was shivering the whole time.
Thankfully, eventually a very nice old nurse wheeled me to the operating theatre where I would next meet the surgeon. He had previously informed me that he had qualified in America so I felt I was in safe hands. With the job in hand, I was worried about friendly fire, blue on blue and have a nice day! The surgeon fitted an intravenous needle into my left arm and injected something before he injected something else, which he told me I would enjoy.
He had a pleasant smile on his face and to cut a long story short, I never stopped talking the whole time he performed the necessary surgery, much to the amusement of the two nurses swabbing blood. I wasn’t encouraged to lean up to see what was going on, nor did I want to, but I was presented with the end result in a test tube full of some kind of clear liquid. The vein, which was removed, was the whitest possible white I had ever seen. It was like chewing gum, but so brilliantly white.
I left the hospital still enjoying whatever the hell they had injected me with and took a taxi to a shopping mall in the centre of Kuala Lumpur. I wanted to buy another suitcase, or so I thought at the time, still under the influence of the drugs I was given. While I walked to the shop I noticed everyone looking at me. I didn’t know at the time, until I arrived home, that my blood had managed to soak through my dressing and also my jeans leaving a large wet, red patch for all to see going down my leg.
I was instructed to return after fourteen days to the clinic, to have my stitches removed, but due to the itching, I couldn’t wait that long. Instead I bought a razorblade, a tweezers and some surgical spirit and decided to become a surgeon. It was the second time I’d carried out such a procedure, the first time was when I was circumcised at the age of five years old, and I’d performed a similar procedure in a well salted bath my mother had dropped me in.
Everything went perfectly as I cut the knots and plucked out the rather coarse stitches. Perfect until I cut the final stitch and pulled it with the tweezers in the wrong direction. I left it until last as it was caked in hard dry blood so I soaked it with surgical spirit to soften the blood, thinking I was being sensible – not.
Once I had cut the last stitch, I pulled the stitch in the wrong direction due to the blood, which caused its knot to pass through the first side on my skin, but ended up stuck inside my wound.
I was bleeding quite a lot, but relieved that the operation was over I guessed things would only get better. I continued to pull the problem stitch but it ended up in disaster. My wound opened up more and I needed to quickly stand up so my blood wouldn’t make a mess on my soft leather sofa. It wasn’t a nice night as I spent the rest of it with my friend in a mug of strong salt water, just like the baths I’d had when I was five years old.
The following evening I needed to collect Wi from the airport as she was returning from her visa run. All was fine until we started to drive back to Mont Kiara. As we were driving on the highway and about half way home, I checked my rear view mirror and noticed the front window of a five series BMW. The car was practically touching my back bumper as I couldn’t see its lights. I pulled over and it went past my car and then swerved across my lane forcing me to brake heavily, until I was only going thirty kilometres an hour.
It had blacked out windows so I knew it was a government car, which were licensed to shoot! Guns were permitted in Malaysia if you were security, but Malaysian law did not permit everyday people to hold a loaded weapon. Security guards outside supermarkets etc., held guns but their shells were not permitted to be loaded unless they encountered a problem. Fortunately the government car pulled away, but both Wi and I were quite shaken by the threat for the rest of the night.
After we had lived in our apartment for three months, new people moved into the apartment directly above ours. The new tenants seemed to keep themselves busy dragging furni
ture all day and most of the night, making our lives quite a misery. With the twenty-four hour construction of new tower blocks being built all around us, and the terrible driving in Kuala Lumpur, we decided to pull out of Malaysia whilst we were still both in one piece.
The company I was working for still owed me over four thousand dollars in expenses from several months of business trips, and despite many complaints, there was no sign of it being paid. It no longer felt as though anything was going well for us, so we left Malaysia and returned back to Bangkok.
I left my four–month-old Volkswagen Golf I had bought with a British friend living in Kuala Lumpur to sell on my behalf. Unfortunately, he fell for the oldest trick in the book and handed over my signed logbook to a Chinese garage owner who sold my car and kept all the money, so I lost everything. The garage owner had done that to numerous other clients before bankrupting the company, which meant nobody got their money. That was a loss of another thirty thousand dollars.
Wi went back to working in the same salon on Sukhumvit Road in Bangkok, but her personality began to change because she was worried that I was not working. Tensions continued to rise until I was able to start a new contract in Qatar as the consortium quality manager of three companies. As I left Thailand, I had no idea when I would next see Wi again so we decided to go our separate ways.