A Farang Strikes Back

by Louis Anschel

  The journey to Cambodia was uneventful. The comparatively empty roads helped the van to cover a lot of ground very quickly, especially on the country roads connected to the motorway. The departure from Thailand went quickly as well. Now I learned like almost every farang in Pattaya about the advantages of the casino in Poi Pet.

  Gambling is prohibited in Thailand, that’s the reason why many Thais go to Cambodia and play with their money, as it is only a stone’s throw from the Thai border. Within this casino is a restaurant with an integrated buffet and you could simply help yourself. Everything was included in the travel price.

  My mobile phone rang. Dao’s number appeared on the display but Som was the caller. She asked me where I was. I told her I was in the casino in Poi Pet and helping myself to a mix of breakfast and lunch. She wished me a good trip and said she would wait in our apartment.

  On the way back progress went quickly as well. I would be back in Pattaya much sooner than I had originally thought, maybe by three or half past three. But still I had the feeling it wasn’t quick enough. I had a strange sensation. Something wasn’t in order.

  After the arrival in Pattaya the van cruised around to deliver my fellow passengers to their hotels or apartments. To cut it short I got off the van and took a motorcycle to Beach Road. My heart was racing, I sweated and almost had a stomach ache. I was afraid, almost panicked. In my account I had roughly 10,000 baht and 2,000 baht was in my wallet. What would happen if…? I didn’t dare to even think about it. A notion I didn’t want to consider. I tried to calm down on my way to the reception and the lift. I wiped the sweat from my forehead with the sleeve of my T-shirt, an action which I got used to doing very quickly in the permanently prevailing heat. But this time the temperature wasn’t the reason for breaking out in a sweat. I trembled when I put the key in the lock and opened the door to my apartment.

  From the noise alone Som would have usually jumped up and would have interrupted whatever she had done. She would storm to me, put her hands around my neck and would have kissed me. But she didn’t jump up because she wasn’t there.

  With a small travel bag in one hand and without taking my shoes off, I went through my apartment and looked at the damage. My travel bag which I had brought to Thailand was on the floor. Som had stowed away her bag below my travel bag. My travel bag lay on the floor her bag wasn’t there. This was the first thing I noticed and said it all. I looked at the wardrobe. The doors were opened. Her clothes had disappeared. Only my T-shirts and shirts were in the wardrobe. A couple of hangers lay scattered on the floor. She must had have been in a hurry. I opened the door to the bathroom. Shampoo, soap and wash powder, the shopping from the day before was all gone–even her toothbrush as well. The last evidence that she wouldn’t come back. Mysteriously she didn’t take the tooth paste and throughout that afternoon I wondered day by day, why? The toilet lid was up. Som had peed and didn’t take the time to flush. Jesus, how much she hated me! I flushed and left the bathroom. She took the contracts with her. Both the sketched one and the one about the house purchase. The money had of course disappeared as well. Absolutely, superfluous to mention it. She had stolen my laptop and my digital camera, and even the charger for my mobile phone which couldn’t cost much more than 100 baht. She even took my tweezers and nail kit!

  On the balcony the fan was missing. All flower pots were turned upside down and the plants brutally ripped out, the potting soil was all over the balcony floor and a part of the apartment itself. The mattress lay askew. If someone looked in flower pots and under mattress for money wouldn’t have forgotten to look in the freezer. One look from the balcony showed the obvious: the motorcycle was gone. During my last holiday she had given me a piece of paper with her address in her home town. I still kept the paper in one of my books. One day I had proudly presented it to show her that I kept it. Even this piece of paper was missing. Som looked through all my things because she wanted to terminate her existence. I owned only the photo of her which was made with a Polaroid camera. I had scanned it and saved it in my email box.

  …then thou shalt give life for live, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

  Exodus

  Third Act

  I bought two big bottles of Heineken and went outside the balcony. I wanted to listen to my first impulse and commit suicide–by just jumping. My apartment was high enough, a sure thing. My life was a heap of shards. I had left my wife without talking to her before. I had quit my job without giving any notice. Now I had lost the love of my life, no job and almost no money. I would drink senseless to get some courage and jump. It was so easy. Everything after that, whatever it is, would be better than my situation right now. What would Som think if she learned that she was responsible for my death? Probably nothing because she didn’t have a conscience. But suicide, a final solution for a momentary problem? I couldn’t give up that fast. I had had a broken heart many times in the past and I knew from experience that the pain would trail off sometime. You just didn’t believe it when you were in this situation. And I would find a way to get some money.

  I called Dao and asked her whether she had heard from Som. Dao told me, Som had showed up to quit. This had happened around noon. While talking with Dao, Som had called me in Poi Pet. I confirmed the calling and told Dao that Som had disappeared. I asked her to call me if she heard something from Som. I didn’t say more at the moment.

  I stayed for one horrible night in the apartment. I had to pay the next month’s rent the next day and I couldn’t pay it. This wasn’t the only reason why I left. I didn’t want to spend one more minute than necessary in this room which kept so many memories. Sometimes I had the feeling Som’s scent was still in the air. I bought a travel bag because all the new things I bought in Pattaya didn’t fit into my back pack. Then I looked for a cheap room and found one somewhere in a guest house on Soi Skaw Beach. I didn’t have a room with a view anymore and wasn’t able to look at Pattaya Bay and Koh Larn. Now I could watch innumerable bars and monitor the hustle and bustle of bar girls and their punters. The bar girls lived next door because most of them stayed in rooms above the bars. My room didn’t have an air conditioner, just a ceiling fan. The furniture was a bed and a closet. No warm water in the bathroom. I didn’t care, though. A cheap place to stay was more important.

  I don’t know how many days I spent in agony. I just had one goal: to decorate the wall next to the door with empty beer bottles. Bottle after bottle was stringed along the wall. One day I started with the second row. My love became hatred. Hate was for me one of the feelings which corresponded directly with love. I couldn’t hate men, but women all the more, when they did something to me. Never before had I loved that much–now I hated her in a new dimension. I had to hunt Som, track her down and would call her to account.

  * * *

  I took a motorcycle taxi and went to the police station on Beach Road. In the reception area, I explained my problem briefly and was accompanied to a police officer who was in charge of complaints for thefts. He sat behind a long stretched desk, next to him sat several colleagues. They laughed about him because he had to deal with a farang and show his knowledge of the English language. I comforted him and told him we could speak Thai. He smiled relieved, produced from a drawer a thick note book, thumbed through it and opened it on a blank page. Then he asked for my request. He wrote in his book while I was talking about the incident. Now and then he asked a question. The problem had already started with Som’s first name. “Som” was her nick name, her real name was in Roman transcription “Khampiar” but you pronounced it like “Campienne”. How would you spell it in Thai? I had no idea. Her surname was just as complicated. I hoped that it was a well known Thai name and the policeman would know how to spell it. I knew her birth-date, but was a little bit unsure of the year. I had saved her full name and her date of birth in my mobile phone. The name, because I always forgot it and wanted to memorize it; her date of bi
rth, because I didn’t want to forget her birthday. Now I fetched my mobile phone and had to learn that Som had deleted her name from the contacts list. The police officer looked at me quizzically and said we could skip the part for the time being, but then I remembered. I gave him her telephone number and said, “Her mother has her mobile phone now”. He wrote down the number in his report anyway. Finally he asked about the things she had stolen and I listed it all–including the soap. At the end he asked whether I was able to read Thai because every report ended with the words “read and authorized” but I said “No”. He just marked the word “read” out and left it with “authorized” after he had read it aloud. He gave me a copy, closed the notebook and started with some paperwork. I didn’t get up so after a while he looked at me surprised.

  “What happens next?” I asked. “Will you search for her?”

  “I will take it on file. Do you have a photo?”

  “Yes, but not with me.”

  He didn’t ask for it.

  A bit disillusioned, I left the building. There was almost a whole day in front of me and I had time to make a plan. I didn’t want only to look for her, but for her to have the feeling that I was always on her heels and that I would spare neither trouble nor expense to hunt her down. And this was easy: she had bought a house–with my money.

  I took a motorcycle taxi and went to South-Pattaya. I instructed the driver to drive around because I couldn’t remember the exact location of the house. Finally we found it. I got up from the pillion, paid and stood in front of the head-high white wall. It was impossible to look over it. The gate to the garden was slightly open and I slipped through it. If Som was in the house I would use force to bring her to the police station. In the garden was a motorcycle which I didn’t notice on my first visit. I knocked on the window of the sliding door. In the beginning timidly, then louder and finally I banged with my fists against the glass.

  A foreigner ran to the door and opened it.

  “Where is Som?” I couldn’t say more. The man was probably this Yankee, her alleged “ex”-boyfriend she had talked about. It fitted all too well. I withstood the desire to beat him.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “The Som-bitch!”

  He took a step back when he noticed the rage in my eyes.

  I used the opportunity and made a tour through the house. Everything seemed to be as normal, the furniture was in its original place and nothing had been packed. It didn’t look like anyone was moving.

  “There is no Som here. There is only me.”

  The American with the funny accent was obviously a comedian.

  “Please calm down,” he suggested.

  The man was Swede and introduced himself as Mats. I explained in a few sentences what had happened and told him about the house purchase.

  “How about coffee?” he asked. “The water is already hot. Why don’t you sit down?”

  He did everything to calm me down. I thanked him and sat down. I drank the coffee he had served me with big gulps.

  “I live here”, said Mats. “This is my house I have no intentions of selling it.”

  “But I have been here. I talked to the female owner. We signed contracts and we even went to a notary’s office.”

  “What did the woman look like?” Mats asked.

  I described her to him as best I could.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know her. She's not my wife, I am sure. My wife is very young. And I can't imagine my maid would do something like that. Some stranger came in my house for this scheme.” Mats looked around like a burglar was standing behind him. “I have to reinforce the safety measures and will change the locks today. This is really mysterious!”

  Mats suggested that I ask the notary who notarized the contract. He had to have a copy of it.

  “My guess is you have paid money for a completely different house,” he said. “Was the contract in English?”

  “No, just Thai.” Mats was right. I couldn’t read more than the house numbers. Who knew what I had signed. It could have been my own death sentence without my knowledge. I doubted that the notary would help me. He certainly got his share of hush money and would just deny notarizing the contract.

  “What did your girlfriend tell you?” Mats wanted to know. “I hope she didn’t say it's your house.”

  “Of course. I paid for it!”

  Mats told me farangs couldn’t buy houses or property in Thailand. They have to use a trick to buy real estate. They establish a company and become a manager of the company. The company can own property. Houses are not bought or sold but shares of companies. Even if I had bought Mats’ house, which was not the case, Som would have been the sole owner.

  Mats and I exchanged telephone numbers. He wanted to make enquiries, ask his wife and interrogate the maid. Maybe she wanted to make some money on the side and let the alleged house owner in the house and the charade could play away.

  I looked for a motorcycle taxi and went to Soi Buakhao to see Peter. He sat like always in his rattan armchair in front of the closed parlour. On his lap was an open book and he drank Chang beer from a bottle. Mai was standing behind him and massaged his shoulders while he was patting her thigh. Peter didn’t lose any time and had a lot of fun with his new playmate.

  I sunk down in one of the armchairs and told him what happened. I avoided mentioning sums because I felt awkward about the money I had lost. I also didn’t tell him that Som and I had planned to buy his parlour from his wife.

  “Now you have made a mistake with such a slut as well,” he said. “Welcome to the club.”

  “I went to the police and…”

  Peter laughed. “This is just a waste of time. You have to pay the blokes if you want them to do something. Okay, you filed a report. That was correct. But don’t think they will investigate. The cops are no good around here.” Peter drank from his bottle. “You want beer or something?”

  I nodded. Mai went to the kitchen and came back with a Beer Chang.

  “Even if the cops investigate, and I doubt that, Som will give them some money, your money, to stop the investigation. Then they will show up and will ask you for double. And this goes on and on. Like ping pong.”

  “Maybe I should go to a lawyer.”

  “And he will pocket for a first counselling interview 1,000 baht. And what should he suggest? Did she steal your money?”

  “Sure.”

  “Or did you give it to her?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Well, whatever.” Peter laughed. “The normal way is that you fall in love, get engaged and then married. But in Thailand you fall in love, get engaged and then ripped off. But only the stupid farang is in love, not the girl. You are not the first and won’t be the last.” Peter drank. “She set a trap and you were caught in it. She only wanted your money. And Thais do everything for money. For her you were just a punter. And that’s why she’s just a damn whore. Maybe that’s consoling for you.”

  I remained silent.

  “I once read a book: Private Dancer. A gogo-dancer is ripping off an English guy. You will find in this book what the girls promise, how they lie and how farangs get trapped. You should read it. Maybe on your flight back.” Peter grinned.

  “I haven’t money for the ticket. Shall I call my wife and eat humble pie?

  “Why not, as long as she pays.”

  “And what shall I do at home? Broken marriage, alimony, unemployed. And I won’t get money from the employment agency because I quit by not showing up for work.”

  Peter burst with laughter. “I tell you something and I am going to tell you only once: If you want to have success at this place you have to do it the Thai way. Think like a Thai, be a Thai. When in Thailand do as the Thais do.”

  * * *

  I went to my former apartment building on Beach Road. I asked the lady at the reception for a copy of Som’s ID-card. I offered her 500 baht for this service for which I received several copies. After that she gave me a letter addressed
to Som which had arrived in my absence. It was posted by Orange, the mobile phone company. Probably the first monthly invoice. I put the letter in my pocket without opening it. I wasn’t interested in telephone bills.

  I went to an internet café and printed several copies of Som’s picture which I had saved in my email post-box. I enlarged it to A5 but the photo was still of excellent quality. After that I went to the police office, looked for the officer I had talked to and gave him the photo as well as a copy of Som’s ID-card to complete his file.

  In the evening I took a bus to Khorat. During the ride I studied Som’s credit card sized Thai national ID-Card.

  Apart from a number which is on the new ID-cards, there is also a chip on the left side. Next to it, in big letters on the right is the name in Thai, below the name in Roman letters. The date of birth is also found in two versions–another innovation. Below the date of birth you find the address of the card holder, but only in Thai. Next to it is the date of issue and the name of the administration which issued the ID-card. On the right side is the photo of the holder. The pictures were taken in front of a scale and you could see how tall the people were.

  Som was a little bit over one metre sixty five, about five foot four. I tried to decipher the address, written in Thai language. Some of the letters I could read. Obviously the name “Chaiyaphum” wasn’t shown in the address. I could read an “R” as first letter, an “ai” in the middle and an “ng” at the end. R – ai – ng. Rayong.

  I got off in Khorat and took a bus to Ban Boa. There was a police station on the corner of the road to Ban Mueangow which I had noticed during my first visit. The hand of a detective in civilian clothes weighed heavy on my shoulder when he welcomed me. You could tell his profession just from his grip. I sat down before a desk and gave him an envelope. It contained the police report from Pattaya and a 500 baht note. He gave the tea money back before he started to read the report.