A Farang Strikes Back

by Louis Anschel

  He then brought me to his chief who was wearing a uniform. He asked me how he could help. I told him. He thought about it for a long time and discussed the matter with two if his colleagues. I wondered what was there to discuss. The case was clear as daylight. I had told him what I wanted and asked him for help. I always said that. But it didn’t happen much. The three officers and I sat at the desk of their boss and ate peanuts from a translucent plastic bag while the chief was considering his options. The problem was obviously that I didn’t know Som’s address. On the ID-card was an address in Rayong mentioned but not the one in Ban Mueangow. I handed a copy of Som’s ID-card out and one of the officers checked it on the computer. There was no charge against Som. The police men couldn’t leave their area because in this case another police station would have been in charge. I told them where the house was but they didn’t understand. I drew a map and received only shrugs. After that I talked to a very congenial young officer and almost begged him to help me. He talked to his boss once again and finally agreed.

  The young officer and I went outside and sat down on his heavy police motorcycle. Now I was getting what I wanted. A policeman in uniform went with me to Som’s house. I was thinking about the gossip in the neighbourhood and was glad about Som losing face. I told the policeman the way. We passed the temple and the market and finally got to the water reservoir. It is more than likely that Som had thought I wouldn’t find the route to her house.

  “Oh, it's here,” said the policeman when we reached the cross road with the five roads. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  Som’s mother stood at the door. We parked on the terrace and the officer asked the mother whether she knew me. She said yes. Then we entered the house. We made a short tour which included the garden and the second floor. Som wasn’t around. Later the policeman started a small investigation and went to the houses in the neighbourhood. Probably without success, as he would have told me about his findings. When he came back, he interviewed the mother, I supported him.

  The mother didn’t say much. Som wasn’t here, she didn’t have her phone number and she wouldn’t know what Som did, because she was in Pattaya all the time. We asked her a couple of questions but it lead to nothing. Either the mother backed her daughter–and this was understandable–or she really didn’t know anything.

  The officer looked at me. Actually there wasn’t anything more to do. I asked him to write down the address of the house in Thai letters. He asked the mother for an envelope and copied the address on a piece of paper, which he gave me. Finally I asked the mother about the address in Rayong. But she didn’t say anything. It was a mystery why Som registered with the authorities there.

  We said good bye to her mother, went to the bike and rode back to Ban Boa. From there I took a bus to Chaiyaphum and from there to Khorat and back to Pattaya. After my arrival I was so tired that I had to lie down and sleep.

  * * *

  On the next day I stopped a taxi and explained to the driver where I wanted to go. He needed take me to Rayong but exactly where, I didn’t know. I just had the copy of Som’s ID-card with her address. I handed the copy to him; he studied it for a very long time.

  “Okay,” he said. “2,000 baht.”

  I bargained him down to 1,500 baht and sat down in the car. The journey to Rayong didn’t take long but in the city itself it became complicated. Pong, that was the name of the taxi driver, didn’t find the address. He asked a lot of times and we narrowed down a certain area. It consisted of innumerable crisscrossing sois, and on both sides stood single-family houses. We asked several motorcycle taxi drivers but they weren’t sure about the address either.

  One of them suggested we go to the municipal administration office to ask for the exact location of the house. He went first and we followed with our taxi to the office. Pong and I then entered the building. Behind several counters sat young ladies who issued documents and serviced the citizens. I had told Pong what happened on the trip, so he spoke up and started a conversation with a rather young lady behind a computer terminal. While he talked she always looked in my direction. She tapped her keyboard and finally turned the monitor to our side. Som’s ID-card was visible across the whole monitor.

  “Is this her?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “She doesn’t live here anymore. She changed her address. She lives in Chaiyaphum province now, district Phu Khieo.”

  I nodded again. Her mother’s house.

  The young lady shouted to a colleague who accompanied us.

  She looked at Som’s ID-card on the monitor. “I know her,” the colleague said. “She’s my neighbour. But she hasn’t been her for a long time.”

  “Where is the exact location of the house?” Pong wanted to know.

  She explained the directions to him. It was in a soi next to a temple.

  “Do you want to go there anyway?” Pong asked me.

  “Well, we are here. Why not? Why should we give up now?”

  Pong went to the described temple and stopped on a large parking lot, an empty site. An old man with glasses limped to our car and asked if we needed some help. We told him the case. The man took copies of Som’s picture and ID-card and disappeared. About ten minutes later he came back–with Som’s address in Chaiyaphum. He got it from the new tenant. Pong and I were then lead to the house. The tenant showed us a small book which looked like a savings book from a bank. It was a Thai real estate register. The last entry showed the name of the current tenant. The entry before showed Som’s complete name, which I was able to decipher. She changed her address and had registered in Chaiyaphum. There was no doubt about it. This was exactly what I was already told by the municipal administration. All traces went to Chaiyaphum. I was on the wrong trail and had been sidetracked, but not for long.

  Pong and I stopped in a small shop and had something to drink. The owner recognized Som on the picture and called one of Som’s friends, a female motorcycle taxi driver. After her arrival she got off of her bike and looked at the picture.

  “Yes, it's her,” she said. “It's Som.”

  Som has been in this area about two months ago, she said, “Together with a friend”. The motorcycle taxi driver talked about Som’s hard life, especially the incident about her second child.

  “A second kid?” I interrupted surprised. “She has a six year old daughter. She never mentioned anything about another child.”

  “She has another daughter, about four years old. The father took the baby after he had left Som shortly after she gave birth. Som hadn’t seen her daughter since. She doesn’t talk about it because the memories hurt her. She still suffers from the loss of her second child. Only some of her best friends know about the second daughter.”

  I wanted to give the motorcycle taxi driver some money and asked her to call me up when she heard from Som, but she refused. Pong said later that she was honest about it. She wouldn’t call me if she heard from Som because the two were good friends. And if she had taken money from me because I wanted her to call me that would be like theft.

  The trip took much longer than planned and the day was almost over. I gave Pong the 2,000 baht he wanted to have before the bargaining. He went back to Pattaya and drove to a car wash. The car wash consisted of five girls and boys who splashed the car with water and dried it with rags. After that Pong invited me to his home, he stayed in Naklua. We changed vehicles, it was onto a motorcycle and we rode to his apartment. We bought six bottles of Beer Chang in a shop and shared the costs.

  We sat down in the room, opened the first bottle and Pong turned on the television. Thai style. He showed me a couple of Karaoke video CDs but when he noticed that I wasn’t much interested in them he changed the program.

  At the end of their military service Thai recruits have big good bye parties. On these occasions striptease dancers perform. They dance on a stage to live music and peel their clothes off in front of everybody. If you sit in the last rows you might not see everything but the camerama
n who had recorded the event stood in the first row and used an additional zoom lens. The girls without restraint lie down on their back and spread their legs with their hands in the hollow of their knees. Because of the zoom lens, you had the feeling you would plunge into the Thai girls who were pretty as a picture.

  I arrived home very late. When I wanted to open the door to my apartment building I stopped in my tracks. Directly next to the entrance was a bar. Girls sat on bar stools. They couldn’t complain about too much work, only one or two farangs were in the bar. One of the girls aroused my curiosity. A very slim girl with fantastic legs, shoulder length hair and dark skin. She had a quite big tattoo on her right upper arm. Something red. I couldn’t see what the tattoo was about. I liked the pretty girl. And she should help me because my situation was desperate. Som was gone and I would never find her. If I wanted to survive the night I needed a distraction. I wasn’t up to sitting down in the bar and answering questions about my name and nationality. I just went over to her and put the 200 baht bar fine in her hand and asked her to come with me.

  * * *

  When I woke up I sent I-didn’t-ask-for-your-name home. It wasn’t far because she stayed in the apartment opposite which she shared with the other girls from the bar. I decided to go and meet Dao and talk with her about Som. The two were good friends. Som had told Dao something, I was sure about it.

  I was still quite far away when I noticed something was not in order with Dao’s Star Massage. A police car parked in front of the door, also two heavy motorcycles. It wasn’t difficult to figure out they belonged to the police as well. When I came nearer I noticed that the whole sidewalk in front of the parlour was littered with shards of glass. The glasses of the parlour windows were ruptured, the entrance door hang askew in its hinges. The masseuses stood in front of the parlour and looked concerned. Dao was in the middle of the group, and held a Kleenex in front of her nose while she talked to a policeman. I stood by the side; this seemed to be an inconvenient moment to ask about Som.

  I thought about visiting Peter but abandoned the thought. He sat doubtless in front of his closed parlour and drank Beer Chang. He certainly couldn’t tell me any news. He might have been a good counsellor but he couldn’t help himself. He waited for Yai’s return and didn’t dare to acknowledge that she would never return. So I waited in a bar nearby until the police left. It didn’t take long. I paid my bill and went to Dao’s Star Massage.

  I entered a scene of destruction. Not only were the windows gone, but the parlour itself didn't look too good. The curtains were tore down from the curtain rods, on the linoleum floor and the mattresses were skid marks. A Buddha statue had been taken from a high hanging altar and was dashed against the wall. In the wall was a hole the statue itself broke in several pieces.

  Dao didn’t say hello. She stood speechless next to me and looked at the ruins of her life.

  “This was Thong, my Thai-boyfriend,” she said finally. “He was drunk again. He came here and rioted. He pulled the curtains down. When I tried to prevent it, he beat me. Then he took the Buddha statue and banged it against my nose.” Her swollen nose was still bleeding but wasn’t broken. Thong probably didn’t hit it the way he wanted to.

  “Where was your bodyguard?” I heard myself say. Under different circumstances I would have laughed.

  “Shopping. I think he waited for this opportunity. He hit me until I went down. I tried to crawl outside. He kicked with his feet. Even in front of the parlour.”

  Then the girls came to help Dao and at five or six at a time they restrained Thong who then disappeared. But he came back. On his brand new motorcycle which Dao had bought him from Richard’s money. Thong didn’t care that Lak, the bodyguard, had in the meantime returned from the supermarket. Like in a movie he burst into the parlour on his bike, through the parlour windows and rode right on through the inside. He drove in a couple of small circles and went outside through the broken windows. I saw the windows, I saw the skid marks in the parlour and still it was very difficult to believe my eyes.

  Thong was Thai and acted like a Thai. At this point in time, I knew what Peter meant, when he had said, “Do it the Thai way.”

  Even though many farangs don’t believe in God they grew up with Christian values which are deeply embedded in their culture. Thais on the other hand could be called animists. Trees are wrapped with coloured ribbons and are regularly worshipped. Also the omnipresent spirit houses lead back to animism. Thais are deeply religious but don’t believe in paradise in a common way. Whatever they do–right or wrong, if you want to take Thai laws or Western values at a basis, Thais will be reborn again. The reincarnation is an almost never ending cycle. Both the future and the (current) life are watched from a fatalistic point of view.

  Lak was in a clinic for a little first aide. The splintering glass had found its way into her arms and legs. She was bleeding a lot. Little glass pieces had to removed with tweezers.

  “What are you doing now?” I asked.

  Dao shrugged. Her eyes were full of tears. “I don’t know.”

  “Dao, you can't stay here. And you can't go home as well. Thong will be waiting for you. And one day he’s going to beat you to death.”

  “I know.”

  “Your bodyguard is sick.”

  “I know.”

  “Where is Mr. Hong Kong?”

  “In Hong Kong.”

  “What a sissy! Come with me. You can stay with me.”

  Dao looked at me. “Are you serious?”

  I nodded and Dao hugged me. My T-shirt became red. Her nose was still bleeding.

  “I help you and you help me,” I said.

  “You have a good heart, you know that? I don’t understand why Som has left you. You would have been an excellent boyfriend for her.”

  “I help you and you help me,” I repeated because I wanted to have Dao’s word. She hadn’t commented on my statement.

  She slowly lifted her head and looked at me for a long time. Tears were streaming over her cheeks. “Okay,” she said finally. “I am going to help you.”

  * * *

  Dao confirmed what Peter had already expected. From Som’s point of view she didn’t do anything wrong apart from the theft of the laptop and the camera. We went shopping together. What I had paid for also belonged to her. The clothes were presents, shampoo and soap and other little things as well. Maybe it silenced her conscience that she didn’t take the toothpaste with her. I had given her the money for the parlour, for Som it wasn’t theft. After I gave it to her it was hers. She didn’t see that she had obtained the money by fraud. They same went for the house. She wanted a house, I paid for it. If I would one day live in the house was a different kettle of fish. She had told Dao that she have never loved me. Her simulated love ended abruptly when I was on the way to Cambodia. She knew about my financial matters and knew I was running out of money. It was about time to dump me and my visa-run was a perfect opportunity.

  Som had just fooled me. That was part of her profession. Every farang is bred and educated to think he is special. Thai women are specialized to confirm this line thinking of the farang or to strengthen it. This is the trick Thai women work with, that is the feat they can play to separate a farang more or less quickly from his money. A Thai will always do what the farang is asking for. Kissing is part of it. Prostitutes don’t kiss but in Thailand most of the bar girls and prostitutes kiss and the farang will believe he is for the girl more than just a punter. The farang will believe the girl loves him because only one who loves will be devoted, read the wishes from his eyes and achieve his dreams. But the farang is wrong. To fulfil his fantasies and to boost his self esteem is for a Thai only business. She gives the farang what he wants or eagerly awaits, but she doesn’t love him because for her it's all about the reward: money.

  Dao wanted to take a nap and I let her sleep. I went outside the balcony with a Heineken, watched Soi Skaw Beach and made a decision. The common farang would be annoyed, would be love sick and fin
ally give up. He would either fly home sadly or find some delight with another girl to distract himself. Pattaya is the right place for the latter. In the future he would be more careful and tick the incident with his ex as “the hard way”.

  I was considering my options. I could talk to my son, soften my tone and ask my wife for forgiveness. I would head home together with my son. Or I could look for a job in Thailand–probably not easy–and one day start to look for a new girlfriend. Som knew exactly I had these two possibilities to chose from. She would get away with it and laugh on her sleeve. But I would defeat her plan.

  First of all there was the money. I never had any–apart from my life insurance. The sum should have enabled me to start a new life. Som had scammed all my money and I stood there with empty hands. What happened to me, how I would pay my rent or buy some food wasn’t any interest of hers. But that wasn’t all. Even if it sounds strange, Som had stolen my heart, my feelings. She had taken a part of my life. The time I was thinking about her, the telephone calls, the high hopes. All this was for nothing and our relationship was already in the beginning doomed to fail because she led me up the garden path. I started a new life–just because of Som, and didn’t leave only my wife but also my home and quit my job. Som had been in the end the driving force. But she was just thinking about my money and for that she should pay until the bitter end. I had only to find a way to channel my boundless hatred.

  Now I understood the rush she always pretended. The house was a bargain and had to be bought immediately. She wanted to marry me despite we hardly knew each other. Usually a man asks whether his fiancée wants to marry him. There is no difference between Thailand or Europe, America and Australia. But I had hardly sat my foot on Thai soil; Som asked me whether I wanted to marry her, which was combined with an unusually high amount of money. When I opposed the idea she wanted to buy a massage parlour. She was in a rush as well, because there were allegedly several interested parties. When Plan A–the marriage–failed, she changed to Plan B. She only wanted my money–as quickly as possible that is. She didn’t lose time. In retrospect I looked through her behaviour and if I hadn’t been that much in love I could have seen the signs.