My Thai Story

by Guy Lilburne

  I leaned over to Jee and whispered

  “Baby have we just got married?”

  Jee nearly spat her sticky rice out.

  “No darling, everyone make wish that you come back quick.”

  It was a nice service and I felt very humble that all these people should turn out like this, I felt as if I had truly made many friends and everyone made an effort to speak with me. Once again Sak’s house was an open house to everyone in the village. I was going to miss this house, it felt like my home. I was going to miss the people from the village and Sak and Pon and their lovely children, Phon and Fon and of course I was going to miss Jee, but I was confident that I would be coming back. I had fallen in love with her. After the man in the white robe had eaten, I saw Jee give him some money and he left after wai’ing everyone. I bought another crate of beer from the shop next door and changed 500 baht into twenties which I then handed out to the kids. The people from the shop came round and joined the party.

  It was a great party with as many people sitting outside the house as there were inside and I kept floating in and out. Later, when I went outside the front of the house for another cigarette the drunken ginger man was sitting at the concrete table, and he was already well on the way to being drunk again. Was I going to have trouble with him again? We looked at each other for several moments before he nodded to me and then raised his glass towards me.

  “Choc dee khrap,” (Cheers.) He said.

  I walked over to him.

  “Choc dee khrap,” I said, and we chinked glasses.

  I sat down at the table with him and I lit a cigarette. I didn’t offer him one because last time he had not even acknowledged it with a thank you and I didn’t want to give him the chance to do it to me again. Sak and one of his brothers also came and sat with us and then his wife did and the tension between us eased and we all started chatting. The Ginger man joined in and his wife kept translating what he said. I have to say he was a lot more polite tonight. He said that I was a good man and that I was a handsome man and that Jee was lucky to have me. He did become harder work as the night wore on and he drank more rice whisky. He started to try and keep pouring more beer and rice whisky into my glass just like he had tried to do on the previous meeting but this time it was different. Before nobody said anything to him and just left it to the two of us to sort out the matter, this time people kept telling him. I don’t know what they were saying but I could tell that they were being firm with him and were not putting up with his drunken antics anymore, especially Sak who gave me a quick nod every time he told him off. I didn’t feel as on edge as I did the last time I’d met him. I think the pecking order had been established, and we were now friends, of sorts at least.

  We left at 11:00 pm. Phong drove us to the hotel. The party was in full swing but Jee was tired and had to start back at work tomorrow after seeing me off at the airport, so she wanted to go to bed. As we lay in each others arms that night I felt a heavy sadness fill my heart and I know that Jee was feeling it too. Tomorrow we would be parting and neither of us knew for how long.

  Chapter 29. Airport farewell

  We were at the airport early. Sak stayed with the pick up and as we said ‘goodbye’ we shook hands for the first time. Jee, Pon and Fon all came inside the airport with me. I’m not into big tearful goodbye’s, I don’t like all the kissing and hugging and thankfully neither do Thai’s, so the farewell at the airport was calm and sort and sweet. We sat together for a few minute before I went through into departures.

  Jee asked me to give money to Pon and Sak. It shocked me a bit really. I don’t mind giving people money if it’s my idea, but I didn’t like being asked, especially after all the money I had already spent, but I did like Sak and Pon and they had been so lovely to me, and I had already given Fon 500 baht, so I opened my wallet and handed over 2000 baht to Pon who Wai’d graciously. Jee then said something in Thai to Pon. I guessed it was something derogatory about me.

  “What did you say baby?”

  “Nothing darling.”

  “Yes you did, what did you say?”

  “Darling I speak you give every person money but not me.”

  I opened my wallet again and handed over my last 3000 baht before saying a final goodbye and walking into departures. I felt as if I had just been mugged. I know that it’s different in Thailand. In the west we separate love from money, in Thailand they don’t. Maybe I should have given Jee the money instead of spending it on jewellery.

  In the west giving jewellery somehow means more, but I think that here it is probably better to give cash but it just didn’t feel right. I didn’t want to dwell on it and put it down to a cultural difference thing.

  I had only booked a flight to Bangkok because when I was coming up to Udon Thani I had booked with Thai airways and I had to wait for hours for the connecting flight at Bangkok when lots of other airlines were taking off in the hours I waited for the Thai airways flight, so I decided to sort out the flight from Bangkok to Phuket when I got to Bangkok.

  On this leg of the journey I had the window seat in the very first row because there is more leg room. One thing that you will notice if you travel around Thailand by airline, all the airports have seating area’s reserved for monks only. I should have remembered that when I made the mistake of sitting with the boy monk at Jee’s older sisters house.

  The monks are also allowed onto the plane before anyone else. On this flight there was only one monk and when I got on the plane he was sitting in my seat. So now what am I supposed to do? I didn’t want to offend him and the rest of the people on the flight by sitting next to him and if I sat anywhere else I would be in someone else’s seat. If it was anywhere else in the world and it was a priest or a vicar I would just say ‘mate you’re in my seat’, but in Thailand the monks are revered second only to the Royal Family and so now I was in a fix. I didn’t know what the etiquette is. I put my rucksack in the overhead compartment and went and asked a stewardess where she now wanted me to sit. She went and checked the monks ticket and I had to sit on the aisle seat, leaving an empty seat between us. I wanted to take off all the white string that had been tied around my wrist, but somehow I didn’t want to do it in front of the monk, I’ll take them off in Bangkok. There was no delay at Bangkok and within an hour I was on another flight to Phuket and an hour after that we were swooping down low over the beautiful blue sea as we came in to land at Phuket.

  Chapter 30. Back to Phuket (22nd) Read book, lonely bars, fall out with Nut

  I was sorry that Jee had to go back to work, but it also gave me five days to myself to think about everything. I had decided that I was going to explore some of the local beaches and relax before flying back to England on 27th April. The taxi driver, as always, stopped at an agents but this time I actually did need a hotel and although I knew it would be cheaper to go direct to the hotels and get a price doing it from an agents office saved me touring around the hotels in Patong, trying to find a room.

  The girl was charming and made a few phone calls and in the end I booked to stay at the Family Inn Hotel which is a bit further out from the town but that suited me just fine and when I was dropped off there by the taxi, I was delighted with the hotel. It was a small but very friendly place, it had a small pool and best of all the room was big and bright and clean. I preferred it to the Baumanburi Hotel and it was a fraction of the price. I took my time to unpack and have a shower and get changed and then it was still only 2:00 pm. I picked up the book that I had started to read at Phuket Airport while I waited for the flight up to Udon Thani. ‘My Thai Girl and I’ by Andrew Hicks.

  I suddenly felt as if I had something in common with the author because he was already married and settled in Isaan and the book is about his own experiences. Now that I had already had some of my own, I found his book fascinating and I couldn’t put it down. I think I was somehow looking to find answers for myself in the book but of course there were no answers for me, just his own experience and adventures in Thai
land, but it did inspire me to write my own story because I thought that if I enjoyed his book so much then maybe someone might want to read mine. Anyway over the next two days I took the book with me everywhere and kept reading it until it was done.

  I also went on the internet and I was really saddened to read that two hundred and sixty seven deaths had been caused on the roads in Thailand over the three day festival of Songkran. I don’t know how accurate these figures are but it seemed such a lot to me. I was shocked but not surprised. I had seen a lot of drunken people dancing out into the roads to try and stop traffic to splash the vehicles. I couldn’t help thinking about all those deaths and thought about the families who must now be mourning their losses. I also realised that the Thai’s themselves wouldn’t want it regulated or to have safety controls imposed. In Thailand Health and Safety is your own responsibility. The festival is wild and unpredictable and goes on anywhere and everywhere and well into the night each night.

  Somehow I get the feeling that the deaths and injury caused are just an accepted part of it, only in Thailand.

  I stayed around the hotel pool that afternoon and in the evening I walked down to the Beach Road. Even at night time and after dark it is still amazingly hot and if you walk at anything other than the slowest of paces you will be dripping with sweat very quickly, so don’t walk with any purpose, just amble.

  There is lots to see on the way, wherever you are going and in Thailand time is just different so why rush anyway. I found a nice little bar and was happy to sit there and look at the sea and just watch all the people walking past. I wasn’t going to go down town to the Bangla Road area.

  I have seen it all before and it held no interest for me now and I didn’t want to be there as a lone Farang. I had an early night and ended up watching CNN in my hotel room and exchanging a few text messages with Jee.

  Chapter 31. What are you doing here?

  I got up and showered early this morning. My hotel booking didn’t include breakfast and I prefer wondering out to eat anyway. I was along way from the town and even the ‘O Top’ market is a fair old walk but I decided to walk there and pick up some breakfast.

  I wasn’t delighted to see Nut running towards me with her arms held out wide when I walked into the market. She ran up and hugged me as if I was a long lost friend.

  “I’m so happy you come back to me, I’m very happy,” she said with the biggest grin I’d ever seen.

  “Nut I didn’t come back to you, I came back to Phuket. I thought that you were leaving on the 16th anyway.”

  “No, I decide to stay until 29th. Where is your lady?”

  “She had to go back to work yesterday so I came back to relax for my last few days.”

  I had breakfast at Nut’s bar, and it was a pattern I set for the next four days until I left. Nut was a funny character but always managed to get on my nerves quite quickly because she was so intense. She made no secret of the fact that she liked me and would say things like,

  ‘You no understand me, if you understand me you love me sure’.

  During my breakfast that first morning she told me that her family had checked up on Jee and that she worked in the hospital. I pointed out that it was me who had told her that and she said that she was the only one called Jee working at the hospital and that she had a Thai boyfriend. I knew that she was telling lies and it was all wearing a bit thin with me.

  After breakfast I wondered around and mostly avoided Nut’s bar, though sometimes I would call in and have a drink on my way back to the hotel.

  Each day at breakfast Nut would chip away at me. She thought that I was crazy wanting to be with Jee and she kept telling me,

  ‘You buy house and car in her name in one year she call Police and they kick you out of house. She live with boyfriend, you lose everything’.

  I also noticed that Nut had become something of a stalker. Each day after breakfast I wondered off and ended up at various bars around the market and in the nearby streets. Wherever I was sitting it wouldn’t be long before Nut either rode past on her motor bike or was standing somewhere watching me. I had never had a stalker before and I didn’t know whether to be flattered or scared. She was a strange girl.

  Chapter 32. Last day heartache.

  I had been in constant touch with Jee by phone and text and we were both counting the days until I would be back in Thailand. I promised her that I would put my house up for sale in England and come back to her as soon as I could. I was already missing her so much and I hadn’t even left the country yet. It was my last morning and I was coming out of the shower my mobile was ringing. It was Jee and she was in tears. She was so upset and it was difficult to understand what she was saying but little by little it became clear to me.

  Nut had rang her, it turned me cold. How and when did she get the number out of my phone? She had lots of opportunity, there had been several times when I’d left my mobile and camera behind her bar when I had to go and use the public toilets in the market. There had been a couple of times when I’d left my rucksack there, which also had my wallet in. It turned me cold to think that she had been through my stuff. She has probably looked through my photo’s on my camera and she could have read all the private text messages between Jee and I. From turning cold, my blood was now starting to boil up inside me. I could feel my anger growing and surging through my body.

  Jee told me that Nut had said that she was married to a Farang from Europe who was my friend and that I had many ladies in England and that I had many bar lady girlfriends in Phuket and that I didn’t love Jee and that I had said many bad things about her. I tried telling Jee the story that Nut had told me and about what she said about Jee having a Thai boyfriend but Jee was crying so much and I know that she didn’t understand a lot of what I said. I told Jee that I would ring her back and I kept saying,

  “You no worry, it’s not true.”

  I packed my case and dressed. I was going to go and tell Nut what I thought about her. I kept thinking about what I was going to say and it kept changing the more I thought about it, becoming more clever and sarcastic and cutting. I didn’t want to be the typical Farang ‘jai rawn’ (hot heart) that the Thais always think we are but as I walked towards the market my rage was swelling to overspill. As I walked towards her bar Nut held out the menu with her usual smile. I couldn’t stop myself.

  “Who the Fuck do you think you are?”

  I actually can’t remember what else I said. I wasn’t saying it I was shouting it. It was a total rant and I did a lot of swearing and whatever I said, I could never express how angry she had made me. She had interfered with my life, with my whole potential future happiness and she had caused the sweetest girl who I had ever met unnecessary heartache and put doubt in her mind about me. I really hated her for that. All the time Nut said nothing. She didn’t argue or make any reply, she just sort of had a sick embarrassed smile and stood there with everyone around looking and listening as the crazy Farang ranted and raged about what a sick evil bitch she was. I walked away still steaming with anger. I got myself lost in a little side street bar because the last thing I wanted was Nut to come stalking me. She didn’t but a little later I got a text from an unrecognised number, it was Nut. She had also taken my number not just Jee’s.

  The text said ‘I’m sorry I make big mistake please come and talk to me’. I replied ‘Fuck off.’

  I didn’t like being like this, I was usually a calm person but somehow she had abused my trust. I had tolerated her and spoken to her.

  I had told her all about Jee. I was now also getting angry at myself for putting myself in this position. I knew she was crackers the very first time that I met her, so why did I carry on talking to her? I got a lot of text messages from Jee and her heartache and upset were obvious, now she had a lot of doubt about me and because we couldn’t communicate that well I couldn’t explain or help to dispel her doubts and fears. I wish I could. How could anyone hurt her gentle heart?

  It was easier to text than to
try and speak, and the only thing I could do was send short text messages telling her I have no lady and that Nut wanted me for herself and so tells many lies to make us not like each other any more. Jee sent me a text ‘Yes I think very bad lady. I not believe’.

  It made me smile and I don’t know if she was trying to make me feel better or make herself feel better but whatever, I got the feeling that she didn’t know what the truth was or what she believed. This was so sad and it was breaking my heart that Jee was so sad.

  At 3:00 pm I got a taxi to the airport and it felt like a long lonely wait for my flight. Jee and I sent many text messages to each other simply saying ‘I love you’, and I know that we did.

  Chapter 33. Back to England (27th)

  England felt cold and lonely when I arrived back in London and after such a long flight the last thing that I wanted to do was make the three or four hour drive back home, but I had to. I had not managed to get any sleep on the plane.

  My watch said it was 1:00 pm, I changed back to 7:00 am, British time, but I had still been travelling for twenty two hours already and I still had to drive home.

  I got home at 10:30 am and the sun was shining but it was still cool. I dropped my case in the kitchen and went and sat in the conservatory and had a few beers and a bottle of brandy. I went to bed at 2:00 pm and didn’t wake up until the next morning.

  Chapter 34. Decision already made

  I chatted with Jee on Yahoo Messenger on the internet. I realised when I had first met Jee in real life that she must have been using some kind of translation programme when we chatted on the internet because her English was so much better chatting online. Jee told me that Nut had rang her again on the day I had flown home and again yesterday and today. I was really shocked, why was she doing all this?