My Thai Story

by Guy Lilburne

  I accept that something might be getting lost in translation here but it then goes on from thinking too much and having accident to thinking too much and this giving her trouble with her heart. I sent her many text messages too.

  I asked a lot of questions and once again told her that I didn’t know what was happening but that I suspected that something was going on and I doubted her declared love for me. Jee once again gets very upset and pleads her innocence and her devotion to me. I am finding all this very difficult, there are so many questions that she can’t or won’t answer and with the communication problems I will never get to the bottom of it. Once again I find myself doubting her but so much wanting to believe her. So does she mean accident as in a physical accident? I know from experience that Jee often gets the English words wrong. Or does she mean that she may have a heart condition? Is she just embarrassed to tell me about it or is she really just unable to because of the lack of vocabulary? What if she is telling me the truth? I still can’t believe that Jee would lie to me. She really is too nice, she has a gentle and honest nature. Am I wrong to doubt her?

  I was worried sick all last week and every time my text alert bleeped on my phone I grabbed it just wanting it to be Jee, then on Sunday it was. I’m happy that we’ve regained contact but I’m still worried. Jee went on to tell me that everyday she is crying and feeling sad and just today, Tuesday 24th June she sent me a text message telling me that she is going back into hospital again tomorrow to have ‘test on brain, no problem you no worry. I love you’.

  The thing is that I do worry. I worry that she is telling me the truth and that there is something really wrong with her that she won’t tell me about. I love Jee and in my heart I believe her, and it worries me a lot that she is going in and out of hospital. I also worry that she isn’t going into hospital tomorrow and that she is lying to me. How can any new relationship survive all this doubt? I can’t help but think that she is seeing somebody else, I am sure that even in Thailand you can make contact from a hospital bed.

  I haven’t bombarded Jee with a lot of texts asking about hospital tests or duration of stay because I don’t think that there is any point. If she is telling the truth then she has enough on her mind without worrying about her stupid Farang boyfriend causing her upset and I don’t want her to worry about my doubts if she is genuine, and even now I have to say that something deep inside is telling me that Jee would not lie to me. If she is telling me lies though, then there is no point, because she would only continue to do so and I would not be any the wiser.

  So what can I conclude from all this emotional mess? Not a lot really, I think that it is just a case of wait and see what happens. I have a heavy dull sadness in my heart, I wish I could be with her but I can’t. I have to try and stop torturing myself about it, so I have decided to believe her, at least for now.

  Chapter 43. This feels very bad.

  Do you know when you get that feeling that something is very wrong, almost like a deep sixth sense that tells you ‘this feels very bad’? Well that feeling has been creeping up on me for the last few weeks. I have been writing this book almost like a diary and I have just read back over the last chapter, but now things have changed and I feel so desperately scared and worried about Jee.

  I hate myself for writing about doubting her and I have even thought about changing it but the whole purpose of writing this was to record my thoughts and feelings as they happen to me before they change with hindsight or fading memory, so no matter how difficult it has just been for me to read over the stuff that I wrote last week, I’m going to leave it in and let everyone see how guilty I am for doubting my beautiful Jee.

  If you can imagine me sitting here alone at my computer in England and crying as I type, then you have pretty much got the picture. It’s Sunday 29th June. I think my heart is going to break, the sadness that is flooding over me seems to be squeezing the very breath from my body. I have already told you that contact between Jee and I had got less and less as she lost her job and then all the business about being in hospital which I’m so ashamed to say but I doubted how true it was.

  The Jee who I fell in love with, the sweet caring innocent Jee. The kind gentle soul, who was so obviously head of her family never lied to me.

  The last text that I got from Jee was last Tuesday when she said that she was going into hospital again on Wednesday for brain tests and as usual there was the ‘don’t worry darling, no problem’ at the end of the message. I have read that message so many times now and it reduces me into floods of tears because there is a problem and I do worry. I’m a Police Detective I shouldn’t be crying like this but somehow my world is coming crashing down around me and the woman I love is lying in an intensive care unit on the other side of the world and I don’t know how bad it is.

  After I didn’t hear from Jee for a couple of days I sent a text just asking what was going on, but I got no reply. On Friday I sent another text asking the same thing and again got no reply. The feeling that it was all over was hitting me harder than I ever thought that it would. I was even getting angry that she hadn’t had the courtesy to send me a text and put me out of my misery. Yesterday I sent another text which read ‘please Jee just tell me if you have another man so that I can try to forget you’.

  At 4:00 am this morning I got a text message, even this was early for Jee, she usually sent a text message at 6:00 am. The ‘bleep bleep’ of my mobile awoke me and I reached for the phone, it took a few moments for me to wake up and my eyes to focus on the text message, it was from Jee’s phone but it wasn’t from Jee.

  ‘Now Jee in ICU (Intensive Care Unit) room in hospital. I am Pon sister.’

  Oh my God, my heart dropped like a lead weight. I knew that Pon hadn’t written this because she can’t speak a word of English but I guessed that maybe a doctor or a nurse at the hospital must have written it for her. The feeling of foreboding gripped me and I know that this is the truth, my shame at ever doubting Jee doesn’t matter now, but what about my poor darling Jee.

  I have been sending text messages all morning begging for someone to tell me what is going on and asking about Jee’s condition. My thoughts are racing around my head and disappearing again before I can sort them out into any sort of sense. I have no holiday left and actually I haven’t got the money anyway until my house is sold but I need to be with her. What can I do? Maybe if I sell my car and just take unpaid leave then I could go to her. To say that I am sick with worry, doesn’t even start to describe the anguish that I’m going through.

  This morning I prayed, and I really prayed this time, to God and to Buddha, please save Jee. I keep sending text messages but nobody is replying. This feels so very bad. I don’t know who has Jee’s phone but if it’s her family I know that they can’t read or write or even speak any English. With the help of my Thai/English dictionary I have just sent a text which simply says ‘khaw bawk jee phon rak khao’. (Please tell Jee I love her.)

  I really don’t know what I can do, I need someone who can speak English to tell me what is happening and how bad it is. I need to know what I can do to help. I want to know if she is going to be ok. I want to be with Jee. I just want to be with the person I have fallen in love with. It’s only 10:00 am, the waiting is driving me crazy, I don’t know anything. I’m going to pray again.

  It’s Monday (30th) today. I didn’t get any reply at all yesterday or this morning. I have sent a lot of text messages written in English and in Thai begging for somebody to let me know what is happening to Jee and I have also sent one in Thai asking for the person who receives it to tell Jee that I love her.

  I couldn’t sleep last night and I watched the clock all the way around until 4:00 am this morning. That was the time I received the text message yesterday and I was hoping for another one this morning but there was nothing. All yesterday and last night I could only think of Jee laying in a hospital bed with wires going in and out of her. I want to know is she in pain? Does she know what is happening to her? Is she co
nscious? Is she going to survive this?

  I don’t know who has Jee’s phone now and I’m trying not to bombard it with text messages. There is no point I have had no reply and there must be a reason. I know that her family must all be so concerned and worried for her, the last thing on anybody’s mind will be me, Jee’s Farang boyfriend from the other side of the world. I just wish I knew how she was, it must be serious, nobody stays in intensive care unless they need intensive care.

  Is she going to survive or are they all gathered around her bed waiting for her to die? I want to know, it is agony not knowing. I feel so useless here. Why oh why didn’t Jee tell me what was wrong with her? She obviously knew something was wrong. All the times she said ‘I love you darling’ are coming flooding back through my mind. All the times she kissed me and held my hand. All the wonderful text messages and emails. All our hopes and dreams of a future together. I have been praying so much this last twenty four hours, but what difference will one persons prayers make? It is the only thing I can do so I carry on doing it. I want my mobile phone to go ‘bleep bleep’ and it be a text message from Jee, telling me that she is ok now and that she still loves me. I want my house to sell so I can go to her. I want to marry her and have two babies just like the monk said. Oh my God I’m feeling so sick. Please, please, please live Jee. I love you.

  At 12:45 pm today, Monday 30th June I received a text message from Jee’s mobile. It read ‘tomorrow get out ICU (Intensive Care Unit), Pon sister’.

  I sent one asking if she was okay and received a reply saying

  ‘Yes now her better’.

  Thank God and Thank Buddha, I was praying to both of them, I think now maybe I’ll carry on. I feel as if I owe them something.

  Wow what a scare this was. It’s Wednesday 2nd July today. For the last two days I have been sending text messages in Thai to Jee’s mobile phone asking about her condition and her whereabouts but as yet I have had no reply. I assume that she is still in hospital having only come out of intensive care yesterday, Tuesday 1st July. I really don’t want to become a nuisance but I’m so worried. I still have no idea what happened to her or how she is now, or what her prospects are for a full recovery. The only good news that I have had in the last week or two is that she is now out of intensive care.

  Chapter 44. Please let this be a good chapter.

  You will never believe this but I swear it is absolutely true. I typed in the title of this chapter over a week ago even before I knew what it was going to be about. Maybe all my praying to Buddha has paid off because today, Thursday 3rd July, I have received some great news.

  Firstly I received a text from Jee and there is no doubt about it this text was actually from Jee. It simply read ‘hello darling. I love you. I am getting better now and tomorrow I go from hospital to home’.

  I was so excited and somewhat relieved to get this text. I sent a couple straight back. The first one was just to tell her that I loved her and had missed her and the second one was asking what was wrong with her but I didn’t get any further text messages from her. I really hope to talk to her again soon and I’m going to continue to pray to Buddha to sell my house quickly and get back to Thailand, a country I love and back to Jee, the girl I love. Anyway for the time being I’m so happy to get a text from her, and she still loves me.

  Since this whole hospital thing started I have worried so much and all sorts of thoughts have occupied my mind. I was worried that Jee might die and then I was worried that she might be brain damaged and would she even remember me, or would she remember but not be able to speak or do anything? But now today all those terrible dark thoughts have melted away and for the first time in a while my spirits are soaring high.

  I’m so happy I’m going to share something with you. I never wrote about it before because I am a bit embarrassed about it but I have told enough stories about Jee and her wonderful family so now I will tell you about one of my own vocabulary faux pas.

  It was when I had been with Jee and her family for about a week. I had got over the culture shock and had really started to fall in love with Jee and Udon Thani in general. I even liked the hot dusty streets of Chiang Phin, the small town that feels like a village to me. I loved walking around the streets in the evening with Jee and meeting the local people. I often felt overwhelmed by their generous hospitality and even the shortest of walks took a long time because we kept stopping to chat and drink water or eat food with people, everybody wanted to exchange a few words with the Farang and I was loving every minute of it. It was like another world in some distant time gone by.

  A lot of the houses were typical Thai and constructed from wood. They were basic and it was easy to see that a lot of these people didn’t have much spare cash, but there is a happiness and a sense of community that money really cannot buy and what ever little these lovely warm hearted people had, they were willing to share. If you could put a price on a smile then I must owe these people millions. I have mental images imprinted on my mind of sitting with friends who I didn’t know and talking in a language that I couldn’t understand, watching children playing, running, laughing and screaming on dry dusty roads, some little more then dirt tracks.

  Water buffalo tied to a long chain and grazing. The evening air only slightly cooler than the day time. A feeling of happiness and well being that I have never experienced before. This is what Thailand, and especially Isaan, is to me.

  Anyway, as I was saying I had been with Jee and her family for about a week and I was trying harder and harder to speak more Thai and maybe I was getting a little over confident. Each night in the hotel I would read a few Thai words and sentences and then try them out the next day. On this particular occasion we had been out and about as usual. There was Jee and her sister Pon, and Pon’s daughter Fon. Sak was driving and I sat in the front next to Sak. We were on our way to a talaat (market).

  Everyday I bought us all food and I usually treated Fon to sweets or chocolate or ice cream because, well just because I liked her I guess. As we approached the market I turned and asked Fon in Thai if she was hungry,

  “Fon, khun hiu mai?” (Fon, are you hungry?)

  Well at least that’s what I wanted to say, but what I actually said was,

  “Fon, khun hoy moy!” (Fon, you have a hairy fanny!)

  Of course I had no idea as to what I had just said but I could tell from Fon’s shy nervous giggle, and everyone else’s sudden gasps, that I had said something wrong and I felt immediately embarrassed but I didn’t really know why. I could just tell that I had said something which had embarrassed everyone else. Jee came to the rescue and asked me what I wanted to say. I told her that I was asking Fon if she was hungry and Jee said ‘oh you mean hiu mai’. She then chatted away in Thai explaining to everyone what I had meant to say and they all fell about laughing, especially Sak who started smacking the steering wheel with his hand. He obviously kept thinking about it because he kept repeating it out loud and laughing all over again. I was happy that I could make everyone laugh so much but I still didn’t know what I had said and Jee wouldn’t tell me. After that it was forgotten except by Sak who used it for the rest of the day to amuse himself and kept laughing out loud.

  That night when Jee and I were back at the hotel I again asked her what I had said and she told me. I was embarrassed all over again and asked Jee to ring Pon and apologise for me. Jee said that it was alright and that she had already explained. ‘Every person understand, no problem’. But I insisted, and Jee rang and after speaking for a few moments Pon and Jee were laughing about it all over again. What a stupid Farang I am!

  The good news for today doesn’t stop with Jee’s text message. Several weeks ago I sent off a synopsis of this book with a sample chapter to Monsoon Books, based in Singapore. I had forgotten all about it, then today I got an email from them.

  Here is another funny thing and once again absolutely true. Everyday I just empty the spam folder on my Yahoo email without even looking inside it. I just trust Yahoo. Today f
or no reason that I can explain, I opened it to look, before deleting the emails inside and that’s where my email was from Monsoon Books. It was a nice email and it was asking me to send them the full manuscript of this book.

  I’m so excited and thrilled to think that anyone will actually read this other than me.

  I haven’t finished this book yet. I don’t know how it is going to end. I want it to end with me marrying Jee, or maybe it can end with us having children. Or maybe end with us celebrating twenty five years of a happy marriage but some how I don’t think Monsoon Books will want to wait that long, so I’m going to send this off as it is and just hope. Maybe it is a case of this book is finished but the story isn’t.

  How funny that I am already thinking of writing the next book now. They might not like it. They might not even read it all, they might get bored after the first chapter but it’s still very exciting news for me and I’m going to go with it. There must be a reason why I looked at the ‘Spam’ emails today for the first time in my life.

  You might think I’m ting tong (crazy) but I think I have Buddha to thank for this. He stopped the mosquito’s from biting me, he spared Jee’s life and now he made me open my ‘Spam’ emails. I think Buddhism works for me.

  Chapter 45. Regaining Contact

  It was very difficult to actually make any contact with Jee, I didn’t hear much from her and her phone was always turned off and I still didn’t know what was happening with her but I was just happy to know that she is safe and well and out of hospital.

  Two weeks passed like this and it was a difficult time for me not really knowing what was going on. But then on 18th July I started to get a lot more text messages from Jee. The only problem was that I couldn’t read them, they were all just numbers. Every single text message was just a lot of numbers. I hadn’t got a clue what she was trying to tell me but at least my maths improved. The only thing I could do was text Jee back each time and tell her that I couldn’t read her text.