by Ken Austin
The Flood
In July of 2011, in the middle of the yearly rainy season in Thailand, flooding arrived in the north and northeast of the country. Flooding is not uncommon in Thailand. Especially in recent years, heavier than normal rainfall and over-logging in the mountains has resulted in more runoff than usual.
But 2011 was exceptional. The rains just kept pounding down day after day. The pictures on the evening news were depressing: montages of old women being rescued from submerged homes, sandbags being stacked and breached, and relief centres distributing food.
By the end of September, the floods had moved further south to Ayyutaya and then into the region of Patum Thani that is just north of Bangkok. Thousands of homes and factories were under water and the rains kept coming. It slowly dawned on everyone that Bangkok would be next to be hit with severe flooding. Flooding takes place in Bangkok on a fairly regular basis during the rainy season, but it is localized in a few low-lying areas and usually only lasts for a few days or weeks at a time.
This time around, it was much worse. To drain off the deluge, the waters would have to be routed through Bangkok and then on to the Gulf of Thailand. And it was a massive amount of water.
In late October and early November, the water arrived in numerous districts in the north and west of Bangkok. The water started coming up through the drain pipes, and then there were 30, 40, 50 centimetres and more of water. Lakes of water wherever you looked. Buses kept plowing through all but the deepest areas, but cars were completely absent in some districts. The surreal silence early in the morning as I went to the main street near my apartment was striking and peaceful.
Many people had fled the capital city, but there were still a fair number of zombie-like people walking around with blank looks on their faces. It was hard work trudging through all that water.
The store shelves were quickly emptied of all the basics. The food production factories in Pathum Thani were shut down, and getting what supplies existed was made difficult because of all the water. It brought home how much those in the cities blindly count on so many people and organizations to keep their conveniences alive and well.
A few years before the flood of 2011, I met a Brit named Louis, who had retired to Thailand and married a Thai woman. Louis had owned a small construction company for 30 years in London and his savings guaranteed him a comfortable retirement in Thailand.
My friendship with Louis was unlikely, especially in Thailand. In the real world, having friends in different social classes or with more disposable income was not unheard of, but in the expat’s world it was almost unknown. Sure, you could meet different people from different backgrounds, but to maintain a long-term friendship with someone who rolled in a higher income bracket was an anomaly.
The reason is simple: westerners who settle down in Thailand ostensibly want to leave behind many of the annoyances and familiarities of life in their home countries. However, rankism amongst expats is more extreme than class divisions at home. The absence of day-to-day interactions with others who possess relatively similar world-views and conditioning results in exaggerated displays of those social habits when expats do mix with each other.
Add to that the fact that Thailand is an extremely class conscious society. Expats get drawn into this whether they like to admit it or not. Foreigners living in Thailand want to prove to Thais and expats just how far up the food chain they believe they are.
Louis was no exception. He was rightfully proud of what he had accomplished in his life and the financial rewards it had brought him. He had a new house, new car, all the latest technological gadgets and a Thai wife 20 years younger than him.
Louis would invite me over to his house in Patum Thani on occasion. Inevitably, we would always spend the first half hour or so standing around his recent acquisitions as he regaled me about all the features and looked at me expectantly for the appropriately impressed reaction. Then we would settle into the bar and games room at the back of his house.
It was a stand-alone structure that had been built shortly after he bought the house. A snooker table, dart board, full bar, and wide-screen TV fitted out the large, air-conditioned room. Leather couches lined two walls of the main room, with the bar at the rear, and bar stools lined up along the fourth wall. The large, red-felted snooker table was in the middle of the room. A narrow hallway near the bar led to another room that contained an 80 inch Samsung TV fitted to the wall and another section of the room set aside for darts.
It was indeed a nice place to spend a few hours.
“What do you want to drink then mate?” Louis said to me as I sat on one of the couches in his well-appointed games room and bar. It was a Friday afternoon in August and there had been no rainfall for the past few days. The heavy humidity of the day was a good excuse to seek refuge in here and shoot a few games of snooker.
“Just a cold bottle of water,” I said.
Louis let out an expulsion of air and guffawed. “The best private fucking bar in Pathum Thani and you want a drink of fucking water,” he said with no trace of animosity.
He went to the bar and pulled out a glass bottle of mineral water and set it on the granite topped bar with a solid clacking sound. I could see the bottle frosting up nicely. Then Louis pulled down a tall glass from an overhead shelf, took the lid off a stainless steel ice bucket, and tonged three large cubes of frosty looking ice into the glass. He placed the lid back on the ice bucket with affectionate care, pulled the tab on the bottle and poured the water into the glass with a flourish. From below the bar, he lifted up a small white dish with pre-cut slices of lime, took a small set of tongs and placed a few wedges of lime into the glass. Finally, he took a coaster with a logo and the name Gosling’s Family Reserve Old Rum and a napkin emblazoned with the same name, set them down on the long, low glass table in front of the couch and placed my water on the coaster.
“There you go mate,” he said with a satisfied smile. “Just give me a few minutes to prepare my drink.”
I knew from past experience that he would probably be opening a fresh bottle of the kind of spirit whose name was on the coaster and napkin. Louis ordered bottles of expensive liquor from various online shops and had them shipped to Thailand. When he opened the boxes, they often included a few stacks of coasters and other marketing knick-knacks such as key chains and calendars.
He went to the bar and pulled down a bottle of, yes, Gosling’s Family Old Reserve Rum. He looked at the bottle for a minute, and then located a small pull tab at the top of the bottle and pulled it. The blob of wax that sealed the top of the bottle loosened and fell onto the bar top. He then popped the cork on the bottle and inhaled deeply. Then he took down the same kind of tall glass he had served my water in, ran a wedge of lime around the rim of the glass, turned the glass over and dipped it in a plate of sugar.
Next, he produced a stainless steel shaker from beneath the bar, filled it with crushed ice, splashed a few jolts of bitters into the shaker, added some lime juice, and then carefully measured out two ounces of the rum and poured it into the shaker. He shook the concoction vigorously for 30 seconds or so, flipped off the lid and poured the contents through a strainer into his glass. He added a few leaves of mint to the drink and finally topped it off with a few slices of lime. Then he plunked a stir stick into his drink; the kind made out of translucent blue plastic and shaped like a caricature of a beautiful, buxom woman. He picked up a coaster, napkin and his drink and sat down on the couch next to me, ensuring that he left space between us.
“Well old chap, here’s to the good life!” he said. We clinked our glasses and each took a sip of our drinks.
Louis let out a theatrical sigh. “Some quality rum there my friend,” he said.
“I would have thought that’s the kind of quality that you would reserve for drinking straight,” I said. He looked flustered but recovered quickly.
“You are right there my friend. And usually I would only drink it straight, but on a day like this, a nice cockta
il helps a person to cool off. Now, shall we play a game of snooker?”
He was up before I answered, racking and arranging the various balls in their correct locations on the table.
“Why don’t you break,” he said.
My pool playing skills were next to abysmal. I always tried to make up for my bad playing with an explosive break, even though a player didn’t necessarily want to spread the balls out so much in snooker. I figured the harder I blasted the shot off the break, the better chance I had that something would go down.
I wound up and drove my shoulders into the almightiest shot I could muster.
We played silently for the next 40 minutes or so, with Louis winning both games. As he was racking the balls for another game, I heard the door to the games room close behind me. I turned to see a dusky, five foot nothing Thai woman padding across the room in her bare feet. She had that practiced blank look of many Thais. Not necessarily a coldness, or shyness, but simply the lack of moronic, superficial gesturing and grinning that so many westerners engage in.
“There she is! Come here sweetheart,” said Louis. His wife looked at her husband as if to say, “Have some class you old fool.”
But she relented and walked up to Louis and allowed him to give her an exaggerated embrace for my sake. “You’ve met the missus, haven’t you Robin?” he asked me.
“I don’t believe I have, no,” I said. I was trying to think back over the handful of times I had been to his place. Apparently his wife had remained a shadow in the background. I was surprised at this as Louis had a compulsion to show off his possessions.
“Well Robin, this is Pook. Pook, I want you to meet Robin, one of my friends.”
Pook and I looked at each other and exchanged an uncomfortable nod. “Nice to meet you,” I said.
“Yes, me too,” Pook said.
“Louis, some friends said the water coming closer,” Pook said.
“Ah, don’t worry about the water. We’ll be all right. I was reading the news online this morning and the Thai government seems to think that everything is in order,” said Louis.
Pook didn’t look convinced. She sat down on one of the couches, crossed her legs and looked sullenly at some unspecified spot on the opposite wall.
“You think the Thai government has provided an accurate picture of how things are going to play out with this flood?” I asked Louis.
“I think so. Anyway, she’s getting told what to do by her big brother. I think he’s got a pretty good idea of things.”
Louis was referring to the current prime minister of Thailand and her exiled brother who was the former PM. I had noticed that expats seemed to take on the political views of their host country depending on who their romantic partners were. Hook up with someone from the lower classes and the expat is liable to support the so-called populist government who has thrown a few crumbs to the peasants to keep them onside. Marry a girl from the middle or upper classes of Bangkok and he’s bound to take on the elitist view and think the party who makes it easy for the rich fuckers to maintain the easy life is best for Thailand.
“So you still doing the English teaching gig?”
Here we go, I thought. Louis always got on this topic. The longer we knew each other, the more comfortable he felt riding me about my job. Teaching English did put one firmly at the bottom of the expat hierarchy in Thailand.
“Yes, I am” I said. I lined up a shot and stroked the cue ball. One of the red balls dropped in a corner pocket.
“How much you getting paid for that Robin? Enough for beer, your rent and a few DVDs every month?” Louis snickered and watched me as I lined up another shot.
“I probably make more than you know,” I said.
“Louis, that’s not polite,” Pook said. We both looked at her surprised that she had understood everything.
“We’re just havin’ a laugh sweetheart,” said Louis.
I made a point of smiling at Pook.
“So how much do you make Robin? Really, I’m just curious.”
So you can rank yourself against me a bit more, I thought. It was pointless to get into it with Louis on any level. Playing the “I truly don’t care” card when discussing money was futile. Even if you really felt that way, you could convince no one. And usually you were trying to convince yourself at the same time as well. Who doesn’t want a bit more to make things easier?
“I’m a bit old school about things like that. Let’s just say that I’m doing all right,” I said.
A certain sneering arrogance inflates expats who are retired in Thailand or were sent over to work for some multinational company. When they get an EFL teacher in the room, they can barely contain themselves over what they are certain is a massive difference in earnings and savings. For the most part, they aren’t wrong. But the bland assumptions that are never questioned and the belief that they have the whole width and breadth of the English teaching possibilities clear in their minds because someone once told them what they wanted to hear, can really grate.
“I see,” said Louis with a smug grin on his face.
We continued playing snooker for another hour or so. At one point, talk turned to the expat community in Pattaya and the strange number of suspicious deaths of foreigners that took place there.
“Another swan-diver there the other day. Read about it on one of the online Pattaya newspapers. What kind of sad fuck-up gets himself into such a hole in this paradise that he jumps off his balcony. Probably working as a ...” Louis caught himself before he finished. He leaned over and made a shot. “Well, you know what I mean Robin.”
“Yes, I certainly do.”
I had long thought that the people one compares himself to provides a pretty good indication of a person’s real self-image. If you get satisfaction out of seeing others in despair and ending it all, then you’re aiming pretty low.
We finished up the game and I left shortly after. I got the feeling it would be some time, if ever, that I would return to Louis’s house in Pathum Thani.
It turned out that it was less than two weeks later that I would be in contact with Louis again. Despite assurances from the government, the flood waters did come surging down from the north and they turned the whole of Pathum Thani into a vast lake, with areas that were like a surging river. The worst floods to hit Thailand in a century and the entire basin of Pathum Thani filled up.
I thought of Louis as I watched the images on TV of people moving through chest-high water and of others having to be rescued by boat. What about all those bottles of expensive alcohol Louis had ordered online? He must have found some way to save them.
At the beginning of November I received a call from Louis. It was the middle of the afternoon and I was lying next to the pool in the apartment complex where I lived. The complex was completely dry though there was water about 100 metres away. Regardless, being on the fifth floor meant that however close the water came, I wouldn’t suffer too much.
“Louis, how are things? You staying dry?” I used that annoying question that had become so common during the flood. I was pretty sure that he wasn’t dry at all.
“No, our house is destroyed. Everything ruined.”
“I thought you said there was no way the flood waters were going to reach your place. Surely you took some precautions.”
“No, we took none. I thought until the last minute that we were going to be OK.”
“Yah fucking idiot!” I said, using my best “just ‘avin a laugh mate” voice. “I’m dry as can be here yah brainless fucking Brit cocksucker! What about all that precious booze you ordered online? You must have been able to save some of it.”
“No, all gone too,” he said. His voice had gone down an octave.
“So, where you calling from? A fucking dinghy?” I burst out laughing. “Ha, ha...you got the wife manning the oars for you Louis? I am enjoying life at the moment as all these sad motherfuckers who didn’t prepare for the worst are crying their fucking eyes out.”
A tense silenc
e came over the line.
“It’s a lot more complicated than that, Robin,” he finally said.
Ah, the amazing ability that personal experience has to teach us all about nuance. The whole country was shrieking that the floods were bearing down on Pathum Thani but Louis smugly insisted that he would somehow stay dry. Yet he easily gained a sense of superiority when considering expats caught in the grip of despair who decided to end it all.
“I guess what they say about every good thing having a bad side and vice versa, is true. When you’ve got a lot, you’ve got a lot to lose as well. You think those sad bastards who leaped to their deaths maybe had a story that was a bit more complicated than you gave them credit for?”
I didn’t hear any response.
“So what are you going to do? Where the hell are you anyway?”
Nothing.
“Louis, what the hell is going on? Where’s your wife, is she with you?”
“She left. She went to her family I think. I’m at a hotel on Sukhumvit Road.”
I felt a wave of pity for the old buffoon.
“Suck it up old boy. Everything will work out in the end.”
“Sometimes things don’t work out. I get the feeling Pook won’t be back.”
After I hung up the phone, I decided to head down to Louis’s hotel to pay him a visit. The hotel was located in a part of Bangkok that hadn’t yet been affected by the floods.
It was one of those places that had a nostalgic feel about it, like a long-lost era that was preserved and showcased in the form of crisp employee uniforms and overly solicitous service.
“I want to talk to Louis Trompford,” I said to the front desk employee. “What floor is he staying on?”
“On the 18th floor, sir.”
Arse Wars
“You son-of-a-bitch!” The utterance of his last word coincided with his fist slamming into my orbital bone, hot fluid running down my face, and near unconsciousness. Despite it all, I couldn’t help smirking, looking up through blood, matted hair and clenched teeth, straining against the ropes that bound my arms behind the chair and challenging the cunt with a look of defiance.