Visa Run - Pattaya to Sihanoukville (2 page)

C
HAPTER
O
NE

It all began on a humid, rain-spattered November day in Pattaya. A sky full of heavy dark clouds that were pregnant with a coming storm that was moving in ominously from over the wind-ruffled sea, and the grim, overcast aura that seemed to hang over the city suited the bad mood I was in perfectly. I was standing in a small queue outside a money-changer’s kiosk along the Central Road at the time; the one next to the narrow alley where that tiny, pony-tailed Thai man who looks like he knows something you don’t has his stall. The ancient dealer, who hasn’t changed a jot in twenty-five years, sells amulets that he claims can keep you in good health or make you rich, stop knives and bullets and protect you from your enemies or bring you success in love. Whilst waiting in the tepid drizzle, I contemplated how it might have been a good idea for me to have invested in one of the old merchant’s magic pendants several weeks earlier myself. On reflection though, I doubted that even the most powerful of the talismans would have changed anything because after a quarter of a century in Thailand I should have known by now what was going to happen even without the aid of a lucky charm.

The sad truth is, only an Isaan bar-girl can change her character almost overnight as much as my latest girlfriend had done. That shy, sweet new girl to Pattaya who had caught my eye as she hid in the corner away from the grasping hands of horny holidaymakers and who was so scared she could hardly speak had, as I had seen so many times over the years, very quickly turned into the biggest whining, money-begging pain in the arse on the Eastern Seaboard. “That’s gratitude for you,” I grumbled to myself, although I knew I only had myself to blame.

Four weeks ago, the cute little bar-girl had been so scared and inexperienced that her hand shook and she couldn’t meet my eye as she poured out my first beer of the night. I had found Jai in one of the less salubrious (and that’s saying something) establishments in Soi Six that cater to the legions of
farang
punters whose idea of a good time is getting drunk whilst having the most sensitive part of their anatomy fondled by girls who might well be attractive if it wasn’t too dark to see what they looked like. Undeniably, Soi Six does suit a certain mood, and I happily admit to having been one of the street’s most frequent visitors over the years. However, even the most fanatical of Soi Six addicts would have to admit that the ambience of the bar-strip is hardly subtle, and plainly this was bothering the new girl. No doubt Jai had heard a little of what Pattaya was about on the Isaan grapevine before she came here, but it was plain she had not expected to see the various reasons for the female presence in Soi Six taking place in front of her at such glaringly close quarters. Suffice to say, it is very disconcerting for a girl fresh from the fields of Isaan—who thought she had been employed as a waitress—to watch women similar in age and background to her own mother removing the pants and underwear from an assortment of weird-looking
farangs
right there in the bar before they had even ordered a beer. It is hardly necessary to lower the tone of this narrative even further by explaining what happens next. Of course, the crunch came when Jai realised that instead of handing out trays of drinks and food she was also expected to do the same things that had shocked her so much on her arrival. The guileless Isaan girl had come to Pattaya to work in a restaurant and ended up on the menu herself.

Enter Joe Bucket, Pattaya’s answer to Sir Galahad, and with a bit of the old charm and a generous measure of bullshit, Soi Six’s newest and prettiest arrival was soon easily convinced that catering to the desires of her knight in shining armour in room 419 of the Happy Home apartment block in Soi Buakhoa was infinitely preferable to facing the ravages of of Soi Six’s barmy army.

As is often the case in Pattaya, a mere month later the previously terrified new girl had kept her sharp eyes and ears open and realised there are other opportunities available for a pretty Isaan girl besides the constant, public manipulation of drunken males’ sex organs in a seedy knocking-shop, or getting what’s left over from the beer money from a long-staying,
keeniaw
farang
who was always out fishing or getting pissed at a bar with his mates. Before she wised up, Jai used to enjoy starting the mornings with a swim at the tiny pool that the Happy Home boasts. Unfortunately for me, so did a real bitch of an old bar-girl who was currently milking some poor first-timer for all his holiday money. Ten years ago, this excrement-stirring harridan had been the shy new girl herself, so of course—ever the gallant knight—I had rescued her as well. Unfortunately, when you live like Joe Bucket, nemesis is an unavoidable fact of life and now our paths had crossed again, my old flame was doing her very best to educate Jai every time I turned my back. The old bar-girl’s name was Poo and I thought this very appropriate, because the previous decade certainly had turned her into a right turd.

“Don’t listen to that bullshitting old
farang
,” I heard Poo telling Jai in Thai as I came up behind them one day and caught her explaining how it was about time I was presented with a proper bill. “His mouth is so sweet he has to keep taking the ants out from between his teeth.” Rhetoric like this is impossible to ignore and the copious amounts of verbal poisoning injected by the now extremely street-smart Poo soon did their job. My previously naive new girlfriend now knew the score. Poo had taught Jai that she was in Pattaya now, where every kiss, squeeze and thrust should be paid for in full.

Thanks to the tuition of Poo, Jai was now aware that the good-hearted Englishman who had appeared in Soi Six on his metaphoric white charger and saved her from the legions of other
farangs
intent on impaling her on their weapons was perhaps more concerned with bargain-basement sex rates with a pretty new girl rather than a genuine desire to save an Isaan damsel in distress. Poo explained to Jai how it was customary for a
farang
to behave like the proverbial walking ATM machine, and also told her how she was really letting the side down in not sporting at least one item of gold jewelry by now. For some inexplicable Thai reason, the old bar-girl had made it her mission in life to coach Jai into perfecting the finer points of the game and she was training Jai with an intensity Sir Alex Ferguson would have been proud of. I never stood a chance. To emphasize a point she was making, Poo jerked a disdainful thumb at her own
farang
, who blissfully unaware, was sunning himself by the side of the pool and trying to work out where all his holiday cash was going.

“He has a photograph of me in his wallet,” said Poo proudly, straightening up a new, chunky gold ring with an expensively manicured hand. “Where his money used to be.”

From experience, I quickly realized I was left with three choices. I could either listen to Jai complaining day and night for the remaining four months of my stay (and believe me, Poo had coached her to such an extent she could now moan for Thailand) or I could pay her off with some of that folding paper stuff she had previously insisted she no interest in. Indeed, it was remarkable how in such a short space of time “I love you,
teelac
, I not want your money, I want stay with you, I not like work bar,” had become, “Poo tell me you very
keeniaw
, she say other
farang
give me big money/motorcycle/house/land/bar” (just insert the appropriate act of generosity, all were mentioned scores of times every day).

I have always been of the opinion we don’t spend enough time on this planet to waste precious days listening to the incessant strains of a wailing bar-girl, so I decided to take the second option. I would cut my losses and draw out a wad of cash that would hopefully be enough to compensate Jai for the time Poo had convinced her she had wasted on me (minus a few disputed expenses, of course). I would then be able to gently but firmly give Jai her marching orders without things becoming too messy; as is often the case in the breakdown of Pattaya romances. Sexist perhaps—selfish, certainly—but even so, I would hope even the most politically correct of feminist readers might have at least a little sympathy after hearing Jai hammering away at the drums in my ears with the resonance and volume of a Caribbean steel band. And any fellow male who has ever fallen out with his Thai girl and had the magic of romance driven from his heart by skilfully engineered sulking sessions and the phenomenon of that previously warm and sweetly surrendering dove-like girl suddenly developing a shoulder as cold as a frozen ham every time he fancies getting his leg over, will certainly be in my corner.

The third option would be to kick Jai out penniless. This was a non-starter. Having already witnessed the formidable temper that lurks just beneath the thin veneer of even the sweetest of an Isaan girl’s outward serenity, I had no desire to incur the wrath of a screaming Thai demon. No doubt Poo would have told Jai exactly what to do should I fail to come across with the expected recompense and I had no wish to view the results of her recent education. If hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, then Pattaya certainly hath no hiding place from a prostitute unpaid. And sadly, that was exactly what Poo had taught Jai to become. I had also noticed—with considerable concern—how Jai had recently become a little too friendly with the toughest and meanest of the motorcycle taxi drivers who plied their trade from the rank opposite the Happy Home. So it was going to have to be pay-off time, and like so many other long-staying
farang
men in Pattaya, not for the first time I promised myself that never again would I allow the charms of a fresh new bar-girl to affect my sanity and destroy the very freedom I had come to the city for. Well—not until the next time, anyway.

On top of the annoyance and expense of having to bung Jai a good slice of my ever-dwindling wedge to get rid of her, I also had the inconvenience of a visa run to look forward to in five days time. Visa runs! What a pain in the arse! Every three months, for those foreign residents not yet ancient or affluent enough to apply for a retirement visa, the immigration laws in Thailand make it necessary to leave the country and return on a new tourist visa. So, everybody piles down to the Cambodian border at Poi Pet in a minibus and leaves the country for five minutes. The more adventurous travellers sometimes pause for a quick short-time with a girl of questionable age and cleanliness in a wooden hut in one of the aptly named ‘Chicken Farms’ just over the border. It is then possible to re-enter the Land of Smiles under a new stamp on the double or triple entry tourist visa you obtained at the Thai consulate back home. On every visa run I have ever made the journey to the border has been made doubly unbearable by having to listen to some knobhead complaining incessantly about the ridiculous system. I wish they would shut up and live with it. We all know it’s crazy but that’s the way things work if you want to stay in the country longer than the three months allotted to tourists. You’re in Thailand now. Surely you didn’t expect things to be sensible? If you don’t like it, you can always go back to your cold, expensive country and its equally cold and expensive women anytime you please. Any takers?

It has always been my policy to try to remember that when life does not go quite as well as it should, it is a good idea to bear in mind that there is always someone worse off than yourself. Looking at the old man in a wheelchair in the queue in front of me, reminded me that I was, as usual, the author of my own misfortunes and that my problems were easily rectified by a handful of Thailand tokens. The poor old fellow looked in a bad way, and although he peered around him with interest, pain had etched lines around his eyes and cut deep grooves into his almost skeletal face and his yellowing skin was stretched tightly over his cheekbones.

I couldn’t help noticing that the Thai girl pushing the old boy’s wheelchair certainly didn’t seem to have any of the complaints that had recently begun to irk Jai so much. The girl was one of those smiling, chubby, capable-looking types that you often come across in Thailand, and enough bling to start a small store was hung and fastened around every one of her available extremities. Gold bracelets fought for space with bangles on her wrists, and enough gold chains to have the most vulgar of gangster rappers green with envy festooned her neck and glinted in the sunlight. Obviously having run out of space, she had even begun to encircle her ankles with her favourite metal. I wondered with some interest where she would start next. If this female Mr.T had fallen into the bay from Pattaya’s Bali Hai pier, all that extra weight would certainly have sunk her like a stone, even if she was blessed with the skills of an Olympic swimmer.

Despite her predeliction for the shiny stuff, the undeniably plump but certainly still attractive woman, who on closer inspection appeared to be around thirty-five years old, did seem to be taking exceptional care of the old guy. I would like to think it was her good heart rather than the acquisition of all those expensive trinkets that prompted Nan—for I learned later this was her name—to fuss around her patient’s wheelchair plumping cushions, patting a sunken cheek and generally letting the old chap know someone cared. Looking at the couple, I couldn’t help remembering a visit to an old peoples’ home back in England to visit the ailing father of a friend. I recalled how saddened I had been at the lumpy sofas full of drooling and glassy-eyed fossils who had been prompted into singing ‘Michael Row The Boat Ashore’ by an over-enthusiastic care-worker. Just then, the smiling Thai girl’s dress fell open as she bent down to straighten the old man’s blanket and I copped a look down the front of her generous cleavage. I knew which way I was going when my dotage came.