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decreaseChapter 1: Indiana Jones, I Need Your Help!
I came to Bangkok on a whim. The ad in the paper said, “Qualified teachers wanted for private school in Bangkok.” I was a qualified teacher who couldn’t find a full time job in Vancouver. I took a chance, applied for the job and a month later arrived in Bangkok.
It was a 20-hour flight from Vancouver to Bangkok, with a transfer in Japan. On the flight from Japan, two toddlers sat in the seat behind me shrieking and bumping my seat. I turned around and shot angry glances at the overwhelmed mother, who avoided my steely glare.
Joop, a secretary at Satit Wittaya (my new school), met me at the airport and drove me to my new house. She talked, but I couldn’t listen. I had just arrived in a strange exotic country, and a litany of thoughts rolled through my brain. I gazed out the window, hungrily absorbing the fascinating features of my new surroundings.
We drove through a pleasant suburb of ruler straight streets and leafy, gated homes. We crossed a tiny bridge and squeezed on to a narrow street, where tiny flimsy shacks clung to the road. In the misty morning light, a dark face crouched next to an open fryer, a television flickered through a doorway and a motorcycle, raw and throaty, roared to life.
We continued past a swampy field and a crumbling temple. Diseased mangy dogs sprawled across the road at the temple’s entrance. Monks, barefoot, shuffled up and down the long straight street with alms bowl tucked under their arms.
“How can they walk barefoot? The roads must be sizzling hot!” I asked Joop, who seemed amused by my question.
“Oh I think they don’t feel it; they have walked barefoot since they were young monks in training,” she replied, honking her horn at the dogs who dragged their tired bodies to the side, yelping feebly in protest.
“Who owns these dogs?” I asked.
She answered that these dogs had no owners; that maybe at one time they had had a home, but their owners didn’t want them anymore, so they dropped them at the temple for the monks to take care of them. I was captivated by everything and full of naive questions but Joop didn’t seem to mind.
We came to another intersection and turned left, driving between a swamp and a series of row houses. Joop pulled off the street next to one of the houses and looked at a piece of paper written in Thai.
“I think this is your house Ryan,” she said putting the paper down then picking up and consulting it again.
“My house?” I replied, alarmed, thinking she had made a mistake.
She nodded.
“Are my roommates inside?”
She shook her head. “No roommates, just you.”
I looked nervously at the house. It was flat and narrow with a crumbling brick façade stained charcoal black. It sat only a few feet back from the road and was protected at the front with a rusty, padlocked gate. A profusion of plants cloaked the small garbage strewn driveway behind the gate, giving the entrance an eerie cave like feel.
From the comfort of the air-conditioned car, I peppered Joop with questions hoping to delay getting out.
“When is the last time someone lived here?” I asked.
Joop thought first then responded, “Three Filipino teachers lived here about two years ago”.
“How long did they stay?”
She thought again. “Only a few months,” she said quietly.
“Why?”
Joop, signaling she didn’t want to elaborate, shrugged her shoulders and frowned. Her body language worried me. What happened to the three teachers who lived here before? If this house wasn’t habitable for teachers from a country with infrastructure similar to Thailand’s, how could I be expected to cope?
These worrying thoughts occupied my mind as Joop got out of the car and jiggled open the rusty lock on the gate. It took our combined effort to pry the old rusty gate a few inches open enough to squeeze through. I raised a handful of the wet plants blocking the driveway so Joop could pass under. At the front steps, Joop wrestled open the next rusty lock. A thin dirty curtain flapped across the entrance, and I nervously pulled it across and stepped inside. The dirty room was cloaked in shadows, cobwebs and dust. A ray of light pierced through the wall of jungle on the driveway and shone on the dusty floor. Instantly, a dozen cockroaches scrambled away from the light, seeking a dark refuge under the stairs and fridge. We hesitantly moved into the musty, damp room littered with mouse droppings.
“Has anyone been in here recently?” I asked Joop, standing behind me at the entrance.
Again, she shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. I was becoming annoyed at her lack of communication and pushed on without her through the front room and into the kitchen. Upon my noisy entrance, large cockroaches, some with wings, dashed towards an open hole in the corner. A squeaky rat scampered boldly through my legs and dove down the same hole. I jumped out of the kitchen in fright. Should have asked more questions about accommodations, I thought.
There were no appliances in the kitchen and its only furniture was a steel, portable sink crudely fastened to a rusty pipe sticking out from the wall. A separate plastic, ribbed pipe dangled from the sink’s drain, barely reaching the open hole where the cockroaches and rats had scurried down.
I left the kitchen shaking my head and mounted the creaking stairs with Joop at my heels. The stairs groaned and strained under our weight, and I feared plunging through them into some blank abyss. Upstairs, the doors to the three bedrooms and bathroom were shut. Joop remained close behind me, her little head peering over my shoulders as we tentatively explored. I opened the first door with a knot in my stomach, expecting to encounter some gruesome scene. Nothing, however, except an old floor mounted air conditioner, a thin mattress, a wardrobe and lots of dust. The second room contained similar furniture and more dust. A chill ran down my spine as I opened the third door, expecting a gaggle of rats and cockroaches feasting on the decomposed bodies of the three missing Filipino teachers. Thankfully, it was the same as the others, except it had a proper bed and a large, wall mounted air conditioner. I turned on the air conditioner and it rumbled to life.
“I guess this will be my room,” I said to Joop, who nodded in agreement.
We went in to the small bathroom and I turned on the tap. Dirty, coffee colored water gurgled then spurted into the basin. The shower spit the same cool, brown water. “No hot water,” I whimpered to Joop, who looked at me sympathetically.
Joop seemed eager to leave so we walked back downstairs, and I retrieved my belongings from her car. She put her hand on my shoulder. “It will be alright” she said unconvincingly and handed me the keys. “See you Tuesday morning 7:00!”
She was gone. Alone in this dirty, rodent infested house surrounded by jungle, thousands of miles from home, I was petrified. What was I doing here? Why did I choose to come to Thailand? And, looking around the house with a sense of impending doom, what is going to happen to me in this house?
(End of Chapter 1.)
Ryan Humphreys
© Ryan Humphreys. All rights reserved by the author.
ISBN: 974-85123-5-5
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If you enjoyed this first chapter of Ryan Humphreys's 'Bangkok Exit' you can easily purchase the book online here at Bangkok Books.com: http://www.bangkokbooks.com/php/product/product.php?product_id=000036&sub_cate_name=&sub_cate_id=
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All rights for this book preview are reserved by the author. Reprint permission came from the publishing house Bangkok Book House (www.bangkokbooks.com).
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June 3, 2008, 07:55
It looks like Ryan found himself some tropical adventure. I'll have to pick this one up and find out what happens to our Ajarn hero. I was reading the first chapter waiting for a ghost to pop up in his new residence. Good writing.