5,930 Miles: Too Far for Crows

September 2007.

I was sitting in the Thermae with a drink. There was the usual gaggle of people; all familiar but only some of them friends. There were tourists, expats, journalists and Japanese with yen to throw around. They were all there because this was a matter of tradition. This was a place of historical importance… It may not have beenthe real Thermae but it was as close as it could get.

I ordered a BLT with someone I’ve known since the first time I set foot in the place and sat back with that feeling that I was exactly where I belonged in the world. Then this man came and sat right next to me.  

“Mind if I sit here. It’s a bit crowded tonight.” He sounded like he came from Barnsley or some town like that and looked a bit like Dudley Moore in the film Arthur except with heavy black rings under his eyes.

“Go ahead” I said.

“So what are you here for my fellow farang? You’re English aren’t you?”

I nodded. “I’m here for the food and the general ambience. What are you here for?”

“No. No. Not here. Not the fucking Thermae. I know what everyone’s in the Thermae for. I mean what are you here in Bangkok for? You work here or you one of those tourists who’s come to experience the sexual opportunities of the glamorous East?” There was an edge to his voice that had more anger than humour in it. Any resemblance to Dudley Moore was purely coincidental.

“Neither.”

“Ah… Something you don’t want to reveal eh. One of those cunts who like to make out they’re a criminal on the run when, in fact, they just work in fucking Tescos.”

“Someone piss you off or something?”

“It’s a joke. A little joke between Englishmen. Don’t tell me your stay in the land of smiles has stolen your sense of humour.”

“I live here. I’m retired.”

“Retired… You look a bit young to retire. And Bangkok. Who the hell retires to Bangkok? I fucking wouldn’t spend five minutes here if I was retired. Don’t get me wrong. I like the Thai people a lot. But this town is a fucking shit hole. It’s dirty. Nobody looks out for anyone. Every second fucker you meet is trying to rip you off in some way. The others don’t know which fucking way is up.”

“So what are you doing here?”

“I work for Carlsberg. Work on the other side of the river. Get over there much?”

“Not much.”

“Course not… Why would you? Hardly anyone speaks English over there. You’d have to get a translator. Speak much Thai do you?”

“I get by.”

“Come on… Between the two of us. Between us two English gentlemen. What are you really doing here in Bangkok? It can’t be the prostitutes because you’re sitting on your own in the Thermae. No… I know why you’re here. Do you want me to tell you why you’re here.”

“I got a feeling you’re going to tell me.”

“You, my friend, are here because you’ve forgotten what it is to be alive. Most of the cunts who come here come here to fuck or to die. Usually turns out to be both. No fight left. It’s like that fucking guy who sits on Sukhumvit with the ‘feed me’ sign. People come here and twiddle their nadgers or pay whores and ladyboys to twiddle their nadger for them and tell them little lies that they just know they can’t believe but that they pretend they do. I took one look at you and you know what I thought… I thought there is one lost looking motherfucker. You just sit about drinking and fucking and doing nothing much else.”

“Yeah well… It’s been delightful talking to you but…”

“No… No… Don’t take offence. Jai yen yen. You know what that means. Jai yen yen. I’m just telling it how it is. Now Hong Kong. There’s a real rat hole of a town. But it works. It fucking works. Everyone pushes themselves a bit. You know what I mean. They don’t just sit back living on charm and black coke. Farang don’t go there to get laid. They go there for business. It’s a place for people who are still alive. It may be a rathole but it’s still alive. Nobody just stagnates there. Not like here. Not like in Bangkok… Certainly not like in the Thermae.”

“You know what… You don’t know me. And I don’t know you. Maybe it’s a good idea to keep it that way.”

“I disagree. We’re fellow Englishmen. And an Englishman has to take being told the truth. Otherwise you can end up believing all those macho lies that our colonial cousins are so apt to swallow without chewing. We may be shitcunts but we have the grace to know we’re shitcunts. It’s a mark of my respect for you as a fellow Englishman that I point out what a cunt you obviously are. But if you want to play that little game of lies and bullshit and sweet talk then be my guest.”

It wasn’t that what he was saying was particularly offensive. But there was something in his voice that was just filled with aggressive bile. I felt that it was only a matter of time before a fight broke out.

Suddenly I was saved by a bunch of bargirls who arrived at our table. One of them knew me and immediately started talking to me in Thai. I talked to her in Thai too and my aggressive friend started backing down. I ended up going to some girl’s apartment in Prakanong and sleeping beside her without doing anything but that’s neither here nor there. It’s so rare for me to come close to losing my temper and I’ve met some truly obnoxious bastards in my time in Bangkok. I had to start thinking about why my fellow Englishman had irked me to the degree that he had. The simple fact was that he had been saying things that I was already thinking.

I loved Bangkok. Bangkok did feel like home to me. For sixteen years or a couple of months short of sixteen years it had been my home. It had welcomed me in and allowed me to be myself. I never failed to see the spiders in the bottom of the glass but at its best it felt warm and funny and full of life.

The thing was that I knew, as much as I didn’t want to admit it, that I was stagnating. I didn’t want to die of one of those hedonist diseases spending my last days with a rotten liver, diabetes and a couple of things the doctors don’t even have a name for.

The matter festered in me for a few days and then I announced to most of the people I knew that I was going to take a holiday in Blighty.

That was last September. As I write this it’s June of 2008. I’ve been going to return to Thailand in a couple of weeks for about six months. But I’m still here. My ambition now is to make it one full year in the UK and then return.

If you live in Thailand too long you change in certain ways. Certain things are hard. Working, if you’re one of those who works in Thailand, is hard. Dealing with visas and bureaucratic shit is hard. Falling in love is hard. But the day to day business of life is so easy that you can become a little soft. How many expats will tell you they couldn’t go home because there’s just nothing for them there?

What I’ve found, in the past few months, is that it really doesn’t make much of a difference. The person I became in Thailand is someone I brought back with me. I would never have picked up some of the women I’ve slept with here in the UK if I hadn’t developed certain habits in Thailand. I find things I love in the UK that I don’t bother with in Thailand. I go to museums and galleries that I might not bother with if I was in Bangkok. And I do find myself intoxicated with the smell of oil paintings and the sense of being in the presence of a vast sweep of history. But there’s a part of me that goes to the galleries more because of all the cute Japanese girls lurking by the pictures waiting to be picked up.

In London I do feel a sense of continuity every time I walk into a pub and people are talking the way I grew up talking instead of in some half assed faranglish. I like sitting on the tops of buses or strolling through cool green parks which don’t need endlessly spitting hoses to keep them green. In London I can stand on top of a hill and feel like I’m looking down on the whole world. The problem is that all the things I do here are shot through with nostalgia for a time that doesn’t exist and alienation from the vast majority of speechless people who throng the streets. In Bangkok people always talk to you. You don’t appreciate it if you live there but you miss it when you’re gone.

The thing is that in London I look around and I see and hear a near perfect reconstruction of the place that used to be my home but the key things are all missing. It’s like stepping into a parallel universe version of London which has all the same buildings and culture and people but in which neither my family nor I existed.

I’ve been thinking about that guy in the Thermae and sometimes it seems like he wasn’t really there. He was like one of those annoying little voices in your head who suddenly appeared to me as a real person. I can’t remember what happened to him. When I started talking to the bargirls he just kind of disappeared like a phantom or like one of those Thermae suicide ghosts.

See… Now I’m even missing Thermae ghosts and the hysterical girls who weep uncontrollable drug filled tears when they think they’ve seen them. That might be a sign that it's time to return.

© TurkFist. All rights reserved by the author.