A Close Shave

This is what happened.

Drinking in a bar in a rural Thai/Cambodian border village. About six or seven large Leos inside the old system and starting to feel slightly drunk. The bar is owned by a Danish guy who is a true gentleman in the regency sense of the word; he has no visible means of support. Surely this bar doesn’t pay for itself let alone provide a living for the aforementioned Dane, along with his wife, an alcoholic, and their two year old child who displays symptoms of fetal insults. He shakes, the Dane that is, until his first beer at about 4pm. He watches that clock like a hawk, unlike his wife who drinks from the moment she gets up in the morning. Her poison is lao kao or white whiskey, the cheapest and quickest way to get drunk in the kingdom and she not so much as likes, but has to get drunk on it all day everyday. Man, she drinks it… she drinks it like it’s going out of fashion faster than the leopard print T-Shirt that hangs loosely over tired braless breasts. Self respect had left her stranded in the comfort of despair many years ago.

But I have to get back to the story.

Earlier in the evening there was a dispute with a local kid who wanted to shoot pool for free. The kid vanished and we thought no more about it. The drinks kept arriving and we kept drinking them. Everybody was well and truly oiled. The atmosphere had accelerated past jolly, beyond folly and parked itself in the parking space between total inebriation and abandonment.

We were talking about geese when it happened. One of the local expats had invested in a farm somewhere or other and wanted to sell some chicks (or whatever it is they call baby geese) ... All four of us were interested in purchasing a bird each for, I guess, novelty reasons.

The Dane, a Belgium, a guy from Bristol and myself all wanted a piece of this poultry investment. Just as we were sorting out who wanted which chick (whatever they call the little peckers) and how much we were willing to pay for the fledglings, something happened out of the blue.

A Cambodian guy appeared from nowhere and smashed a large beer bottle (Chang, I believe) over the back of the Dane’s head. Bottles and glasses flew off the table. Blood splattered my shirt. Claret everywhere. Chaos. I stood up and picked up a chair in an act of defense more than anything else. A samurai sword sliced a leg off from the chair. Two more Cambodians appear. Samurai sword brandishes his weapon and the other points a gun at my head. The weapon fires, misses. Must of flinched. I walk slowly back first into the bar.

Then things become clearer… the Cambodian with the gun is a teenager. He is wearing a face mask. A ski mask I guess we would call it, not that much skiing to be had in this neck of the woods. But, I digress… I can see from his eyes that he is probably more scared than I am. We both backed away… slowly…

The police arrive and I tell them in Thai what happened and where the boys came from. There is a dangerous bar opposite that is mafia run. They are reluctant to investigate. I realize instantly that it was an alcoholic mistake to point the finger across the road.

I walk back to my office and bolt the doors shut. I am suffering from panic whenever there is a noise outside. There is a knock at the door, I freeze, and then I hear the Dane's voice. I open the door. He is standing with a bandage on his head. By his side is a pretty Thai girl I recall works in the bar. “Bouey” or something like that… “Thought you might need some company,” he says.

I did.

© Sisterray. All rights reserved by the author.