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decreaseI spent about 20 minutes surrounded by motorbike taxi drivers to whom I repeatedly said ‘Bangkok Smile Dental Clinic, Asoke’. Out of the blue, one particularly scraggy individual had a Eureka moment and pulled me onto his bike. The mad little bastard zigzagged through traffic as if unaware of the fact that a mistake would mean the two of us being skinned alive by hot tarmac.
When you’re weaving recklessly through Bangkok on the back of a motorbike or tuk tuk, you reassure yourself with the notion that these lads know what they’re doing. Like fuck they do. We crashed straight into a pedestrian. Our victim took the form of a thirtyish, tall and well-dressed Asian bloke who picked the wrong time and place to cross a road. We probably broke his arm. The poor bastard dropped his shoulder to take the impact when he realised he was going to be hit. He must have leaned into us because he didn’t loose his footing. I however, nearly flipped over the driver before bouncing back into my seat. The driver slapped the guy on the back, said ‘OK!’ in what was more of a set of instructions than a question and sped away leaving the poor cunt rubbing his arm and sucking air through lips so puckered his mouth looked like a cat’s arsehole. In the West, that event would have lodged in the kneck of the courts for three years.
The most shocking aspect of the uniquely Thai adventure from A to B is that now that I’m finally outside the door of the dentist the gaunt, unquestionably drug-addled driver has decided that, despite the fact that I’ve just paid him over the odds, it’s perfectly reasonable for him to stick a grubby, scarecrow hand our for a tip.
“Tip! Tip!” he says, while wrenching his battle-scared moped onto the busy footpath.
“Tip?” I ask, not sure if my hearing has been affected by the traffic collision this rat bag piece of shit inflicted upon me.
“Ya! Give me!” he says with whirling, custard-coloured eyeballs.
“You little rat bag bastard. You’re a smelly little rat bag bastard, you know that right?” I note as I take my wallet out of my back pocket. I had to foresight to load it up with 1,000 Baht notes before leaving my hotel and I decide, seeing as I’m in such a charitable mood, to share some of the wealth.
“Ya, tip sir!” says Shaggy as I whip out five sheets. He’s practically salivating at the prospect of getting his boney mitts on what would probably be enough cash for him to finance that Yabba overdose he’s been heading toward. However, as I roll them into a golf ball and put my arm around his kneck his gleeful expression quickly fades. I’m somewhat surprised at how far I manage to jam them down his pigeon-like throat but not, I’m guessing, as surprised as he is.
When a foreigner fucks with a Thai the insulted party normally disappears meekly only to return with an eager gang of Siam warriors armed to the teeth with bats and knives. I feel confident however, as I stroll through the door of the dental clinic, that the prospect of loosing that uncomfortable ball of cash he is in the painful process of trying to extricate from his oesophagus will mean my buddy Shaggy will cut his loses and head home. Or to some crack den or other in one of Bangkok’s shanty towns.
Two maddening, uncomfortable hours later I walk back into the hazy Bangkok sunshine with an immaculate set of delf. I’m sure though, that their aesthetic value is being ruined by my cracked, hanging lips. They feel huge. They’ve been stretched to fuck by invasive Asian hands and clumps of cotton wool. I stop walking and drag my tongue across them. They’re still fairly numb from the anaesthetic but feel blubbery and twice the size they should be. I’ve a vague idea that this is, perhaps, a normal side-effect of a long stretch in the dentist chair but I’m convinced that if I could see a mirror it would confirm that my lips have, in fact, become a grotesque, out-sized parody of their former selves. That could, for all I know, have been a beauty/dental clinic. The dumb bitch who worked on me could have been left with the impression that I wanted lip enhancement as well as my teeth sorting. I was spaced out to fuck with my whole face as numb as a cripple’s bell end – she could have been doing fucking anything to me. I paw helplessly at them while walking, in no particular direction, until I remember that my hotel is fucking miles away. Not wanting to face the prospect of my second road traffic accident in one day, nor the ugly scene which would no doubt follow, I decide to grab one of the thousands of empty pink taxis going practically nowhere on the upper Asoke Road.
I flop onto the bed as soon as I make it through the door of my hotel room and conk out asleep, face down and fully clothed. When I wake up, in exactly the same position, I’m an hour late because it’s 10 O’clock. By the time I’m finished trashing around in the bathroom in an attempt to get showered and ready I’m an hour-and-a-half late. I bang the door closed behind me and hit the stairs. I’m carrying a latent fear of the elevator after being forced to share it with bell boy Manuel. I can’t fucking believe that was only this morning. I cut through the lobby and land outside onto Soi Five which happily, is just across Sukhumvit Road from Soi Nana.
For some reason, this end of town has come to be dominated by Arabs and Africans. I know they share a continent, but they seem unlikely bed fellows all the same. Most of the Africans are leary looking wideboys, dressed up like they’re staring in a hip hop video. A look inside Bangkok’s Klong Prem prison provides a similar view – it’s swamped with drug mules who arrived from Africa with a belly full of gear totally oblivious to the fact that airport authorities take a particular interest in people from their kneck of the woods. Some must be making it through, all the same, because they’re on every street corner, hassling the cheaper-looking freelance Thai hookers with various seemingly unsatisfactory propositions. The Arabs meanwhile, seem to focus their nefarious attentions on the Thai stall owners which line this end of the Suk, barking demands for ludicrously unreasonable discounts for the various knickknacks on display. Groups of bearded, white-robed geezers with wives following a safe distance behind barge through the cramped, hooker-swamped walkways between the roadside stalls like they own the fucking place. They’re all getting on my tits and running the risk of being slapped, de-robed and fucked bollock naked into the Sukhumvit traffic by the time I catch sight of Soi Nana. Weirdly, it changes my mood instantly. It dawns on me that I’ve had my head inches from the chopping block for the past six months in an attempt to get back here. I’ve conned, fought, killed and mutilated anything that got between me and the place I’m standing in front of now. For a moment I’m elated, before immediately crashing back down to earth. It’s a seedy fucking shithole!
To be continued
© Rob Carry. All rights reserved by the author.
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