Dirty Dancing

Ivan has had a local troop of dancers come put on a Khon performance at his place for years, whenever he can get a group of tourists to sign up for the Khan Toke dinner. His was one of the first places here to do so, but with all the big new hotels bringing in Thai rock stars and Filipino jazz bands, he’s decided that changes need to be made if he’s to remain competitive. Ivan is deathly afraid of seeing his guesthouse fall into Tattooed Backpacker Purgatory.

The dance troop has so much time and money invested in classical costumes and choreography that they had vetoed his original plan - that they dress in slashed Levi’s and begin the set with a tribute to Michael Jackson. They had, however, agreed to let him alter the one-page Xeroxed synopsis of the Ramakien which is given to each diner before the show, since most Westerners are unfamiliar with the story and wouldn’t know the difference anyway.

This, then, is Ivan’s version of the ancient epic of the struggle between good and evil, a myth that forms the basis of most Southeast Asian art produced in the last three thousand years.

Nang Seeda is a beautiful and guileless girl from the North working as a receptionist at a big hotel in Phuket. Nang Seeda is engaged to Phra Ram, a pilot for Thai International. Phra Ram is tall and handsome and good as gold, though he’s about as deep as a petrie dish.

When our story begins, Phra Ram is away on a flight to Katmandu. Nang Seeda is left unprotected on the night shift in the dangerous environs of the hotel lobby. Enter Totsagan, an Arab businessman with 10 heads and 20 arms. While the maids are busy removing the liquor from the honor bar in his suite, Nang Seeda must entertain him at the desk. He falls for her, of course, and begins on a campaign to woo, wed and bed the hapless girl.

Over the next few days Totsagan showers Nang Seeda with gifts and flattery, promising to make good her father’s debts, send her kid sister to school, and give her granny an entire betel nut plantation. The day he presents her with a pre-paid cell phone, she hears news that Phra Ram’s plane has had an unfortunate meeting with a mountain top in Nepal, and in her grief agrees to come with Totsagan to his desert realm.

Of course, conflict being the heart of any drama, Phra Ram’s plane did not actually meet a sudden death in the snowy peaks. What in fact had happened was that the entire crew was grounded by a bout of intestinal distress brought on by a steady diet of rock-hard fish balls and soggy spring rolls, and our hero has been languishing, incommunicado, in a mission hospital in New Delhi. He returns to find his beloved about to be whisked off by the treacherous Totsagan, who has by now become bored with the simple Nang Seeda and merely wants her to work in his harem laundry, chained all day to an ironing board pressing the wrinkles out of hundred dollar bills.

Phra Ram enlists the aid of Hanuman, a wily tuk-tuk driver who spends his days asleep on his rig waiting for tourists outside the hotel, a greasy brochure advertising the elephant shows placed over his face to keep the sun out of his eyes. Hanuman promises to help Phra Ram in exchange for a thousand baht and a pair of real Levi’s from the States. The next time Totsagan leaves the hotel, Hanuman entices him into his tuk-tuk, which is drawn by a team of sacred lions, with the promise of showing him a nightspot where all the girls are bona fide virgo intacto, who nonetheless have been forced to view a thousand German porno tapes so that they are well versed in the arts of love.

Hanuman takes Totsagan on a spree, and in the course of the evening craftily gets the unsuspecting villain roaring drunk. In the wee hours, Totsagan lets slip the fatal information that he can only be defeated by destroying his American Express Gold Card, which he keeps locked in his safety deposit box back at the hotel. Hanuman knows that this is really no obstacle at all and he takes the now comatose letch back to his room.

Wrapping a hotel towel around his head and feigning a Middle Eastern accent, Hanuman goes the desk and convinces the night duty manager that he is Totsagan. As soon as he has the precious card, he returns to Totsagan’s room, to find that Phra Ram has come there in a last desperate bid to save his fiancee, only to find himself surrounded by burly Semitic bodyguards in Armani suits. At that moment Hanuman arrives with an army of nak laeng: guys who rent jet-skis and sell ganja on the beach.

It looks like a stand-off, until Hanuman produces the Amex card and tears it asunder before the startled eyes of Totsagan, his minions and Phra Ram, who as usual has no idea what’s going on. Seeing their boss suddenly deprived of the basis of his power, the body-guards rush from the room to the hotel tour desk, frantic to book seats back to Bangkok and the safety of the Grace Hotel.

Totsagan slinks off to the bathroom to get an aspirin, vowing revenge, and Phra Ram pays off Hanuman’s "army” with a dinner of somtam and Mehkong. He is reunited with Nang Seeda, who asks if she’s allowed to keep the cell phone that Totsagan gave her.

© Steve Rosse. All rights reserved by the author.

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