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1

The Hello Bar was a vicious, evil and violent place. It's reputation as a den of iniquity was unparalleled amongst the backpackers and hippies and serious travellers of Khao San Road. According to legend this was a place where, on a good night, you could witness drug trafficking, gang warfare, and, if you were really lucky, the occasional bloody murder. If this was a story about drug trafficking, gang warfare or bloody murders then the Hello Bar backdrop might be more apt. But this is a story about women or a woman to be more specific. It's a true story, if that matters, and, because I have no shame, I have left everyone's names exactly as they are.

Now there are some travellers who have set out to muddy the reputation of the Hello bar. Minor incidents have assumed epic proportions and urban legends abound. Swordfights, gun-fights, West-Side-Story style knife fights punctuated with a bit of dancing. Amputated limbs found hidden in dustbin liners just by the back exit. Diners who, while eating were given a local anaesthetic by a midget surgeon, and had their kidneys silently and delicately removed. Lord Lucan sighted doing Zorba style Greek dancing on tabletops. Kilos of heroin found floating around bowls of tom yam to a chorus of "Waiter, waiter, what's this smack with a London street value of two million quid doing in my soup?". It's not for me to shatter such myths. I know how events, seemingly unlikely in the outside world, become de rigeur in Bangkok, but I never saw any evidence to corroborate these myths.

I did see a little trouble at the Hello Bar (and by a little I mean a little as when a fight breaks out I either duck behind a table or hide under a woman). Usually the fights were between gentlemen warring over the attentions of some deaf prostitutes. Deaf prostitutes pretty much ran Khao San Road back in the early nineties. They didn't have all that much visible competition. Oh, granted there were a few tissue paper breasted katoeys who used to roam the midnight hour side soi's hunting for any lone young traveller cut off from his herd. But apart from the odd few freelancers that was it. The deaf hookers ran the place and they liked to hang out at the Hello Bar whenever possible. They'd cause fights beguiling men with their combination of erotically charged sign language and theatrical winks. Many men came to blows over the dubious honour of a quickie in some roach ridden fifty baht guest house's short time room.

Not all conflicts were down to the hard of hearing though. There were also a few major cultural misunderstandings. A Nigerian Gentleman saying "I take this ketchup, Okay." in the tone of a statement rather than a request caused great consternation amongst a table of American backpackers who felt that the correct protocol for borrowing ketchup had not been adhered to. A row ensued. Voices were raised. Violence was threatened. Had it not been for the timely arrival of some tourist police obviously trained in international diplomacy the incident could have led to an outbreak of hostilities and a knock on effect on world oil prices.

Personally, I quite liked the Hello Bar. It had a lot going for it. It had a relaxed, easy, hassle free, atmosphere. The chef knew how to fry an egg without it being too oily, too crispy, too runny, or too hard. In fact for fried food it was pretty much without equal in Bangkok. I think the chef might have done a year on exchange with a chef from a Kentish Town greasy spoon. (How many Thais know how to prepare a fried egg, sunny side up, be honest). It was also open twenty four hours and served anybody without judgement. In fact there were odd nights back in my Khao San Road days when the Hello Bar was a serious rival to the Thermae for sleazy and violent fun.

The story of my involvement with Da, the Poison Dwarf, began on one sunny December afternoon in 1991. Bottles of Mekhong, coke, buckets of ice, plates of fragrant sauced chicken wings and deep fried bananas were piling up on our table as a celebration of near death reigned.

The night before had been one of the worst of my life. I tried to tell it in another story but I couldn't do justice to the depth of the madness of drunken Thai hookers going to war. Some of the hookers in question were my friends (still are my friends come to think of it). But I was like a lost child amid all the vomiting, blood and breaking glass. I'd left them celebrating the fact that they were all mad at the Thermae the previous evening, come back to the relative sanity of the Khao San Road and slept. I'd been going to grab a late breakfast and write some postcards when I spotted them all sitting there in a booth next to the entrance of the Hello Bar looking as if they hadn't stopped drinking all night. My Australian friend Billy had joined them which was a relief, I didn't want to be the only farang drinking with that lot. And so had Da.

What drew me back to this drunken revelry was not the chance for more drunken revelry, but Ae. Ae with her blue black Khmer locks and high warm cheekbones. Ae with her peerless eyes that would glitter wickedly as if she was always silently laughing at life. Ae who I had spent days holed up with in a cheap short time room and wanted to spend the rest of my life holed up in a cheap short time room with. Even though I guessed that she was probably on the way to being just as mad as the rest of them I wasn't ready to walk away.

There were about ten of them, all shouting over each other, all trying to top each others heroic interpretation of the previous night's events. Thai women seem to have no trouble repeating the same story over and over again within a short space of time. It's one of their less appealing habits.

When I had walked into the bar it was Nan rather than Ae who called me over. Nan was the kind of leader. The one most at ease with the idea of violent death. Strangely she didn't seem to think of me as the farang who had cowered in the corner wanting to be somewhere else. She remembered me as having been somehow a part of their heroic escapade. There was much shoving up to make room for me at the table and that was when I first saw Da. Small and sweet with a face full of chickenpox scars. She moved out the way for me to sit next to Ae. Ae kissed me briefly but passionately and then went back to talking to her friends.

It's hard to describe Da. She had the smile of some angelic but mistreated child while her small body was all erotic curves. She had the body of one of those sculptures of sexually entangled women you see outside certain Hindu temples. It didn't at first strike me how small she was. Most Thai women seemed small to me. Ae was small, Noi was tiny, but Da was almost a miniature. A couple of inches short of five foot I guess. She wasn't a dwarf, the nickname came from Billy, though she would have fit comfortably into a large-ish suitcase.

As for Ae, well Ae was on the way off to richer pastures. I felt it in my bones but couldn't get it to my brain. Nan, Noi, Bun, and the rest of our party all felt closer to me after I had seen them at their worst. They started sharing quite intimate facts about their lives with me over the next few weeks. Ae, though, was getting more distant. She still rested on me and drew me into kisses which were as expertly intimate as ever but I cold feel her lack of interest. It was like we were married or something.

Mind you, the real married couple here was Billy and Bun, she treated him with open contempt most of the time. The fact that he was now squeezed between her and the wall in a space more suitable for a deceased pilchard than a fourteen stone ex-boxer was typical. I think she did love him. Things went haywire for them later and I believe the poison dwarf played a role in that, but that's another story. She must have loved him a little because she stayed with him and you don't stay with a fifty year old foreigner with no money unless there's some kind of emotional thing going on. Bun was twenty but she had the sort of looks that would have made you place her a few years older. All the same she lost a lot of face staying with him at all for no money.

"Jo." Said Billy, voice lowered to the point of a whisper. "It's a pity you can't get that Ae away from this lot."

"Tell me about it." I said.

"With me and Bun. It's fine when we're alone. But when there's a fucking audience there's no respect. Trouble is your Thai bird is a bit of a pack animal. Thai blokes are the same. I mean, like, you, you came out here on your own. I bet wherever you go you could be just as happy in your own company or speaking to one of your mates. But your Thai isn't like that. They're like wolves or hyenas. They got to run with the pack. She might go off like she went with you a couple of days ago but once she's back with the herd you may as well forget it. I mean. How lot have this lot been drinking. A day. Me, I don't know about you, but I need to crash out every once in a while. Get a bit of peace and quiet and space. But this lot... Fuck knows when this little party'll end."

"Yeah. I think I'm hitting culture shock now. The glamour's wearing off a bit."
"Don't think too much. That's the one good piece of advice the Thais give you. Don't get too attached to any of them. It won't last too long anyway. I mean the second you go back home she'll be back working. She'll forget about you and go on to the next farang. But you can't let that get to you. Just enjoy it when you can get it."