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Well, My Dears, the month of August lived up to its patrician Roman namesake with legions of Italian tourists parading their phalanxes up and down the length of Soi Bangla. It’s been years since I slept with an airline pilot, but I can always tell when Al Italia has made a deal with Thai Air on a cheap round trip from Milan by counting the pairs of Farragamos slapping the buckled paving stones on the Via Veneris.

This year most of those pricey pairs of penny loafers will have to be discarded, because after a week of going barefoot on Patong Beach in the monsoon season every unwitting touristo has globs of number three crude oil stuck between his aquiline toes, and besides keeping the Holiday Inn room maids busy at night scraping it off the lobby floors and scrubbing it out of the carpeting the nasty, gooey stuff gets into footwear and makes the most stylish silk socks as uncomfortable as bubble gum in a brassiere.

This time of year a walk on the beach by moonlight ends either with a kerosene foot-bath poolside or black skid-marks on the bed linen, and since oil is a solvent on latex, perhaps more embarrassing damage. But My Pets, the sludge on our beaches is a necessary effect of the tankers bringing oil to the thirsty mopeds of Rangoon and the buses of Madras, and every visitor to Phuket who leaves behind a pair of ruined pumps can take solace in the knowledge that he or she has contributed in a small way to the health of the world’s fossil fuel industry.

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The annual influx of summer-weary Europeans has come as a welcome relief to the harried business community of Patong, since the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans who make up the bulk of the off-season trade tend to stand gawking in doorways despite the pleadings of the most persuasive tout. They only spend their cash on bags of fresh fruit and tickets to the Butterfly Garden, while the European FIT’s will brush that same tout aside in their hurry to come inside, and spend five hundred Baht notes like they were made out of paper. From King’s Fashion, the oldest tailor shop in Patong, at one end, to The Firehouse, the newest a-go-go at the other, Lira are turning into Baht faster than a “legitimate businessman” turns into a politician, and everyone’s turning a profit the Apian Way.

The pariah dogs are pulling wads of cold pasta out of the trash bins and the gutters are awash in body-temperature Chianti but life goes on as it always has along the Street of Dreams. Only in Patong could a place called the Viking Bar offer Mexican Food, and the toy counter at Central offer a plastic robot called “TITANUS”. Only here could an Italian greet a street vendor from Nakhon Narok like a long lost brother. One has been here three days and speaks ten words of Thai, the other has been here three years and has ten words of Italian, but the warm tropical night makes them capice and the rate of exchange makes them co-conspiritors.

The Rock Hard a-go-go is gobbling up the lion’s share of the trade, and some ungenerous souls say it’s because Larry went back to America for a while, but I’d bet my stars and garters (all I’ve got on at the moment) that it owes more to Ira’s Bar-B-Q and the best location on the street. The new ground-floor venue can’t hurt as well, and it must be kinder to Big Bill’s delicate dimpled knees. Darling Karen gets the Accessory Of The Month award for her stunning chrome bus conductor’s “clicker”, as she stands by the door counting punters-in and punters-out. They don’t call her Mistress of Discipline for nothing, My Precious Lambs.

*

The more things change, the more they remain the same, and the two-year-old child of a street beggar can still play in the middle of the sidewalk oblivious to the crowds hurrying past; the most popular form of video entertainment is still American Wrestling; people still play that game of pounding nails into a block of wood despite the inadvisability of handing a twnty-ounce hammer to a man soused on alcohol and frustrated lust; and the best outfits on the Road To Ruin are still to be seen at the mouth of Soi Crocodile, which is still the only place on the whole street where tourists must plow through a crowd of “women” just to pass along the sidewalk. Seenuan Bar at Bangla Center still has that poor, pitiful gibbon on the bar, and Woodstock Bar, despite the name, is still thoroughly German, right down to its Kaiser Bier beer-mats.

But amid the hurley-burley the normal folk go about their business, and the Lions Club of Phuket Pearl and Lions Club Andaman Sea will celebrate the installation of new board members on the 9th of Sept. at Thavorn Palm Beach at 7:00 PM. They’ll be joined by the Lions Club Georgetown Penang and Lions Club Kuala Lumpur, and invite any other Lions visiting Phuket to attend.

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And Vaudeville is not dead, it’s nursing a beer on Soi Bangla. For some reason Lawyer Jokes were the norm in August, and here’s my favorite: What’s the difference between O.J. Simpson and Christopher Reeve? O.J. will walk.

It’s going to be a long, hot month, My Dears.

 

 

Note: These old columns were sent in by the author with permission to publish them here. We hope you enjoy them.

 

© Iris Criswell. All rights reserved by the author.