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Well, My Dears, thirty days hath September, and on Soi Bangla this year it rained on every one of them. This is the winter of our discontent, the month when a Soi Bangla Debutante will sit on one bar stool with her bare feet up on another, pointing at anybody who comes in the door, and buy her own damn drinks. Most of September is ruled by Virgo, which is nobody’s sign on Soi Bangla, until the last week which is ruled by Libra, a sign of even exchange which has no house on the Street of Shame.

What few visitors braved the wind and rain for a snack at the Cafeteria of Sin found their spirits dampened more than their 2-for-50-Baht T-shirts. A flurry of Italians were left over from August, a clutch of Chinese, and a few Japanese, usually two women travelling together. The oil field workers were more than usually visible in the Billabong Bar, The Kiwi Bar, Faulty Towers and Bruno’s Grillstuberl as they wrapped their legs around their stools and their fists around another beer, counting the days until the chopper takes them back to the Gulf. The Thai Navy made an appearance, but nobody gets rich selling Mekhong and Coke.

* * * * *

All month our guests slogged though a lethargy only slightly less thick than the mud left over from our municipal government’s latest ill-concieved sewer construction effort, which, now halted mid-course by the men in the snappy tailored uniforms, threatens to cripple pedestrians and mar the dance floors until well into, or past, next year. My Precious Lambs, where the sewage is going now is a thought far too troubling for the mind of your simple correspondant, who prefers to learn naughty words in Burmese from the laborers on such projects while the authorities arrest foreign businessmen for not having work permits.

But I can tell you, as a dame who’s been around the block on both sides of the street, that the comic opera of the Sewer That Wouldn’t Die is a mere side-show to the grand circus of The Fall Of The Patong Empire. Used to be, when this beach was nothing but a banana plantation and I was but a slip of a girl, that a few strong families shared the reins of power with a few greedy bureaucrats. But My Sweeties, the stakes have gone up and there’s a lot more in this girl’s slip and a lot more in the kitty than those suggestively shaped berries these days, and the old boys who pulled the strings just a few years ago have seemingly lost control.

From the unfinished public works to the bullet that passed through the doorman on Sept. 15th to cross the room, carom off the bar, bounce off the wall and imbed itself in the Men’s Room sign of a certain popular bar, anarchy is the name of the game on the Road to Ruin. If it had been high season, that bullet would have passed through more people than just the doorman, as it is, it served notice to the Dream Merchants on Soi Bangla that a group of seventeen year old punks from Nakhon Sri Tammarat have staked out their turf at the mouth of Soi Sunset, and a claim on a portion of the profits.

Money is the root of all evil, and my favorite root to boot, but it may be that since the local authorities no longer collect their monthly bribe for each snooker table in Patong, they are no longer taking as firm an interest in protecting the lives and property of the local business community. The only light spot in the gloom is that the new punks in their fake leather jackets, fake Levis, fake Ray-Bans and pathetically tiny motorcycles made their move at a time that there are no profits to be shared.

* * * * *

But amid the gloom and drizzle, and despite your sequined oracle’s dire predictions of flood, fire and famine, the normal people go about their business. Kevin Costner ate at Baan Rim Pa this month, and they still played Buffalo Soldier ad nauseum in the Reggae Bar. T.D. Morin, director of the Phuket Gibbon Rehabilitation Project and familiar face on Soi Bangla, laid his head down on the bar in Cat Balou in the wee hours of August 30, and never woke up. His last mortal vision, after 53 years, was a wall full of bottles, a wooden bust of a cowboy, and a Harley Davidson Fatboy poster. Every evening in September the management placed a fresh Seng Thip and Coke in front of his regular seat, and played Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here.

Those great lumbering beasts in the Hash House Harriers will hold their 500th run on Saturday, the 28th of October, with celebrations covering the whole weekend. If you can find anybody sober at the Expat Hotel, they’ll tell you all about it.

* * * * *

The passengers sang hymns as the Titanic sank, but the Soi Bangla Debs are telling jokes, like this one:

How is bungee jumping like having relations with a professional? It’s kind of expensive, considering it takes less than a minute, and if the rubber breaks, you may be in big trouble.

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.