Whisky Lao Blues

Thai cockrels are something else, above all else they are Thai. Hence at 3.00am every day they insisted on screeching sweet nothings at the opposite sex, who may be as far as half a mile away – a noise that penetrated concrete walls and tried to split my head in half. Not good news after ingesting Beer Chang which back then, just about the time it was introduced, cost a 100 baht for five large bottles!

Sane farang would probably grin and bear it, not wanting to interfere in grave matters of Thai culture. However, digging the woman in the ribs, after telling her to get shot of the brother-in-law's chickens, each and every time I was awoken by the wretched things worked a treat – three days all it took for their rapid relocation. Thais sleep with all the innocence of babies and have the same kinda reaction to being forcefully brought back into good old harsh reality. To be fair, freshly slaughtered chicken cooked Petchabun style is absolutely delicious; to this day subsequent KFC offerings make me want to throw up.

It takes a certain mindset to survive six months in the deep Thai countryside, Petchabun swampland in this case. Okay, by the time we inhabited this little corner of paradise it was more like rice paddies surrounded by the odd bit of raised land with houses of various decrepitude on them. Except for the odd Chinese rice merchant who lived in splendor behind high walls. But I always thought of it as swampland as it always seemed to evince a certain primeval nastiness. And the heat totally mind bending, soul destroying... not to mention the hordes of ravenous mosquitoes and homicidal fist-sized cockroaches.

Petchabun province itself has something of a reputation. A Bangkok taxi driver almost swerved off the road when I said I had a woman from there, gave me a pitying look whilst indicating that anywhere else would be much better. And an Australian guy almost had a fit when Petchabun town was mentioned – a fairly dismal city in my own meanderings, except for the beautiful women, but in his case he reckoned he was being set up by a woman and a couple of cut-throats, had to flee the city pronto, literally minutes ahead of an untimely death!

This was after I'd had my six month sojourn in the rice plains. I admit I was a touch concerned when a few of the farang in the immediate district died of heart attacks and some motorcycle taxi youth had to be physically restrained when I walked past. Well, I was living on 200 baht a day, half that for the beer, and there was no dissipation of wealth through the extended family (ie the whole lot of the lazy buggers) other than some free Chang and rice-whisky of a night (my strict self-imposed rule, no drinking before 9.00pm otherwise my liver would've exploded). For sure, all the hard working locals were tucked up in bed by then ready for a 5.00am start, so I was mostly entertaining the dregs of society – but it was always fun to load them up on the nastiest of rice-whisky and watch their heads explode.

One Swiss guy had gone completely local, or at least loco, decided to fit right in by going on a constant diet of rice whisky aided and abetted by a stash of ganja in his underwear! He disappeared for a few months, returning cold stone sober after a stay in a Swiss hospital – back in farangland he'd been introducing his friends to his Thai woman, only she was still in Thailand, a figment of his ruined brain circuits. Sober, he found the area much less to his taste and soon headed back to Pattaya.

Those farang who maintained a grasp of reality soon came to similar conclusions, getting beneath the surface friendliness at some point and sotto voice, whilst the women were engaged in some Laotian screeching, admitting their unease, to which I always agreed being at the tough end of the game with my self-imposed spending limit (this was about ten years ago so call it four hundred baht a day now); a distinctly unfriendly scowl never far away. Papa, for instance, always made damn sure his mates didn't Wai me!

Despite these misgivings, the tremendous omni-present heat threw me into a weird kind of lethargy; my only employment writing the great novel on my portable computer which just about made the afternoons bearable. Luckily, I have always been a bit of a loner and fairly self reliant. There was only one road into the area and it was surrounded by a river, seemed at times to be the very centre of the universe; entering the real world on my weekly trip to Petchabun I always felt a pang of sadness as I crossed the river and exited the area.

One amazing thing about the area, the builders! The lady had spent 60,000 baht to buy some land, over a rai next to the main road. A reasonable Thai price via some distant relatives. She'd then managed to build a two bedroom 60sqm concrete and tile house on it for about 120,000 baht which needed ceilings and tile flooring to finish off but was built to a very strong standard and is still standing unscathed today.  That price only obtained if there was no evidence of farang... the farang price would've been 500,000 - 2,000,000 baht depending on how much money was available, the profit then split between the builder and the girl! Builders in the area grouped together and took it in turns to win farang projects. I was honour bound not to mention how little the house had cost to other farang!

That was all bad enough (and someone else's dosh) but getting some tiling done was a major achievement, all kinds of silly quotes given. And even just going to buy the tiles, they would double the price and split the profit if you weren't careful. I had already priced everything in Bangkok so had ballpark figures that I passed on to the ever despairing woman. For sure, I ended up paying over the going rate for just one guy to do the work (250 baht a day, I think) but only enough to entice him to break ranks and put some rice (more likely whisky) on his table.

Oddly, where the immediate family was involved, they would pitch in and be happy enough with some decent food, whisky and beer at the end of the day... but I always forced a fair amount of baht on them just to keep things equitable! I wasn't trying to rip-off anyone (though no doubt my reputation spread far and wide) just be fair to both them and myself. Fair play rather than making massive face for themselves something country Thais have never comprehended. It only takes one ignorant, rich farang to ruin everything for all the others.

Spending 200 baht a day for six months you can save an incredible amount if you still have an external income source (house rental in the UK in my case). No English language TV, no Bangkok Post or Nation, nothing intelligible on the radio and no TOT phone line so no internet, my only connection to civilized society a weekly trip to Petchabun town where there was one internet shop and the odd copy of the Bangkok Post. The only advantage of the being so isolated, could crank the stereo system right up!

The nights  easy enough, beer and wild, wild sex... having sent the chickens off god knows where and banned the dogs (they were probably wondering when I'd start on the family), it was actually possible to sleep to ten or eleven in the morning. The toilet, after being tiled,  relatively civilized although some joker had installed an oil can in the ground to collect the waste, which needed bi-weekly clean-outs at 100 baht a time – I'm sure they were taking the piss on that, too (sorry!).

A fifteen minute motorcycle ride away, the nearest town offered a small market, with wondrous, pre-bird flu grilled chicken and an array of fresh fruit. My main meal, fried rice made with olive oil and a wide array vegetables (making sure only bottled water was added to the rice as I didn't fancy collected rainwater off the roof); absolutely delicious if you make sure plenty of water is added to the rice before boiling to fluff it up a bit. Not really to Thai tastes, they much preferred a collection of free food, aka fried insects (fried cockroaches smell like septic waste – literally), fish from the polluted river and god knows what else. I made some face by happily consuming the odd whole Durian – lovely!

The downside of having my specially prepared meal, it would've been dead easy to add in the odd bit of arsenic or rat poison, which seemed to be the ethos with regards to farang in the immediate area! I am still here so I am probably being a bit nasty for no sane reason but just say it would not have surprised me if it happened. The upside of the sojourn in the country, I lost more than two inches from my waist even with the heavy beer consumption, which meant,  at forty, my body was back to where it was when I was a slender eighteen year-old. Also, arriving alone in Bangkok after six months in the country, I had the kinda wide-eyed innocence that b-gals love; they were all over me in the bars thinking I was a newbie rather than an old-hand!

The thing with living in these conditions, and only having a marginal grasp of Thai, you are solely dependent on the woman for the family's opinion of you, a lady under huge pressure to make face for everyone within five miles of the house... and there are only two ways to do that, either spread lots of lovely dosh around or take a Thai husband. As far as I was aware, neither of these went down but I could feel the pressure building on the woman as time went by, although I did allow various family members to erect wooden shacks on the back of the land (yes, jolly nice of me, I know) on the proviso that they didn't make any noise in the mornings. You can almost imagine a comic opera at 6.00am, with the Thais prancing around silently whilst making rude gestures in the direction of our bedroom – all these dictates only possible on the conviction that there was a lot more money to be extracted from Mr Farang!

We had aunty and four kids right at the back, plus her meandering husband who was reputed to have killed a lot of Cambodians in his youth (why I don't know, he had a useless plot of land on the Thai/Cambodian border which he was still trying to sell). I don't think I exchanged one word with him but aunty was friendly enough and her daughters cute but too young. Then there was the second sister about fifty yards away plus her nice Chiang Mai husband and unruly kid – this sister was a little tubby and not very attractive but had snared a handsome young guy whilst the much more attractive gals in the family were stuck with forty year-old guys like me. Go figure. Nope, neither of these men were her husband in disguise.

By the way, I was informed that the owner of the land gets the house at the front, whilst various family members are strictly allocated spaces based on their seniority in the family hierarchy. Whilst not to Western tastes, having a strong, extended family unit as a fall-back position seems like a good idea in a third world country – as they say, be kind to people on the way up as you may need them on the way down! But it is all a bit extreme when a farang gets involved, an almost communistic hatred of someone having access to a lot more dosh that everyone else; an almost suicidal urge to level down everyone.

Basic rule of survival, keep your money invested outside of Thailand and never admit to having serious wealth. Any money taken into Thailand is considered by Thais as fair game, after all it is then (physically) Thai money so it must belong to them not you! On the other hand, if you can confuse them by living more or less on the same level as the Thais, you can get away with lots of cheap sex... of course, you have to show you are serious by devoting yourself to the girl of the moment.

After six months of living on a pittance by Western standards (but two to three times the average income in the locale), and a small amount spent on finishing off the house, I could feel the tension rising to unbearable heights. Female food vendors were fine, the local babes were fine, often trying to knock the gal out of the way to say hello (I have very white skin which got them all riled up...) and even the dogs often ended as supplicants on their bellies, eyes full of fear at the strange farang apparition – but like the Thais themselves transformed and transmuted when night fell.

This was basically reptile country where the only thing that counted was survival... what really got to me was that often there would be one hard working guy in the family who provided for a whole host of layabouts who would whip themselves into action once or twice a year for things like rice cutting and planting, spending the rest of the time lounging around, ingesting whatever stimulants – usually rice whisky – were cheaply or freely available. No wonder the industrious and hard working Chinese managed to enrich themselves, the Thais just wanted to have fun.

Unfortunately, I got the distinct impression that I had outstayed my welcome. Scowls, actual impression of barely restrained violence, from the local male layabouts, I could just about laugh off... but then I got a hold of rumours that they were saying I was gay or even a katoey, despite the fact that I was bonking the babe for an hour or two each and every night. Unable to directly rip me off or steal my women I suppose it was the only way they could keep their macho bravado intact.

Of course, Thai women are infamous liars and she could've been telling them all kinds of junk to stroke their ego's. The old man, often off his head after a week on a rice whisky diet, often amused himself by shaking his fist at me and spitting out a litany of Laotian curses. Bear in mind that I had been explicitly  told not to give him any loose change as he would only spend it on getting drunk out of his head. Not that I would take anyone who pissed in their trousers seriously! When he got completely out of control, Mama brought him back to sanity by heavily slapping him around! Happy Thai families! Luckily one of the other daughters had built the parents a reasonable house some distance away so they were not right in our faces all the time.

Then the concrete table and chairs on the veranda disappeared, the usual meeting place for my nightly alcohol sessions with the locals. I had to wear thick jeans, long sleeved tee-shirt and boots to keep the mosquitoes from eating me alive even though there were the usual coils and heated pads in evidence – they were as crazy for farang blood as the Thais were for farang money, a real feeding frenzy if you relaxed for a moment. It must've taken at least six of them to lift the table. Asking where it had gone got me nowhere; a gentle Thai hint that my days were numbered and everyone was distancing themselves from me – you know you are in trouble when Thais refuse free alcohol!

So all a little bit edgy but then the real nastiness cut in. Despite being firstly accused of being gay I now found myself under scrutiny as a pedophile! Where the f..k that came from I don't know. One of her sisters hurriedly took her daughter away on one occasion and a couple of local teachers turned up to check me out! Possibly, the babe bitching that I was into young girls (as in twenty year-olds – I admit it!) and wild extrapolations from that.

This was the kind of place where gossip spread like wildfire and things could easily get totally out of control, especially as I was stranded miles from civilization – just to get to the Bangkok bus a thirty minute motorcycle ride! Being naturally paranoid I had visions of being set up and blackmailed into handing over a large chunk of cash. Basically if you were ever accused of being a pedophile – however unjustly – it could totally f..k your life, with repercussions back in farangland with horrendous consequences even when completely innocent.

This kind of nonsense made me sick at heart for a while and then ENRAGED, what a bunch of wankers – basically totally determined to extract a dose of money from me whatever the consequences. Luckily, the woman was still more or less on my side, whatever horrendous pressure she was under from the locals, and I was able to flee the scene, reputation and wallet intact. But if she was smitten by a local guy and nastier at heart then I would've been well done over. I cried myself to sleep a few times over this, totally f..king vile people!

Bear in mind, if you were a good farang and handing out lots of dosh then the welcome mat would be out, the Thais, on the surface, the nicest people on the planet. Literally, the toast of the village! But most people with a decent income simply wouldn't want to live out in the middle of nowhere in relatively primitive conditions with the kinda soul destroying heat and nasty insect life that could easily drive someone right off their heads!

Me, I could take it again, but only if I was absolutely sure of the woman – and, these days, I doubt if that would ever happen; soul too battle scarred.

Bangkok Bull