default
increase
decreaseThe Spell of Thailand
I wanted the gold, and I sought it;
I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy, I fought it;
I hurled my youth into a grave.
I wanted the gold, and I got it --
Came out with a fortune last fall, --
Yet somehow life's not what I thought it,
And somehow the gold isn't all...
Robert Service
I wanted the girls, and I sought them;
I travelled to countries afar.
Tropical diseases – I fought them;
I wasted my youth in a bar.
Then I wanted real love and I got it –
Came home with a good wife last fall;
Yet somehow life's not what I thought it,
And somehow a wife isn't all.
No! There's the land. (Have you seen it?)
Exotic’s the best word I know,
From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it
To the rice paddies spread out below.
Yes, it’s hot where the palm trees don’t shade it
From the blistering heat of the sun –
Maybe; but there's some as would trade it
For no land on earth – and I'm one.
You come to get girls (damned good reason);
You feel like a sinner at first;
You fornicate hard for a season,
Taking the best with the worst.
It grips you just like drug addiction,
A bargirl becomes your best friend;
And you can’t give her up on conviction
That she’ll treat you right in the end.
I've stood in some lively agogo
That's plumb-full of girls to the brim;
I've watched the girls after the show go
With customers lusting for quim.
And sometime I’ve gone for tag-teaming
With two girls, the best of the crop;
And I've thought that I surely was dreaming,
With two pretty bargirls on top.
The ruudu rawn (summer) was ever
The worse time to be in Bangkok;
The stench from the Chao Phraya river
And the drains backing up when they block.
But I love that lifestyle without harness;
The sois where the Hello Girls call;
The freedom, the fun and the farness –
O God! how I'm stuck on it all.
The ruudu fon (wet season) soaks you,
And floods every thanon and soi,
And the smog from the traffic jams chokes you -
But there’s other things that I enjoy:
The wat that are older than history,
The monks’ meditation and chant;
The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery,
I've bade 'em goodbye – but I can't.
There's the girls, and they’re haunting and haunting;
I think of them till my head swirls.
Yet it isn't the girls that I'm wanting
So much as just finding the girls.
These are pleasures that nobody reckons
In our land so boring and chill;
There's a land – oh, it beckons and beckons,
And I want to go back – and I will.
© Bangkok Byron, 2007. All rights reserved by the author.
Print Article
Send to a friend
Save as PDF