On Tour in China and Thailand

After my two tours as a tour-manager in China I would have one week before my next to two tours in Thailand. So after my two tours of duty in China I finally could go back "home" as I started to refer to Thailand. While going back to Thailand the airplane was going too slow and the bus not fast enough. And to my disappointment even Wanna did not pick me up from the airport. And my hotel "New World" was too far from where I wanted to be; Sukhumvit Soi 4. So after a quick shower I took a taxi to the place where I wanted to be; the "Golden Beer Bar" at Soi Nana Tai. I did look around but did not see Wanna, but of course she spotted me in a split-second. And when she walked to me with her big and happy smile it was quickly forgotten that she did not pick me up at the airport. This is welcome in Thailand! She is the one who much later once said to me "You are not in love with Thailand, but with Thai girls".

As it is my first night in town I want to meet all my old "friends" and maybe meet some new friends also. So I start to explore Sukhumvit. And at the end of the evening I also walk to Nana Plaza to "G-Spot a-go-go". When I'm eating something just outside the door of "G-Spot" someone shouts to me "Hey you!" It's a friend of Simuang and she is sitting next to her! I did not recognize her and she did not recognize me. She is not dancing anymore and she even changed and became a little bit fat. We have a little chat and I take a walk into Hollywood a-go-go, but the girl I met the last time on my last night in Bangkok (I still refer to her as number 172 as even after 5 yrs I still do not know her name) is not working this night. Or at least she is not working inside the bar. I walk to G-Spot again and tell Simuang I have bought two watches in Hong Kong for her. She wants me to get it now but I tell her it's too far to go to my hotel and that I will bring it to her tomorrow.

The next day I first visited "The Bus Stop" beer garden and when Dow sees me she takes a little run and she smiles. She tells me she is happy to see me. This also gives you a big burst for your ego, when a beautiful girl of 21(at least she told me she is 21) is so happy to see you. Or at least pretends to be so. After that I go to the room of Simuang and she is already awake and is putting up her make-up downstairs in "G-Spot". So I walk inside and I give her the two watches and she is very happy. We talk a little bit and then I go again to return in the evening.

When I return that evening she is working at the door and I’m helping her to welcome customers. This is sanuk and fun for everybody. Simuang is very happy and tells me that she is my madam now and that she will take care of me. So when I go inside G-Spot I have the best and most happy service I ever had. Four beautiful girls, half-naked, are chatting and flirting with me. The little girl from the "Golden Beer Bar" is now also working in G-Spot but is very shy and does not like it that I see her naked. But she looks very good naked! Later when I walk outside I meet some other girls from last time and they even recognize me and say hello. This is a very happy evening for me, it looks like I have friends here and it seems that's all I want? I think of the day that a friend and I went to the beach in Hong Kong and talked about our lives. At that moment I asked myself, "Why should I go back to Holland and work in an office when I can sit on the beach in Hong Kong?" Now I realize that being alone is shit even on a beautiful beach in Hong Kong or in a Go-Go bar full of sexy girls. Because yes, I might think I have friends here, but they are only working.

This morning I had breakfast at The Bus Stop and had a nice chat with Dow. She ordered the wrong breakfast for me (ABF instead off CBF) and she has eaten the most of it. When she was eating the eggs the yellow of the eggs was coming out of her mouth, which I find quiet horny to see. She is laughing because I watch how she is eating. Dow is 21 years old now and she wants to have a boyfriend at 22 and wants to be married when she is 23. When I tell her that I will come back when she is 23 so we can marry she tells me she wants to marry a Thai and not a falang. She does not like falangs. Her Thai boyfriend must be a student and he must have long hair. Jeez, a hard copy of Khun Kob. Are girls just as simple as guys? But what the hell, Dow looks very sexy today in her short skirt. The 8 days free between my China tours and my Thailand tours were mostly spent at Nana Plaza in G-Spot with Simuang and sometimes at Golden Beer Bar with Wanna.

A new visa in Padang Basar

As I am on a tourist visa in Thailand I have to extend my visa, but that is only for 10-days and I would like to stay 2 weeks more. So I will make the famous visa-run to Malaysia. I decided to take the night-train to the border, get into Malaysia for 5-min and then quickly return to Hat Yai in Thailand. So at 2 o’clock in the afternoon I am in the train at Hua Lungpong waiting to start my journey to Malaysia. I end my visa run by entering Malaysia at the railway border and then walk to the exit border to enter Thailand again. I take a motorbike taxi and go to a little Thai village where I take the bus to Hat Yai. Here I take a taxi to the center of town. When I tell the taxi driver I want to fly back to Bangkok he wants to bring me to a good place to buy the ticket. This way I get a free tour of the town and we talk about his work here in Hat Yai. After I have the ticket to fly back in the evening (so I can pickup Wanna at the airport when she arrives from Singapore) I take a walk in the center. A lot of things have changed here. As it starts to rain a little I take a lunch in the food hall of a shopping mall. After that I go to a barbershop where a nice girl is working. I stay there all afternoon and I almost fall in love with this girl. She is very nice and she would like to go with me to Songkhla another time when I would come back in Hat Yai. If I did not want to pick up Wanna tonight I would have never left Hat Yai. In the evening I take the airplane back and after my arrival at the domestic terminal I walk to the international terminal and wait for Wanna. She is one of the last to leave the arrival terminal. When she walks out with her girlfriend and she sees me she is very happy and smiling. We take a taxi back to Sukhumvit (which of course I pay) and she talks very happily to me and gives me a little massage in my neck (I'm sitting in front and she with her girlfriend behind). She really makes me feel that I have a friend. Hahaha, but feelings are for rent here!

Back to working again

After a one week party in Bangkok I picked up my guests from the airport and started to travel with them in Thailand together with my Thai guide named Noi. First we stayed for 3 days in Bangkok where we made a famous Klong tour and visited the famous Wat Po. After Bangkok we went to Kanchanaburi by train, and missed the train almost because of the heavy flooding after the rain. After 2 days in Kanchanaburi we traveled by bus to Ayutthaya, KaiYai national park, Khorat, Khon Khaen, Phitsanulok, Sukhothai, Chiang Mai and there we made a 2 days trekking north of Chiang Mai. It’s called, "Hill Tribe Trekking", but in reality it’s just a long walk from one small village to another small village just along the road to Mae Hong Son. After the trekking we returned back to Chiang Mai again and made a 3 days trekking to the Golden Triangle and visited Mae Sai and Chiang Rai. We even did some boring bamboo rafting, visited Akha and Mhong tribes, and of course we did an elephant ride. Well I can say the Thailand pax are much different from the China pax, they are less well prepared and expect another Thailand. After the northern trip we return back to Chiang Mai again to take the train back to Bangkok to continue to Hua Hin. I try to contact Simuang to ask her if she likes to go with me to Hua Hin but she does not like that. From Bangkok we took two mini-vans to the floating market and then continued our trip to Hua Hin were we did stay for two days. As I'm a little bit tired I did not do much more than sleeping & eating. Every evening I have a chat with the owner of a bar where only girls are working. She is a little bit older and had been working in Germany to make money to buy the bar. But the bar is not making good money so she has to work again to pay the bank. Well life sucks! After two days we leave Hua Hin again and at 13 November I bring the guests to the airport and say goodbye. And I, of course, returned straight back to my beloved Sukhumvit.

While I was making a tour of duty, Wanna went to Singapore to work. I did call before she left and just before she would come back, both times she sounds very happy. And it seems that Simuang is becoming fucking crazy. First she seems to be normal and we talked and had sanuk but then the bullshit starts again. One evening I pay her bar fine and suddenly that evening she is gone. First I'm very angry, but when I see her sleeping in her room totally wet from the sweat then I cannot be angry anymore. Would she really be sick?

Well as I was feeling very alone I decide to go to Hollywood to look for the girl from last time when I was in Thailand. As I sit at the bar a very nice little woman looks to me, but is to shy to come to me. When I offer her a drink she comes to sit and drink with me. Her name is Si (I call her my little Khmer girl) and she comes from Buriram and she speaks very poor English. I end up with her in my hotel but at 6:00 in the morning Simuang shows up. Shit this is going to start like a TV-soap! I get dressed in 2 minutes and go outside (I look like I just come out of my bed, which is true, as a matter of fact). Simuang and I talk and I say sorry to her but her face looks like she wants to go kickboxing with me. Then she wants throw away the ring that I give her, but I tell her to keep it. I give her also back a little box with her things that I "stole" from her last night. She walks away, a little bit angry. When I visit her the next day in the afternoon she is sleeping in her room and she does not want to look to me. I talk a little bit to her and slowly she makes that lovely smile again. When I ask her why all the bullshit then she tells me, "I can not take care you!"

Going to Ban Krachuab

As my second tour in Thailand is canceled I have 2 more weeks of holiday and I decided to visit Wanna in her home town Ban Krachuab. Yesterday at 7:00 in the morning I left my hotel in Bangkok to go by taxi to the northern bus terminal. I have to take the bus to Phetchabun and I have to get of at Wichianburi. It seems that the way I say the names of these places that these places are totally new for all the people working at the bus terminal. Finally one boy has the guts to help me as he sees that this is driving me nuts. Finally I get the right box the buy my ticket and at 8:15 the bus will leave. As I have no idea how Wichianburi looks like I do not know where to get off the bus. I know the bus will take the highway to Phetchabun and that Wichianburi is not on the highway. Lucky enough for me there is a Thai boy sitting next to me who speaks a little bit English and he warns me when to get off. Well now I'm in the middle of nowhere, but there is a Songtheauw which probably will go to Wichianburi. Twenty minutes later I end up in Wichianburi for only 20thb. As I also know that Wanna is not really living in Wichianburi but in Ban Krachuab I ask the driver to bring me to Ban Krachuab. This is another 30 minutes ride and it will cost me 150thb. Finally in the right place it's quite difficult to find the house of Wanna because nobody knows the house numbers. It's a small village with about 50 houses, no shops, no bars and no anything. Now I can imagine why Wanna wants to escape this. The driver and I finally find some local drunk guy who for some beer will bring me to the house of Wanna as he knows her (a matter of fact all the guys do know her). When I arrive at her house there is nobody home, but a kind of family member comes along and tells me Wanna is to Wichianburi to pick me up. He shows me a family photo album with photos of Wanna working in a bar? Later Wanna is quite angry about the fact that I did see the photo album. After one hour Wanna arrives on the motorbike and I hardly recognize her. She is wearing jeans and a cap, a real Thai country girl. Here in her family hometown Wanna is very much different than in Bangkok. She creates a kind of distance between her and me. A kind of distance that would later start to irritate me and even to hurt me. In the afternoon all the kids take me to a small lake just outside the village to go swimming. One of the kids seems to be the daughter of Wanna. Two of the kids speak a little bit of English and they ask me smiling if I love Wanna. I just smile back and say nothing. First I was wondering how the kids would go swimming, but of course I should have known that they go swimming with all their cloths still on. For the good Thai tradition we drink whisky in the evening and watch television. Wanna has made a wonderful Thai dinner this evening, she could start working in a restaurant. Suddenly Wanna is gone and one of the kids tells me with a big smile that I have to go upstairs to go to sleep with Wanna. Now I think, "How can you explain this to your daughter?" When I go upstairs I see that Wanna has made a very romantic place for us to sleep with a big mosquito net. And she is already sleeping in it with of course, by Thai tradition, with all her cloths still on. So I sleep next to her with my clothes on also, which is actually nice because it's a little bit cold in the evening and night. Her parents sleep at the other side of the cabinet, which is standing direct next to us. On the next days it seems that Wanna is very nervous about me being at her home. I do not understand why she ever invited me to stay here. She tried to cancel it, but she could not contact me. She is not talking about money, only one time she tells me she has not been able to work in Singapore. But when she tells me this I think, "But you bought a Seiko watch of S$120 for your father?" I will be surprised if she has a financial surprise for me, but then again if she has should I be negative about it? After a few days we return back to Bangkok and Wanna stays one more day with me but then she is suddenly gone. Has she gone to another customer?

Almost one year later when I'm in Holland and call Wanna she seems to be in Germany with her "boyfriend". She would like to meet me, but as I'm at that moment still living with my wife that is quite impossible. When I later return to Thailand I would unexpectedly meet Wanna and her boyfriend in the bar where she used to be working. She looks very different and introduces me to her boyfriend. Later I would meet her in a shopping mall to give her a late birthday present (a dictionary Thai-German). The next day she calls me to have a drink in the Go-Go bar where her sister is working. She is drinking gin-tonic and is a little bit drunk. This way I have never seen her; she even starts to dance with the girls. As I decide that it is better for me to go now I say goodbye to Wanna and wish her good luck with her boyfriend. She asks me that if she cannot stay with her boyfriend would I be waiting for her? Of course I say, "Yes". When I leave the bar I turn back at the door and look for one more time to the girl that I loved before and had become a kind of friend for me. This was the last time I saw her or did speak to her. She is now living in Germany. I learned to forget her, just like Simuang. But somewhere in my mind they will stay forever.

Going to Buriram

When I returned to Bangkok I of course also did return to Nana Plaza and saw Si. She asked me to go with her to her hometown Buriram, or as I found out later a small village called Ban Kruat near the Cambodian border. From the northern bus-terminal in Bangkok we took a 6 hour long bus-drive to Buriram and from there a 40-min car-ride to the house of her father and mother. We arrived at her home at 3:00 o'clock in the night and her father and mother were waiting for us. Her family lives in a typical wooden Thai house without any western comfort like a kitchen or a bathroom. At 6 o'clock when the sun rises and the monks go on their search of food she wakes me up and tells me we will go and give food to the monks. This is for me a very special happening because it is the first time in my life to practice this myself. Of course I make some mistakes but she tries to explain to me and with a sweet Thai smile everything can be forgiven. In the afternoon Si and her younger sister are going to show me her town and neighborhood. So with 3 people on the motorbike we are on the road. She shows me something like a "Stone Forest" and some ruins of old-villages. And of course she shows me the rice-fields and teaches me how to cut down the rice. Now I understand that this village is very close to the Cambodian border, so close that during the last fights against the Red Khmer some rockets were hitting Thai soil and even Thai people were wounded and killed. Just before the evening two monks visit her home, one of the monks is her younger brother. As there is nothing to do we go to sleep at 8 o'clock. We sleep in the only real room this house has. But as this house is built very simple there is no way of making love with my lovely little Khmer girl. So we decide that the next day we will go back to Bangkok again. At least there we have a real bed and a real bathroom. When Si and I return to Bangkok she asks me to stay in her apartment at Soi 16. So we pick-up all my things from D.I. Mansion and we live my last week in Bangkok together in her room. She lives in a one-room apartment in a neighborhood that is not Bangkok anymore. Little sois that are hard to reach by car, with little shops, and no farangs at all. It was a week to never forget.

Reality check

My time in paradise was over and I had to return to reality. Going back to Holland again became more difficult every time. Si did bring me to the airport, so at least I had someone to say goodbye to. But while waiting for the customs tears are more near than a happy smile. I can see Si leaving and I walk into the duty free shopping mall of Don Muang airport. When I'm waiting at the gate I cannot help overhearing the conversation of other Dutch people. They are talking about being happy to go home and about the news that they have been reading in the Dutch newspapers. They are happy while I was almost crying my heart out.

At that moment I felt my heart was tearing apart. And not just in two pieces between Holland and Thailand.

-Chang Noi-