Context:
- I am like a bear with a sawed-sore-head when I wake up
- I have low alcohol tolerance
- I have a bad sense of direction – try co-piloting a car with me one day – you’ll see
- I get very emotional / irrational when drunk. I am also indestrcutable, could have Jet Li in a fair fight, and am a world-champion arm-wrestler
- 75% – 82% of Thai adult males have taken the services of a prostitute at least once
- There are many ways of getting a girl (not a woman) into debt bondage – basically a form of slavery in a brothel. One approach is when the girl’s family sells her to an agent. Who sells her to a brothel. The loan-shark like interest on this price paid by the brothel is then earned by the girl over many years. I have only read one book about it so far. Pretty horrific.
So my songkran involved whisky. Jim tells me that there is a kind of social heirarchy here which means that older / foreign people are seen as providers and have to look out for their juniors. So at the Krabi sprinkle dance, some ‘geng mar’ Thai folk doused me, covered me in porridge (not that I normally like men doing the latter) and offered me booze. In return I went shopping and got picnic stuffs while the band sang snippets from ‘Living on a prayer’ which is quite miraculous as there didn’t appear to be any English speakers in the band. That was okay, there only appeared to be me semi-noticing this – not many westerners at all were present. I think I counted two.
Whisky. Crisps. Beer. Ace. Lots of singing and use of the following phrases we had in common:
“Thailand number one”
“England number one”
“Velly Good”
“Ching chong” (I need a leak)
“Beautiful laydeeee”
“Go boom boom laydeeee?”
“1 laydee, 2 laydee, 3 laydee boom boom?”
The usual stuff. I was pressganged into porridging ladies faces. This apparently means you like them. I did. If they porridge you back, that means you have to go and get married. Or something.
I’d loosely arranged to meet Ciaran at 6pm in a pub called 89. Which was okay, as me and my new best friends, whose names included: ‘Mista Ex’, ‘Mista My’, ‘Mister Sombar’, ‘Poh’, ‘Pah’, ‘Soh’, ‘Sah’, and ‘Bill’ (?), could communicate in numbers. By about 4:30, I had decided to donate my shades and hat to the cause, and by 5:00, I was admiring the 110cc supersport bike of a ladyboy who was vaguely associated with the group. More whisky. More picnic snacks. More beer. Lots of ‘ching chong’ from small-bladdered ‘Mista Gaz’.
About 6:00, which is when the combination of eyes and watch ceased to function at the same time, ‘Mista My’ became very animated. Very porridged too. He said that if he had too much more whisky, he would go to sleep. We had some more whisky. Then I figured out he was trying to say that if I had too much whisky, I would end up asleep. More whisky. Then I think he was saying that if I had more whisky I wouldn’t be able to sleep. With ‘laydeeee Thai’.
Thinking nothing of it, I carried on, determined to experience the almost mystical quality of Thai whisky madness that Jim had told me about. Full on bull goose looney madness. That only Thai paintstripper can induce. Three teapots to the wind. In this small endeavour, I think I must have been successful. I say think. I recall a motorbike laden with at least 4 of us, ‘Mista My’, and ‘Mista Sambar’ where definitely on it, and some other inebriate reveller was piloting through the jets of water directed at us. Safe as you like. Why you don’t see more Thai people in Superbike racing I don’t know.
So I wake up with an empty wallet, fully clothed in a small concrete breeze-block room. A little confused. And not getting many answers from the wafer thin woman who is also in the tiny room. But I see a photo of her and her child, and all of her possessions in the room. It’s about 10:30. I am very cross, and decide that this girl must be freed from slavery. I am very drunk. The management of the brothel I woke up in are not sympathetic to my enquiries, but neither are they very tall looking, or particularly dangerous. And I decide to release the one wafer thin woman I have seen. But I decide to try the ‘easy’ way – by trying to find out how much she owes the brothel, and how much I need to give the fuckers to let her out. I don’t get very far – this isn’t one of the farang brothels where they all speak English, and whenever I try to ask a question about women and money, I get a price for two hours.
No good. In retrospect, my judgement of the situation may have been impaired, but I stormed out thinking that actions would speak louder than words. Well money, anyway. Securing an ATM, and taking out all the money I could, I returned to the brothel to liberate this victim of slavery. That I managed to find the unsigned place again is quite remarkable.
But I couldn’t find the woman when I returned. Instead, I was offered ‘new laydeee’, but couldn’t seem to get my point across. Seeing a tank of fish, I decided that the only way to make my point was by throwing this to the ground (sorry Greenforce and the fish conservationists). Luckily for me, the fish, the hidden woman, and everyone concerned, I spotted a police van outside, as one of the staff exited the building.
Fucked off with the whole affair, I cut my losses and my inebriate courage disappeared (some kind of middle-class fear of police thing). I managed to find Ciaran and 89 at about 11:30. Still a bit livid. Who knows if I was off the mark? If the woman was a non-consenting sex worker sold by her family? All I know is that she didn’t look too happy, and trafficking women does happen in Asia, and that statistics are hard to come by due to protection of the industry all over the shop.