Thai Shorts Read online

  “Where is the shower?”

  “There tee rak.” She pointed to the blue barrel.

  “How does that work?”

  Apple laughed and leaned into the barrel and picked up one of the buckets. She pretended to scoop out water and throw it over herself.

  “See. Shower.”

  Well, I was hot and bothered and I thought what the hell! Apple went back into the house. The lock on the ‘bathroom’ door was a nail stuck in the door with a piece of string hanging from it. I tied the string onto another nail that was knocked into the cement wall. I undressed in the dark. Just a little light crept through the gaps between the tin roof and the breeze blocks that it was sitting on. The mosquitoes started eating me as soon as I stripped off. I hate these little critters! Once I was naked I decided that I had probably better try and excuse myself on the toilet but, to be honest with you, I didn’t really know how to use it. It was too low to sit on and if I did manage to get down that far I would have to sit with my legs out in front of me and I didn’t think that was a good position to do what I wanted to do. Besides that the floor was wet and, by the smell of it, I didn’t think it was water and I certainly didn’t want to sit in it. I decided to try and do a sort of squat like a sumo wrestler. Now I’m a big man and I didn’t want to squat down too far in case I couldn’t get up again. So I did my sumo squat and hoped for the best. My best didn’t turn out to be so good and, although some of my business went into the pot, I’m afraid to say that some of it didn’t. I looked around and there was no toilet paper. I couldn’t believe it, but it was true. Then I noticed an old blue rag hanging over a bit of old electric cable. I guessed it was some kind of shit rag. I’d heard about shit rags, but I’d never actually used one. It looked stained and dirty, but clean enough to use I guess. I wiped myself and hung it back over the line. Then the next big surprise was that there was no flushing mechanism. Well not anywhere near the toilet anyway. It was pretty dark in there but I looked on all the walls and there was nothing. Maybe it was on the outside of the shit house for some reason. Nothing surprised me about Thailand anymore. I showered by throwing cold buckets of water over myself, having a good ole wash and then more buckets of cold water. I have to admit it felt good until I started to dry myself and then I just started sweating again and the stink from my own business was starting to make me gip. I got dressed again and went to find Apple. I told her that I couldn’t find the flusher for the toilet and I followed her back into the shit house to show me. Guess what! There wasn’t a flusher. She looked at the toilet.

  “Tee rak, why you not do poo in toilet?”

  “Some of it is in the toilet.”

  “Why you not do all in toilet?”

  “I tried!”

  Apple used one of the buckets from the ‘shower’ and flushed what she could away with that. Then she used the underside of the same bucket to push the rest of my business into the pan and washed that away with buckets of water too.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said.

  I went and sat back in the car and had another drink. It was about half an hour before her pappy came out of the house waving his skinny arms around and shouting at Apple. I don’t know what she had done wrong, but something had upset the old man.

  Apple came over to the car.

  “Tee rak, why you do shit on shirt my papa?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you do. Papa say you do big shit on his shirt in shower!”

  The penny dropped.

  “Is it a blue shirt?”

  “Yes. He wash already and it was to dry on line in shower and you do shit on it.”

  “Sorry, I thought that it was a shit rag.”

  “What you mean, tee rak?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Tell pappy I’m sorry.”

  “He angry you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Why you do like this to my papa?”

  “It was an accident.” That was all I could think to say and I pressed the button to make the window close.

  I sat in the car drinking and smoking all evening. Apple only came to speak to me once and that was to ask me if I wanted to sleep in the house. I told her that I would rather sleep in the car and that is what I did. It wasn’t the best day that I had ever had and I hardly slept a wink.

  The next morning I was up and awake early and so were Apple’s family. They all ate rice and fish for breakfast and I didn’t. Apple was talking to her parents about our wedding, but I wasn’t really included in the conversation until Apple said;

  “Tee rak, we can marry. My papa want one million baht. You think okay?”

  Now, I worked out that a million baht is about $30,000. That wasn’t a bad price to pay for a wedding.

  “Yes darlin’. That sounds okay to me.” I nodded and Apple squealed and her mammy and pappy broke out into big toothless grins.

  “Does that include the food and entertainment and everything darlin’?”

  “No, tee rak. That money just for my papa. You pay for everything in wedding!”

  “Then why the hell would I want to give your pappy one million baht?”

  “Because tradition and so my papa not lose face.”

  “Darlin’ I won’t be giving your pappy one million baht. I heard that in some countries you pay the parents to marry their virgin daughter, but you ain’t no virgin! You were working in a bar for 7 years. I reckon you probably had two hundred men a year on a low estimate. That’s 1,400 sexual partners darlin’. No. I won’t be payin’ your pappy anything, but I can give you a good life, better than you ever dreamed about, so I guess it’s up to you!”

  “But tee rak, my papa will lose face if you not pay.”

  “Darlin’ your family are a bunch of no good dead beats - free loaders who sent you away to sell your body, so that they can laze around doing nothing. You owe these wasters nothing. They don’t love you. They just want you to sell your pussy so they don’t have to work. I don’t care about your pappy’s face. He ain’t got no face to lose. He should be ashamed of himself. They all should.”

  I thought that Apple was going to start crying, but she didn’t. She said something to her pappy and then she took me for a walk around the village. She pointed out her father’s land. It lay barren and un-worked. She also pointed out other land that belonged to different relatives, but at least the other land was being cultivated. We bumped into one of her cousins. His name was Tai and he was a real friendly kind of guy. He had a great smile. A smile as if he meant it and he spoke great English. He told me he learnt it in school and that he thought education was important. I could see that he worked hard on his farm and he insisted that Apple and myself go back to his house with him. So we did.

  His house was lovely. It was still basic, but he had a TV and a fridge and some nice wooden furniture - deep red and polished. He told me that he had built it himself. I liked Tai. He was a good man with an honest heart. He worked hard and he loved his family. He had two young boys. One was nine years old and the other one was aged 7 years. The youngest was blind, but he was a real nice kid. Tai got two cold beers from the fridge and passed me one. He was interested about my ranch back in Texas and we talked about farming and making money. He told me that both his boys were doing well in school, but he was saving up to send Tuk, his youngest boy, to a specialist school for the blind. He thought that he would do even better in a blind school than he was doing in a mainstream school. He told me that he wanted his kids to grow up and have a better life than he had had. Tai never stopped smiling and I liked him more and more by the minute. Tai insisted that we stay and have some food with him and his good lady wife. They cooked spicy chicken and rice and it was delicious. We sat at the beautiful red wood table that he had built himself. Before we left I offered to pay the money to send his lit
tle boy to the specialist blind school. It was a genuine offer, but Tai refused. He said that he would never be able to pay me back. I think he was a proud man. A proud and honest man! Yep, I liked Tai a lot.

  We walked back to Apple’s mammy’s house. It was hot and I was still being eaten by the pesky mosquitoes. When we got to the house her two brothers and her pappy were sitting on the floor in front of the house drinking some cheap Thai whisky and smoking hand rolled cigarettes, which smelt disgusting. They were sitting with another man who Apple told me was another cousin. He was a big man, especially for a Thai man. I would guess that he was about six foot tall and he wasn’t scrawny like most of the Thai men I’d seen. He looked solid and well built. He gave me the same dirty look that I had been getting from her brothers since I arrived. I would say that he was about 30 years old. They didn’t speak to me and I didn’t speak to them. I got my whisky from the car and drank it from the tin cup and smoked a cigarette. Apple went into the house. The big man grunted something at me and used his two fingers to pretend to smoke a cigarette. This seemed to be a Thai thing when they wanted to smoke a foreigner’s cigarettes. I just shook my head and the big man shouted something towards the house and Apple came running out. He grunted something at her. She came over to me.

  “Tee rak, my cousin. He want cigarette.”

  “Well, tell him to carry on smoking that crap he is already smoking or, if he wants a real cigarette, then tell him to go and buy some.”

  “Tee rak, you don’t want big problem with my cousin. He ex-kickboxing champion. Give him cigarette please, tee rak.”

  Now, back in Texas, I can punch a bull unconscious with one blow. I’ve done it many times and the skull on a cow is a lot thicker than the skull on a human, so I wasn’t too worried about her cousin.

  “Darlin’ I ain’t scared of no ex-boxer, especially one who has to use his feet. Tell him he ain’t gettin’ no cigarettes from me.”

  I don’t know what Apple said to him. I suspect she didn’t say what I wanted her to say, because the big man just nodded with a sly smile. Apple went back inside the house. I guessed that she had told him that I didn’t have any cigarettes left and I wanted him to know that I had, so I lit up another one. I think I guessed right because the big man saw what I did and grunted something again and repeated the gesture with his fingers to his mouth.

  Now, I have been in enough bar room brawls to know when a man wants to fight you. It is not what they say and it’s not even the body language that all these experts talk about. It’s the look in his eyes and the big man had that look. He grunted something again. It was an aggressive grunt alright. I think he had just threatened me, but I couldn’t understand.

  “Fuck off.” I spat the words out at him just in case he had threatened me. He smiled to the others. It was a confident knowing smile. I think it probably was the confident smile of an ex-boxer. Even one who had to use his feet! He stood up and flexed himself. He flicked his head to the right and made a cracking sound and then flicked his head to the left and it cracked again. I realised that the two brothers had probably asked their big boxing cousin over to the house especially to give me a good hiding. The big man grunted something again. I guessed that he was giving me one last chance to give him a cigarette and save myself a beating.

  “Fuck off,” I said again.

  The big man looked at the others sitting on the ground and smiled and nodded. Then he looked at me and started walking slowly towards me. His hands were hung low, but flexed and ready to fight. I punched him on the jaw. It was a solid punch and he flew backwards a few feet and landed unconscious on the ground. He didn’t get up again. I would have been surprised if he had. Surprised and a bit worried that I was going to have a real fight on my hands. But he stayed on the ground and didn’t get up for nearly ten minutes. Then he staggered up onto his motorbike and rode away without looking at me or any of Apple’s family. It was a long hot day. I was bored out of my mind and then the day turned into a long hot evening. Nobody was talking to me, not even Apple. I decided to walk along the village and go and visit my friend Tai. I took what was left of my whisky with me.

  Tai greeted me with a warm handshake and an even warmer smile. He went and got some more cold beers from the fridge and his lovely wife cooked us some more chicken. I told him all about my experiences meeting Apple’s family and he laughed so hard I thought he was going to pop a blood vessel. He told me that Apple had always been a lovely girl but her family was lazy and no good and he blamed it all on her two brothers. We spent the night talking and getting drunk. We talked mostly about the lack of work available in the area and I believed him when he told me how hard it was to make any decent money. I told him that he had the land so, if we could think of a business plan, then I would provide the money if he provided the land and, just maybe, we might be able to employ some of the family and other locals. We tossed a few ideas around, but nothing really sounded realistic. However, we had bonded and become real good friends. The mosquitoes were still attacking me and Tai could see how uncomfortable they were making me. He went into the house and brought out two badminton rackets. He had converted them himself. He had put a fine metal gauze across the heads and two wires went down to a battery strapped to the handle. He connected the wires and we started swatting mosquitoes. They crackled and popped as they hit the electrified gauze. It was actually great fun, but more important than that, they were effective. It was brilliant and he had thought of the idea himself. We started talking about making these things on a bigger scale and we sketched out a better design. We made the bat shorter and stronger like a tennis racket. We sketched in an on/off switch and a button to press to make the system live. We could make them rechargeable so people wouldn’t have to buy batteries and we could cast the rackets in plastic. Suddenly we had a business plan. We agreed that night that I would fund the business and Tai would provide the land and we would be equal partners. Tai was a good business man and within days we had applied for a patent and built prototypes. They were better than expected. Tai travelled all over Thailand getting orders and we built a big factory on his land. I supplied the money and we equipped the factory with machinery to make the mosquito bats on a large scale. We were making them for 100 baht each and they were selling for 250 baht. Now that’s good business. Soon we had big orders coming in from Tesco Lotus, Big C and all the other main store chains in Thailand. If you ever come to Thailand you can see our bats for sale everywhere these days. It made Tai and his family very rich and made me even richer. We do employ most of Apple’s family, but her two brothers never wanted to work in the factory. I leave all the running of the business to my friend Tai. I married Apple and we went back to live in Texas, but we visit Thailand a lot. I even built a nice house next door to Tai. Apple and myself had three babies. We had a boy first, little Edward Earl James IV and then we had two beautiful daughters. Apple is a good mother and a good wife and we love each other very much. We have been blessed with a wonderful family. I’m going to be seventy years old on my next birthday and I’m sort of hoping that the next ten years are going to be as happy as the last ten. What more could an old timer like me ever want!

  3. The Cigarette Girl

  A story of love, trust and responsibility

  My daughter is getting married today and I’m happy about that. She is a 24 year old Thai girl and her husband is a 30 year old guy from Sweden. He is a teacher here in Thailand and he works hard. I know that he loves my daughter, so I’m happy about that too. My daughter is called Som and she isn’t really my daughter - well not legally anyway. But I’ll tell you this now; no man ever had a better daughter. I tried to be a good father to her too, but I’m no saint! I came to live in Pattaya for the same reason that most divorced middle-aged men do. I came for the beer and the bars and the girls and for a second chance at life. Well, I certainly got that, but not in the way I expected. Som made me a better man than I really was and I owe her e
verything. My name is Tom Bradley and I‘m 70 years old. In my former life I lived in England, before I became a full time drunk and good for nothing in ‘the Land of Smiles’. That was 12 years ago when I was a mere 58 years old. That is when this story really starts.

  I had never been to Thailand before, but I had heard all about it, especially about Pattaya. I was told the place was full of beautiful ladies and they were all available for a price. I’d been married for 30 years before I was divorced, after my wife left me for another man. Because we didn’t have any children there was nothing worth staying in England for. I felt as if I had wasted my life with a woman who I knew now never really loved me.

  Pattaya was everything that I had been told it would be - and more! I had a pension so I didn’t have to worry about making money or getting a job. I rented a little apartment. It just had a sitting room, a bedroom and a bathroom. There was no kitchen, but then again I wasn’t planning on doing any cooking. There was a little balcony that overlooked the soi below, but it was too small to put a chair out to sit on. The apartment wasn’t perfect, but it was clean, it was cheap and it was in the heart of Pattaya. I didn’t need a car or even a motorbike. I just jumped on and off the baht buses to get around the city. I found some local bars that I liked where I could sit and drink during the day and I made friends in those bars with other ex-pats. In the evenings, after I had slept off the day time beer, I would go out to Soi Six or Soi Seven and, more often than not, buy a bar girl for the night and take her back to my apartment.