Stranded with no money in Bangkok

Last night was the night before pay day. I was down to my last B50 baht, after giving boyfriend Maiyuu money at lunch.

I get paid every two weeks. Sometimes it is hard to make the money stretch, especially as I am supporting one other (the boyfriend).

He has worked half a dozen times or more in the last month, but he, too, does not get paid until the end of the month.

Yesterday he asked for money to buy cooking ingredients, and looked disappointed when I handed him just B200.

After work last night, I waited for a bus to take me home. It was due at 11.30pm but by 11.45pm, it had still not arrived.

The last bus of the evening had evidently decided not to turn up. I did not have enough money to get home by taxi, but that was the only way I was to get there.

I walked to a nearby ATM to check my balance. I did not have enough to make a withdrawal.

I called the boyfriend. 'Do you have B50 to pay the taxi if I catch one home?'

'No, it's all gone.'

I called a trader in the market where I live. She makes an order of food for me every night, which I pick up after I return from work.

'Can I borrow B50?' I asked.

This was embarrassing. I didn't even know her name, but desperate situations call for desperate measures.

I was stuck on a dusty motorway in an industrial zone of Bangkok. I was hot, and I wanted to go home.

'Of course,' she said.

On the way home, the boyfriend called to say he had borrowed the taxi fare from kathoey Bic, who lives upstairs.

When I arrived outside the condo, he was standing there waiting. He looked irritated, but forgave me.

'You should try saving money instead of buying drinks for handsome guys at Mum's shop,' he said.

I walked to the trader's stall, which is under a large canvas opposite my condo, and thanked her for her trouble.

'I won't need it any more...we borrowed the money from a friend,' I said.

A mother in her 50s, the trader looked disappointed that she was not able to help. 'I kept looking at the road, wondering when you would get out of the taxi, so I could race over with the money,' she said.

Her husband, who works with her, laughed.

This is not the first time they have come to my aid. Once, in the early hours of the morning before their shop had closed, her husband took me on the back of his motorbike deep into a soi (street) nearby to find an after-hours pharmacy - really, an ordinary shophouse - when I had run out of medicine for a headache.

Today, now that my pay has come out, I shall buy them flowers by way of thanks.