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| Wat Dan, where Dew served as a novice |
If they wanted to call home, the novices would have to ask the monks, so many decided to go without. When I turned up towards the end, only half a dozen of the original 70 to 80 boys were left. Several rushed to borrow my phone so they could call home.
One child called his mother, who was clearly taken aback from her holiday reverie to be asked by her neglected son when she intended visiting him at the temple again. The kids cannot leave unless they get the consent of parents or the monks, and there are no outings once the programme ends.
Grandma Eed, a religious figure who wore black for months after the death of King Rama IX, often praises the monks as sources of wisdom and virtue.
When I saw how quick she was to use the monks as surrogate child minders when it suited, I was struck by how hypocritical her remarks sounded.
One day, after repeatedly asking Eed when she intended letting Dew come home, I declared I would pick him up myself if she did not act, which prompted her surly response above.
Of course I couldn't look after Dew at home any more than she wanted him back, but I was missing him and felt sorry for the kids dumped there in such a heartless fashion. She finally brought him home one day before the new term began; his hopes of enjoying his holidays with friends now in tatters.
I emailed my parents in June, 2016, after our first swimming trip together since Dew's return from the temple. I wrote: "The past two months in which I have been battling this woman Eed have felt like a divorce-style tug of wills. I do not like adults holding kids hostage to their own interests; even now I can barely bring myself to talk to her. However, I told Dew I would make an effort to get along, and he wasn't to worry.
"His behaviour appears to have slipped a bit...he seems naughtier now that he was the last time I saw him regularly."
My relationship with Eed never really recovered. I took Dew to the local army pool a few more times, but when Grandma Eed's neighbour - Dew's former childhood carer - got out of jail I handed him back and left his life. My days off from work had also changed and I was no longer prepared to give up six hours on my Saturdays taking him swimming.
His carer and her family, who also took over responsibility for looking after Dew from the old women, gave me the icy treatment for weeks afterwards, as they thought I had abandoned the child. I have explained to Dew many times since why I withdrew from his life, and that I wasn't just some other adult shoving him from pillar to post.
I enjoyed our time together as we visited local swimming pools, eateries, and temples. Thais we met on our travels often mistook me for his real father, as we both have Caucasian blood (his birth father has no knowledge of the lad, and was visiting as a tourist when he happened to meet Noi, Dew's Mum).
Dew, now 13, and a keen football player, later returned to his mother's care when Noi herself was freed from jail. She still rents a place in the soi.
She told me soon after her release that she is working in "jewellery" in Silom, though that sounds unlikely, given her prison record.
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