Helping hand (1)

'It won't work.'

A Vietnamese man in his early 20s, Kai, mouthed those words to my young Thai friend, Pao, who was sitting opposite.

He meant: 'I don't think the farang will part with money.'

That was cynical of him, particularly as we only met that night.

Kai had just asked me if I had ever visited Vietnam.

'No. I am going there next year with my family,' I said.

'Why not travel there sooner,' he asked sweetly.

Kai meant: 'Why not let me be your guide? We could pretend to be gay travelling companions.'

I met Kai an hour before, after I sat down for a drink with some young people from the shop where Pao works. It is next to Mum's shop in Thon Buri.

A Vietnamese girl, Nam, works at the shop with Pao. Over the last two nights, I have been getting to know her friends.

A young Vietnamese man who grew up with her in the same village turns up late at night to see her, when the shop is ready to close.

His name is also Nam.

'How do you tell yourselves apart?' I asked the boy.

'I'm Nam Kaeng [ice], and she's Nam Plao [water],'he said.

Nam Kaeng insists that he and the girl are just friends, though they look close.

Nam Kaeng works at another karaoke/eatery place about 10 minutes away. Last night, he brought along a male Vietnamese friend, Kai, from the same restaurant.

They all live together in the same rented room.

Thai employers must like migrant labourers such as the Vietnamese. They can employ them cheaply, and ask them to do work which Thais would refuse.

The Thai owner of the restaurant employing Kai pays him just B2000 a month. He gets tips of up to B300 a day on top of that.

Kai told Pao how little he was earning at the restaurant down the way. Pao nodded sympathetically.

Pao gets paid nothing at all, as he is still in debt to his shop for about B1000.

That bill stems from a spot of legal trouble Pao fell into more than 12 months ago, when he first arrived in Bangkok.

His relatives, who run the restaurant, paid a police fine on his behalf. Now he is working at the restaurant to pay them back.

Kai has pale skin, and a wide, friendly smile.

He stood up and stretched in front of me as he told me about his life in Bangkok since he arrived three years ago.

Kai is single, but has gone out with Thai girls. One relationship ended in heartbreak, he says. Kai showed me scars on the top of his wrist where, in grief, he attacked himself with a burning cigarette.

now, see part 2

Roughing it

Pao, the young Thai who works next to Mum's shop in Pin Khlao, needs more trousers.

He has returned to Bangkok after months in the provinces, to his old job serving customers at an eatery/karaoke joint.

'I have just the one pair,' he said, referring to a back pair of jeans which he wears without a belt.

We were sitting at a table outside his shop. It had closed for the night, and only a handful of staff were left.

I brought a half-bottle of whisky over from Mum's shop, and gave it to him and his friends.

Last time I knew him, I bought Pao a belt. That had now broken, so he left it at home at the farm in Esan.

He had taken off his T-shirt, and his black boxers spilled over the top. 'It's hot,' he complained.

He stood in front of me, and stretched. His boxer shorts rose a long way on his narrow waist. Without a belt, his jeans slipped below the top of his buttocks. I asked him to put his T-shirt back on.

Pao also showed me scars from injuries he sustained when he fell off a motorcycle recently. 'I need medicine to get rid of the scars, but have no money.'

Pao has scars on his chest, shoulders, arms and back.

Pao says he is working for nothing at the shop but food and board. His hair, which he wore in a smart Japanese style when he first arrived a few weeks ago, now looks ragged.

On his feet, he was wearing a rough pair of rubber flip-flops, which he claims is the only footwear he brought with him.

'Mum has gone back to the farm,' he said.

Previously, his uncle Top worked at the same family-run shop. Top and his girlfriend slept in one room above the shop, Pao in another.

Now, Uncle Top has changed jobs. He is working as a cook at a similar shop down the way.

Pao introduced me to a young man aged about 30, called Lek.

'He sleeps in the same room as me,' said Pao.

I have not seen him before, but I suspect the pair work together.

Pao has lost weight, and his hair is thinning on top. I felt sorry for him.

'I will give you some money to buy some more trousers. However, I will entrust it to Lek. He can take you shopping,' I said.

Pao looked happy. He liked the idea of his older friend taking him to the department store to buy clothes.

I do not trust Pao to spend the money wisely himself, as he is only 17.

When I noticed him at at the shop for the first time since his return, Pao avoided eye contact, and tried not to talk to me. I put this down to shyness.

Last week, after they finished work, I bought him and his friends a few bottles of beer.

Pao has now overcome his anxiety. He remembers we were friends.

'What do you want with him?' a foreign drinking friend asked me.

'Just to look after him, or help,' I said.

My male drinking friend, farang C, nodded. Pao and his friends invited us over when they finished work.

An hour before, I had told Pao that farang C liked the look of a Vietnamese girl who worked at his shop.

'I will bring the whisky if you help introduce him to the girl,' I said.

He laughed.

After the last customer left, Pao set up two drinking tables on the footpath, with chairs, soda, and an ice-bucket for each. The Vietnamese girl, whose name is Nam, was there, along with a male Vietnamese friend who had arrived in the country just a few days before.

They insisted they were just friends. Nam had spent a year learning Thai before she left Vietnam a month ago. However, she has no English, which makes communication with farang C difficult.

An hour of drinking, the girl and her friend excused themselves and went home to bed. I was left with farang C, Pao, and Lek.

Half an hour later, Pao and Lek declared they were tired, and also went to bed.

I will go back tonight with the money for his trousers. Pao does not expect much, as he is used to having nothing.

The last time I knew him, I was in two minds about whether to help Pao. Mum said I should go ahead, if it made me feel good.

'You only see each other when you come here to drink, so why not?' she said.

Two weeks ago, a woman who works with Pao came over to Mum's shop, and signalled with her eyes that Pao was now free.

She is aged about 50, and is related to Pao. She is also happy for me to support him.

I like the idea of having a bad-boy nephew. Let's hope he does not get too expensive.

Book-loving Thai

After a quick visit to the supermarket at the local mall, which was all but empty, I went to the bookstore nearby.

I always drop in to this shop.

At home, I have a large collection of books written for Thais learning English. I bought them when I first arrived in Bangkok, and still use them to help me teach.

Back then, the books were written mainly by Thais who had learnt English at university, here and abroad. They were dry, heavy, and boring.

Today, we have entered the digital age, and publishers are getting smarter.

Many 'pocketbooks', as Thais call them, are sold together with a CD-Rom, by television personalities, Thai and farang alike, who have their own TV shows and language schools.

More ambitious authors package books together with VCDs in huge boxes which are plastic-wrapped. You have to ask staff to open them if you want to take a look.

I saw one on sale, written by a Thai, for B700. I took one look at the blurb in English and knew straight away whether it was worth that price. It is among the top 20 best-selling items in the shop.

What happens when the buyer gets his or her purchase home? I suspect the 'pocketbooks' end up on the sitting-room table. The bigger packages, in the pre-wrapped boxes, might end up under the bed.

Confronted with so much choice, some parents give up, and let their children get on with it. They park them in front of the English language section, while they browse elsewhere.

I tried to look at what was on the shelves, but could not reach them. The space between the aisles is narrow, and youngsters were sitting on the floor, reading.

Next to me, one biggish Thai woman was negotiating with her two children, aged under 10.

'Now, just one book each today, please...' she said in Thai.

She tried to move past, perhaps to give me more room.

'Ex- cu-seme ...fub.'

In English, she was trying to say, 'Excuse me, please.' And maybe she did say it, but it was so faint I could barely hear her.

Ironies abound in this place. We were standing right in front of a bank of books on English grammar. She was talking to a farang. Yet she could barely bring herself to speak the language she wants her children to learn. Perhaps she was worried someone would hear.

I looked at the beaming television personalities on the shelves - Khru Lilly, Khru Andrew, Khru Chris, and a few other sunny faces I didn't know. All want to teach Thais how to learn English.

They were smiling from the covers of their attractively packaged 'pocketbooks' and VCDs - but they were not laughing at her.

They know better than to mock...they just want to sell more books.

Pucker up

'Real' men among us are helpfully pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable manly behaviour among Thais, which makes it easier for those in the other camp, for whom girly behaviour can be hard to avoid.

A male university student, writing at the Pantip board, asks whether 'real' men who use lipstick to make their lips look a lighter shade run the risk of being labelled as gay. 'I use it, and have shown it to my uni friends, who say it looks sexy,' he says.

Sexy? Readers who left comments reckon it is acceptable for a 'real' man to use lipstick ('toner', I suspect), to change the colour of their lips. Thais do not want to look 'black', as they charmlessly put it.

To look white is to look Chinese, healthy and wealthy - even where the lips are concerned, not just the skin.

'Just don't make it too shiny or oily or your friends will tease you about being a girl,' one reader replied.

Postscript: Recently, another Pantip poster started a thread about 'guy liner' (eye liner for men) - a pencil which some guys use to shade in the area around their eyes. It gives them a Goth look.

Thai food gets dull (2, final)

No matter where you live in Bangkok, if you never left the soi (street) you live in, it would be easy to survive on Thai food alone.

The 7-11 convenience store doesn't stock much. They can sell you pre-packed slices of carboardy pizza or hamburgers, which they heat in a microwave.

But I feel guilty buying such food, as if I haven't bothered to organise myself a decent meal. It is there for when you fall hungry in the middle of the night and nothing else is open, or for when you have been drinking.

But if you want to cook with fresh meat or vegetables, you have to visit a supermarket. And not everyone lives next to one of those.

My boyfriend visits a supermarket every couple of nights. Sometimes he goes to a 24-hour supermarket about 10 minutes away, other times to the tourist centre in Silom.

He comes back with fresh meat, vegetables, and baking ingredients such as chocolate and cream. Unbelievably, the 7-11 does not even sell cream.

For the last four days, Maiyuu has made beef or pork steak for lunch. One day, he made it with pumpkin, the next potato, and then diced vegetable salad.

Today, he served a pork steak with large slices of garlic bread, which he made himself. When I came home last night, I saw he had also made several chocolate cakes.

I am enjoying eating western food again. Before the boyfriend started cooking western food every day, I seldom ate it, as no one sells it in the market.

If we visit the local shopping mall, we would rather go to a Japanese restaurant, or one which makes decent Thai food, which of course costs more than the food on sale at carts or market stalls.

Notice I say 'we'. My Thai boyfriend gets just as bored with the Thai food on offer around here as I do, which is why he has started making western food for lunch instead.

We all like a break occasionally, even from Thai food. It's supposedly among the best in the world, but in the hands of some Thais, can taste little better than the cardboard from the 7-11.