Quiet moment in Bangkok

Klong Toey market

I was heading down a narrow street into the Klong Toey fresh market when a familiar radio broadcast came on over a loudspeaker.

We were in the centre of Bangkok...but the same thing happens in villages and public places nationwide, twice a day.

The national anthem is broadcast on radio and television at 8am and 6pm. In villages, headmen play the tune over the loudspeaker so everyone can hear it.

My destination was a small outreach medical clinic run by Chulalongkorn Hospital, in the heart of the market in a poor part of town.

Twenty people were walking ahead of me. Any of them could be heading for the clinic. Last time I had to wait 20 minutes for the queue of patients to clear.

Ten seconds later, the advertisements stopped, and the national anthem started. People in front stopped walking. A man on a motorcycle turned off his bike.

It would be an exaggeration to say that life froze, as Bangkok is too hectic. But it did slow, as we paid our respects to King and country.

The Thais around me looked at the farang. I looked at them.

I like the national anthem, but I enjoy the King's anthem much more. In cinemas, it is accompanied by moving pictures of the King's life. The clip plays before the main feature. Whenever I watch it, I get teary.

The boyfriend knows this, and steals a look at me as the song ends. I do not disappoint. My cheeks are wet every time.

Half a minute later, the radio broadcast, as relayed through those scratchy loudspeakers, ends.

Activity on the street speeds up again, as if someone had taken his finger off an old vinyl record. The pace of life picks up.

Another 20m to go. People around me cleave into smaller groups.

Half a dozen appear to be heading for the clinic, but no. At the last moment, they dive off somewhere else.

Two people make it to the clinic's sliding glass doors ahead of me, but the waiting room is almost empty.

Inside the entrance, I talk to two staff behind a small counter, then take a seat. The clinic is so small, I can hear what the doctor is saying to the patient in her room.

Five minutes later, my name is called.

'I have come for more sleeping pills,' I said. 'I do not use them much, and take only half a tablet a day.'

I thought this good news would impress the doctor, who I had not seen before.

At hospitals and clinics in Bangkok, I have rarely seen the same doctor twice.

'Well then, we should keep you on half a tablet,' she said.

I left her office, and took a seat in the waiting room before staff called me to the counter.

They had divided the sleeping pills into halves, which is fine, but cut the number of pills normally prescribed.

I can see now I should have lied, and told her the problem was getting worse.

'How many pills are here?' I asked. The small, clear plastic bag in which they dispense these things looked suspiciously light.

'Ten.'

'And last time, how many did you give me?'

'Fifteen.'

'Why has the doctor given me less?'

'Maybe so you come back more often,' she said honestly.

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.

Master negotiator (2, final)

We took the girls back to their spot on the sidewalk.

They asked for B200 for wasting their time. Farang C ignored their request.

'I don't think you really want to do this,' I told farang C. 'Some of the girls are not pretty. Others look too young. You could lose you wallet.'

He agreed, and we abandoned the idea.

Kew was unhappy that he could not help farang C. 'You farang, you just want pup, pup pup!' he shouted. He brought the palms of his hands together in a pumping action, referring to sex, of course.

Farang C did not understand what was going on, which was just as well.

'Kew, please be good,' I said firmly from the front seat.

He fell silent.

I took Kew home. Earlier in the evening, as we drank at Mum's shop in Thon Buri, Kew told me that he had been diagnosed with a lung disease.

He had been to the doctor, who tested his blood. He was going back for a fuller diagnosis this week.

Kew, who is 24, has smoked since he was 15, and smoked again as we sat at Mum's shop.

'Will you miss me if I am no longer here?' he asked.

I stroked the back of his head. 'Of course.'

Kew wanted me to call the next day, so he could take me to his place of work. He now works for a firm close to my home, where he interviews workers for factory jobs.

Previously, he worked as a security guard, and before that as a bar boy in Pattaya.

He also wanted me to accompany him to hospital later in the week, to see his doctor.

When I called the next day, he did not answer. When I called the next day, his cellphone had been disconnected. Maybe he forgot to pay his bill.

I don't know what to think about Kew any more.

'If you wanted him to be your boyfriend, he would probably let you,' farang C told me later. 'He does the little-boy-lost act very well.'

It is interesting to get a foreign friend's perspective on Thai friends I have known for years. Thais who meet Kew are unimpressed. They think he looks rough and unscrupulous.

Where money is concerned, he does have a ruthless streak. However, where friends are concerned, he also has a soft side.

He calls me every few weeks, and often it is not about money. 'Don't worry, my doctor's visits are covered by health insurance,' he told me at Mum's shop.

Maybe he just wanted a free night out. I paid for his drinks and food, as I normally do.

If I ran out of money, and pulled the plug, would he still keep calling?

Master negotiator (1)

'Get out of the way!'

That was farang C. He and bad-boy Kew, my Thai friend who is aged in his mid-20s but finds it hard to grow up, were wrestling in the back seat of a taxi.

We were kerb-crawling, as the Americans say. Farang C, who was drunk, had expressed an interest in sleeping with a girl, but did not want to spend much money.

Kew, a former bar boy in Pattaya, was keen to impress upon my friend farang C how clever he was at negotiating with girls of the night.

When he worked in Pattaya, foreign and Thai women alike had 'off-ed' him, so he knew how these things worked.

He gave the driver directions, and we headed off to Wong Wian Yai in Bangkok, where girls of the night ply their trade from the sidewalk (along with Pin Khlao bridge, outside Thammasat University, and various other spots).

The taxi knew where to go, as customers in search of female company had taken him there before.

The girls gathered in groups of four or five, spread over a 100m stretch. Each time we came upon a small group, Kew, who was on the driver's side, told the taxi to stop. Then he would lean across the back seat and call to the girls out the window.

Farang C, who was sitting closest to the girls, could not see them, because Kew's body was blocking the view. Kew had to lean across farang C to bargain with the girls from the window on his side.

'I can't see if they are pretty or not, because his body is in the way,' he complained.

Some girls came over for a better look at who was in the taxi. Others just called out from where they were sitting.

Kew negotiated over prices, and the number of girls. At each stop, he asked for two girls, and offered them B450-500, which included the tariff for a short-stay hotel.

'Some girls will only let you do it once, or you have to pay again,' said Kew.

I assume that is why he asked for two girls. Maybe he wanted to sleep with one, too. He can't possibly have thought I was interested.

In the end, he found two girls who agreed on his price. Kew took us to a short-stay hotel, which I had recalled seeing many years before, but only in passing.

The taxi took us up an off-road ramp, and into the back of the hotel. It stopped, and farang C, the girls and Kew went in to the office.

Five minutes later, they were back. 'We don't serve foreigners,' said the owner, a man in his 50s told us. He came out accompanied by the others.

We left. Traffic on the ramp is one way, so we kept going the same way we came up.

It took us past many small, squalid-looking rooms. Outside their room, customers can park their car. If they don't want their vehicle to be recognised, they can draw a large curtain across the vehicle to conceal it.

now, see part 2

Me, new phase, Thai life!

The boyfriend is back, after two days at work. His employer alters or adapts clothes, lampshades, and shoes to order.

Customers bring in clothing or furniture items, wanting braid, flowers or other decorative bits and pieces put on them. Can do!

That information is more than six months old, dating from the last time I asked the boyfriend about his work.

When he goes to work, he tends to go for at least a day and night. This time, he went for two days and two nights. He sleeps over at his boss's place.

I tried calling a few times on the phone, but he was too busy to answer. Until recently, we sent text messages to each other. I used to send one just before coming home from work, prompting him to do whatever household tasks I asked him to perform while away, such as washing the dishes.

Now, I don't bother. I know the job will get done eventually, and life is made of bigger things.

We must have reached a new level of understanding in our relationship, where we both know that those tiresome SMS messages are no longer necessary.

Apart from that, I have made a new farang friend at work, who calls regularly at night, after our shifts end and we have returned home.

We work the same shifts, on the same days. We have hit it off, even though he is irredeemably straight. We have been drinking at Mum's shop a couple of times, and talk almost every night during the working week.

He is the first foreigner I have befriended from work in years - maybe the first ever. Before, I turned up my nose at the company of foreigners. I wanted to immerse myself in Thai life, so all my friends became Thai.

Later, I realised that this was not working. Most of my Thai friends are at least 10 years younger, are still studying, or busy carving out careers.

We have nothing in common, outside Mum's shop.

When Thais see two farang, laughing and enjoying themselves, they want to join in the fun.

They come over, hold up their glass, and say 'Cheers!'

We clink glasses - then they walk back to their drinking table, to rejoin the relative safety of their Thai friends.

My Thai friends and I talk better when my farang friend has gone home, and we are alone. But I don't call my Thai friends during the week, and they rarely call me.

Before, I relied on the boyfriend for company, when not with my drinking friends at Mum's shop. Now, thank God, I have found someone else, who couldn't give a toss about my boyfriend, or life outside work.

We haven't reached that topic yet. We are still too busy talking about life in the West, good novels, work, our shared profession...