Get on with your pastry, then!

Making pastry can be a challenging business, judging by Maiyuu's failed attempts so far.

Maiyuu spent hours yesterday trying to roll pastry without making it split. Maybe I do him an injustice: he has made many pies in the past without problem.

He gave up the effort after two failed attempts, and left home to spend the night with whoever is entertaining him outside home these days.

-
A gay youngster hopped on the bus as I was heading to work. He had dyed his hair blond, and wore his black pants low, with a jacket, and low-rise T-shirt.

He shot me a gay look as he sat down - maybe out of habit, or to see if I was interested. A few moments into the journey, someone called him on the phone.

'I wanted to go to DJ Station or Or Tor Kor last night but I have a cold,' he told his friend, referring to those two well-known gay nightspots in Bangkok.

After the call, he stretched, showing me glimpses of his white underwear.

His apple eyes, shapely forehead, and square lips were all distinctively Thai. In a gay nightclub with 100 customers, he would be among the best 10 best-looking youngsters there.

We left the bus at the same place. He walked ahead. I was making my way to a noodle stand for something to eat before work, which is close to a bus stop, and a 7-11. He sat down at the bus stop.

After ordering my noodle, and leaving my bag at the foodstand, I wandered over to where my young man was sitting. He was on the telephone again.

I tapped him on the shoulder, interrupting his call. 'You are very pretty - did you know that?' I asked.

He smiled - and I returned to the noodle shop. By the time I had finished my noodle 10 minutes later, Mr Handsome Blond had left.

-

In the market, I visited a shop which serves pork off the bone and rice. I visit regularly, as I like one of the young men who serves me.

After the meal, a man in his 50s walked out before me. He had asked the family which runs the shop to give him B20, so he could call his daughter, who sells goods in the area.

They declined. As we left the shop, he was grumbling, so I gave him the money instead.

We talked, attracting strange looks from residents in the market.

My new friend is called Da Bua. He lives behind the shop where we had eaten moments before.

We walked back to his place, taking the scenic route. Outside his simple home, which sits in a small slum community, he introduced me to a neighbour in her early 50s and her teenage son.

I bought a bottle of lao khao, his favourite tipple. We found a place to sit, and he brought out a checkers-style board game called makhos (หมากฮอส).

We played, but I spent most of the next three hours talking to his neighbour, and her 14 year-old son.

'I have no family here, and would love to be part of someone else's family if you would let me,' I said.

I must have been feeling lonely.

Mum accepted me happily. Today I will go back to see them again.

Love thy neighbour

Boyfriend Maiyuu has spent the last three nights away from home - the first two, at a nearby hotel meditating, and last night with a friend.

This is what he tells me, and I have no reason to think otherwise.

It's New Year, so we all have to do something different.

For three days in the last week, my company has put us on an early-start, early-finish shift. So I have done 'something different' too.

'I hope you do not mind if I am not here. Being alone gives me time to think, and makes me feel better inside and better about my life,' Maiyuu told me two nights ago, on a brief home visit before returning to his meditation hotel.

'I am staying at a cheap place, a hotel around here,' he said.

'Where's your overnight bag?'I asked him before I left.

'Oh, I left it at the hotel last night, so it's still there,' he said.

-
Maiyuu has bought a new German oven, for his baking. When we visited the mall together a few days ago to buy my new glasses, we also took a look at portable ovens.

The oven which he uses for baking is small, unreliable, and old. The new one looks super-duper - what else can I say?

He has yet to use it, but has been busy looking at cookbooks for new ideas.

-
The people who live below my condo celebrate New Year at home. They hire powerful stereos or karaoke machines with a deadening, thumping disco beat.

One place puts up tinsel outside every year. They sit around at a table, or dance.

A girl who joined their party screamed all night long, intoxicated by the noise she was making.

The family opposite raises noisy chickens. Last night, they took over the chicken shed for their New Year celebrations. They had hired their own stereo or some other sophisticated noise projection device, which pumped out music with its own beat.

I have seen both families come to blows before, and thought another commotion was in the offing last night.

How can you enjoy yourself properly, when the family directly opposite is blaring out its own music?

After tossing and turning in bed for two hours, I finally heard someone call out: 'It's time for bed.'

An hour later, by 2.30am, the worst of the noise had died down. I took half a sleeping pill, and the problems of the world faded away.

-
On New Year's Eve, the night before, Maiyuu and I watched fireworks light up the city from a window in our condo.

I held him by his shoulders, as I didn't want him falling out.

Our heads turned here and there like spectators at a tennis match. Over here, a big plume of orange! Over there, candle lanterns floating in the sky!

He is a sweet kid. Maiyuu lit a cigarette, as he tried to contain his excitement.

He had recently showered. I put my nose against his head and sniffed his hair.

Where heroes are made

Bangkok Yai canal, which runs through Talad Phlu 

'Can't you just polish the old ones?' the boyfriend asked the optician hopefully.
She shook her head. No, you can't.

He tried again.

'Can't you just put the new lens in the old frames?'

'No - I want new frames,' I said.

Maiyuu and I visited an optician at the local shopping mall yesterday. I need a new pair of prescription glasses. He was determined to part with as little of my money as possible.
Of course he asked the questions in jest. However, if they had replied 'Yes', I might have had an argument on my hands.

For someone who has good eyesight like Maiyuu, all this fuss over glasses is hard to understand. I buy a new pair every 12-18 months.

I chose a new pair of frames, with his help. Actually, he went straight to the cabinet where the cheapest frames are kept, chose one for me, and pronounced they would look 'perfect'.

Actually, they do not look too bad, if a little on the trendy side.

'I am too old to wear these,' I said.

'They will make you look younger - and they are cheap,' he said approvingly.

We did try on a few others, but settled for the pair he liked which will set us back the least.

The young woman serving us enjoyed our exchange: the farang urging the Thai to spend a little more on his eyes, the Thai keeping his purse strings closed.

They also tested my eyes. My eyesight has grown worse in my right eye, as I suspected.

My new eyeware, with a new pair of lens, will set us back B7,300, which is not so bad really.

Maiyuu put down a B4,000 deposit. 'You can find the other B3,000,' he said.

I talked him down from that lofty position by agreeing to buy him a present at the local bookshop - two cooking books, worth B600.

-

Long-tailed boats bring tourists with their bikes to canalside eateries

I met bad boy Kew at the riverside eatery for a drink.

He wanted to meet in Pin Khlao, where he could pluck my guitar moodily on the banks of the Chao Phraya River, but we decided the local eatery by the canal running through Talad Phlu would be easier.

He turned up shortly after 2pm, the first time we had met in four or five months. The last time I saw him, I brought along a straight friend of mine, farang C.

At his request, Kew took us that day to a forlorn part of town where men pick up girls off the street.

Yesterday, Kew was in a subdued mood. His mother had bought a desktop computer, and then a laptop computer, for the use of his younger sister, who is still at school.

'My sister wanted the laptop so she could show off to her friends,' Kew complained.

Kew knows he is his Mum's favourite, but is having trouble communicating with her. He says she should have saved for a rainy day the money she spent on the laptop. Kew's parents left each other years ago, and his mother is not well off.

My young friend is close to his younger sister, who shines academically - or did, before she became hooked on her friends.

'She told me to butt out of her business. I cried,' he said.

Kew's former girlfriend is also causing him problems. She is 18, and has made herself pregnant with a man she befriended in the provinces. Kew worries about her, as he fears she is too young to raise the child herself.

'I tell her to stop smoking and drinking, so the child has a chance of being born normal,' he said.

I felt sorry for my friend, who came close to tears a few times as he told me the sad stories of his life.

Kew, a security guard, works for a local car firm. He can look after his own needs financially and is even managing to save money, he says, so life is not all bad.

While we were drinking, a fight broke out at a nearby table. A small man in his 50s started shouting at a woman. I don't know what the fight was about. Kew could see more of what was happening from where he sat.

'If I intervene, will I get thumped?' he asked.

'Don't do anything - just sit,' I urged.

However, we were both on our feet a few seconds later when the man pulled out a paper cutter. The sound of the blade sliding out of its metal sheath is unmistakable.

One of the women at the table was trying to restrain him.

I was the first to arrive. 'That's enough,' I told him firmly.

Kew did much more. He put himself between the man with the blade and his female target, and threatened to take the knife off him.

The little man with the fiery temper agreed to put his cutter away. The woman he was scolding fled the restaurant, and life returned to normal.

I was proud of Kew. On his feet, coming to the rescue of a woman, he looked tall and strong.

'You are the hero of this shop today,' I told him after we had returned to our table.

'You're my hero as well.'

Kew and I have known each other since he was 18. He is now 25, looks harder in the face, but is still handsome.

While we were drinking, three long-tailed boats pulled up at the pier outside the eatery - a small restaurant with open sides perched on the banks of the canal - and disgorged their passengers and bikes on to the rickety pier next to us. 

Under the bridge, close to the canalside eatery

They were tourists, who had come on a bicycle ride around the market. Before their ride, they drop into the restaurant for a bite to eat.

I spoke to one of the guides, a tall Thai woman in her early 20s.

'I like girls like that - if I didn't have Maiyuu, I might be with her - she suits my specs,' I announced.

I would like to think it could be true. Who knows.

Kew, for his part, decided he liked the look of one of the Dutch girls in the tour group.

An hour later, as another tour group was getting back on a long-tailed boat by the wooden pier, having finished their ride and their snack, a Thai tour guide chatted to Kew through the open sides of the eatery.

She was on the pier, piling bicycles onto the boat.

After she left, a member of the waiting staff told Kew that the girl had left her phone number.

She must have liked the look of Kew, but was too shy to ask for his phone number herself.

Kew called back, but did not sound interested, as his moods were still flat.

My young friend has depressive tendencies, but I am not sure how to help him feel better.

'Can I kiss your forehead?' I asked. 'It looks sad.'

'No - you're mad,' he said, laughing.

Postscript: Happy New Year to readers.

Khao tom reunion

Farang C went for the Thai option last night, choosing to drink at a humble khao tom shop rather than a trendy, tourist-style place nearby, as he did not want to sit indoors.

In Klong Toey, where we met, I gave him a choice of two places to drink, which I had last visited years before.

One was an indoors eatery which looks like it belongs in the tourist district, with soft lighting and trendy furniture.

The other place, next door, was a khao tom shop whose good name stretches far and wide among Thais, but which to many farang might look too basic.

Without hesitating, Farang C chose the khao tom place, whose owner and family remembered me from last time.

I introduced farang C to the owner, Jay. If we decide against returning to Mum's forlorn hole-in-the-wall in Pin Khlao, the khao tom in Klong Toey might even become our new local.

That should please Jay and her family, as the place was quiet.

Several young men turned up late to order food, probably for their girlfriends. A few couples also dropped in for a meal, but other than that, the place was empty.

I drank whisky, farang C drank beer. About midnight, he left for a girly bar in Silom, and I went home.

-

The Mall Tha Phra, our local mall

Maiyuu and I are visiting the local shopping mall, our first social outing in months.

I want to buy a new pair of prescription glasses, and need Maiyuu on hand to pay the deposit.

First, I shall have an eye test. Maiyuu can sit next to me in the little booth where the optician places lenses over my eyes.

'Can you read the letters on the bottom line, please...'

Last time we did this, about 18 months ago, Maiyuu was surprised at how poor my eyesight had become.

After the eye test, I will seek Maiyuu's help in choosing a pair of frames.

As my eyes get worse every year, so does the bill for new prescription glasses go up. I hope he doesn't mind.

Daddy elephant and the naked ascetic

An elephant walking through Bangkok

A young man escorting a large elephant through town asked me if I would like to buy bananas for him (the elephant) to eat.

'Dad (Ah Pa)...elephant? ' he asked.

This is the first time I have been called Dad.

Many Thais have called me uncle, but an uncle can start his duties at any age.

In real life (outside the blogosphere), I am now an uncle many times over, though I seldom see my nieces and nephews.

I was a little shocked, and shook my head to say no.

Boyfriend Maiyuu says the term does not have to mean Dad. Traders can use it as a term of endearment to refer to customers generally. Still, when I heard it, I felt old.

Before I was Uncle (Lung). Now I am Dad.

Still, it's better than being called Aunty - which, but for the tone, sounds very similar to the word 'Pa' meaning Dad.

-

'Mum's place is dead...where else shall we drink?' I asked my work friend, farang C.

He and I have drunk at Mum's shop half a dozen times. I introduced him to the place one night, to show him that life outside the tourist zone in Silom, where he lives, can be just as rich and colourful.

In Silom, he does battle with mamasans, drunken foreign friends, and bargirls who steal money.

On the Thon Buri side where I live and drink, he can take in the family side of Thai life - Mum and Dad arguing with kids, street dogs, drunken Thais...

I prefer mixing with Thais rather than foreigners, so no surprise if I should have stuck by Mum's place all these years.

But the place is now barely a shop at all. When I see it, I think of Charlie Brown's lemonade stall. Why would you bother, unless you felt sorry for the kids, or were absolutely parched?

'Let's try Klong Toey,' said farang C.

Klong Toey, which is closer to where he lives, contains an odd mix of the super-wealthy and ultra-poor. It is home to mansions and slums alike, separated only by a motorway.

As it happens, I know two places where we can drink on nearby Pra Ram 4, which span both sides of the wealth divide.

One is indoors, and looks like a boutique eatery, similar to the smart joints he frequents in Silom, or in trendy Thong Lor.

It has plenty of golden woodwork, and subdued yellow lighting, but is probably empty most of the time. Few tourists dine in Klong Toey, and most young Thais who want to be seen stick to the central city.

The other is just around the corner - an outdoors khao tom shop which also serves booze.

I haven't been to either in years. Tonight, I shall catch a bus into Klong Toey to meet farang C.

I will take him to these two little shops I know, and ask him how he would like to drink - like a farang tourist, indoors at some wannabe Thong Lor establishment - or at a humble khao tom shop, staffed by youngsters from Esan, who are tired, overworked, and thinking of home.

Which way will he choose?

-

Chee Plueay Jao Leh (ชีเปลือยเจ้าเล่ห์) is a short story in Thai for children about the dangers of entrusting secrets. A merchant is washed ashore after his ship sinks at sea. He has no clothes, and locals assume he is an ascetic. They shower him with gifts and ask for his advice.

The King of the Garudas and King of the Serpents are among his followers. Because he is a nosy, fickle type, he extracts a secret from one, and passes it to the other, in the hope of getting some benefit.

Disclosure of the secret has potentially disastrous results, for the two are lethal foes.

However, when the two kings realise they have been deceived by the naked ascetic, they reconcile, and get their revenge.

Sound interesting? A Thai woman has translated one version of this ancient story into English, and asked me to check her work.

She wants to publish this story and about 50 others related to Buddha's birth in a book for young children.

A mutual friend has asked me to help her. 'My friend wants to make merit...please check her English,' he asked.

I doubt there is a market for such books. At that age, few Thais are interested in English. I am about to finish her story on the naked ascetic. Hopefully, she will then lose interest, or find some more productive way to occupy her time.

Am I being mean?