Shattered dreams (part 3, final)

The lane leading up to their place where we hid

I recall two scenes vividly - Orng hanging on for dear life to an iron fence at the mouth of the soi as her family pulled her by the hair; and another of Orng, her hair astray and shorts adrift, being kicked inelegantly around the front yard. 

Auntie Lek and I were sitting at the table when the first punch was thrown and quickly found a place to hide, down the lane about 15m from the house. We watched as the attack carried on, not game to interfere as it was family business. 

It was only a matter of time before someone in the soi called the police, I thought, such was the commotion; finally I left for home as I couldn't stand being present as the assault unfolded.

One of the regulars at the table warned Auntie Lek and I not to get involved (by all means watch, but say nothing), and it was good advice. 

I can't recall if the police were called but when I turned up the next day Orng, Noi and her family had made up, though the younger brother, the first to hit her, remained on the outer. 

In late October I wrote to my parents about the family fight - a new one for me, even after all the time I have spent in Klong Toey slums:

"Last week I witnessed her younger brother and older sister beating up Orng, after she got into debt. Her husband had to take on responsibility for repaying the loan sharks, but called on family to help.

"It was an awful fight, and thankfully little blood was shed. Life is now getting back to normal there, and Ong and her husband Noi seem as close as ever, despite the dreadful scenes that night. I am pleased few kids were around to witness it; Orng's teenage son Dream was away on a trip to the provinces.  

"Dream turned up the next night, crying, according to Auntie Lek. He asked his uncle over and over why he had to beat up his mum." 

My parents, who have given up warning me off odd types in the slum, remarked laconically that the scene must have been an "eye-opener", which indeed it was.

My relationship with this crowd has waxed and waned. We renewed our ties again in May last year when, coincidentally, my sister was due back in Bangkok on another visit. 

Orng urged me to bring the kids over, though a churlish member of her drinking group said I should stay away until my sister had arrived. "Don't bother with him now - wait until he's brought the kids," she said brazenly at I sat at Orng's table. 

Their interest in befriending me again was tied solely to whether they would get to see those cute farang kids. After that, presumably, they would give me the cold shoulder.

My family was in Bangkok just a week so time was limited. I raised the prospect of a visit with the kids but no one seemed keen. "Are you still seeing that family we had lunch with?' my oldest nephew, now 16, asked. 

He recalls the day we went there for lunch, when he was a little over 10. When I said yes, he grimaced.

Where Dream is concerned, things are adrift. Funnily enough, even after we made up, I found it difficult talking to the lad, as too much time had passed.

Dream and I have spoken a few times online about our shared fondness for dogs (he raises two Beagles ), and we exchange greetings at the 7-11. "You are my friend," he declared in one online chat.

I gather he still works as a messenger, though no longer for his aunt as he did before. He still plays football, though appears to have finished night school. He had a live-in girlfriend for months, but they split up and on FB now declares himself single. He is also a social media addict.

"One day I willl ask you about your life, as I know almost nothing about you," I told him on chat. "I hardly ever bother snooping on your FB."

These days even that's not an option, as he has put most of his posts in friends-only mode. However, he leaves up a few pictures with his old girlfriend, no doubt to let the world know that he once had one. Dream was never big on self-confidence, and I doubt much has changed.

"He has football in his life, and that's about it," his mother liked to tell me.

These days, you can add to that his drinking mates, and FB feed.

Dream may be willing to make a new start, but I find I am too nervous. If I see him outside his house, I whizz past on my bike; we don't talk. I hear his friends, some of whom I know independently of Dream, ask: 'What's wrong with the farang?'

When I see Dream in public I stumble over my words and don't know what to say. Where do you start, after years in which we were estranged, long periods which we should have spent getting to know each other but didn't? 

He was such a charming young man, and my early experiences of mixing with the crowd at his home warm and vivid. 

However, when I go past the house now it seems a shadow of what it once was. While Orng's friends still gather, the drinking circle has shrunk dramatically. 

They fall in and out with the folks who gather further down the lane to drink. Worse, the young people who used to lighten the atmosphere there have all but gone, as they are now old enough to socialise at bars and eateries with their own mates instead.

Another phase has passed with an unsatisfactory ending. I often think of Dream and his family, but the cost of re-entering their lives - tolerating hours of miserable, endless talk about 40 baht street food and 20 baht football bets - seems too high. I must have moved on, even if they haven't. 

Shattered dreams (part 2)

The angry one and his mum's drinking crowd

Dream must have resented the fact we hit it off, and when we were together would studiously avoid me as usual or even attempt to pull his cousin away if we were talking.

We had many involved conversations standing in Orng's front yard as Dear, an ex-con who served time for drugs in his youth, offered me some well-meant life advice. "Make money, find a woman, have kids," just about sums it up.

Some months later Dear gritted his teeth and moved back to his family home in leafy Bang Krachao, the so-called "green lungs" of Bangkok across the Chao Phraya River. I have not seen him in many years now, after he and Dream's family fell out.

Meanwhile, a neighbour and distant relative of Dream's mother, Orng, invited me to her daughter's wedding soon after I met the crowd.  Dream's mother and her friends were happy to welcome me into their lives, despite my problems with the angry young one.

They held the wedding at a nearby playing field, which was fancier than it sounds, with overhead lights, dining tables and so on. At his uncle's suggestion I kept a watch out for potential trouble. "Teens in the neighbourhood might hear about the wedding and turn up to cause mayhem," his uncle, a DSI policeman and elder brother to Orng, said darkly. 

I kept an eagle eye out for strife which did not arise. Dream dressed up and looked fabulous, as did his mates. I recall much laughter and group photos, but not much else. However, still no talkies.

Time passed. In April 2014, some months after we met, Ong invited my sister and her family, who were visiting Bangkok, to join a religious ceremony at their home. 

Orng had invited the monks to bless the ashes of her late mother, as she does every year on the anniversary of her death. She puts on a big meal afterwards and when she found out my sister was in town was quick to invite her. 

Orng and her friends made a fuss of us, perhaps her first farang visitors, seating my sister, her husband and their three kids at their own table, and explaining the Thai dishes on offer.

My nieces and nephews, the oldest of whom was about 10, were popular, with Orng and the others trying their best to chat in English, and even Dream remarking to his mother on their startling blue eyes. 

On the day we joined them, however, he made sure to sit with his back to my family, as he joined his mates at their own table nearby. 

Later that night, his messenger friend, Laem, invited me to a football game in Klong Toey. We went as a group, including a few kids, but once again Dream pretended I did not exist. 

Orng's place wasn't always so warm and welcoming. In October 2015, Orng's relatives assaulted her after she fell into debt with underground lenders and left them with the bill.

Orng, aware she could no longer afford the repayments racked up over months of casual borrowing, fled home and left her husband Noi to cope with the problem. 

Indian lenders do the rounds of the soi offering easy money at high interest. I see them on their bicycles as they move up and down the lane offering loans or collecting interest, like doctors making house calls. 

Thais in the soi stop them to borrow money for spending as casual as laying a bet on a football game, and worry about the consequences later.

Orng racked up the debts on the quiet and abruptly left her husband rather than tell him what she had done. When the lenders told Noi that he was on the hook for tens of thousands of baht, he told his shocked friends and family. They lured her back home for the inevitable confrontation.  

Her younger brother and elder sister arranged with Noi to be present when she returned, though they went into hiding, for dramatic soap-opera like effect. When Orng turned up in early evening after several nights away, she no doubt hoped she would find her husband alone.

Her family sprang out from wherever they had secreted themselves and demanded she explain. Her younger brother Tong, a surly individual who lived in a delapidated lean-to down the lane, ran out of patience, and thumped her in the shoulder to show his displeasure. 

I was sitting next to him outside their place and was startled to see him hit Orng, especially as he regularly helps himself to food at her house. 

However, he was not the only relative happy to lay hands on Orng that night. Her brother and elder sister chased Orng around the front yard over the next two hours, punching her, slapping her, pulling her hair, tearing at her clothes, and dragging her into the house.

They were demanding retribution for saddling them with debts which they assumed they would have to help pay off.

As the screaming intensified, Noi closed the door to outsiders so family members could vent in privacy. 

Noi, while he may have tricked his wife back home, did not appear to lay a hand on her, I am pleased to say -  but nor did he try to stop the others from hitting Orng.

now, see part 3

Shattered dreams (part 1)

Orng's house, plus the drinking table out front

Dream and I finally buried the hatchet on his birthday in April 2016, a mere two years and four months since we argued. I was sitting at their drinking table outside his mother's house, having renewed my friendship with this crowd after a distant patch.

The drinkers at the table helped us break the ice with a few words along the lines of: "Dream, the farang would like a few words."

The young man, grasping how much it meant to me to make a new start, took my hand as I - ahem - shed a tear of relief.

I wish I could remember what I said now, but it must have made sense. Or perhaps the adults stepped in to explain.

I had told his mother Orng and her friends how much I regretted the episode. I had felt guilty about it for ages, but I could never bring myself to speak to Dream, and vice versa.

When the moment finally came, I wept out of relief that I could finally put this awful business behind me. Dream, seeing my anxiety, offered his hand in comfort. 

For months after we argued, we would compete for attention among the drinkers at his mother's place, just like teens vying for a peer group following. Dream would interrupt as I was talking, or I would do the same to him. However, we would never speak to each other, and if adults at the table tried to get us to reconcile we would pretend not to hear.

Once I grabbed him by the arm (the one he broke in his motorcycle accident months before we met, unfortunately) demanding to know why he wouldn't talk. I went for a toilet break and when I re-emerged into the main room, just metres from the front door, he was standing there alone. 

He and I circled each other around the room as I kept asking, almost taunting: 'Why won't you talk? What's the problem?'

The adults including Orng were sitting just outside and were within earshot.

After I grabbed his arm, which has a steel plate inserted there after his accident, he gave me wounded look as if I had just trespassed into a forbidden zone, and should have known better.

Dream fled outside to his mother, shouting angrily, and warning that he would refuse to let me back if I bothered him again. 

The adults, as shocked as I was by his teenage tantrum, sent him upstairs to cool off. While he was banished upstairs, they invited me back to the table and offered words of comfort.

"He's like that," his mother said. "There's no point trying to make amends. If you upset him you will just have to wait until he comes around."

Ah, but the weeks were to stretch into months, and finally years!

At first I would unload about Dream to anyone who listened, convinced I had not wronged him so badly as to justify his stand-offish behaviour. Later, I kept my peace, but the hurt feelings festered. 

After Dream started giving me the big feeze, I befriended his cousin Dear, who was living in Dream's place to escape a fractious relationship with his own mother. 

Dear, aged in his mid 20s, worked as a messenger (I think), and was a great talker. He had a businessman's eye for the main chance, and could hold forth seemingly on any subject.

now, see part 2

Country cousins (part 3, final)

Jap in Sept 2017, about to start work

We spoke that night from the outskirts of Bangkok where his bus stopped. They weren't coming any further into town and his parents and I would not get to see him. "Sorry I won't get to meet you this time either," he said. 

When he returned to Nong Kai the next day he had to face the wrath of his aunt. His mother heard about his unauthorised trip to Bangkok and called to pass on her concern. 

I dropped in to Sin's place that night after work at Oiy's invitation, so I could be there as she and his father called to reprimand him. 

As Sin and Oiy spoke to him over the phone, I recall Oiy pleading with Jap: "You don't have long to go now. Just a little more patience and school will be over." 

The product of a broken home, Jap's birth mother turned her back on him when he was still a baby. She now has a new family and has shown no interest in forging a motherhood bond.  When he tried to make contact some years ago, she made him feel so awkward he has not been back. 

While Sin predicts cynically that she might come calling one day whenever Jap starts earning a decent wage, so far he has heard nothing. In the meantime, he calls Oiy his Mum - though confusingly can also refer to his aunt who raised him in Nong Kai as his mother too.

As for Sin himself, he has not raised Jap by his own hand in years. "I asked my sister to take on the job, after helping her raise her own children when they were in a tough financial position years ago," he told me once.

Back to Jap and his life since school. He had spoken of pursuing studies after his secondary education ended, but it was not to be. After leaving school he moved to outer Bangkok. His first job was working as a security guard, in Ratachada, I think...I never went to see him there. 

He abandoned that job, left the lease on his apartment, forfeiting the bond and losing his unpaid wages. That was the last teenage-style drama of Jap's that I was involved in. I had stopped sending him money before then as he had entered the workforce and as far as I was concerned could look after himself. 

He turned up at his father's condo for a brief visit some time later, which is when I finally met him, our first face-to-face encounter since those May holidays three years before. I had told my parents about Jap, and had this to say on the day we reunited:

"Jap, who is now 19 and a big lad, sent me a text last week to say he was at Dad's. Last night we had a beer together at the condo. We just picked up where we left off; it has been so easy getting to know him again. He looked nervous for perhaps the first five seconds, then we just relaxed." (email, Sept 18, 2017)

Later he took a job at a Korean-owned company in outlying Bangkok making home appliances. It was hard, gruelling work on a production line and eventually he quit. In June last year he joined the staff of a Bangkok supermarket popular with foreigners, which his mother helped arrange through a relative who works there.

Jap floats a krathong in Bangkok, Nov 2017

He seldom leaves his rented place in the suburbs to visit his parents' condo. In August last year he visited briefly to give his Mum a wai on Mother's Day. However, I no longer visit when he turns up as I do not want to have to part with money.

I tell him that I can't give him money any more as I am now connected to internet banking. My partner checks the balance, I say, and if he saw any funds missing would object. 

I am sure that in Jap's eyes I am still his "uncle"...but since I passed on that grim news we don't see the need to talk much.

Country cousins (part 2)

Jap the schoolboy

Oiy and Sin met as youngsters in the provinces, drifted away, then reunited many years later after Sin ended a lengthy spell in the monkhood. Oiy has a layabout son by another relationship, Benz, who has been to jail once and appears to have no steady work but, like Jap's Dad himself, enters the monkhood every so often when he is sick of bumming around at home. 

At the outset of our friendship in June 2014, Jap told me he visited his father's place in Bangkok just twice a year, which I thought was unfortunate, but better than the prospect of not seeing him at all. Yet after our first meeting in those May school holidays it would be more than three years before we saw each other again.

When Jap turned up at his Dad's place again in September 2017 he had finished school and started work as a security guard in outer Bangkok. I had missed the school boy phase of his life, but for our regular conversations over the phone. 

That was one of a series of disappointments where Jap was concerned. His father told me Jap was studying at a private fee-paying school in Esan which, as a bonus, sent kids to Chon Buri at the end of their Matthayom 6 year to gain work experience at a factory - one of those Japanese-owned mega-plants which employ thousands and provide an entry into the full-time workforce for many.

I would tell myself that investing in his well-being was a good thing, as he was bound to get a good education at a private school; I was helping mold a star. 

In fact, Jap's grades were average, as was the school;. It was indeed privately owned, but brand new; its executives embarked on recruiting drive among local parents as it had no academic reputation to call on or help the kids secure jobs when they left school.  And while the other kids in Jap's year did get to spend part of their last term in Chon Buri, Jap himself missed out as his grades weren't good enough.

I started to grow suspicious that his school was less than claimed when he sent me a photograph of his schoolbooks; they were the same scrappy soft-cover, mass produced textbooks which students can buy from local malls all over the country.

But our relationship, conducted almost entirely by telephone, persisted until he left school and returned to Bangkok. Jap spoke little, and showed little feeling. I recall him getting emotional only once when he pleaded with me to fund his entry to a direct sales company selling collagen. 

While he had many friends, I doubt teens were the ideal market for skin whitening products such as collagen, especially in a place like Esan where folk farm the land and are naturally tanned.

While hanging with that crowd, he wagged school to attend their seminars, and even took a furtive overnight trip to Bangkok without telling his aunt. I figured out what he was doing, thanks to a cryptic Facebook message posted from a bus stop, but I was the only one in his family who knew.

now, see part 3