Culture shock (part 2)

All that's left of their stall these days...

She was to run into similar problems at her site where I met her down the road from my office in central Klong Toey. She was to last a matter of months before packing up and moving somewhere else. 

By then our relationship had also moved on, as I grew sick of their strange ways.

Robert lived with his aunt Pim at a rowhouse in the Jet Sip Rai area, about 10 minutes from where they set up shop. She had several brothers who ran their own food stalls, much like her own, including one in front of the rowhouse where they lived. 

One day I chatted to members of the family as they turned up at Pim's stall lugging supplies or equipment. First I met her partner, an amiable motorcycle taxi driver. 

Later I met her brothers, cousins, uncles, Pim’s father, and even an elderly grandmother with whom Robert, one of the youngest members of the family, had lived for years before moving in with Pim.

All arrived from Laos years ago and no one had work permits or visas permitting them to stay. Robert, 16 when I met him, had been in Thailand since he was little boy when he crossed the border with his grandmother. 

Because he lacked paperwork, including an ID card, he could not enter the schooling system. While he spoke Thai well, he could barely read or write.  

Pim could see I felt sorry for him as we chatted away, and was keen to encourage idea that Robert was a hard worker with few friends. 

It took me a while to piece together the events in his life, but I found out Robert had moved in with Pim only recently; six months before, he was still living off Chua Phloeng Road with his granny.

I could understand why he wanted to leave Granny's place. Pim's home in Jet Sip Rai offered the independence of young adulthood and a job. At granny's place he was just a kid with no income, spending his days playing football and computer games.

Nonetheless, it was a tough life. Pim paid him a pittance, just 100 baht a day assuming sales went well, but he worked 12 hours at a stretch, with few breaks or days off. 

“We are all family so it doesn’t matter. We help each other out. Apart from that, I have to keep money aside for his future,” she said expansively. Still, it looked like slave labour to me, and I told her so.

Perhaps because he was finding the adjustment to working life tough, Robert and Pim bickered often. 

Robert did not let his youth hold him back; he was outspoken and blunt with his aunt, even in front of customers. When Pim tired of his surly behaviour, she would pull in other youngsters as helpers, and banish Robert to her brother’s shop at Jed Sip Rai. When she forgave him she would let him come back again.

When Robert worked at Pim's shop I was protective of him, as I didn't like to see him exploited. He was much smaller than other boys his age - a family trait, the elders told me. "They all grow up small in our family," one said.

I helped Robert heavy items in the shop, put up the umbrella when it rained, lift the gas bottle off his motorbike after he went into the market to fill it up. If I fussed too much, he would reprimand me jokingly: "Just sit still!" 

Robert enjoyed playing guitar, he said, so I bought him one on the internet. I had never bought online before and enjoyed the experience. However, I felt deflated when someone at Pim's place broke the guitar the same day Robert took it home.

During this time I had all but abandoned my friends in the slum next to my condo.  When a youngster from that community contacted me one day wanting money, I suggested he come and see me. Nong Ton and a school friend turned up on their motorbike and I shouted them a quick meal at Pim's stall.

At the prompting of the ya dong stall owner down the way, I also gave them 200 baht for a meal at a Japanese eatery where were heading to meet friends. When they left, Pim caustically remarked: 'You should stick with us. They they just want handouts." 

Meanwhile, curious members of Pim's family were turning up at the stall to meet me, as if welcoming a new member to their family. They included the grandma on her first trip away from Chua Phloeng Road in months (a relative escorted her). It was as if I had married into the family through the aunt or Robert and everyone wanted to check me out.

now, see part 3

Culture shock (part 1)

Pim's stall sat where the pink chairs are now

"Everything that's yours is also mine"...that's a public-spirited attitude I hadn't bargained with when I decided to help a young man at an eatery close to work. 

I bought Robert a guitar, but his relatives, with whom he lived in a rowhouse nearby, borrowed it and broke it on the first day. 

I offered to buy him clothes, as he appeared to have few of his own, but his family invited themselves along and insisted I buy clothes for them too. 

Weeks after we met, in early August last year, I suggested we go out for a Thai-style bar-b-que for his birthday, but his aunt, wo also ran the streetside stall where he worked, hijacked the occasion. She dragged us along to a huge barn of a place in faraway Bang Kapi because she had been enjoyed herself there once before. 

By that time I had grown wise to their exploitative behaviour, and offered to pay for the kids in our group only; the adults would have to look after themselves.  

Robert was doing well because he happened to meet a farang who felt sorry for his plight. Yet his family was not content with that, as they wanted some of the action for themselves.

If he was doing well, then by rights they should benefit too, as they were an indivisible whole - an extended Laos family in which anything which accrued to one member should accrue to all. How joyfully socialist!

The family welcomed me as one of their own when I met them a year ago or so, which was touching, but it proved too much of a culture shock.

Back in those days I would drink regularly at a ya dong stand down the road from my office. The mainstay of the family, an attractive young woman in her 30s called Pim, opened a little stall on a vacant space next to us on the footpath.

Her stall was sandwiched between a busy road on one side and a truck yard on the other.

Some customers drove up alongside, barked out their order and waited for their food to be delivered in a white styrofoam box. 

Others with more time on their hands parked their motorcycles and took a seat at one of the rickety tables and chairs which spilled onto the roadside.

Occasionally we would have to shout to heard above the din of the trucks, as all that separated us on the footpath from the yard behind was a chain link fence.

Robert

I noticed her nephew, Robert, sitting alone for hours at a time as I knocked back my ya dong from shot glasses at another stand next to their little shop. 

He and one or two other youngsters served customers while Pim made their orders. They also helped her open and close the stall each day, and fetch supplies from the market.

This was a casual family-run stall, consisting initially of a gas cooker, a few pots and pans and a glass display cabinet, and not much else. It had no roof or walls or doors as such - when finished for the day they would string netting across their belongings, tucked into a corner on the footpath, and hope no one stole anything.

They turned up overnight after Pim reached a deal to rent the footpath space from the owners - a family living in a squattie or lean-to arrangement smack up against the chain-lik fence in the smelly truck yard. 

Don't these people own a proper home - and how did they gain possession of what was a public space by the side of a busy road?  

The husband and wife who lived in this hovel argued often, sometimes coming to blows. Customers in Pim’s shop heard the racket as it drifted through the chain link fence; we all did, but pretended not to notice. Welcome to life in the slums!

Pim, who comes from Laos, opened the stall originally in a busy nearby community called Jet Sip Rai, where she and her brothers live, but ran into trouble with the local council inspectors, who did not like the way her tables and chairs spilled onto the road.

now, see part 2

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 hatched 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