Culture shock (part 4)

The Korean-style moo kra ta joint in Bang Kapi; also, below

He looked at me, fish-eye indifferent, as if he was used to getting such brush-offs. Robert, who heard the exchange, looked shocked at my response. I stormed away.

I fumed all the way home, pedalling furiously, and stopped in the slum soi to compose a stiffly worded message to Pim. "Your father has just tried to menace me into buying him khong fak," I said.

Pim replied almost instantly. "Oh, he's always saying that to people. Think nothing of it. It's a misunderstanding," adding hurriedly that she hoped I would still take them out to dinner to celebrate Robert's birthday at a moo kra ta joint as planned.

"Of course," I replied niavely. "Just because he has no manners is no reason to punish the boy."

The next night Robert, a teenage cousin who also worked at the stall and I piled into a taxi close to Pim's shop for the long trip to Ramkamhaeng. Pim, who was elsewhere, spoke to the driver on the teen's phone as we climbed in, but didn't tell the kids where we were going. I had to ask the driver, a crabby guy in his 60s, where we were headed, as she didn't talk to me either. We had been travelling for 20 minutes, edging our way through peak hour traffic, with still no end in sight.

"Why, do you want me to let you off here?" he asked sarcastically, when I dared ask where he was taking us.

"No one asked for your feedback - just drive," I replied tartly.

Pim, it transpired, had spent the night in Ramkhamhaeng where she has a flat, no doubt for an inimate night with James the motorsai driver. She lived there before moving some months ago into the Jet Sip Rai community to be close to her brothers.

A good looking bunch: Pim and her son...

...brother Jalin

...and brother Lek

No doubt it was convenient for her to summon us out to that remote part of town rather than travel back to the city. But as far as I was concerned, it was cheeky - why have us battle heavy traffic for an hour and a half, including a lengthy wait for two motorcycle taxis who took us on the last leg of the journey, when we could have done this in town?

The eatery was off Ramkhamhaeng Road in remote Bang Kapi. I can't recall the last time I visited that part of town ...I may as well have gone on a trip to the provinces, it's so far.

She had been to this Korean-style bar-b-que joint before and enjoyed herself, she said later. "They put no time limit on your stay, unlike some others in town which give you a couple of hours and charge extra if you haven't finished everything on your plate," she said.

It was a huge barn-like place, so far out we were almost in a rural area. After the motorcyle taxi left us we had to dodge traffic on highways as we made our way towards the two storey restaurant (see pic), which was almost empty. 

Diners eat smorgasbord style, moving between food stations which offer dishes from a variety of nationalities. I took a look at the place and realised it was ideal for families and large gatherings, not the kind of restaurant set in more intimate surroundings which I would typically visit with my partner. But then, I would insist on interposing myself in some else's young family... I took one look and wish I had never come.

I saw the way Pim was piling her plate to the brim with expensive shellfish and the like and decided to lay down a marker. "I will pay for the kids only. The adults are on their own," I declared. Pim looked non-plussed, as if she was expecting it.

now, see part 5

Culture shock (part 3)

The Jet Sip Rai community in Klong Toey; also, below right

I was drawing close to Pim, the boss of the family, who also had a good head for business.

This was a woman of intrigue, I decided: she had a teenage son by an ex-lover in the South, but in Bangkok had remade herself as young, sexy and available.

She dyed her hair blonde, wore clingy, figure-enhancing clothes, and enjoyed flirting with male customers. One admirer, a trader in Klong Toey market, would turn up to pester her occasionally, annoying her boyfriend, James, the motorcycle taxi guy, who asked a woman who sold food from a pushcart across the road to act as lookout for him. If any admirers turned up to flirt, she should let him know, he said.

Anyway, I was heading to work one day when Robert told me his grandmother was coming for a visit. When she arrived he alerted me by text message and I biked down the road to see them. 

I gave her a wai, as is the custom, and sat down for a chat. However, James reprimanded me for turning up empty-handed.

"Where's the gift?" he said bluntly, in front of everyone.

I ignored the taunt, but it stung. How could I buy a gift, when I knew only the hour before that she was coming? I put it down to a cultural misunderstanding, though complained later to Pim.

We arranged an action packed weekend around that time to coincide with Robert's birthday. It was our first big outing as a family, as really I knew them only at the stand. My partner was away in the provinces so I could indulge myself.

I had noticed that Robert had virtually no casual clothes so asked him what kind of clothes he needed. Pim overheard me and joked I should buy some for her too. I didn't think much of it, but should have realised she was serious.

The first outing of the weekend was to take Robert to Saphan Phut wholesale clothes market. The family goes there regularly to buy cheap clothes, Pim told me. 

I was expecting her to turn up with Robert in a taxi, but was shocked to see she brought along her father and another young employee from the shop as well...anyone she could squeeze into the vehicle, it seems.

Saphan Phut wholesale clothes market

I was expected to buy clothes for everyone, I was informed, and they helped themselves as we wandered from stall to stall - a pair of jeans here, a belt or T-shirts there, even a jacket for Pim's father. If they were embarrassed to be relying on the generosity of a farang who was not a genuine part of their family, they didn't show it. The trip was expensive and I wasn't happy about it.

A day later Pim's father, who about to return to the provinces after a brief visit to Bangkok to see family, approached me as Robert was packing up shop. Pim had quit early and gone home, leaving her nephew to clean up and close the stall.

He asked me for gifts (khong fak) for his relatives back in the sticks. Like a true farmer, he wanted bags of rice, or fish. A humble enough request, I suppose, but given that I had just clothed his back, had met him only days before and didn't know his relatives at home from Adam, I refused.

"Of come on, you know you can afford it!" he said in vaguely menacing manner, as Robert stood by our side.

He was trying to bully me in front of the lad to improve his chances of getting me to part with money. However, that only made me angrier.

"I don't know you, and you ask me for money? You have no manners. Don't ever pressure me in front of that boy again," I growled at him.

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.