Short Time in Samui

By JJ Stone

Each time I saw Noona, there was some new twist to learn. These eventually became so numerous and ironclad that I called them Noonas Rules.

Rule # 4: All men are liars. I dont believe anything they say. In her entire life, Noona had only experienced negative relationships with men. She did not know when someone was being nice, so she interpreted acts of kindness suspiciously as potential exploitation or lies. It gave me an idea about what her life was like, but when you think about it, a whore in Thailand probably hears more lies and promises than anyone in the world.

Rule #5: You cannot know the future, so dont worry about it. You cannot undo the past, so dont talk about what happened. This rule was a mix of Thai Buddhism and Noonas nihilism, but it was a simple way of keeping a focus on the present and avoiding feelings of regret or hope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Sep 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490745398

JJ Stone

Professor Stone has combined academic research with world travel, and he writes with an analytical perspective on cultures and a psychological perspective on people. He writes with passion about his personal journeys through marriage and divorce, through loss and depression, in his search for reconciliation and love.

Book preview

Chapter 1

In my life there’s been heartache and pain,

I don’t know if I can face it again,

Can’t stop now, I’ve traveled so far

To change this lonely life.

—Foreigner, I Want to Know What Love Is

I left Pattaya the next day after a long breakfast with Meow at the little restaurant near the Kerati homestay hotel, far enough from the beach to be cheap and close enough to the bars to be fun. It felt like home because we had eaten there three days in a row and the waitress (maybe she was the owner too) chatted with us while we waited for food. It was not really breakfast at 11:00 a.m., but it started the day for us. The street had been noisy until 4:00 a.m., when the pink van with the portable bar, disco ball and lights, and loud music packed up. We got used to it though and enjoyed standing on our balcony, watching the people come and go all night. Now, in the bright morning sunlight, it looked like a different world, and it really was because the people were shopping, visiting the travel agency, and eating meals instead of drinking, flirting, and looking for sex. The taxi pulled up, and we drove one kilometer down Soi Bukaow and dropped Meow off at her place. I waved to her through the back window, and our eyes stayed locked until the taxi turned the co rner.

The trip to the airport in U-Tapao, 150 km south of Bangkok, usually took thirty minutes, but the traffic was heavy. There was a problem at the Cliffs Resort in the south end of Pattaya. It seemed that the red shirts, the political party of the rural Thai people, were protesting a government meeting there. This was in response to the previous demonstration of the yellow shirts, the pro-king, pro-army, pro-aristocracy party that represented Bangkok interests, in a demonstration at Suvarnabhumi Airport, when they shut down the airport for three days. Thai politics is confusing to farangs, foreigners, even those who take time to try to understand the constitutional monarchy that governs the kingdom. King Bhumibol is head of state and has been on the throne since 1946. He is not only the longest-serving king in the world today, but he is also deeply revered by all Thai people. The law of les majeste prohibits any criticism of the king or monarchy, and the penalties for public or media criticism of the king are severe. The army defends the king while the political parties joust for local control of budgets, and omnipresent corruption follows politicians like remora follow sharks.

The basic division of power in Thai politics has always been between rich versus poor, Bangkok versus the countryside, educated versus uneducated, urban versus rural, yellow versus red shirts. Elections do not matter too much because the army has staged coups of the government more than a dozen times in the past twenty years. Indeed, the military has been the dominant government force for more than fifty years. However, in 2001, Thaksin Shinawatra was elected the prime minister of Thailand. He was a popular leader who was supported by the farmers and peasants throughout the country, but his power base was in Issan, the agricultural rice bowl of Thailand. It is not important that red shirt supporters loaded up farmers in vans, drove them to polling places, and paid them ten to twenty dollars to vote for the red shirt candidates; that was hardly novel or newsworthy. Thaksin responded by distributing political largesse to the working poor and crafting policies to boost the price of rice. Not surprising was the revelation that Thaksin made millions of dollars for his family in telecommunications deals, but most foreigners don’t know that Thaksin also ran a fierce campaign against drugs and criminals through military and police operations. That might not show up in judicial records because the drug lords usually died before they ever made it to court. The ruthless pattern of interdiction suppressed the drug trade and crime under Thaksin. Regular Thai citizens were grateful for his powerful response to a long-standing problem.

Politics in Thailand is woven with threads of history, kings, armies, corruption, crime, and of course, power. The conflict between red shirts and yellow shirts was the simplified way that the news media portrayed the strife to the rest of the world. For Thais, it was the shifting power base between historical forces, and hope seemed to volley between the rich and poor although the rich usually won. Now it seemed to be swinging back toward the poor and the red shirts. As we drove to the airport, I saw that the highway south of Pattaya was blocked for miles to allow politicians to get in and out of Pattaya, a long empty road just waiting for the motorcades of the elite. The agitation was growing at the seaside hotel. Red shirts had broken into the meeting place, and I got out in the nick of time. I was lucky to catch the plane in U-Tapao.

I had not slept well last night because Meow and I knew it was our last night together. She was going home to Korat to open a karaoke bar and was dreaming of success so she would not have to return to Pattaya to sell sex. At thirty-four, Meow thought she was too old for the competition in Pattaya, even though I tried to convince her that she was younger than most of the farangs on Walking Street. But Meow had her principles and her dreams. She wanted to go back to Korat, to raise her adopted daughter, Ying, and to support her parents since she was the only daughter. Oh yeah, here is another surprise. Meow told me that Ying was her brother’s daughter. He fathered a child with Meow’s friend at work, but he did not want the family to know, so he convinced the mother to give the baby to Meow. After all, she was the mother’s friend and father’s sister, so it was like family. That was how Meow became a single mother. Amazing. It was a good lesson for me about the notion of extended families in Thailand that defied the usual Western understanding.

All these thoughts poured over me on the flight to Koh Samui. Mostly I thought how lucky I was to meet such a wonderful person, but the pangs of guilt, loss, and emptiness tugged at my heart too. How could I feel so good about Meow and just leave her? I was lost in reverie about Meow and tired from a few hours of sleep, so I hardly noticed how fast the flight was to Koh Samui. After we landed, I got my bag and got in line for a shuttle van to the hotels along Chaweng Beach. I was not in a hurry and did not mind when the shuttle bus driver took a long time to help three young guys from Israel find a cheap hotel. They just showed up and expected to get into a hotel without an advance booking, a risky decision the week before Christmas. Maybe I still had some of the old plan-ahead guy in me, because I booked the Beachcomber Hotel on the beach, an older but reasonable hotel with a good rate that included breakfast.

The driver finally got me to the Beachcomber, and I spent an hour getting unpacked, connecting to the Internet, and looking at maps of the island. Then I went for a swim in the ocean, my first time in the Gulf of Thailand, and it felt good. The water was much cleaner than around Pattaya. A nap sounded good to me, even though I rarely took naps, so I was startled to wake up after 9:00 p.m. I put on blue jeans and decided to explore the main street along Chaweng Beach, where the shuttle bus had driven me. Mistake. There were many shops, restaurants, ATMs, 7-Elevens, massage places, and souvenir shops, but very few bars with music. In fact, things looked dead compared to Pattaya. Was I too early at 10:00 p.m.? Was I in the wrong part of Chaweng Beach? I walked about a mile in a big circle following the one-way streets until I finally saw the Soi Reggae that was suggested to me. Aha! There were lots of bars along the way, so it looked like the bar scene was isolated from the family part of the shopping areas. Maybe that was wise, because I noticed motorbikes and taxis dropping off single farangs and girls whistling and waving to them as they strolled the street. It reminded me of Walking Street in Pattaya.

The big bar with an open-air dance floor at the end of Soi Reggae was dead, maybe twenty people sipping drinks and waiting for the action to start, so I walked down the street lined with bars. Same-same; every bar had seats for about 20 people, a pool table, and young girls trying to look sexy so they could pull farangs into their little webs. I heard good loud music from one bar with three girls wiggling in front and waving Beer 90 baht signs, so I decided to give it a go. Some guys were playing pool, a few girls were at the bar, and the wigglers were in front. It looked promising, but after sitting there for twenty minutes I got bored drinking by myself. As I watched the wiggling girls, I saw a few girls at the Sunshine Bar across the street in front of the muay Thai boxing arena. One cute girl seemed to be laughing and dancing more than the others, and she looked like fun from a hundred feet away. I paid for the beer and walked across the street to hear the familiar refrain, Welcome, so I saddled up on a barstool. Luckily, the cute girl sat down next to me, but, as I recall now, she may have been nudged toward me.

"Sawadee (hello) krup," I said.

Sawadee ka, she replied. Where you from?

America, I said as we began the ritual dance of casual banter.

How long you been Samui? she asked.

I just arrived today, I said.

Me too, she replied.

Really? I was surprised but pleased that we shared something straight off. She seemed fresh, eager, and enthusiastic, and her attitude brightened my outlook.

What’s your name? I asked.

Noona, she said.

Noo- nah, I repeated slowly, I never met anyone named Noona. What does it mean? I asked.

"Noo means mouse. Na is rice field. Noona is little mouse that live in rice field - like me," she said with a matter-of-fact explanation.

Ah, good name for you because you are a cute little mouse, I said with a smile.

I liked the mischievous look in her eyes and her enthusiastic chatter. The night sky and colored lights strung overhead made it look like twilight in the bar, that sort of half-light that hid the grime (physical and psychological) and allowed you to see the outlines more than the details of the things around you. That was probably why nighttime was so good in Soi Reggae. You saw what you wanted and in general shapes mostly. Noona had a cute face and nice butt, but she was thin. I later learned that she weighed forty-one kilos (ninety pounds), and that was about half a person in America. She had an unusual look in her face though that betrayed her size and my inferred immaturity. Her steady gaze was trying to penetrate my exterior, to see my persona, as only a veteran bargirl would do. She smiled slightly, not giving too much away, so I sensed a guarded, perceptive face atop the childish body. It was a look beyond the age of her face, and I wondered how she acquired it. The contradictions made me want to know her story.

Sometime after the hello and the small talk with a new acquaintance at a Thai bar, you reach a choice point: kick it up a level to maintain the interaction or move on. With a bargirl, it is simple to kick it up; offer to buy her a lady drink. So I did, and Noona ordered something in Thai. When the bartender put a shot of tequila, some salt, and a lime wedge in front of her, I was surprised. Was I the easy mark for an expensive drink, or was this girl a hard drinker? She took the shot and sipped it without taking the salt or lime first, and then she winced like someone had pinched her butt. She smiled at me, and I could tell we hit it off. Either I was easy or she was trying to impress her boss with the expensive drink, or maybe both. Okay, so it was a three-dollar shot, but bargirls made their chits one drink at a time, so I was on the plus side with her at least.

Noona spoke English with a good vocabulary, and her conversational skills revealed a quick uptake on the explicit and implicit meanings of what we said. She made jokes. She smiled. She liked tequila shots. She spoke English. She sold sex. Yes! Check, please. We negotiated a rate for our short-time romance, 1,500 baht, about fifty US dollars, and I paid the bar fine of 300 baht, nine US dollars, along with my bar tab. Noona went to the back of the bar to retrieve her purse. We waved goodbye to the girls at the bar and walked a quick two blocks to my hotel.

Upon entering my hotel room, Noona found a place for her purse and her shoes and began undressing. I guess the tequila was foreplay. I watched as she became naked and then stood facing me with no embarrassment. Her short hair, impish face, and creamy skin were enticing. She was less than five feet tall and so skinny that her collarbone and hipbones stood out sharply. I swear that she reminded me of an image burned into my brain long ago. It was a front-page photo of a teenage girl in Vietnam, maybe 1972. She was naked, burned, screaming, crying, and running toward the cameraman with death chasing her close behind. The image of a young, emaciated child, with terror on her face, trying to escape the war, could have been Noona. They both had Asian, child-like, skinny bodies. The juxtaposition of that memory with the quiet countenance of the naked girl before me washed away my thoughts of sex. I asked, Want to take a foam bath?

Up to you, she replied.

I said, Yes, a bath sounds good.

She nodded in compliance.

Noona sat in front of me in the tub, and I began to wash her back and talk to her. It was easier not facing each other. How long have you been in Koh Samui? I asked before realizing that I asked her the same question back in the bar, but sometimes you lose the connected memories of faces and stories, and a little redundancy helps my memory.

Today, she said, holding up one finger.

Really? Where did you come from?

Pattaya.

Me too. How did you get here?

I took bus, two days, she said, holding up two fingers.

Now I was incredulous, since I had taken the direct hour-and-a-half flight today that connected Pattaya on the eastern side of the Gulf of Thailand and Koh Samui, an island on the western side of the Gulf. Instead, Noona had traveled north from Pattaya to Bangkok, changed buses, and went west and then south, with many stops in Thai towns and villages along the way. She did not sleep much in the crowded bus with other poor people, but the fare was only nine hundred baht, about twenty-seven US dollars, whereas my plane ticket was almost two hundred dollars.

How did you find a place to work right away?

My friend. She tell me this bar okay, need ladies. I see owner and she say okay, start work tonight. I start. You my first customer.

The dubious honor of being her first customer in Koh Samui did not impress me nearly as much as the ordeal she had been through to get here, so I pressed on. Why you leave Pattaya? I wasn’t sure why farangs speak in pidgin and broken English to Thais, but we did. Or maybe it’s just me. It probably indicated more of a lack of understanding than grammatical diplomacy.

Noona was silent for a moment, and I waited and continued washing. Her back was getting very clean by now. Have boyfriend Pattaya, but him no good. He drink. He hit me.

How long you with boyfriend? I asked.

Ten months.

What? That’s a long time. So I asked the next logical but stupid Western question, Why did you stay with him?

I cannot run away. He lock me in room. He make me sleep when he sleep, eat when he eat. I do what he do. Same-same all the time.

No, that is kidnapping. It is illegal. You could go to the police and have him arrested.

Noona was now facing me but looking down into the water. Was it too difficult to talk about? Was she uncomfortable?

I go to police once. I tell them what he do. Police take me downstairs and fuck me.

What! The police raped you?

She nodded without looking up.

Then they call boyfriend. He come get me, take me home, and beat me good. I no leave apartment for one week so nobody see my face all beat up.

I was speechless. How could this happen? Kidnapped in the middle of Pattaya, raped by the police, and no one to turn to? Noona had traveled to Pattaya from a small town in Chaiyaphum, about four hours north of Bangkok. Her parents were farmers who lived in a wooden house with a dirt floor. Her younger brother was in high school, and there was no work and no money when they could not farm and sell their rice. It was the duty of the oldest daughter to take care of the family. It was the Thai version of social security that made thousands of daughters leave the poverty of Issan to earn money in Bangkok, Pattaya, and other tourist destinations. It reminded me of