Are You Sitting Comfortably?

[qwertz]

You all must have at least one.

Anecdote, sad or humorous comment, observations on the pond life, wildlife, nightlife.

Too many people out there (yes, you know who you are) just sit and wait for other people to post so they can dissect it.

Here's a chance to post your thoughts, dreams, whatever's going on in your heads.

No problem if it's fiction, let's have a little more levity here.

[qwertz]

So much for imagination and writing skills.

Looks like I'll have to kick off with a little anecdote. This is true:

Long ago in Patts, when there was only one primitive bar and one guesthouse in Soi 7 and none in Soi 8, I had a pal, American, Vietnam vet and a little screwed up but a great friend all the same, sadly no longer with us.

He existed on a pittance even smaller than mine and vowed never to go home.

He had healthy appetites and frequently consorted with dubious females dredged from the Marine Bar, which some of you oldsters will surely remember with fondness.

Anyway, one afternoon I looked in on him and after I had disposed of his carelessly stowed stash, in anticipation of a police raid, I found him sitting in large bowl and the room reeking of diesel fuel.

"For gawd's sake don't smoke near me !" he cried.

"Okay", said I, "May I ask, is this your latest method of getting high on the cheap?"

"Nah, learned this in Nam, it scares the h€ll out of crab lice, little mothers are feasting on my nuts".

I could write a book this this guy alone.

BTW, he kept his vow never to go home, he was found dead one day after I left for England, presumably from alcoholic poisoning.

Okay, maybe it's not a brilliant story but at least I tried.

Edited June 26, 2007 by qwertz

[colino]

Ok i will have ago ,

About two years ago my friend came over to pattaya for a two week holiday (this was his first trip abroad ) everything went well for the first few days going out having a few beers playing pool ,but by the 4th day he started acting abit weird , by this i mean sitting in his hotel room reading the thai english bible and chanting all kinds of dribble ,, but hey thats ok no harm done ,, 6th day he his walking around pattaya with 2 small coconut cups 1 for rice and 1 for water and wearing only mua thai boxing shorts ,,( i have to tell you he has dreads down to his arse getting the picture )

well come night time he flips totaly loses it and runs in to the gardens of the hotel strips off butt naked and starts kicking the palm trees (this hotel is very near the dolphin island),

then he runs round the hotel going crazy saying people are trying to kill him ,, (still butt naked ) then steal's a packet of cigs from reception,

the staff stood tottaly dumb struck as he ran round hooping and howling in his birthday suit , well after a few mins they call the police and sure enought they turn up and 8 of thais finest leap on him and pin him down then chuck him in the back of a pickup, and cart him off to the nick ,where he continoues to fight and go crazy ,, well after 2 days in the nick they let him go with no charges , and gave him a note to vist the hospital then fly home , best bit was the police wrote his name in thai on the note when he went to see the doctor they called out his name ,

Mr TARZAN the doctor will see you now ,

IF YOU GO TO THIS HOTEL EVEN TODAY THEY STILL CRACK UP IF YOU MENTION TARZAN,

[MTW]

You can't mean that you want ME to answer???

[mcgriffith]

OK, it's a combo Thai/Lao story, but since we have no takers you're just going to have to deal with it.

It's 1975 and I had just spent a week in Chiang Mai. Had the bright idea to go to Laos, even though there was this darned inconvenient war going on. Luang Prabang absolutely out of the question, too much shellfire.

So I decide to FLY from Chiang Mai to Vientienne. No big deal. So I get to the airport an hour before departure, my flight is on Royal Air Lao. Unfortunately the runway temperature is so high they will not permit takeoff till it cools down. We wait...and wait....and wait- from 12 noon till late afternoon. Started to get nervous, as we knew that Vientienne airport had a night blackout due to war, etc. I make friends in the departure lounge with a young American who had just been discharged from the US Air Force- a C-130 pilot. He was hoping to go to Vientienne and get a job with Air America as a contract pilot. So finally, around 5 PM we are boarded. On the oldest, gnarliest-looking DC-3 twin prop (WWII era) I have ever seen in my life. Took a good 10 minutes to start up the primary engine, and when it did start it belched out enough black smoke to do a Bangkok tuk-tuk proud. Whole aircraft looked like it was going to shake to pieces, just starting up....

So we get on, taxi, take off. Hostess comes around with tray of glasses and a bottle of French wine. "Wine, Monsieur?". Yeah, sure, "Merci boucoup!". I notice she takes the bottle and tray up to the 2 pilots. We all drink wine together; life is good! After a few minutes, my American seatmate (the C-130 pilot) decides he wants to go up to the cockpit and exchange pleasantries with his fellow pilots. So I let him out of his window seat and he goes forward. Dusk has now turned to night. He comes back to his seat after a few minutes, laughing. I ask him why the mirth. He says: "Do you know how we are navigating?". I reply "Uh, radio beacon, VFR, what do I know, I'm not a pilot". He points out the window down below into the darkness. I see a fire burning way down below us on the ground somewhere. He then tells me that Royal Air Lao pays locals to light bonfires at night on certain bends of the Mekong, and that we are NAVIGATING BY BONFIRE DOWN THE RIVER. Great, pilots are about 4'11" tall, can't even see over the cockpit out the window, are drinking wine, flying an ANTIQUE aircraft, and we're navigating by bonfire- final destination a blacked-out airport in a war zone. Farking Fantastic. Can I please have another large glass of that very nice French wine? So we come in for our landing. Airport is completely blacked out. Only the dim blue lights at side of runway are lit. The pilot "glassed it". Came in so smooth, so perfect, so flawlessly, you could not tell the difference between sky and ground, until halfway down the runway when the tail dropped back. Best aircraft landing I have ever experienced in my life.....

McG

PS There is a crab lice element to this story, but it is in the second chapter set in Vientienne.....

Edited June 26, 2007 by mcgriffith

[qwertz]

You can't mean that you want ME to answer???

Well of course, over to you MTW.

Nice stuff, colino and mcgriffith.

BTW, there's a Tarzan posting on another forum, don't know if he's the one but his posts would fit the description.

Edited June 26, 2007 by qwertz

[expatwannabe]

When I was staying in a dingy hotel in Bangkok, there was this crazy Brit in the next room who gave me a map to a secret island near Koh Samui that had tons of reefer growing ~ .. wait a minute .. that may have been a movie I saw.

Edited June 26, 2007 by expatwannabe

[qwertz]

Expat, you met him too!

Okay, this should really be in the "Marry Thai Girl" thread but it's another true anecdote.

Jeff is a nice guy from Luton, 33 years old, came for a short holiday in Patts, first time in LOS.

While hanging around the SOI 7 bars he met and fell in love with Nok, a little stunner, 17 years old.

So, drunk with love, he bought her out of the bar and married her after knowing her for only 2 weeks.

Then he overstayed, lost his job as a telecoms engineer in England and ran out of cash.

Nok obligingly offered to go back and do the business with farangs, to which Jeff reluctantly agreed.

However, Nok being a little stunner, was soon well in demand again and Jeff became insanely jealous.

He told me several times what a lazy little cow she was, couldn't cook, wash, clean or iron and why couldn't she get an honest job, knowing that he was in dire straits financially.

He became quite irrational and took to beating the poor girl, assuming that if she had a black eye and assorted bruises, men wouldn't find her so attractive.

Anyway, things came to head one day when a very large, hard German called at the flat, threw a bag at Nok and told her to pack, she was dumping this loser.

Jeff made the mistake of contesting this claim and attacked the German, who was about twice his size.

End result, Jeff got a serious kicking, lost his little treasure and finished up roaming the streets, bumming drinks and telling everyone how bad Thai girls are.

A basically decent man and a pretty girl; they started out loving each other and it turned into hate and fear.

His family finally had a whip round and had him sent home, a sadder and wiser man.

All because of lack of planning.

Edited June 27, 2007 by qwertz

[chinthee]

This is short but sweet.

We were sitting in Bangna (the walking street of Patong) in Phuket at an outdoor bar directly across from the ladyboy soi, where they all dance on the table tops outside, and various lb touts try to get customers in from the street.

One plus-sized farang couple were walking by, the LB grabs the husband, and he evidently paid a little too much attention to LB, so his wife, who stood a foot taller and 50 kgs heavier than him, cocked her fist and blasted him across the chops. He staggers, almost goes down, and wifey then proceeds to drag him down the street, yelling at him nonstop in some nordic dialect. The entire street was in tears.

[girlx]

that'll learn him!

[Robski]

On the subject of fisticuffs, I was coming down Pattaya Klang in a baht bus and we stopped at the lights for 3rd road.

A Volvo came round the corner, rapidly followed by a Mercedes ML500 which then overtook the Volvo and screeched to a halt in front of it, a big farang guy in his thirties jumped out and strode toward the Volvo, obviously road rage. The guy in the Volvo must have been 65 years old and as he rolled his window down the big farang guy hurled a torrent of abuse and finger wagging at him.

The old boy looked pretty shocked and argued his case and then the big farang went for a sucker punch, pulling it at the last moment to scare the old boy, well the old boy went crazy! He started to get out of the door and the big guy panicked and tried to jam the door shut, but the old boy kicking and pushing like a man posssesed gets out the car, faces the big farang, puts his dukes up and says c'mon then, he was frail looking wrinkly and liver spotted, but the courage was evident and the big guy didn't know what to do, but before he knows it WHAM! the old guy plants him with a big right and a left! the big guy crumbles and falls in on the old boy, who spins him around against the car and starts working him over, the big guy was in pieces and was just holding for dear life as the baht bus pulled away down Pattaya Klang, oh how I wish I had my camera on me, ting tong falangs!!

[larvidchr]

Shortly after arriving to Pattaya a Thai lawyer invites me out for a late lunch, after eating he drags me into this upper-class "karaoke bar", he has arranged for girls to keep us with company, and he tells me they will provide extended services if I am so inclined and it is all paid for, I am a little taken aback, brand new to Thailand and just expecting a drink/lunch thing, he quickly gets rather drunk and starts singing, we are sitting in a small private room and the music is ear-splitting loud, he chooses a song and tells me that it is a very sad song about poor country girls being sent away by their family's to work as prostitutes in the big city's, anyway he starts singing and by god, the tears is streaming down his checks, I look at the ladies sitting around us, but none of them seems to take the slightest bit of notice that the guy who has just bought them for the night, is sitting and crying over the hard life of young prostitutes. Being very new to the goings on here in LOS, I took an instant strong dislike to the man and told him I was going home, when I got home I had one of the worst headaches in a long time from the loud music and his horrible singing voice, and I swore never to set foot in a Thai karaoke bar again.

Kind regards

Edited June 27, 2007 by larvidchr

[Nignoy]

Pull up a bucket of laterite dust, and I will tell you an old true golf story!!when the british army decided to build a tempory camp 100kms north of Ubon,they definitely got their priorities right first they built wriggly tin(sorrycould not spell corrogated )basha.s for the officers and they then blasted a nine hole golf course out of the jungle, the village boys used to earn a few baht caddying for the golfers,one sunday morning after a few captain morgan and lipovitan shandies ,I was talked into my first game of golf!!at that time the most valuable commodity in Isaan for brits was golfballs as to be expected I lost my allotment of golf balls at the first hole, because the 2 young caddies could not find them I refused to pay them both, they were rightfully really hacked off, any way I was the big roughie toughie squaddie did not give a toss and went back to the mess for a liquid lunch,after a snooze I decidedto take a stroll down to the village and get a bite to eat, Big Mistake my 2 young caddies turned up at the machan stall demanding their money or they were going to beat me up,I stood up and laughed, Well when I eventually Woke UP!!again they demanded their money, after spitting out a few teeth I told them to go forth and multiply!! They then proceeded to give me the biggest hiding of my life,I paid up of course! and marked this down as my first lesson in Thai diplomacy.As the years past I became great friends with the boys and their families,we never miss a chance to visit them , my grandkids some times stay with them on their school holidays from OZ, they often threaten me iff I dont behave, they will tell everyone in the RSL about the day grandad kopped a flogging from 2 ,11year old thai boys Nignoy

[qwertz]

Encore!