A farang`s life story

I look down on the perfect half moon of Pattaya's boulevard from the hill that houses the Wat Kho Phra Bath - Wat means temple in Thai.

Down below a heavy cocktail of farang high testosterone and hormone levels rule the veins and arteries inside white fleshy bodies dressed in colorfull Hawaii shorts, mostly belonging to middle-aged western men whose ruddy faces carry a constant grin of happiness due no doubt to the petite hard-bodied local ladyfriends holding their huge hairy hands, often not even half their age.

Indian tailors stop them in sthe street offering exclusive business suits at ridiculous low prices, s*xy bar girls giggling and secretly hoping it was them holding that fat farang hand. Russian tourists with a big thirst for wodka mingle with Saudies dressed in their long white djelebas. Hawkers constantly on the move from the police offer sticky rice with lemon, roasted chicken legs or barbequed shrimps, cooked eggs or slices of fruit.

Pattaya is a mad house at any time of the day or night. The party continues even after the curfew, though it might have to be in the privacy of your hotel room.

Up here at Wat Kho Phra Bath tranquility rules, young monks involved in whispering conversation, a scawny dog with hardly any fur left is ferociously scratching his flea ridden body, a few sleepy cats on the stairs and of course lots of gold colored Buddha statues all over the wad.

I'm actually here on a mission, I've come here like any other time I've been up here, to make Darsha, to pay my respect to Lord Buddha and the Thai people. But also to remember the past, to find the peace to let my mind flow freely without any inhibitions.

My farang mind wanders back to my first trip to King Bhumipol's nation, how I ended up in a police holding cell on fighting charges, a police cell where the cockroaches were bigger as European mice and where the mosquitos ruled your skin, where the toilet was as hole in the ground and the shower a basin where you laddle yourself with a plastic container cut in half, a police cell I was sharing with the same three young Thai males I had been fighting with the night before, where twice a day you were fed a small plastic bag of sticky rice with some miserable looking pieces of vegetable on top.

My first day in this rathole was also my twenty-fifth birthday - "happy birthday" the jailer said in terribly accented English". But this crazy experience was also the beginning of a completely new life, something changed during these thirty days of incarceration, somehow I fell in love with Thailand, made up my mind to get to understand the complicated oriental mind, learn Thai and live rest of my life according to the Buddhist rules, spend some time living at a wat as a simple monk.

It was also the time I met Jamie, another inmate and a Leuk Kreung, a Thai/Karen half-caste of my own age who made money as a Muay Thai boxer in obscure bars in Bangkok, whose body was covered in weird tattoes, strange designs and symbols as a protection, a Moordu against bad luck in the ring.

I eventually met Nong, his sister with whom I've two children, Jay and Joy, hope to meet them in Bangkok next week.

Nowadays my Thai is, despite years of dedicated study and determination, still only passable at best. My understanding of the Thai oriental mind.......sometimes at the end of yet another trip to this so-called Land of the Smile I believe I'm finally there but that "enlightenment" is gone the moment I set foot back on Dutch soil, blown away by the stormy Dutch wind. My relation with Nong something of the past, countless Thai ladies have gone her way. Living my life according to Lord Buddha's rules for Nirvana too difficult considering my passion for life itself and all the attractions that come with it, no time in a Wat dressed in saffron robes, all bodily hair gone and getting up early to ask for alms.

Jamie left this weird world swept away by the Tsunami that hit Thailand in 2004 together with his Swedish Tilak. I actually felt his watery death in my own mind being in Amsterdam at the time. The pain and grief is all gone now.

Slowly I allow my farang mind to return to the here and now coming to the conclusion I need a few cans of cold Leo beer on the boulevard after this emotional state of mind.

written by  heraclio on April 4, 2009 from Bangkok, Thailand
from the travel blog: Farang Chronicles.
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