Beyond The Border

Over the years my friends' sons and daughters suspected that my travels were connected to the CIA or some criminal enterprise. My denials only confirmed their opinions, mostly because none of them wanted to become their parents, unless they were rich.

Recently young man contacted me on Facebook and asked if I was in Thailand to transport drugs. Thai police are very strict on traffickers and I have never entertained any business enterprise involved the shipment of drugs within or outside Thailand, however back in 1994 I was motorcycling north of Chiang Mai with two Italian friends. We reached the northernmost point of Thailand, Mai Sai, and stayed at the idyllic Mai Sai Guesthouse. Butterflies floated over the tropical flowers and young Burmese children swam in the river. I was content to drink a Singha beer, but they wanted more.

"More?"

"Prego, opium." They chorused this mutual desire.

"Don't say that too loud." Undercover Thai police specialized in entrapping westerners. I tried to deter their obsession, but they were relentless and I said, "I'll see what I can do."

I set out for the western mountain crest marking the frontier on a 250cc ATX. No police patrolled the road. No passport control either.

I spotted an old man from the Yao tribe. I asked him if he knew where to find 'fin' or opium. He nodded with a toothless grin and pointed into Burma. I thumbed behind me and he jumped on the back of the trail bike. We drove several kilometers on an unpaved road to a small village of thatched huts and runny-nosed kids. He spoke with several men and came back with five fingers up.

"$50?" I asked and he smiled once more.

The money was the Italians, so I wasn't losing anything, if he disappeared into Burma. I handed over the dollars. He and another man drove off in a pick-up . I sat in the village watched by everyone like I was a TV showing an American sit-com without subtitles. After twenty minutes I started getting nervous. I was in Burma without a visa looking for drugs. Potentially big trouble. A truck was coming up the hill. I got on the bike and started it in case the truck belong to the Burmese police.

It was the old man. He got out of the truck with a garbage bag of pot. Five pounds at least. I shook my head.

"Not ganga. Fin. Opium. Horse. Ma."

None of this filtered through our language barrier, but he lifted a finger for me to wait. He went into a hut and returned with a bag of white powder. It looked familiar and tasted familiar too. Chinese # 4 Heroin.

I thanked the old man and stuffed the cellophane bag into my boot. Thais are very wary of people's feet. They consider them dirty and my boots were caked with dust. I drove back to Mai Sai through several Thai police checkpoints without any incident. In my room I showed the bag to the Italian.

"This is not opium." They were disappointed until we chased the dragon.

This was the real gear and I explained that opium was tough to find now that the DEA waged its war on drugs along the border. The growers refined the opium into heroin for easier shipment. The Italians could have cared less. They were in oblivion and by the end of the week they were hooked to the gear. They wanted more, but I wasn't pushing my luck. I gave them directions and headed back to Chiang Mai.

I never saw them again.

I explained this my friend's son.

"Right." He preferred to believe his own story and I was guilty as charged by a teenage mind. Better than the real thing, because I like my freedom and I know better than to do something that stupid now I'm a grown man. At least anyplace other than the Golden Triangle.

A TASTE FOR THE EAST 1990

My first trip to the Orient was in 1990. A round-the-world ticket. One destination was Singapore. The Straits city was already undergoing its metamorphosis from a colonial port to a gleaming metropolis of skyscrapers. Raffles had been closed for renovations. I stayed at a cheap Chinese hotel in a decrepit godown. The walls climbed toward the ceiling without reaching their destination. A yard of wire covered the gap. The bedding had been soiled by a thousand weary bodies and the fan spun with lazy fatigue. That night I left the room and wandered toward the harbor, looking to drink beer. A Punjabi rickshaw driver stopped by me.

“You want ma.” His clothing had been shredded by a decade of useless washes. His body had been dessicated to bones wrapped in parchment. His eyes shone with a dull want.

“Ma?” Horse in Chinese. The word had one meaning in New York City. “Where?”

“I know place.” His claw of a hand beckoned to accompany him. Drugs were contraband in Singapore. The penalty for possession was death in the most grievous cases. A long prison sentence for anyone else foolish enough to challenge the system. Most arrests came from informers such as this rickshaw driver, who said, “I not police.”

“I know.” Snitch maybe, but the appeal of opium was an old friend. I climbed into his vehicle and we traveled into the night far from the new towers of glass and steel. The streetlights were dim in this neighborhood. Several doorways were populated by Indonesian transvestites. Others by Chinese whores. Men drank openly on the sidewalk in rebellion against the Singapore leader’s draconian measures for public behavior. The rickshaw driver braked with a whining screech.

“Here.” He looked over his shoulder to check for anything out of place. “My name Rami. This place good. Give $10.”

I handed over the money. We entered the battered house. The smell of opium greeted us. I tapped Rami and gave him another $10. “One for you. One for me.”

“You good man.” Rami smiled with two front teeth. The rest had been rotted as brown as cigar butts.

An old woman of indistinguishable racial origins led us into a tiny cubicle. The furnishing were two wooden benches and a wax-covered stool. Sweat shadows marked the proper position for lying on them. Money passed hands and she shut the door. Rami produced tin foil, which he tore into two separate pieces.

“Sorry, no have pipe.”

“I know how to chase the dragon.” I opened my packet and dropped the black ball on the aluminum foil. Rami rolled two paper tubes. A lit candle illuminated the room. Rami was an expert and I followed his lead.

“Good horse.”

Within minutes we were transported to another century before planes, telephones, and movies. Back to when Opium was king and I was its slave. Years later I went back to find the opium den. A shopping mall stood in its place, selling nothing I wanted. Only fancy perfumes and expensive shirts. It was better that way for the rest of the world and I went to Raffles for a Gin Sling, looking for Rami every step of the way.

He had to be in the shadows somewhere.

Men like him never die.

Not if they know what is good for them.

A STORY OF O by Peter Nolan Smith - 1994

In 1994 Crazy Santa possessed a special guest card to the Russian Baths on East 10th Street. The steam room crew began to heat the river boulders at 6am. The two-ton stones glowed red by 7:20. The Schvitz opened at 8 AM, but Crazy Santa was in the dry steam room at 7:21. He was a rich junkie, who was the last family member of an 18th century fortune. Heroin had not ruined his sense of entitlement.

As a permanent member I could have entered the Baths at that bastardly hour, except my alarm clock was set for the opening. At 8:10 I exited from my apartment two doors down from the entrance with a towel over my shoulder and strolled east rain, sleet, snow, or sunshine.

Every morning day on my short walk I witnessed autumn's surrender to Winter, the snow on the sidewalk, the ornamental pears blooming in Spring and the return of the hot sticky Summer.

I liked the look on the day workers' faces headed to the subway. Their eyes questioned my destination. The Baths weren’t for everyone. It was a temple to cleanliness and rejuvenation, in which the weight of a night’s hard drink evaporated after thirty minutes in the 180F heat.

One Spring morning I entered and spotted Crazy Santa on the top tier of the heat room. His white beard remained fluffy, despite the Venusian temperature, then again his body fat was less than zero.

I knew the Jersey heir to a deodorant fortune through my Uncle Carmine, a Sicilian plumber married to a Aunt Jane, a distant aunt from Maine's Cumberland County, which she called 'the last place on earth created by God'. We weren't really blood, but Carmine and I conducted business on various projects hidden from the rest of the family. Crazy Santa had a small room in Uncle Carmine’s basement. The walls were covered with torn hippie posters. He paid no rent.

Crazy Santa’s real name was John Lyon. His other alias for the addicts of the Lower East Side was Junkie John. He was a sucker. His family had had big money. THe sole heir Crazy Santa inherited the remains, which had mostly been invested in his veins.

The previous Christmas I helped him turn $80,000 of stock into gold coins, which wasn't an easy thing in 1993, since the Feds were after drug dealers laundering money. Collecting the coins on West 47th Street took a little time. Returning to his bullding between B and C Avenues, I asked Uncle Carmine, if I should fuck him.

“He’s going to get $2 million at 50.” Uncle Carmine was patient. “We’ll get him then. He promised to take care of me.”

Trusting junkies was a losing proposition. I said nothing. Carmine also knew the risk.

Crazy Santa lost the gold coins to his crackhead girlfriends within a month. We hadn’t spoken since the sale.

The near-albino nodded, as I sat opposite him in the gaseous vapors hovering under the ceiling ceiling. Crazy Santas’ skin was parched dry as a Death Valley corpse. Junkies like vampires don’t sweat, unless they are jonesing.

“Hot, huh?”

“Always hot this hour.”

He spat on the floor.

"Do me a favor. Don't spit on the floor."

"You don't own this place. You don't make the rules."

I grabbed him by the hair and shoved him.

"You're right. Just don't do it again."

“Sorry, you wanna smoke some O?” Somewhere in his head he suspected that I had ripped him off on the coin deal. I had only taken a 5% commission, but the only truth junkies believe are the lies they tell themselves He wasn’t man enough to blame himself and stood up with a towel around his waist.

“It’s a little early.” I wore a fluffy towel and my own flip-flops. The ones at the Baths were cheap. Like wearing paper towels and cardboard sandals.

“No one’s here and anyone who is here lets me do what I want. Money buys freedom.”

I remembered how he talked about his money. I should have left, but followed him to the front of the Baths. I hadn’t smoked opium for years.

"You know I know you and Carmine are waiting to rip me off. You think you're so smart, but I went to Harvard."

"Did you finish?"

"No, but I know your type. A loser from the lower classes just likeCarmine. You'll both get nothing in the end."

We entered the bathroom and he pulled out a glass stem. We lit up a small ball of black tar. The Tongs had run thousands of opium dens in New York. Chinese rocks had killed off most of their clientele, but this morning Crazy Santa had opened one on East 10th Street. The aroma was Golden Triangle, although the country of origin was Mexico.

Tijuana black tar.

Heroin.

I faked my inhale. John like most junkies only cared about his high. The heroin flitted through his blood and he sagged against the wall in a nod. I took off the key wrapped around his wrist and went upstairs to his locker, quickly rifling through his clothes. I left the dope and pilfered half the money. I returned to the bathroom. He was still breathing and I slipped the key back onto his wrist. Upstairs I showered, dressed and said my good-byes to the owner.

“Where is Crazy John?” The owner had another name for Crazy Santa Claus.

“In the bathroom?”

I nodded, wiping the sweat from my face. A little of the D ranin my arteries. Work would be tough for the first hour.

“High?” asked David.

“Yes.”

“I will make sure that he doesn’t die.” Dead people were never good for business.

“I could care less.” That was the drugs talking and a little bit me too. David and I spoke the same language. Always apathetic to junkies. They were their own worst enemy and ours as well, but he was right, given the chance I would take him for it all, then again losers are never that lucky.

Sleep Sweet Sleep

Tourists in Northern Thailand flocked to the convergence of the Mekong and Mai Klong Rivers in expectation of experiencing the notorious Golden Triangle. Most express deep disappointment that there aren't any opium dens from which they can watch the flow of the Mekong River. A few harass the riverside shop owners for a taste.

"Four hours on a bus and all I can buy is a tee-shirt."

"Tee-shirt good. Say you come here."

Bann Sop Ruak was a tourist trap, although years ago you could sit in the bungalows of Chiang Saen 10 kilometers to the south and smoke yourself into a narcotic coma for weeks on end.

In 1991 I stayed at a guesthouse along the Mekong. $5 a night for a bamboo shack. I was writing a novel about pornography. The owner supplied opium. Fin was good for my dreams.

A Japanese tourist hadn't emerged from his room for two weeks. The owner and I thought that he might be dead and knocked on the door. A groan was followed by footsteps. The door opened with a creak. The Japanese backpacker was whiter than a mushroom. He smiled and said, "Mai pen arai."

"No problem." The owner shrugged his shoulders without the slightest sign of condemnation.

It was low season. I don't think the Jap ever got to Baan Sop Ruak. He had found his Golden Triangle in a 100baht/night bungalow.

I'll find mine again when I'm in my 80s.

Brown Mixture

800 kilometers north of SriRacha is the Golden Triangle. Tourists identify this fabled name with the confluence of the Mekong and Ruak Rivers. The term more accurately referred to the opium-growing regions in Burma, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand, where once most of the world's opium was grown by the tribesmen and KMT armors living beyond the law.

Back in the 1990s the highlight of many backpacker's mountain treks from Chiang Mai was a night's stay at a remote village, where the headman offered opium or fin to the farangs. More enterprising westerners attempted to ship the narcotic back to Europe. Some only made it as far as a Thai prison. One of the world's worst destinations this side of the grave.

Viktor Bout, infamous arms dealer most recently extradited to the USA from Thailand said, "Prisons in the States are like mental hospitals and here they're like a zoo."

Even money won't save a farang, but this doesn't prevent westerners from challenging the gauntlet of police snitches, DEA, and custom inspectors to seek their fate.

I haven't seen opium or 'fin' in years, although in 2007 I visited the local pharmacy and asked the chemist for medicine to cure a persistent cough.

The druggist gave me a small bottle labeled 'Brown Mixture'.

20 baht or 60 cents.

I returned home, where I took a slug, then read the read the label. The last ingredient was 'tincture of opium'. In other words I was drinking laudanum. The drug of choice for the 19th Century. I finished the bottle in one go and I slept like an angel. A good destination for a man my age and my cough was gone too.

Good old Brown Mixture.

Nothing like it in the States.

A TASTE FOR THE EAST by Peter Nolan Smith

My first trip to the Orient was in 1990. My round-the-world ticket had many stops. One was Singapore. The Straits city was undergoing its metamorphosis from a colonial port to a gleaming metropolis of skyscrapers. Raffles was closed for renovations and I stayed at a cheap Chinese hotel in a decrepit godown. The walls climbed toward the ceiling without reaching their destination. A yard of wire covered the gap. The bedding was soiled by a thousand weary bodies and the languid fan spun with fatigue. I left the room and walked toward the harbor.

A rickshaw driver stopped me.

“You want ma.” His clothing was shredded by a decade of useless washes, his body was desiccated to bones wrapped in parchment, and his eyes shone with a dull want.

“Ma.” Horse in Chinese. The word had one meaning in New York City. “Where?”

“I know place.” His claw of a hand beckoned to accompany him.

Drugs were contraband in Singapore. The penalty for possession was death in the most grievous cases. A long prison sentence for anyone else foolish enough to challenge the system. Most arrests came from informers such as this rickshaw driver, who swore, “I not police.”

“I know.” Snitch maybe, but the appeal of opium was an old friend. I climbed into his vehicle and we traveled far from the towers of glass and steel. The streetlights dimmed in his neighborhood. Several doorways were populated by Indonesian transvestites. Others by Chinese whores. Men drank openly on the sidewalk in rebellion against the Singapore leader’s draconian measures for public misbehavior. The rickshaw braked with a whining screech.

“Here.” The driver looked over his shoulder to check for anything out of place. “My name Rami. This place good. Give $10.”

I handed over the money. We entered the battered house. The smell of opium greeted us. I tapped Rami and gave him another $10. “Half for you. Half for me.”

“You good man.” Rami smiled with two front teeth. The rest were brown as cigar butts.

An old woman of indistinguishable racial origins led us into a tiny cubicle. The furnishing were two wooden benches and a wax-covered stool. Sweat shadows marking the proper position for lying on them. Money passed hands and she shut the door. Rami produced tin foil, which he tore into two separate pieces.

“Sorry, no have pipe.”

“I know how to chase the dragon.” I opened my packet and dropped the black ball on the aluminum foil. Rami rolled two paper tubes. A candle was lit on the stool. Rami was an expert and I followed his lead.

“Good horse.”

Within minutes we were transported to another century before planes, telephones, and movies, when opium was king and I was its slave.

Years later I went back to find the opium den. A shopping mall stood in its place. It was selling nothing I wanted. Only fancy perfumes and expensive shirts. It was better that way for the rest of the world and I went to Raffles for a Gin Sling, looking for Rami every step of the way.

He had to be in the shadows somewhere.

Men like him never die.

Not if they know what is good for them.

Across From Burma

Throughout the 90s I biked up from Chiang Mai to Mai Sai on the Thai-Burma border. A small river separated the two countries. The people on both sides looked the same and the houses were built in a similar fashion. I stayed at the Mai Sai Guest House to the left of the Friendship Bridge. They offered clean A-frame bungalows for 100 baht a night or about $3. Butterflies flirted with the flowers and a pleasant waitress served breakfast in the morning and beers at night. The guest house never hit full capacity during my visits. I traveled strictly in low season, but the owner said, "High season. Many farang. Smoke opium. Sleep too much." Smoking Ma or Horse was a ritual of the Golden Triangle and I liked a pipe once in a while. Young Burmese boys swam across the river at night. A ball of O was cheap. I slept late every day and rode a Triumph through the hills. It was a good place to be. 1994. I was 42.