Rasta Mayans

Sleaze a la Old Bangkok

Written Apr 1, 2019 Most tourists to Thailand have wandered through Patpong, but the old sex entrepot has been tamed by time, but even twenty years ago other than the sex shows on the second floors there was never too much sleaze of the soi. Mostly straight-forward go-go bars and beer halls with the usual barfine and 'love you long time' lines.

Ho-hum.

Massage parlors. Girls with numbers washing you with their bodies. Very sensual, but how wicked could a place be when you're being washed clean for an hour.

But back in the 90s Bangkok had dives. Bars your mother prayed you would never enter. Booze halls your father never visited. Den of iniquity you don't write home and brag, "Gee, you should have seen where I spent Christmas."

My first dive in Bangkok was Kenny's Bar off Soi Duplei.

Kenny’s purported to be a bar/restaurant. Walking by you wouldn’t think it was anything evil judging from the daytime bunch of losers searching for the chance of sex or drugs or whatever comes there way. There was even a little gambling going on and Kenny was always trying to get you to go with his girlsor him or the three of them, but in the end he was a family man and sadly went off to the UK with a lover. Now his cousin Fat Pat maintains the same level of depravity.

The next three were godless haunts with no socially redeemable values.

If you even know of these places you have already sold your soul to the Devil.

Congratulations.

Eden Club off Sukhumvit.

You walked into the bar.

The manager, a weedy frog, said, "The Eden is not for drinking. It is for fucking."

The Frenchman clapped his hands like the Marquis de Sade. The girls separated into two groups. Michel, that’s his name, explained, “The girls on the right are 2 hole. The girls on the left 3. Do you need me to explain?"

If you hit the Eden right then you can choose two princesses, but if you show up with a friend, then you fight over the pickings.

And let's face it going to a place like the Eden is no fun unless you can brag about your exploits to your friend afterwards.

3-holers were understandably not as pretty as 2-holers.

But they were good to mix and match.

The girls will do anything to each other for an hour; dildo, 69, XXX movies, but bring your party hat because the Eden costs about 3500 for an hour and the clock started ticking from the time you leave the bar. So no lingering on the stairs.

If you were stuck for ideas, the girls will provide inspiration.

The owner, Michel, the garlic eater, promised 'satisfaction guaranteed or your money back'.

Which was almost impossible after you've been satisfied better than an Ismaeli Asāsiyyeen who are promised raisins and not seventy-virgins in heaven or Jannah.

The Eden was a fine place to walk out feeling like you need to confess your soul, but it was far from damnation. That honor was accorded two legendary Bangkok establishments.

It's 2am. everything is shut. You're still up for hell.

Damn Satan. I'll take his best shot.

For real sleaze you need some place when you mention its name, friends scrunched their eyes and say, "You're not seriously thinking about going there."

The Thermae Coffee House commotes die-hard devotion to a life of sin.

Entering the bar required courage. Farangs descended into a firetrap populated by the possibly wildest girls in Bangkok. Their fun began way after where yours ended.

Thermae was not for the casual tourist as the male clientele was better suited for a police line-up in any country in the world; dealers, thieves, scammers, drunks, losers, perverts as nauseum.

If pets resembled their owners, then these guys own rats, snakes, and weasels.

In short the Thermae was a Disneyworld funhouse for deviants.

The girls could be scary. Ugly enough to make a train take a dirt road or else scary in the sense that you never knew what you were getting into; fight with an ex-, STD, psycho burn-out at your hotel, possible jumpers.

But that was the price of admission to the most depraved place in town.

The Thermae was sin and you know you’re a bad person sitting there.

Plus it was almost impossible to get its smell off you.

At the reception of your hotel the staff would take a sniff.

'Eau de thermae'.

Their esteem dropped to the level of a street dog, especially when your date from the bar entered after you. Cheap slutty and drunk. Miss Dok Thong 2006. The next morning the staff checked your room for possible theft of towels. A post Thermae ritual.

GRACE BAR was a dark star of depravity, which even scared the infamous Stickman.

Despite numerous edicts on early closure of bars in Bangkok, the Grace strove to uphold its myth. The girls were beasts and the men were lovers of beasts. No one seemed to bathe or change their clothing. Some smelled like they might have died in the past 2-3 days.

Everyone at the bar had inhaled enough second-hand smoke to get cancer and their life expectancy was under constant threat from alcoholism and drugs. The males were drop-outs from the Osman Bin Laden suicide camp, Nigerian scam artists, Sikh tailors who haven't washed in a year, and American expats too fucked up to realize they were not in a go-go bar.

The women were beautiful, if you had lost four of your senses. Most of them were old, which was good because the people frequenting the Grace should be banned from procreation. Customers and girls ODed in their chairs. No one tried to revive them, because one deserved a second chance in the Grace. They had wasted those long ago.

The Grace was a hellhole.

Still you had to love these places, because without them Bangkok became one big shopping mall. And we don’t buy anything in those emporiums.

Well, maybe Ginger Crisps at Marks and Spencers.

YELLOW TEETH by Peter Nolan Smith

Written Dec 31, 2011

I have been arrested several times in my life.

Age 12 for vandalizing an abandoned missile base overlooking Boston Harbor

Age 21 for driving over a bed of flowers at a girl's college in Newton.

Age 25 for running an after-hour club in Manhattan.

Age 31 in Paris for grafitting the British Embassy wall. The gendarmes thought my poem was an IRA tirade, instead of drunken verses to my girlfriend working across the street at the Azzedine Alaia salon opposite the embassy on Rue St. Honore.

None of these crimes deserved jail time. My violent streak never came to the attention of the police. My drug deals were strictly small-time. I avoided contact with the Mafia. They were as dangerous as the Hell's Angels, Hamburg pimps, Colombian cocaine dealers, and conniving transvestites.

My mother had warned me about these people.

"If you see trouble coming, walk the other way."

I was near-sighted, so trouble found me long before I noticed its approach.

Luckily my Uncle Carmine told his wayward nephews the Golden Rule.

"Only break one law at a time."

His advice stood us well and I avoided any serious complications with the law for twenty-two years, however no one's lucky streak can challenged the odds forever and in January 2008 I returned to Central Pattaya after a pleasant seafood lunch with my steady girlfriend in Jomtien.

It was a good life.

I was living alone in the most wicked town on the planet. My website selling counterfeit Ferrari and assorted F1 merchandise was # 1 in the Google search engines. The weather was cool and I had shipped a big order of McLaren driver suits to Germany.

Another week of good sales and I would be out of debt, then I could get my yellow teeth whitened to a brilliant white.

I entered my estate off Soi Bongkot and parked my motorscooter before my rented house. Another month and the mango tree would bear fruit. Everyone in the neighborhood waited the harvest with lip-smacking anticipation.

A mini-van stopped behind me. At first I thought it was my brother-in-law coming for a beer and I wondered why he brought so many friends.

Except it wasn't Pi-Wot but the Bangkok police to arrest me for copyright infringement. The oldest officer in a black suit presented a search warrant. The other cops were undercover in jeans, tee-shirts, and sneakers. I wore sandals. Running was not an option. I opened the gate, then the doors to my office.

They politely took off their shoes and entered my office. Twenty F1 shirts lay in plastic bags on the floor. They seized the merchandise and the ranking officer asked, "Where’s the rest of it?"

"That's it." Business had been traditionally slow after the holidays.

A computer geek sat at my computer. He wanted the codes to my site. Refusal was out of the question. Cooperation was rewarded with leniency, but tonight looked like i would be spending the evening in a monkey house. They were never comfortable.

"Can I go outside?" I wasn't needed for the dismantling of f1 shopping.net. The long-haired geek knew his business and his fingers swept over my keyboard like a tsunami.

The commander nodded and two cops accompanied into the garden and I hyperventilated, as a series of prospective scenarios played in my head. Most of them finished in jail.

One of the younger cops told me to calm down, "Jai yen. Jai yen."

"That's easy for you to say." I had seen MIDNIGHT EXPRESS more than once.

He wasn't being arrested in a foreign country.

"No big problem. Maybe 2000 baht." He explained the fine would be about $60. "We take you Bangkok. You pay bail and then go home. Mai pen lai." 

American detective from Quantico Ltd. was supervising the operation. His company had been looking for me a long time. Rusty was a Yale graduate. His online persona had emailed that his mother wouldn't allow his use of her credit card and I had accepted a Western Union wire to my real name. I had mailed him merchandise, but had written phony addresses on the envelopes, thinking that might protected me.

At least it was a comfort that my ex-wife hadn't sold me out to the tam-luau.

How they had tracked me back to Soi Sawan was unimportant, but Rusty also said it wasn't such a big deal, "Not the first time. Next time you go to jail."

"Message well taken." I had been trying to quit for ages. "I don't want to go to jail."

Jail in Thailand is a bare floor with thirty-plus other misfortunates.

"You won't." Rusty had arrested scores of counterfeiters.

"You seem like a smart person. Why are you doing this?" I hated snitches.

"Why did you do this?" Rusty was in his thirties. His Thai was impeccable.

"So I could stay in Thailand." The other employment opportunities were either a low-paying teaching job or running a bar.

"We all do what we have to do."

The old lady on the street came up to me. I paid her to clean my house. She had received perfume for Christmas. The police had questioned her about me several times and she had never said a word. I also hated people who didn't snitch.

"I tell police you good man." Thai police studied the ways of the Gestapo. Thailand had a long fascist tradition. The only up for informers were the police.

"Thanks." Her testimony was the best a woman in her position could do for a farang.

"These police not same Pattaya. Honest. Not worry."

"Sure." I always worried when people tell me not to worry, but the police never cuffed me or confiscated my telephone. The older officer asked if i had any drugs in the house. I told him the truth.

"Ganga no problem. Get rid of it."

He sent me into the house and I flushed the two joints down the toilet.

When I came out, he asked, "You want beer?"

"Yeah." It couldn't hurt and I reached into my pocket.

"Mai, mai." He waved his hand in the air and leaned forward. "I talk with everyone and they say you good man. I will take care of you. I not like other farang."

He was speaking about Rusty and his employers. The old lady had said that they were honest, but this arrest was unlike any that I had seen on Sophon Cable or read in the Bangkok Post.

After two hours of checking my computer and packing the merchandise, they transported me to Bangkok in an air-conditioned mini-van.

Halfway to the Sathon Police Station they stopped for food and bought a bag filled with a McDonald’s Happy Meal. This was not my last meal and I realized how fortunate I was to have been arrested by Federal police.

A Thai friend in Bangkok met me at the police station. His face said COP same as mine. Khim worked as a chauffeur. He explained the process and said, "Small problem. You get bail. Go home."

Strangely everyone was very polite to me. My holding cell was an office with AC and a TV with my choice of DVDs. I didn’t feel like watching anything as I was reading Peter Hopkirk's THE GREAT GAME.

Later TV crews showed up for a show. The commanding officer for copyright infringement pointed to a pile of two-thousand shirt. "This farang was caught with 4 million baht and 2000 shirts."

"No, khun tam pit." I whispered under my breath. He had made a mistake and I pointed to a single bag down the corridor. "Those are these."

"These?" Someone had properly not briefed him.

"Yes, 20 shirts. Nothing more."

He waved to the TV crew to shut off the camera. End of interview.

The arresting officers laughed at their boss.

I sat in an AC office watching TV. Movie of my choice. INSIDE MAN. I was fingerprinted and filled out an arrest form. When the cops announced bail of 50k. I said I didn't have it. That was the truth.

"40k?"

"Mai mee kap." Speaking polite Thai helps in situations like this.

"30?" There was no way they were dropping to 20 or 25.

30 it was. A little less than $1000.

Khim and I said, "Yet mah." or motherfucker.

We were short the bail. I had 15 k in the bank and Khim had 500. Nu couldn't sell a motorcycle until tomorrow. The monkey house loomed as a probability instead of a possibility. No beds, no blankets, cheap rice twice a day, and lots of mosquitoes. The antithesis of the worst Bangkok in Bangkok.

I made one phone one call. The Old Roue lived in on Soi Nana. I knew him from New York. I asked for 20K. He had 15K. Khim drove over to Soi 4 and picked it up. Without the Old Roue I would have been in the monkey house for who knows how long. I called him to say thanks every few days and also let him know I'm still broke.

"No problem man, you get it when you get it."

The whole process from raid to release took seven hours with a two-hour trip to Bangkok thrown into the program. The Fed cops had me sign an affidavit confirming no one had asked for a sin bon or bribe.

After the money was paid they cut me loose. Khim spent 200 baht on 5 bottles of Khang. I drank 3 of them myself.

I fell to sleep happy that I didn't spend any time in the 'monkey house'. No chairs, no fans, and lots of mosquitoes as a prelude to the Bangkok Hilton, the Koong Toey jail.

I appeared on national TV that night. Channel 5. The Army station.  The police had said, “Not worry. Not many people watch Channel 5."

Everyone on my soi saw the newscast.

Several Thai friends said I looked handsome. They couldn't care less that I was arrested. It's something that happens.

Everyone was astounded by this revelation of how much money I had. "You have 4 million baht."

My old lady who cleaned my house knew the truth. I was broke and wished I had the 4 million baht. I could get a job at the local school teaching English and make about $300/month. 10,000 baht. 300/baht a day is a big comedown from 3000 baht a day.

This story is far from over, since the cops said it would be at least 6-10 weeks until I go to court.

Another day in paradise has gotten a little less paradisaical, but it's always better to be free.

ATLANTIC SLAPDOWN by Peter Nolan Smith

Written 9/8/16

Last Saturday afternoon the streets of Brooklyn sweltered in the sultry August heat and my landlord invited me to join a family excursion to the beach. I had only swam in the ocean twice all summer, so my answer was quick and to the point.

"Gimme five minutes."

I ran upstairs and changed into my beach gear, then grabbed a towel. We weren't going far and I hurried down to the street in time to help AP load his kids' bikes into AP's Audi A6 station wagon.

"Nice day for it." The temperature was in the mid-90s.

"Any day is." I sat in the back with the door open. The afternoon air was breathless and I toweled the sweat off my face. His daughter and son bounded down the stairs and joined me in the back. Lizzie and my daughter Angie were born only a few days apart, while James was two years older than Wey Wey. I considered both AP's children family. Mine was on the other side of the world in Thailand.

"Everyone set?" their platinum-haired mother, Kay, asked from the front.

"Ready," we chorused and AP drove through downtown Brooklyn to the Dumbo exit of the south-bound BQE. Traffic was nearly non-existent along the shore of New York harbor and we round the Narrows past Coney Island. AP got off the BQE at 11S to cross over Jamaica Bay Inlet on the Gil Hodges Bridge after which AP entered Fort Tilden, to which he had a parking permit from the Rockaway Artists Collective.

After pulling out the bikes, the two kids rode ahead on the crumbling roads of the decommissioned military outpost, while we tramped toward the beach.

Fort Tilden had served the nation since the War of 1812 and existed as Naval Air Station Rockaway throughout the 20th Century. Coastal guns had at one time dotted the dunes to protect New York City from invasion. During the Cold War Nike Hercules and Nike Ajax missiles had been installed in bunkers and launch sites to shoot down Soviet nuclear missile.

AP's eight-year old son was desperate to find a silo in the flowering beach heather.

"Why don't they not have missiles now?"

"The fort was abandoned in the 70s."

"Why?" It was only the second of many whys and AP was a good father. He answered each and every one through the dunes.

We reached the beach, as the crowds were heading for home. The wind off the water was cold. The beach was strewn with plastic bags and beer cans. AP's son asked why.

"Because people are pigs," AP answered and stripped off his shirt. He had summered most of his life on the Hamptons. This was his ocean. His daughter and son waded in ankle-deep surf, as he plunged into the thick ocean rollers. I wasn't quite ready and policed the sandy stretch around us for trash. After five minutes it was almost pristine and I dropped the bag of garbage by Kay reading a book.

"A little better now."

"Wasn't any plastic on the beach when I was growing up."

AK's wife came from San Diego. I knew those beaches from the 70s.

"You think the Atlantic is different from the Pacific?"

Both are cold." She put down her book and surveyed the green waves. "The surf is bigger back home and the slope doesn't drop off so fast like it does here, but it's almost the same. What about Thailand?"

"The water there is calm and warm." I shut my eyes and saw Angie and Wey Wey on Mae Laim Phim. My kids loved Rayong. The sand was soft and the water was warm, plus palm trees lined the beach. Nothing was getting me there today and I opened them to see Lizzie and James before me.

"Are you going in?"

"No, I just sit here. I'll watch your garbage."

Kay resume reading her book.

"Thanks."

I tugged off my shirt and walked to the edge of the surf. AP stroked through the surf and shook the water off his body.

"You kids ready for a swim?" AP was a good swimmer and a better father.

"Yes."

Lizzie disappeared under a wave. Her younger brother was more cautious.

"I'll carry you." AK lifted James in his arms and wandered into the deeper water. I missed my sons. My daughters too.

"Don't mention it." I was also a father.

I ran into the ocean. I duckdove under a large wave and Aussie-crawled about a hundred feet from shore. The current swept east at a fast clip and I swam to keep AP and his daughter before me. James shouted and pointed behind me. A surging wave built a sloping face. I rode it for a good twenty feet before the wave collapsed onto the sandbar, slamming my body to the sand and I popped to the surface gasping for breath.

An unusual pain throbbed in the ribs.

Lord Neptune had tried to kill me, but I wasn't an easy victim and bodysurfed to shallower water. Standing up I inhaled deeply. The ache wasn't going away and I decided it was time to call an end to this swimming expedition.

"You okay?" AP asked emerging from the surf with his daughter and son clinging to his neck.

"I might have bruised a rib, but I'm okay."

His kids ran to their mother.

It was three months since my last visit home.

Sea water was good at hiding my tears and I said, "Nothing a few margaritas wouldn't cure."

"Your wish is my command." AP is a kindred soul. "Let's go get some in Rockaway. Tacos too."

His wife liked the idea.

"That was quite a tumble you took."

"It only hurts when I laugh."

"I bet it does, but it will go away." Kay understood the ache in my heart, but her children were happy and I was happy for them to be happy and ever happier that we had gone to Fort Tilden. I inhaled deeply and grimaced from the pain.

It wasn't bad and I follow my friends to the car.

They were a family and so was mine.

And one day soon I will go see my kids.

On the sands of a beach far away.

And that will happen one day.

Thai Words for Smile

Written Jul 24, 2008

Different languages have many words for the same thing.

Eskimos supposedly have 15 words for snow.
You can read them on this URL

http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~atman/Misc/eskimo-snow-words.html

The travel movie AMAZING THAILAND claims the Thais have 13 words for smile. This statement falls into the realm of urban legend, although the Thais have a smile for every occasion.

Happy? Smile. Sad? Smile. Crash car into buffalo? Smile.
I went to www.thai2english.com to see how close they came to 13.

6 was the answer.

Yim - Smile

Roi yim - Smile

Feun Yim - Forced Smile ie after you tell your wife you're not giving her any more money for the week.

Om Yim - Smile knowingly ie your wife knows you'll hit an ATM for her if you want to go out with your friends and not get an earful.

Bproi Yim - Distribute smiles to ie smile to others saying what a fool your husband is not thinking he can get away without hitting an ATM

Obviously there are some smiles even the Thais don't recognize.

Yim Mah - Doglike smile on your girlfriend's boyfriend who's you think is his brother.

Yim Kee - Shit-eating smile on your girlfriend after you discover her brother is really her husband.

Yim Beer - Your smile after figuring a bottle of beer is more faithful than your girlfriend.

Yim Kwai - Your smile as seen by Thais. Buffalo grin

Yim Talung - Your smile walking down Soi 6. Otherwise known as a leer.

Yim Im - Smile after eating too much.

Yim Isarah - Your smile upon biding your missus adios.

"Free at last, free at last. Good God Almighty. Free at last." Martin Luther King.

The South Shore to Maine - New England - Quinton Sprague and Peter Nolan Smith

Written Aug 24, 2021

THE SOUTH SHORE TO MAINE by Quinton Arundel

At the 169
Willem gives his blessing to our road trip

Peter visits a friend Franny
I drive a rented car to Nantasket
Hull
Fried clams at Tony's on Wollaston Beach
Talk Heroin. More honest than cocaine. Talk about dropping qualludes in the Duxbury cranberry bogs
The old Bay State Colony

The Quincy Quarries ain't no more. Emerald water is grass surrounded rock cliffs

No one in his family lives in Boston. Route 128 is their home.

Listen to Jonathan Richman's ROADRUNNER
Head north on 128 to Cape Ann, Gloucester, Rocky Neck
Swim at the Rockpport Quarry.

Peter jumps off the cliff into the water
The police come to investigate our trespass onto private property.
Peter explains he could read the signs because he's dyslexic and has been swimming here since 1970
"What's your excuse?" asks the officer.
"I'm with him."
We leave wet from the leap

Ipswich Beach.
Beautiful sand, but not the quarries.
We stop at the Babylon of the North Shore

Salisbury Beach.
"I did acid here in the winter of 1971."
"How was it?"
"Wicked."
Our only direction was north.
Portsmouth NH
Kittery Maine
York Maine.

My land and lobstahs too.
Tomorrow north to Falmouth and Sebago to hear the myths of weird old man.
Weird old men never get old.

Tragedy at Laem Mae Phim

Written Jul 4, 2012

When my family moved south from Maine to a suburb south of Boston in 1960, my best friend and I vowed never to go swimming unless we were together. Chaney's parents had a place on Lake Sebago. That summer was warm in New England. One day in August my mother received a phone call from Chaney’s mother. I was told to sit in our station wagon. After a few minutes my mother exited from our split-level house and said, “Chaney drowned this morning.”

I sat in the car for a long time, staring at the silhouette of Great Blue Hill.

Chaney was gone.

My eight-year old friend had broken our vow, but so had I at Nantasket Beach. One of us had paid the price. Chaney not me, so drownings have always held a special sorrow for me.

Three times I've jumped into the ocean to save people; Horseneck Beach for a drunk, Matzatlan for a small Mexican boy, and Pulau Wey in Sumatra for a young Muslim girl. Each rescue was effortless since they were in trouble in less than four feet of water and I walked them to shore and the gratitude of their families. The owe their lives to my Boy Scout swimming merit badge, but not everyone in the world knows how to swim and especially not in Thailand, where there are no lifeguards at the beaches.

Down the coast from Pattaya is Had Laem Mae Phim.

In calm weather this soft sandy beach offers safe waters for non-swimmers. School bus tours from the Isaan Plateau arrive at the beach to offer students their first encounter with the sea. The teachers instruct their classes to be careful, then retreat under the palms for an afternoon of eating and drinking. Most trips end with happy faces, but Laem Mae Phim isn't called 'the mother that cries' for nothing.

If the wind is up, the calm waters are churned to chest-high waves and deadly undertows suck at the innocent.

Such an incident occurred the other day as reported by pattayaone.com

'Four friends drowned off the coast of Sattahip on Friday morning in a tragic case which began with the attempted suicide of a 19 year old man who was jealous of his girlfriends Facebook activities, especially those which involved other men. Ironically he survived but four of his friends who jumped into the water to save him, drowned. Khun Jalaepat, who was heavily intoxicated, was in a state of complete shock but did explain how he jumped into the water with the intention of drowning. Two other friends, who were able to rescue Khun Jalaepat, confirmed the story and watched as rescue workers found the four bodies and took them to shore. The four dead friends were aged between 17 and 19 and were found throughout the morning as an earlier rescue was not possible due to poor weather conditions. Police are investigating but have initially recorded the deaths as accidental.'

Death by Facebook.

It's a deadly addiction.

We didn't have Facebook in 1960.

At Chaney's funeral the priest said my friend was in heaven. I looked into the sky and saw only sky. If there was no heaven, then there was no hell.

Wherever Chaney was, I would meet him there.