I Woke Up Feeling Thailand

I Woke Up Feeling Thailand.

A remarkable new talent. Starrs’ hilarious parody of Westerners adrift in small town Thailand is destined to become a backpacker’s favorite. - Barry Scott, author of Love and Wigs: Poems of Bangkok, Bollywood and Beyond (Australia: Transit Lounge Publishing, 2003).

First Edition: Sid Harta Publishing, Hartwell, Vic., Australia, 2004. Copyright D. Bruno Starrs 2004, ISBN: 1-877059-77-3 (256 pages, paperback only, presently out of print). Second Edition (i.e. this one): Written by Dr D. Bruno Starrs and published via Smashwords. Copyright D. Bruno Starrs 2012, ISBN: 9781301029778 (E-book).

Smashwords Edition License Notes.

This E-book, entitled I Woke Up Feeling Thailand, is the second edition of the 2004 novel of the same name, written by D. Bruno Starrs and published via Sid Harta, Australia, in 2004. This second edition was written and published by Dr D. Bruno Starrs via Smashwords, and is licensed for the individual buyer’s use and enjoyment only. Although it is not protected by Digital Rights Management, it may not be resold or given away to any other person/s. Please.

It is easy enough to steal, but if you would like someone else to share in your enjoyment of this work, please ask them to download their own free copy and perhaps to even take a look at the author’s latest full-length new novel entitled Bollywood Extras (and take advantage of the 20% free sampling!)

So. here’s to thanking you in advance, for respecting the long, hard work of a self-publishing author!

I Woke Up Feeling Thailand.

2nd Edition, 2012.

A tale of cheap drugs, cheap sex and teaching English ... on the cheap.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

TITLE PAGE.

CHAPTER 1. CANDY.

CHAPTER 2. BAYARD.

CHAPTER 3. KEOWAH.

CHAPTER 4. BAYARD.

CHAPTER 5. SIP EAK TAOWETSUWAN.

CHAPTER 6. BAYARD.

CHAPTER 7. HARRY.

CHAPTER 8. BAYARD.

CHAPTER 9. PUI.

CHAPTER 10. CANDY.

CHAPTER 11. BAYARD.

CHAPTER 12. KEOWAH.

CHAPTER 13. PUI.

CHAPTER 14. BAYARD.

CHAPTER 15. LEO.

CHAPTER 16. HARRY.

CHAPTER 17. GENERAL AUNG.

CHAPTER 18. SIP EAK TAOWETSUWAN.

CHAPTER 19. KEOWAH.

CHAPTER 20. BAYARD.

CHAPTER 21. HARRY.

CHAPTER 22. KEOWAH.

CHAPTER 23. PUI.

CHAPTER 24. LEO.

CHAPTER 25. KEOWAH.

CHAPTER 26. BAYARD.

CHAPTER 27. GENERAL AUNG.

CHAPTER 28. CANDY.

CHAPTER 29.LEO.

CHAPTER 30. BAYARD.

CHAPTER 31. GENERAL AUNG.

CHAPTER 32. KEOWAH.

CHAPTER 33. CANDY.

CHAPTER 34. BAYARD.

CHAPTER 35. POOL BOY.

CHAPTER 36. KEOWAH.

CHAPTER 37. CANDY.

CHAPTER 38. CHERYL.

CHAPTER 39. LEO.

CHAPTER 40. SIP EAK TAOWETSUWAN.

CHAPTER 41. HARRY.

CHAPTER 42. PUI.

CHAPTER 43. GENERAL AUNG.

CHAPTER 44. BAYARD.

CHAPTER 45. LEO.

CHAPTER 46. POOL BOY.

CHAPTER 47. CANDY.

CHAPTER 48. LEK NO. 33, 816.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

BACK TO THE TABLE OF CONTENTS ...

Chapter 1.

Candy.

Ah woke up feelin’ … tired. Discombobulated. Groggy. Nooo, ah had not slept with some fella who self-deprecatingly calls hisself ‘Groggy’ and wuz still ‘feelin’ his presence; altho’ there wuz that night in ‘09 … No, that particular … ah … experience … is entirely irrelevant! What ah means to say is: Lawd Almighty, does my poor ol’ head hurt!

Ah tried to remember what happened last night … to get my bearin’s back on track, so’s to speak. That’s right – it’s comin’ back now - Jethro an’ me wuz knockin’ back that ole Beer Chang (which apparently means ‘two white elephants takin’ a shower from a red brick well in the ground’) - brand beer with this Aussie backpacker fella who wuz tellin’ us about the gold medal what Beer Chang won at the 1998 Australian International Beer Awards.

The Aussie’s name wuz Barry an’ he knew all about it on account of him being, well, an Aussie. They’re the world’s Bloody Experts on beer according to Barry.

You know, Candy, he had said, leaning in even closer to my cleavage, "Beer Chang was actually made by the Carlsberg company, and when they won the gold medal the Vice President of Carlsberg, one ‘Jim-bo’ Napier, said - an’ Barry then put on this real smarmy, high-falutin’ voice:

We are now the market leader in Thailand. Awards like this are very important because they take a regional beer out of its background and show the world how fine it is.

But the gold medal they were so proud of was also awarded to 83 of the 87 other beers entered in the same category by a bunch of enterprising Australian university students who started the competition just so they could get heaps of free beer! And they did, pallet-loads of booze from all over the world! No bull, mate! Makes me proud to be an Aussie!

Barry went on, in between great fits of laughter in which he wuz bent over like some kinda dyin’ man, tellin’ us that in fact it wuz the more expensive Singha Beer - or Beer Sing, as the locals call it - made by Boon Rawd Brewery that wuz the leader of the Thai market with over 80% of domestic sales (that means beer sold in the country it was made in, not whether it can do your household chores as well).

Man, did Jethro laugh at that information: he always thinks other foreigners are jus’ plain stupid compared to us Americans an’ he figured this wuz typical of the Thais, too. What with him having all of four days experience in Thailand now, Jethro already considered himself the expert on South-East Asia

He. Is. An. Idiot.

Oh, what the hell, Ah couldn’t care less. Beer Chang didn’t taste too bad to me, an’ it sure wuz cheap!

So, there we wuz wanderin’ along Khao Sahn Road an’ Thai people wuz askin’ us weird stuff like You wanna drink snake blood? an’ sayin’ to Jethro weird shit like Good time! Girl, boy, ladyboy, fuckee fuckee, no problem! An’ every cafe or bamboo an’ canvas restaurant seemed to have a big screen video with either The Simpsons or the Leo DeCaprio movie ‘bout a Thailand dope island playin’.

An’ then we met this itty-bitty, pot-bellied Burmese fella who kept askin’ questions about Texas an’ if we wanted to teach him English, an’ he kept on touchin’ my long blonde hair - which, ah has to admit, is one of my better features, and ah seems to recall that didn’t impress Jethro none. We wuz drinkin’ in this outside restaurant where this Burmese fella called Sawayark had no hesitation in pulling his tee-shirt up over his brown, hairless paunch for all to see. He wuzn’t the only local who bared their bellies in order to cope with the Bangkok heat, either. They wuz like dogs with their tongues hangin’ out only it wuz their guts that wuz doin’ all the pantin’.

Jethro an’ ah just kept on sweatin’ like pigs, which wuz’nt so bad coz we’d been laughin’ so much at the way the Thai waiters kept prayin’ at us that ah’d actually wet myself a little. Just a tiny bitta leakage. They kept on bringin’ their palms together like a little church steeple and right up to their nose whenever that show-off Jethro gave them a 10 baht tip, an’ we wuz playin’ it for all it wuz worth. An’ the girls wuz even funnier; they’d do this little curtsy bob-down thingy as they did the prayin’ part. Barry said it was called a Wai. Real cute it wuz an’ Jethro couldn’t help makin’ fun of them. But we wuz from out of town, so to speak, an kinda knew we’d get away with some attitude.

Manna from heaven, my oriental friend, said Jethro, an’ ah’d follow-up, shakin’ my finger like a schoolteacher, with Be not led into temptation, for money is the root of all evil … an’ the best drugs!

Ah don’t think they understood we wuz taking the mickey, but even if they did we wuzn’t getting’ back any bad vibes so we kept on jokin’ around an’ havin’ a great time, thanks to that good ole Beer Chang an’ also to the big, fat reefer Bazza - which is what he insisted we called him - laid on us right there on the table next to the pavement of Khao Sahn road.

Where anyone could see and certainly smell the mary jane.

No problem, Police get their tip every month! he said, but little Sawayark wuz catchin’ on to our hijinks, coz he spoke some English, an’ ah think he said somethin’ to Bazza coz he kinda told us to cool it; which we did when he bought over some soup with these huge shrimps an’ shellfish in this kinda silver urn with a li’l ole Bunsen burner underneath. He said it wuz called Tommy yummy, or somethin’, an’ Lawd Almighty it wuz delicious!

An’ ah remember ah put on my best Blanche DuBois’ Southern belle accent an’ said, real theatrical-like:

Why, thank you, Mr. Sawayark, sir. Ah have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

But the Burmese fella didn’t get the ‘inter-cultural reference’, so to speak, so me an’ Jethro had ourselves a mighty delicious free dinner. Course, everythin’ we ate so far in Thailand wuz delicious an’ so cheap it wuz nearly free; like banana pancakes, Pad Thai noodles, chunks of pineapple sprinkled with salt an’ sugar … Ah wuz pretty heavy-boned before ah came here an’ ah reckon ah’ll be even heavier when it comes time to go home - tho ah ain’t gonna try them deep fried scorpions or grasshoppers.

Ah draws the line at eatin’ bugs!

Hmm, to think that only six weeks ago we wuz stuck in our trailer with no jobs an’ nothin’ to do but drink hootch an’ sell crack. An’ then we bought some cheeseburgers from the drive-thru in town an’ scratched off the free contest card an’ WOO HOO! - a two weeks all expenses paid holiday in Thailand. But it’s a shame that Jethro swapped our plush hotel rooms for that quarter-kilo of speed on the second day. Oh, yeah, a quarter-kilo is about half a pound; they measure things different here. We’d just met this sweet Thai girl in the foyer an’ she an’ ah got on real well right from the start. She was the one who scored us the speed.

I kinda had the hots for this Thai girl, who seemed so confident, as did Jethro, the sleazy pig. Ah bet he wuz hopin’ for a bit of three-way action, coz she wuz real stunnin’ – an’ tall, too, for a Thai chick. Jus’ like that Sawayark fella, she wuz quite taken by my hair. Ah reckon if Jethro wuz blonde, too, then he woulda seen some three-way action after all …

Now, what’d she call the speed? That’s right – Yaah baah … Hmm, actually, weren’t no shame really about the room, on account of that shit wuz A1 grade. An’ all we had to do wuz get it home an’ we’d be rich!

Yep, it wuz one helluva night, but ah don’t even remember comin’ back to the guesthouse last night, though … Oh, shoot, well, Jethro’ll remember - he never fergits nuthin’ when he’s speedin’ …

Jeth, honey!

There wuzn’t no answer.

Ah tried to roll onto my side but somethin’ wuz stoppin’ me.

Hey, just a minute: Ah’m tied up in this here bed! With handcuffs! Admittedly, they’re nicely padded handcuffs ...

An’ ah can remember from the night before at the guesthouse that there wuz a creaky ole ceiling fan, coz we couldn’t afford no air conditionin’ on the spendin’ money we had left, an’ this room now has air con - Ah can feel it on my boobs, which, come to think of it, ain’t the only part of me that’s nekkid. That dirty ole Jethro! But Ah ain’t up to no foolin’ around - Ah still gotta whoppin’ headache!

Jethro! Ah ain’t in no mood for none a your kinky-ass games, babe!

There still wuzn’t no answer. The lazy bum wuz probably takin’ a dump (he always fucked better after a crap). Ah twisted around on the bed trying to see where the can wuz; an’ then ah saw it all.

Lawd Almighty! There wuz six or seven other beds in the room, each with a blonde, nekkid chick asleep an’ tied up in it with handcuffs! An’ there wuz an IV feed hooked up to the wrist of each of those chicks! An’ there wuz bars on all the windows!

Bluish-white fluorescent tubes buzzed loudly above me. An’ in each corner of the ceilin’ ah could see a tiny little video camera pointed down at us with an itty-bitty red light glowin’ next to its lens. An’ then ah looked down at my own left arm an’ there was an IV drip hangin’ out of me, too!

Ah sure wuzn’t in no cheap Khao Sahn Road guesthouse no more.

Ah sucked in a big lungful of air an’ screamed.

BACK TO THE TABLE OF CONTENTS ...

Chapter 2.

Bayard.

From the customs lanes the passengers debouched single file into the milling, teeming mass of the arrivals lounge of Bangkok’s second airport, Suvarnabhumi International. There, I’d been told, would await my greeter. With eagle eyes peeled, I soon spotted her.

She was holding an A4 sized placard with Threeplewood inscribed upon it in child-like hand-writing, and the seemingly young native Thai teacher of English looked me up and down with nary a thought to concealing her malevolent intent.

Indeed, ice seemed to form on her upper slopes and her breath began misting the glass partitioning of the airport waiting room.

The agenda of the comely but silent wench was obvious. Put simply, she was to visually appraise this new native English speaker’s suitability - my suitability - for the vacant English lecturing position I had been commissioned to fill at her Rajabhat (the Thai university, where, as a white-skinned Westerner, I would earn around five times as much as her probably more deserving and better qualified self).

Convinced of my inadequacy, she would then report back to her dean that my passport photo was a misleading forgery: I was either a long-haired hippie or a tattooed criminal and by sending me on my way she had saved the Institute immense shame and embarrassment. Saving face, I already knew thanks to several forums on the Internet, of course, is of utmost importance to most Asians.

So here I was, self-consciously toting my faux-ostrich skin briefcase filled with the compendium of exaggerations and half-truths otherwise known as my CV, my British passport (authentic) and my Cambridge University degree and academic transcript (also authentic): documents all verifying that I meet the Selection Criteria - documents all corresponding with the details I had provided in my job application form and curriculum vitae, which was so long I sometimes joked that it made the Old Testament look like a haiku poem.

But these papers alone would not keep me in the lifestyle I had grown accustomed to, through various loans from ecstasy-dealing former friends and a sizeable Bank of Britain overdraft, so I had pecuniary plans in addition to Rajabhat teaching for my new life in Thailand.

Buoyed emotionally at having collected the rest of my irreplaceable luggage from the conveyor belts and having passed through customs relatively quickly, and filled with the adrenaline that surely accompanies the beginning of any foreign adventure, I was feeling confident.

Thus, the pretty Thai lady’s arrogant demeanor hardly fazed me all.

In the spirit of international diplomacy, I offered the young woman my most captivating smile. As her coffee-colored brow furrowed I could tell she was as yet immune to my formidable Western charm and allure, but I knew she would nevertheless weaken. Eventually, I assured myself, mesmerized by my masterful Lothario-like manners, the ladies of Thailand such as she would follow me in droves, like moths to a naked flame. Naked being the operative word, I hoped …

But as I stood there, her moss-brown, doe eyes lingered, unimpressed, upon my shorter left leg, and I knew this was the moment to exercise my best charm. Indeed, had she observed my superfluous nipple I daresay she would have at that moment turned tail and ran screaming ‘Foreigner is devil! Foreigner is devil!’ (or whatever is the Thai language equivalent) at the top of her Buddhist lungs. But my pale ribcage was shielded from her prying gaze by a chemise of the finest white polyester cotton.

I momentarily toyed with the notion of mentioning my status as Associate Member and Vice President of the Fabian Society of Cambridge to gain her respect. This frequently worked back home in ‘Ye Olde Blighty’ with the elderly matrons at the local Municipal Public Library turning a blind eye when and where I had sometimes found myself dossing down after hours between the stacks when my cash-flow was. well, minimal.

You could say I had a talent for society but no talent for wealth. Or, in more prosaic terms, a wealth of real experience but limited experience of real wealth.

However, my physical imperfections not withstanding, it appeared my elegant demeanor and insouciance had wordlessly appeased her critical eye, and she refrained from pointing summarily to the departure lounge and thrusting my return air-ticket back at me.

Catching a glimpse of my reflection in the window of one of the myriad of currency exchange offices lining the walls of the cavernous Suvarnabhumi airport foyer, I paused for a moment of genuflection and was able to appreciate my dependably elegant sartorial visage. Ah, yes; the good people of Thailand were in for a