My farewell to Thailand was somewhat rushed in that I arrived in Bangkok from Cambodia a day-and-a-half before I had to fly home. I was shattered from my trip and dry retching at the thought of the long haul ahead, but was easily talked into a farewell piss-up by my fellow Irish ex-pat Chris, a gargantuan David James lookalike who grew up in my housing estate in Dublin and had been living in Thailand since his early 20s.
A little crew of farang guys I’d met through Chris and my Muay Thai corner man and good friend Ek got together and headed off into the steamy Bangkok evening. We bummed around from bar to bar, sipping happy hour beers and buzzing off the ever-cheerful bargirls who hit on us for free drinks..
The thoughts of leaving the next day horrified me. I wanted to see my family and friends, but my year in Thailand was the best I’d had and life back in Ireland was unlikely to match the carnival that my stay in Asia had become. Around the same time that alcohol chased off my concerns about making a 20-hour journey with a hangover, I decided that going home was in fact a ridiculous idea. It would make far more sense if all my family and friends simply relocated here. If only the thought had occurred to me sooner.
We ended up in the one remaining Bangkok nightclub that opens beyond 2am. ‘Spice’ avoids being shut by the police because it is owned and staffed by the police. Thailand’s boys in brown frequently stand accused of failing to properly enforce the law, and while they may be incompetent on that score, they sure know how to run a club. Taking out the competition was a masterstroke and the place was packed with the full complement of dodgy individuals you would expect in the last remaining after-hours spot in a city that lives off its reputation for having a wild nightlife.
The majority of the clientele being hosted by Bangkok’s crooked cops seemed to be female and implausibly attractive. My thoughts were apparently written across my face because Chris quickly read them. “These are all dancers from the go-go bars,” he said with a blank expression. “This is where they come when they’ve clocked off.” I sighed, swilled the beer around in the bottom of my bottle and knocked it back. “Don’t worry,” Chris continued. “You’ll grow to love rain and unattractive women after a couple of years back home.” I cried a little inside and headed for the bathroom.
Overly conscientious toilet attendants are no rarity in Irish nightclubs but the Thais, I discovered, take things to disturbing and potentially hazardous new levels. No sooner had I arranged myself in front of the urinal than two hands landed on my shoulders. I yelped and spun around as far as the job at hand would permit me to and discovered a sprightly young man in a shimmering waistcoat and dickey bow.
“Jai yen yen!” he chirped before erupting into laughter along with a number of his similarly dressed and hitherto unnoticed colleagues. Appar-ently it isn’t at all uncommon for toilet attendants to attempt to win tips by giving impromptu neck and shoulder massages to whoever wanders up to the urinal.
“Don’t you ‘jai yen yen’ me!” I wailed, jolted by the thought of the heroic beating such a move would precipitate if attempted in Paparazzis in Dun Laoghaire. “I’ll tell you what,” I continued, starting to see the funny side. “How about I pay you not to touch me while I’m going for a slash? Will that work?” They had probably seen the same reaction from bemused farangs a million times, but the way they had to hold each other up to stop themselves from falling over laughing suggested that it just never got old.
As I pushed my way through the throng of girls who delighted in pinching, poking and giggling at every unescorted male who came within reach of their overly-manicured fingers, it occurred to me that most of them would kill for the unwanted plane ticket I had back in my room. Many would happily walk down the isle with any sweating, middle-aged derelict westerner for a visa. It said a lot about the human condition that all I wanted to do was stay while all they wanted to do was to leave.
The rest of the evening is a bit of a blur but I have a vague memory of walking down the Bangkok soi which was home for much of my stay. I recall slurring teary farewells to inanimate objects (“Goodbye lamppost! Goodbye tuk tuk stand! I’ll miss you!”). The sun was creeping up between still-blacked out skyscrapers and within an hour the whole city would explode into life for the day. Sadly, it was one I wouldn’t get to see – because I had a poxy plane to catch.
Robert Carry is a former staff journalist at Metro Éireann where he served as chief sports reporter and headed the paper’s Northern Ireland news section. He is currently working in Thailand as the news editor of an English-language magazine
