An Exciting Future

3 WHITHER NOW?

3 WHITHER NOW?One afternoon, while they were drinking iced coffee on the balcony, the conversation turned to the future.

“So, Lek, we have had a bit of a holiday, so now it’s time to start making some plans. What do you think? What would you like to do?”

“Well, first of all, I want to go see Soom and my Mum.”

“Yes, OK, we’ll go in two days, if you like, but I mean longer term than that. Where do you want to live for a start?”

“That is up to you, darling. I give you two choices: here in Pattaya or in my village, Baan Suay.”

“OK, that’s a start. I must have the Internet, so if we can get the Internet in the village, we still have two choices, but if we cannot, then we live in Pattaya. We could buy or rent a condo or house here and have a small ‘hunting lodge’ affair in the village for holidays.”

“Hunting lodge? What is ‘lodge’? No hunting in the village. Only hunt frogs, not tigers. Cannot hunt tigers now. Police take you and not have tigers any more. I don’t understand.”

“Yes, all right, wait a minute, calm down. I don’t believe in hunting for fun anyway. I mean a small house. A hunting lodge is just a small house. Like a cabin. A small wooden house.”

“Ah, I see! We have many hunting lodges in the village. Not many for chow though – I mean for rent. Maybe buy land and make small house. Can do?”

“Do you have Internet in the village?”

“I don’t know, telak? I think nobody has a computer, but I don’t know. We can go look in two or three days.”

“Yes, good idea. I want Internet in our room too, so today I want to go buy a USB wireless modem. It’s a bit like a mobile phone, but only for the Internet. I saw one yesterday in Pattaya Klang for 3,500 Baht, so not too expensive. Then I don’t have to pay 20 Baht every hour in an Internet shop. Now I pay 100-160 Baht every day. Then I can work from the room or the beach or anywhere I like.”

So, they drank up, grabbed the laptop and set off. Once in the shop, Craig spoke to the assistant:

“I am interested in that wireless modem.”

“Eh?”

“That wireless modem there.”

“Eh?”

Then she said to Lek in Thai:

“What is the falang talking about? I cannot understand him. Does he speak English? I can speak a little bit of English.”

“He is speaking English, but I don’t know what he wants either. I don’t understand computers at all. Ask him again, but tell him to speak slowly.”

“What you say? Say again, but speak slowly, please, sir.”

“OK, I want that wireless modem there. That one, right there.”

“Ah! Wi-Fi? Internet Wi-Fi. OK. Here. Look.”

Craig inspected the device, took out his laptop and switched it on.

“I can try now?”

“No, cannot. Not have ca’s.”

“What? Not have ‘cars’. What are Internet ‘cars’? Lek what is she saying? Can I see the instruction book, please, Lek?”

There was a flurry of Thai and the manual was handed over.

“I don’ know how to tell you, but we don’t have ‘ca’s’ for modem. I don’t know what is ca’s.”

So he sat down to read the manual.

It was only in Thai. He couldn’t read it and Lek couldn’t understand it. Then the sales assistant took out her mobile phone, took the back off it and pointed to the SIMM card.

“Not have ca’s in modem. Must buy, then can use for Internet.”

“Ah, I see. Must have SIMM card.” The two women smiled and nodded. “OK, if I buy Wi-Fi and a SIMM card will it work everywhere?”

“No,” she said, “only in Thailand. If you go to Cambodia, stop working.”

“OK, does it work everywhere in Thailand? Everywhere? Even Sukhothai, Uttaradit, Phitsanulok, in a village up there? Or only in big city?”

“Everywhere, sir. It working everywhere in Thailand. Even in village.”

“OK, I want one Wi-Fi and one SIMM card, please.”

He was putting his laptop away, when she said:

“You can buy Wi-Fi, but cannot buy ca’s. Not have.”

“What?,” he was starting to become hot and bothered now. “Why not?”

More Thai, then Lek said:

“You must get SIMM card from a DTAC telephone shop.”

That meant nothing to Craig, but he bought the modem and they left. He wasn’t sure about the DTAC SIMM card, but Lek led him straight to a shop near the apartment. When he saw the shop, he realized that he’d seen hundreds of them before. There were several in every main street in Pattaya. DTAC is one of the biggest mobile phone providers in Thailand and with thousands of girls and several million tourists a year, Pattaya could support hundreds of phone shops selling DTAC SIMM cards.

Craig’s cost 750 Baht a month for unlimited usage, which worked out far cheaper than the roughly 4,000 a month he was spending then and it was much more convenient. It also still left them with two choices of where they could live.

Things were looking up.

They went down to Daddy’s Hobby, where Craig plugged in his new toy and was chuffed to find that it worked like a dream. They sat there until the battery on the laptop ran out and then Craig wanted to go home. Lek had a simpler solution and she had the laptop plugged into the mains. The adapter was always in the bag because the battery only lasted two hours and Craig regularly spent eight hours working in the cyber cafés in one session.

He was off again and, with a beer, was as happy as a sand boy.

Lek admired the way that Craig could sit self-contained, detached and completely absorbed in whatever he was doing. At times like this, she had noticed, he would be the only person in his world. Nothing would distract him, yet he would react to his name. It fascinated her. Lek found it hard to concentrate on anything for more than fifteen minutes at a time. For that reason, reading novels was not her favourite pastime.

Lek was telling everyone how excited she was to be going home for a few days to see her family. They all made the appropriate noises, wished they could be going too and those from Baan Suay asked if she would take small presents home for their families for them. It was a custom and Lek naturally agreed. Some girls even rushed off there and then to get something from a local store, while it was not busy in the bar.

Gifts would be things that were impossible to get in the village like chocolate for the kids and dried squid for the grown-ups. A pineapple from Chonburi, the Province that Pattaya is in, is also a luxury as they are famous for being the sweetest in Thailand. Children’s clothing was also often sent back by mothers missing their children.

Some of the girls who knew how to, wanted a go on the Internet. It would save them time and money not to have to go to an Internet café and Craig found himself reading, translating and writing some quite pornographic message to amorous falang lovers. Little did they know that a bloke was writing them, he thought. The image of their faces if they had known made Craig smile.

“Ha, ha! Man tell man he want to kiss him all over. Funny, neh, Craig? If my boyfriend John know you send message, he want box you and me. Tell him I wan’ to kiss him down there. Good joke, neh?”

Craig was not very impressed but wanted to help out and so did so.

It went a log way to getting him back in with the girls and he loved every minute of it. It would become a regular part of his frequent visits to Daddy’s Hobby.

They went to the apartment quite early at nine o’clock, but both were tired after a week of parties. They went to bed after a shower and Lek fell asleep almost immediately as she often did. It was a knack that Craig envied.

He had had problems getting to sleep all his life; for as long as he could remember. Even as a very young child, he could remember going downstairs to ask for a drink of water, just because he was bored that he couldn’t get to sleep. His parents’ advice had always been to just lies there with closed eyes as ‘a rest is as good as a sleep’. He didn’t believe it any longer, but he still couldn’t get to sleep.

Usually, he just got up and read, but this evening he had a new toy, so he switched the computer on and got ready to work. It would set the trend of the way things would be for the rest of his life, but he didn’t know that yet.

Craig had made a few web sites before, but he knew that they were amateurish, so he set about looking for instructions on how to do it properly. He didn’t want to have to learn HTML thoroughly, so preferred the route of using an editor.

After three hours of research he had selected a British HTML editor from a short list of six. It was not cheap, but by two a.m. it was on his desktop and he was preparing to launch it. This was typical of Craig, he always wanted to be ‘doing it’.

By six a.m. he had created a web site that was better than he had ever made before. At least it looked good in preview, so he looked around for a host for the web site. Within the hour, the web site was uploaded to the host and a decent-looking web site was live on the Internet. When he looked up, Lek was standing behind him.

“You get up early, telak? I think you not go to bed. Why you not sleep, my dear?”

“Don’t worry, Lek, it’s just that I’m excited with this new modem. It allows me to do what I want at any time of the day or night. I love it. Look, I made my first web site in Thailand. Not bad, eh?”

“Very nice. You can make money with that?”

“Well, no, not yet. As it stands it will not make money, but....”

“So, I don’t understand. Why you work all night for web site that not make money? Seem stupid to me. I don’t understand Internet and web sites. Tell me later, I go to sleep again for one hour.”

He didn’t feel too discouraged, but he knew that he could not ever be certain of being able to make enough money on line to keep them together either. It was another facet of their new life together that was not guaranteed. In fact, so far there was nothing guaranteed except that anything could happen.

When Lek woke up again at eight thirty, Craig had applied for a Google Adsense account, a PayPal account, an sss account and several others. These would allow him to monetize his web sites, if he were accepted and it would mark the first step to being able to live in Thailand without financial worries whether it be in Lek’s village, Baan Suay, or Pattaya.

There was little more he could do now except think of an idea for a good web site, so he undressed and crept into bed beside Lek with sunlight streaming in through the French windows leading to the balcony.

Moments later, he heard:

“Telak, I go get tickets for go to the village tonight. OK? I want to see my daughter and my family. See you later. We go tonight, if I can get tickets. Or tomorrow if I cannot.”

Lek was getting up, before he was completely asleep – this too would become a regular occurrence in their future.