An Exciting Future

2 SETTLING IN-1

2 SETTLING INThey woke up at nine o’clock, which was a bit later than had become normal for them. When Lek had been working, she usually didn’t get up until midday or even later, but if she was with someone, it depended on the friend.

She had been with Craig for almost a year now and she had adapted quite easily to his lifestyle. In fact, she usually got up a couple of hours before him in order to get most of the chores done first. She had also gone back to eating rice soup first thing in the morning as she had done when a girl in the village, like most people did in the countryside.

There was no food in the apartment, so Lek went for a shower, in order to go out to the shops nearby. Craig put the TV on to look for Pattaya People’s News, a local news channel that broadcasts mostly in English. He lay there catching up with what had been happening in the last seven days. As usual, a Scandinavian had jumped, fallen or been pushed off a balcony and somebody had been robbed at knife-point by a couple of lady boys on the beach at three a.m.

Some things never changed.

His mobile phone rang and it took him by surprise until he remembered that they had both put their Thai SIMM’s back in the day before. It was Lek, but then who else would be phoning him, he thought.

“Hello, darling. What’s going on? Are you OK?”

“Sure, telak, but there is a good-looking café on the grounds outside the room. I don’t want to cook, so will you come down here and we can eat in there or outside in the sunshine? They have Thai and falang food. The coffee looks good too.”

“OK, don’t cook. I’ll have a quick shower and see you there. Where is it?”

“Go onto the balcony, look down to the left and you see me. I stand outside the café.”

Craig did as he was told and saw Lek waving up at him enthusiastically.

“All right, go inside. I’ll be down in ten or fifteen minutes.”

He didn’t rush. He fancied a coffee, but he didn’t usually eat soon after getting up. Lek, on the other hand, liked to eat within minutes of getting out of bed, unless she had to go outside when it would be minutes after her shower. She was one of those people who start to feel ill, if they don’t eat regularly. Lek grazed throughout the day, whereas Craig liked one or two large meals.

When Craig caught up with Lek, she was eating a bowl of rice soup – the Thai equivalent of porridge. She had learned to drink tea and coffee because of the company she had kept, but left to her own devices, she preferred ice-cold water.

Although a lot of the apartments were owned or occupied by foreigners, farang or falang in Thai, the staff in the café could not understand his English, so Lek ordered him an English breakfast and a coffee. It was meant to be a treat, but Craig wasn’t really hungry. It was a poor imitation of an English breakfast too, but he pretended to enjoy it so as not to disappoint anyone.

It was a glorious day and the sun glinted off the small pool nearby. There was also a big pool just under their balcony and Craig decided to go swimming every day to loose some weight. He hoped that Lek would join him, but doubted it somehow.

“Telak, what you want to do today? I love this compound and I love our room. What shall we do?”

He could almost hear her think: ‘Say, go down to Daddy’s Hobby, go on say it.’

“I don’t know. We need to discuss where we are going to live and how we are going to make a living, but I suppose we don’t have to start doing that right away...”

“We can stay here! And you can swim and work on the computer. Same as before; and I will take care of you and maybe find a small job, although that is not easy. You want me work in a shop or a hotel – make bed – or in a bar?”

“We are booked in here for two months, but after that, I think we need something permanent. And yes, I will try to do something on the Internet, but no, I don’t really want you to do any of those jobs. That can wait for now anyway, unless something comes your way that you would like to do.”

“OK, good idea. You want to swim after breakfast. I go get towels and costumes and book for you,” and she was gone. Craig suspected that she had a plan of some kind. Thai women, and a lot of Thai city men, do their best to stay out of the sun because they want to keep their skin white, so why would she volunteer to sit at the poolside with him?

Lek came down with a duffel bag with his things in and a towel around her waist, which made him think that he must have misjudged her. While he went to get changed in the toilet, Lek rearranged two of the sun loungers to be as much in the small amount of shade as possible. She also put a couple of parasols up.

The pool was deserted and looked very inviting even though it was eleven a.m.

Craig swam for an hour and Lek watched and pretended to try to sleep. When he got out, Lek handed him a towel and began pulling on her jeans.

“I cannot sit here, darling, it is too hot and the sun move and give me black skin. I want to go to Beou’s house and eat lunch with her. You stay here, swim and read your book. It is boring for you to sit listen to me and my cousin speak in Thai, I think. No?

“I want to know everything what happen here when I stay in Wales. Too boring for you, eh? I want to speak Thai and eat real Thai food from north Thailand. Beou phone to me and ask me come for lunch. She ask you too, but I say I think you not want. You want to come, telak?”

Craig knew that he had been outmanoeuvred, but he didn’t really care. Lek was right, he would find it boring and this way, he could slip out to a bar and see who was about.

“No, that’s OK, don’t worry about me, Lek. I’ll see you later.”

“OK, thank you so much, telak. Don’t drink too much and I phone you later. Maybe see you in Daddy’s Hobby bar at four o’clock. Good idea, neh? OK, good idea. Bye-bye.”

She looked around furtively and then gave him a quick peck on the cheek. She was back in Thailand now and kissing in public was frowned upon even in Pattaya. He watched her walk away and could not help thinking how beautiful she was yet again. It was still too early to go out, so he took Lek’s advice, rummaged in the bag for his book and started to read.

He decided to wait until twelve-thirty to start his first tour. At midday, a fat, old man made a huge splash in the pool. It took Craig by surprise because he had been engrossed in his book, but he looked up to see if a greeting of some kind was in order. The man was not looking at him, but he caught sight of a small, young woman hiding from him behind a bush not five metres away.

She was looking at him, then at the man in the water and giggling. The old man shouted at her: “Spring ins Wasser” – German for ‘jump into the water’. The woman was obviously shy of Craig, so he looked down at his book, until she ran past him, dropped her towel at the last moment and slipped into the water.

Craig watched her for the last few seconds and she knew it and wasn’t too happy about it either. They were probably used to having the pool to themselves, he thought. Ten minutes later, an old couple came down, also German, as it turned out. They were both as brown and as wrinkled as walnuts. He was twenty kilos overweight and she was about twenty kilos underweight. They were lappers – swimming up and down the pool, obviously counting out a predetermined number of laps before they could go for lunch.

The first German was quite adept at keeping out of the way of these serious swimmers, but his girlfriend, just hung onto the side as if an undertow would suck her away if she let go. Each group, the man and his girlfriend, the couple, and Craig studiously ignored one another, although Craig had not started it.

‘Very friendly, he thought, ‘very friendly indeed’.

Meanwhile, Lek had got on a Baht Bus outside the compound, gone right to Pattaya Klang and then had to change bus to turn right again as the one she was on turned left towards the beach. She was in her cousin’s house fifteen minutes later. Beou’s daughters were in school, so they had the place to themselves.

“How did you get on in Craig’s town, Barry, isn’t it? Did you like his friends and family?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Lek, “I wasn’t joking yesterday when I said that I loved everything about it except being away from my daughter and a few others in the family. I want to go and live there, but that will take some work too, because Craig has his heart set on living here. With me, of course. Still, I can work on that one. There is time enough.”

They both laughed and hugged. It was great to be in cahoots with each other again. They really got on well, more like sisters than cousins. Lek had worked for Beou in the bar for ten years but even then Lek had had a special position that none of the other girls could ever have achieved.

“Well, look at it this way, telak, Soom is still only young and cannot speak English anyway – well, not fluently, eh? So, maybe it is better to get Craig to teach her before you all go over there anyway. That will take a couple of years and by then he may want to go home again. Don’t worry. As you say, you have plenty of time. Let’s see what fate has in store for you all.”

Lek had told a white lie to Craig, she hadn’t been invited to lunch, well, not a prepared lunch anyway. The two friends wanted to cook lunch together as they might have done if they were back in the village, where it is normal for visitors to help prepare the food. There, if you are not asked or allowed to help, you know that you are not being considered a close friend.

So, the first job was to call another old friend from the village, Noi, who also worked at Daddy’s Hobby but as night watch woman. She had arranged to get off early to be with her oldest friends. They met up in the market and when Noi and Lek saw each other they ran at each other and hugged.

“Oh, Noi, I have missed our chats together. I tried to wait for you to come on shift at the bar last night, but we were so tired and the taxi came early. Still, here we are together again, all three of us. Like ‘The Three Sisters’, three peas in a pod, eh?” and they walked off arm-in-arm to shop for their favourite foods.

They spent an hour shopping, an hour washing, chopping, preparing and cooking the food and an hour eating it, although, in proper Thai country style, they prepared three or four dishes and started eating them first, but cooked other courses at the same time, so that there were always half-eaten and totally fresh, different courses on the table at the same time

By the time they had finished they were truly stuffed and there were still kilos of food both cooked and unprepared. After an hour dozing, chatting and watching TV, Beou, put the left-overs into cartons and put the cartons into three carrier bags so that they were shared equally.

Noi would take hers home, because she had to meet her daughter after school, but Lek and Beou weren’t finished yet. They would take theirs to Daddy’s Hobby and start the party up again, but with a lot more people this time.

Craig thought that he had got away with a free pass as he nodded to the security guard on his way out of the hotel compound, but in fact he had been granted one, so that Lek could do what she wanted. He thought he would stroll quietly down Soi Buakhao, the same way Lek had gone, but turn off before the end and make his way down to one of his favourite places the ‘Pig and Whistle’ on Soi Seven, which was not far from Beou’s bar.

He intended to stop at quite a few of the intervening bars along the way though and get to Daddy’s Hobby between four-thirty and five – late, as is normal in Thailand. He knew that Lek wouldn’t consider an hour as being late.

As he had hoped, every bar along the way was devoid of customers, because it was still too early for most people, but they were full of bored bar girls and he got come-ons from every bar. They took a standard form, which was usually: ‘Hello, sexy man’ or /and ‘Come have drink with me’. He took more than a few up on their kind offer, but he had no intention of doing any more than drink a few beers.