Sunday, February 27, 2011
Thursday, February 24, 2011
PHNOM PENH TO SHANGHAI
Ever flown Phnom Penh to Shanghai and back in one night? Yes? Without boarding an aircraft? I didn’t think so. I had another urgent message from David, ‘Call me ASAP’. David’s life was filled with urgent massages. This one turned out to be two cheap airline vouchers he’d acquired lending a Thai friend cash for unknown reasons. The details were incomplete. He now had two vouchers on Bangkok Airways for return flights to Phnom Penh. He’d often described Cambodia as a ‘hell hole’ in great detail. He’s gained this bit of knowledge from his extensive reading of detective stories. David knew more about Phnom Penh from never visiting the place. Phnom Penh’s midnight shootings were regular occurences according to his favorite detective hero, Big Bret O’Toll, ex CIA, DEA agent turnd private investigator. O’Toll’s exploits made comic books seem real. What had been David’s most feared destination had now become his most sought after adventure. The small matter of never having been to Phnom Penh didn’t dim the fear that the city was a dangerous place, especially at night. O’Toll was regularly shot at leaving bars in the early morning hours. David believed everyone carried a gun and he’d be shot coming out of a girly bar semi-drunk. David was never semi-drunk, he always went the full mile. He’d read too many novels and had forgotten the word - fiction.
We were off for a long weekend into the heart of darkness as I described it for David. A little dramatic flare added to his paranoia.
The California Hotel had recently closed – that was Dave’s target budget, about twenty five dollars a night. I’d recently stayed at Lyon D’Or and found it good and similarly priced. A sprinkling of French ambiance wouldn’t hurt. Air conditioners that worked most of the time or was it some of the time? Elevators that were going to be installed next year. But the food was good and the beer cheap. And they had David’s favorite hotel amenity – rooms without windows. David didn’t need to know if it was day or night.
Was the first stop Sharky’s or the Voodoo Bar, I couldn’t remember. Suddenly we were in the Shanghia Bar, it was one AM, the music was blasting, the girls were drunk and smiling and David thought he’d landed in heaven. His last comprehensible words were, ‘make sure you get me back to my hotel room.’ The one without windows.
Was her name Aya? It seemed so, I had a phone number on a Shanghai napkin. Was this Aya’s or a taxi number. I think David came home with me. Did we take girls with us? If so, they’d disappeared during the night. I didn’t have a headache which meant I’d had too much to drink. But I was tired – no – exhausted. Why did I always wake at six AM? I needed more sleep, another hour at least.
BREAKFAST
I heard the phone, it kept ringing and getting louder. I was almost awake. I knew who’d be at the other end. He’d probabbly been up since five AM.
‘What he fuck at you doing? Those girls still with you?’
‘Girls?’
‘Be downstairs in ten minutes or we’ll miss breakfast.’ And he hung up.
David wasn’t alone. She didn’t look too good, not enough sleep. She looked the way I felt.
‘This is Avin.’ She smiled politely, then looked dreadful again. The waitress glided over to take our order.
‘I’ll have a large diet pepsi, eggs and toast, thanks.’ David didn’t drink coffee or tea, ever. It was diet pepsi or coke with all his meals, drinks and in-betweens.
‘Pepsi extra, one dollar.’
‘Yeah, yeah – large.’
Anything not on the breakfast menu was extra.
‘What happened to those two girl you took back with us?’
‘I had two girls? I’m not sure.’
The coffee and eggs revived my body and got my small grey matter connecting. I’d been on the balony at Sharky’s talking to two lovelies. One had dark skin, no boobs and and lovely wide mouth with beautiful succulent lips and perfect teeth. Her friend was near perfect too, but she had surging breasts under a sleek linen jacket. ‘Surging Breasts’ spoke pretty good English and her friend nodded, spoke little English but picked up on the conversation. Did they mind if I asked them both back to my place? No problemo. They were all smiles. I don’t remember much after that.
DAVID’S FRENCH EMBASSY
We caught an afternoon flight back to Bangkok. David arranged for the taxi to pick us up an hour earlier than necessary. He wanted a quick tour of Phnom Penh, something to add to his memory of one windowless hotel room and two bars. The taxi driver was very obliging and spoke pretty good English. We managed the Royal Palace, National Museum, a quick drive by of the Central Market, a Pol Pot torture school and what David said must be the old French Embassy.
The tour complete we headed for the airport. David had seen it all without dodging any bullets, it was so anticlimatic and he seemed depressed by the thought. We had not heard a single gunshot in our forty eight hours in Phnom Penh. He wanted to live on the edge and at least have heard some gunfire. David slept for the entire forty five minute flight back to Bangkok. There was nothing to say.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
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Saturday, February 19, 2011
THE JADE FALCON
A Story set in
BANGKOK & PHNOM PENH
‘David at bar’, she blurted over the phone in her shrill atonal Thai-English voice.
It was always the same. ‘David at bar. David at hotel. David shopping.’ She spoke in statements. Not that I was interested or cared about her tone. It was an aberration. Did all Thai’s speak in statements? It must be a language thing. She was the only Thai I’d ever met.
David had stories about Thailand. In the pub these little gems would float into the smoke filled air, little illusions of another life.
‘Bourbon Street Bar got voted the ‘Best Bar in South East Asia’ three years in a row.’
‘Did I know that?’
Did I even think about the best bar in south east Asia? I didn’t know shit about the best pub in Asia. I just drank beer on Friday nights after work. Four-thirty to six-fifteen. Drive home in fifteen minutes, six-thirty was dinner. It was the same routine for twenty-two years.
‘Pattaya is crazy, too many women, too many bars’. David would say.
‘Hotdog, on Soi 3 off Sukhumvit, had the best girls. For fifty dollars you got the girl and a room upstairs. The best deal though, was two girls and a room. Only seventy-five dollars.’ David’s words resounded in my little gray cells.
Two girls and a room for ninety minutes, just what I needed before dinner with the wife. Why ninety minutes? Was this the perfect length of time. Sixty minutes was too brief, and two hours beyond man’s endurance?
‘After two hours they knew you were on viagra, that was getting something for nothing.’ You always pay in Thailand, David remarked.
It was a chilly Friday night in July. Midwinter in Dunedin. The days were longer. On the shortest day the sun came up at eight fifteen in the morning and set at four twenty in the afternoon. That was the shortest day in mid June. Sunset had now moved to five in the afternoon by mid-July. The sun barely warmed you, if you saw it, forty-five degrees and raining. It rained for three weeks in May, three weeks of continuous rain. Your clothes gained weight from the humidity. In the pub if you stood in one spot in the pub for too long the cold creep through the soles of your feet into your ankles and up your legs shrivelling extremities in its path. Moving restlessly was the only solution.
David continued, ‘Too hot in April or May. October and November are the best months.’
‘What about December or January? It must be cooler. I have holiday’s in December.’
‘No, Euro-Trash is there Christmas and New Years. Fucking rude Germans.’
What did I know, ‘Euro-Trash’ at Christmas, of course.
I could feel my feet getting colder. It was six-ten, I had to leave in five minutes.
All this was in another world. David went to Bangkok fifteen years ago and came back with a Thai wife. End of story. It was only the beginning. Six months later he was off to Thailand again. Two weeks alone and two weeks with his wife.
That’s when the stories started. Soi Cowboy. Nana Plaza, soapy massages, bets with bar girls and all night pool games.
It was all bullshit. But after five years of storytelling, it all seemed real. Bourbon Street was still his favorite pub, the mamasan in Rawhide still played cards for drinks, and there was a girl in the Emmanuelle Sauna that gave the best blow job in Thailand, if not the world. She reportedly got over ten marriage offers a week, but she was really only into giving blow jobs. More money and freedom. Thank god he didn’t marry her. He’d have never made it back to Thailand again.
He kept saying, ‘Come to Bangkok. I’m going the first week in November, for a month.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
The rider ignored her warning and turned to fire. She let off two quick shots. The first shattered his helmet, the second his spinal chord. The gun fell from his hand as his knees buckled. He was dead before his head hit the concrete. Our driver let out another scream when he saw the motorcyclists blood, then got up and repeatedly thanked Ming for saving his life. The light traffic had slowed to see the commotion, most of the drivers thinking there had been an accident between the motorbike and the taxi.
Ming said, ‘Let’s get out of here.’ We got our bags from the trunk. A few cars passed and slowed for what they though had been an accident. Another taxi slowed and we waved him to stop.
‘Airport’, Ming said as she smiled.
The driver said, ‘Yes, yes, ok, ok.’
Inside the taxi he asked, ‘Bad accident? Driver ok?’
‘Yes, bad accident, driver ok.’ I replied.
We saw the traffic slowing and backing up behind us. I hoped it would give us time to board our flight before anyone realised there had been a shooting.
We sat in silence to the airport. Ming’s Glock disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.
‘How did such a small gun take the motorcyclist down?’
‘It’s a Glock 36, slim but forty five caliber. They don’t get up when they’re hit.’ And she smiled.
At the airport Ming showed her SIS security card and said she was armed. A security guard walked her around the metal detector while I took off my shoes and belt, the change in my pocket setting off the alarm. I took the coins out of my pocket and that solved the problem with security. It was easier getting through airport security with a gun and ammunition.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
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