RAWBangkok

Well, strictly speaking she wasn’t the very first Thai girl I knew — she was the second.  The first Thai girl I ever knew introduced me to her.

Here’s how it went.

I was living in Sydney, and I heard from a friend about a Thai freelancer who lived in an apartment just a few blocks from me who was lots of fun, delivering a fantastic Girlfriend-type experience.  Her working name was Yuki-Lee.

I made an appointment and went to see her.  She was everything advertised — not the most beautiful girl, but tons of fun.  I went back to see her several times.  Part of the reason I enjoyed seeing her was that she was bright and fun to talk to… not just wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am.

It turned out that she enjoyed my company too.  One day she was invited to a friend’s birthday party.  The friend was an a girl from her school, the guest list was a group of Aussies and Asians and the venue was an upscale restaurant and bar at Darling Harbour.  Yuki-Lee called me and invited me to go with her to the party as her date.  She said that none of the people at the party knew that she worked as a hooker, so I had to keep that a secret.

No problem with me.

I went with her and had a great time.

When I talked to Yuki Lee the next time I told her that I was in the market for a girlfriend.  I asked if she’d be interested.  She declined, but said that she had a friend arriving from Thailand in a couple of days and she’d be happy to introduce me to her.

I was a bit skeptical. Yuki Lee was no beauty queen, but she was fun and sexy.  I imagined that it was unlikely that I’d be as interested in her friend as I was in her, but I agreed.

A week or so passed, and I didn’t think about it much.  But on Sunday afternoon my phone rang.  It was Yuki Lee, and she and her friend were walking around town.  She asked if they could come up to my apartment.

Sure.

Yuki Lee and her friend — we’ll call her Noi — arrived just minutes later.

When I met Noi I was like a stunned mullet!  She was beautiful!

Not cute.  Not pretty.  Drop-fucking-dead-gorgeous!

She had long hair down to her waist, porcelin white skin, ruby red lips and a great figure.  Her English was just short of flawless, and I was captivated.

I didn’t make a great impression on Noi that day.  I didn’t really know anything about Thai people back then, and my behaviour wasn’t really appropriate, but I didn’t know that.

Fortunately, Noi had lived in Australia for a year once upon a time, and she spent a month in Sydney every year since, so she made allowances.

I now know her story quite well, but back then it took me some time to really understand everything.

She lived in Bangkok, leading a respectable life.  She didn’t really work in Thailand, though she helped out in her aunt’s business from time to time.  She had a Thai boyfriend who had a good job or some money, and they spent several nights a week doing light drugs, partying and dancing in upscale Thai clubs.

But she earned her money in Sydney every year.

She came to town and worked in the brothels, turning ten or fifteen customers a day, seven days a week for a month.  With the exchange rate and the cost of living, she typically made enough money in a month of hard fucking to pay the family’s expenses for the other eleven months in Bangkok.

On this particular trip four years ago she was staying for two months, and was aiming to earn a million baht or more.

And I believe she was in the market for an Australian husband.

The circumstances that I didn’t understand back then all seem clear to me now, but at the time I didn’t know anything about Thai people.  Noi had managed to cobble together a life that worked well for her, but now in her late 20’s she was getting worried about her ability to continue the lifestyle.  She was getting too old for it, and she was looking to settle down.

As a 45 year old business professional with an open mind about her lifestyle, I was a pretty good candidate for a husband.

But I didn’t know all that on that first day in my living room in Sydney.  All I knew was that she was possibly the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, and I was lonely and horny after being dumped by my girlfriend just four months earlier.  I was intently interested in getting to know Noi.

In fact, sitting in my living room on that Sunday afternoon, I wasn’t sure that she was a hooker.  In fact, I didn’t actually think she was, and I wasn’t about to risk offending her by asking.

We were about a week or so away from my birthday, so I invited Yuki Lee and Noi to go out with me on my birthday.  They agreed before leaving to continue their walk round the city.

I was pretty excited, but I didn’t want to seem too much like a nerd, so I waited until my actual birthday before calling Yuki Lee mid-afternoon to make arrangements to go out that night.

She apologized profusely.  Her sister had given birth to a baby overnight (same birthday as me!) and she needed to go to the hospital to visit.  It was clear that she’d fogotten all about my birthday, but she suggested that I could still see Noi.

I was skeptical but Yuki Lee assured me that she would call Noi and make arrangements.

Without describing the two or three conversations in detail, the bottom line turned out to be that Noi was actually working in a brothel in the Western suburbs that night.  She couldn’t get off, but she was happy for me to come see her.

In any normal circumstances it would have been a long 25 minute ride out to where she was working, but on this night the rain was bucketing down and the lightning was flashing and crashing.  it took me nearly 45 minutes to get where I was going, but I never thought of turning back.

Well, nothing keeps punters at home like heavy downpours and lighting, so when I got to the brothel it was pretty well deserted.  I asked for Noi by the name that Yuki Lee had used when introducing me to her and got a puzzled look.  They said they had no girl by that name.

I explained that she was expecting me, and I described her.  A light of recognition popped in the eyes of the receptionist, and a moment later Noi came out of the back calling to me like an old friend and running over to greet me.

I got a hug and a kiss.  “Yuki Lee called me, but I didn’t think you’d actually come out in this weather!”

Are you kidding?   I wouldn’t miss this for the world.  This was my birthday present to myself.

Noi didn’t quite believe it was my birthday.  I had to remind her that we’d discussed going out while she was at my house a week ago.  She didn’t really remember, but was surprised and pleased that I wanted to see her on my special day.  We had three hours till closing time, so I paid for all three hours in advance and went to the room with her.

The three hours in the room was great fun… definitely a birthday present I’ll always remember.

As we neared the end of my time, I chatted with her about how long she was staying in Sydney, where she was staying and the like.  It turned out that she was renting an apartment in a high rise building directly across the street from mine.  If I walked to the east side of my building (my apartment looked west) I could actually see onto her balcony from the floor I lived on.

I offered to drive her home and after some polite refusals she accepted my offer.  On the way we stopped at McDonalds for a couple of burgers.  Sitting across from her at the tiny table in the unforgiving florescent lights I could see that she was every bit as beautiful as I’d previously thought.  She looked like a movie star.

When we got back to our street, I parked my car in my building and offered to walk her across the street to her place.  Instead, she asked if she could spend the night with me.

Well, she was supposed to be in Sydney for eight weeks.  Within days she had moved into my apartment, sleeping in my room with me.  It was my slow season at work, and when I wasn’t busy at the office I would drive her to work or pick her up.

She was working as a prostitute every day, but having sex with me every night and every morning for free.  The odd part was that her apartment was paid for, and she still kept some clothes there, so I wasn’t saving her any money… she just wanted to stay with me.

I was in heaven.

The date started approaching when she was scheduled to fly back to Bangkok.  She actually had a ninety-day visa, so there was some flexibility in her plans.

In a fortunate or unfortunate turn of events, at this exact time I was made redundant at my workplace.  I got a six-month payout.  I had plenty of cash in the bank and unlimited time on my hands.  Looking back now I can see that redundancy as a major turning point in my life.

I had time and money, and Noi decided to stay an extra month at my place.  She worked an extra two weeks, and reserved the last 14 days for her and I to enjoy a holiday together.

I took her to Brisbane, the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast and Port Stephens.  I took her on city tours of Sydney, and showed her sights and places that she’d never before seen.  I have hundreds of photos from those two weeks with the Opera House, Toronga Zoo, Bondi Beach and a dozen other venues in the background.

With the circumstances — recently dumped by my girlfriend, made redundant at work, and now spending every day with a seriously sexy girl — I became completely infatuated.

As the expiration date of her visa drew closer, we talked.  I spoke seriously to her about getting married.

I think this was her goal in life at the time — not necessarily to marry me, but to marry an Australian, and to come live in Oz.

We soon agreed that I would travel to Bangkok about ten days after she returned, and that I would take an extended holiday there.

She warned me ahead of time that she wouldn’t be able to spend all her time with me, but after spending ten weeks together in Sydney I wasn’t quite prepared for how little time she was going to be able to find for me.

She had a Thai boyfriend, remember.  He’d been waiting for her for three months and she couldn’t get away from him often once she was back in Bangkok.  Also, she had some work and family obligations.

So, while I’d come to Bangkok thinking that I’d spend a lot of time with her, I actually spent a lot of time alone.  I quickly found my way to Soi Cowboy, and soon I was living there from dusk till dawn, emerging only when Noi could break away for a few hours or a night.

During all this time, she kept reinforcing that she needed 12 more months to get her life in order, but she planned to leave Thailand next year, and she would be happy to come to Sydney and marry me.  I just had to be a little patient.

She made trips with me to Cambodia and Laos, and I also took her and her mother on an island holiday over a long weekend, but aside from those times, I spent most of the eight weeks getting to know a bunch of bar girls.

I think it’s safe to say that by the end of my eight weeks in Bangkok, my infatuation with Noi had worn off, and my obsession with the bar girls of Soi Cowboy had taken its place.

Over the next two months I came back to Bangkok on two more holidays totalling 4 weeks.  I didn’t tell Noi where I was.  I was carrying my Australian mobile phone.  Noi called me a couple of times a week, and often we were only a few kilometers apart as she told me about the weather and the happenings in Bangkok thinking that I was still in Oz looking for a new job.

By September of 2005 I decided that my future was in Bangkok.  I moved here, and again, I didn’t tell Noi.

I’d been here about six weeks when I finally called her one night in November to say that I was in Bangkok, and asking if we could get together.  I met her and her mom for dinner at a restaurant near their home.

When I broke the news that I had moved to Bangkok, that in fact I’d been here for six weeks already, and that I was working, I was surprised by Noi’s response.

She was angry.

“I told you to just be patient!” she said, “I was gonna be in Australia in another 9 months.  All you had to do was wait!”

With me in Bangkok, she reviewed her options and made a rational decision.  Here in Bangkok she had an offer to be a mia noi to a rich guy.  He had made it clear that he would set her up well and take care of her family, but he would continue to live with his first wife.

She considered it carefully, and discussed her options with me, as well as her family before making the decision to say no to him and move to Australia instead.  She atually mentioned to me that if she was mia noi to this guy and I was still living in Bangkok that she would still be my gig.

Finally she made her decision.  In mid-2006 she moved to Australia and got married.  I still remember when she told me what she was gonna do.  We’d gone to a movie, then back to my place for some sex and conversation.  We were both naked and sticky, and I was laying between her legs with my head on her tummy when she told me about her decision and her plan to get married in Australia.

That was a bit over two years ago, and it’s the last time I had sex with her.

She has always stayed in touch, writing the occasional email, but more often calling me.  It’s always a surprise, but a pleasant one to hear her voice.  I have nothing but good memories associated with her, and  I came very close to marrying her once upon a time.

Nowadays I look back at that infatuation and realize how foolish I was.  I was lonely and she was there, but I wouldn’t have been happy or content.  The life of a sex-pat suits me much better.

For her part, she called me a few months ago to tell me that she has a baby on the way.  She sounded genuinely happy, but she said that she had blown up like that blueberry-girl in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

The reason I’m writing about her today is that she called me tonight.  She is in Bangkok now, heavily pregnant and visiting her family.  She plans to take her mom back to Oz next month where she will give birth to her baby, who will be a native Australian.

She wants to see me, so tomorrow I’m travelling to her home.  She offered to meet me somewhere, but in her condition she doesn’t need to be schlepping around in the Bangkok heat.

She warned me that she is not the same girl I remember.  She says that her weight gain has been exteme — she’s about 50% heavier than she was when I last saw her.  She asked me not to “get scared and run away” when I see her.

I suspect she has a point.  I doubt that I’m really ready to see this beautiful girl turned fat and pregnant, plump-breasted with dull hair and dark circles under her eyes.

She was always so damned glamorous!

I’m sure the change is gonna shock me.

But I’m going anyway.  I think it’ll actually be nice to see her again.

As things have turned out, we are very good friends.  We’ve supported each other and stayed in touch with each other for nearly four years now.  Both of our lives have changed in unexpected directions, and the situation today seems a lifetime away from the Sunday afternoon when Noi and Yuki Lee dropped by my apartment while I was watching cricket in my living room.

It’s gonna definitely be strange to see this girl who lived with me while turning tricks in the brothel, who liked to pop ecstasy tablets and dance all night, and who gave me some of the best blow jobs I’ve ever had — to see her as a happily married housefrau just 44 months  later.

But then, real life is strange.