RAWBangkok

This is my fourth winter in Bangkok and I did something today that I’d never done here before.  I put on a jacket because I was cold.

How cold was it?  Well, on the 11th of January the low for the day was 14 degrees C, and on the 12th it was 15 degrees.

Checking one of my favorite websites, the Weather Underground, I find that these are both historic low points.  The previous records were 15 degrees for the 11th of January and 18 degrees for the 12th of January.

On the 11th (Monday) I left my home at 6:15 a.m. to go to work.  I considered briefly putting on a jacket before going out and dismissed the idea as silly; after all I’ve never needed a jacket before.  But walking to the train station I was regretting the decision.  I was cold.

But you should have seen the Thai people — especially the girls.  I passed about three office girls in a row, and I was trying to figure out what was wrong with the picture.  They were all wearing mid-thigh skirts, with high heels and jackets.  They were all walking with their arms folded, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d seen their breath frosting in the chill early morning air.

Then it struck me what was unusual.  All the girls were bare-legged, as is normal here in Thailand.  Back home on a cold morning all the girls would have been wearing stockings.

Well, after Monday morning I decided to swallow my pride and put on a jacket today.  I only have two — one is an old and rather ugly unlined vinyl windbreaker.  The other is a nicer lined jacket with a company logo on it that was given to me by one of my clients here in Bangkok.  I’d never worn it, and decided to put it on today.

Walking to the train station with the jacket on I realized that it was just a bit too warm.  I was breaking a light sweat that had the effect of making me hot and cold at the same time.  I decided to just walk a little slower rather than take the jacket off.

People this week have been making comments about expecting to see snow at any time.  I have seen Thais inside their offices bundled up like they are about to go out into a blizzard — I’ve even seen some Thai guys walking around with woolen gloves on this week.

The five-day forecast says that it’s gonna warm up this weekend.  It’ll be a welcome change.

My electric bill will be very easy to live with this month.   I haven’t turned on my fan in days, and my air conditioner is just a piece of junk taking up space.  The only appliance that’s been getting a workout is my water heater, but with my bathroom permanently exposed to the open air (typical Thai design for one-room condos) my bathroom is too cold in the mornings for the hot water to totally compensate.

I saw my nurse at work today.  She was sniffling and seemed to have a mild cold.  This is the third time I’ve seen her at work since I first asked her out about ten days ago; the other two times she has walked me out and chatted with me for a while before I left.

Today she didn’t.  When I left her hospital today she just said goodbye and wandered off.

I wasn’t particularly put out about it; we’ve got date for Thursday so I figured I’d just see her then.

I’d been on the train for about five minutes when an SMS arrived.  It said: “I’m sorry I didn’t talk with u at work today because I am feeling stomach ache and back pain very much “

Sounds like she’s on her period.  Anyway, I thought it was nice of her to hit me with the message.

Speaking of messages, my favorite go go dancer sent an SMS from Europe today.  It was just a brief ‘hello, how are you’ message but it was nice to know she’s thinking of me.  I’m always suspicious of SMS messages from bar girls because no matter how limited their technical skills might be they always learn to master the “broadcast” function on the mobile phone.  If you get a message that says, “Darling I miss you so much, happy new year” you can just about bet that it went to thirty-five other punters at the same time.  I always look for my name to be written into these sorts of messages.  So far my favorite go go dancer has been 100% on her messages to me… they’ve all had my name, so that even if the message sounded fairly generic, I know that it was at least intended for me.

A few months back I received a message from her that I saved.  It said “What are you doing my love, I am thinking u r still in the room hee hee ha ha“

It didn’t have my name on it, and we have never used endearments like “my love” or “sweetheart” with each other — it never seemed appropriate to a bar girl – customer relationship. I don’t waste time saying “I love you” to a bar girl, and I don’t expect to hear her say it to me.

So when I saw her the next day I showed her the message and suggested that it was never intended for me, but for a customer she had left earlier in the day.  She got an embarrassed grin and said that I was right.

So, handy tip… look for your name in the loving messages you get from Thai bar girls.

I’ve mentioned before that over the past few months before she left Thailand my favorite go go dancer often used my computer to check her email, and she almost always showed me the emails she received and asked me to help her type the replies.  It was obvious that she had at least four punters who were talking to her about getting married.   She was encouraging all of them.

At the end of each email she invariably said “I love you and miss you” and sent lots of kisses and hugs.

I had taken her on a holiday out of Bangkok and we had taken a lot of pictures.  She selected her favorites, asked me to upload them to my computer then emailed the same set of photos to half a dozen guys.  Each of them must have felt special because she was taking the time to send photos.

For her it was just good marketing.

One of the guys had taken her on a holiday last year out of Bangkok.  To him she wrote that the entire time she had been on the holiday with me she had been thinking of him and remembering the holiday they had taken together last year.  She said how much she’d love to go away with him again.

Remember, she was dictating the messages to me and I was typing them.

So again, if you’re in a distance relationship with a bar girl, be aware that her endearments may not be as direct, as genuine, as exclusive or as private as you hope or expect.

Thailand is a tropical country, but if your not ready for it, it can be a mighty cold place as well.