Note: The following is an excerpt from my first blog in Thailand, circa 2003. I have changed all names in the interest of goodwill and not being sued. It tells a strange tale of a teacher's life in that land of ten thousand conundrums . . .
Okay, so the job I had lined up in Hong Kong went south. It was an English camp for rich little Chinese hobgoblins, but the Sars scare is still keeping people holed up in their shanties, disinclined to let the kiddies congregate unnecessarily. That meant that Camp Wun Hung Lo could dispense with my services before even sampling them.
I hesitated admitting this debacle to my Bangkok buddies, the Good Old Boy LDS Returned Missionary network that has kept me going these past six months. Surely, I thought to myself, they will think I am a premier slacker, always talking about going to work but never actually doing any. I’ve had so many strike-outs in the past two months that I should get a team position with the Minnesota Twins (an in-joke for Minnesotans; you can fill in the blank with your own state’s baseball team.) Well sir, when I finally broke down and told them I had lost yet another job opportunity they merely waggled their heads, not at me, but at wonderful, crazy Thailand where this kind of thing happens to everybody all the time. Then they placed a few phone calls and the job offers came rolling back in like the tide.
A paper company, which I am not at liberty to name, immediately paid me in advance to do some sourcing work for ‘em. They wholesale mulberry and pineapple paper to the States for scrapbooks and other artsy-craftsy things. I immediately found ‘em a good deal down at Chatuchuck Market for hemp paper, forgetting that hemp is still banned in the good ol’ USA. Now I am pursuing the source of one of Thailand’s most delicate handcrafted papers – elephant dung paper. You know how much fiber an elephant chews up & returns to mother Earth each day? I’ve handled the stuff; you wouldn’t know it from newsprint (or what’s printed on newsprint, for that matter.)
But my main squeeze has come from a gentleman named Sathorn Vanitsthian. Being a distant relative to the King, he has his finger in many profitable pies. He came to visit Peter Wilson, one of my old missionary companions, last Saturday on a social call; Peter immediately pressed him to hire me for something, anything. Khun Sathorn was looking for someone to handle his English correspondence, so he called me to arrange a meeting at The Heritage Club, the hoity-toitiest social club in Bangkok, smugly perched atop the Amirin Tower.
I groomed myself with care, even cut my toenails, and donned my one and only business suit, with bright yellow shirt and dazzling blood-red tie. Shined my shoes. Outside of the yellowing piece of string tied to the end of my glasses to keep them from slipping down my nose, I looked like any other go-getting business executive out to cut a few deals before lunchtime. On my way to The Heritage Club, Bangkok experienced one of it’s finest downpours this season, turning the streets into whitewater. When I stepped out of my cab I immediately went into a pothole up to my knees, tripped, and began snorkeling in the muddy, diesel-stained waters. A few curses and hand towels later I was as presentable as I ever would be. Khun Sathorn apparently thinks all foreigners take showers in their clothes, for he said not a word about my sodden appearance, but instead launched into an impassioned explanation of his latest business venture, The Sino-Thai Foods Supply Company, Limited.
China and Thailand, it seems, are becoming friendlier and friendlier; the Chinese are greedy for the fat juicy lychees and pomelos that only grow in Thailand’s steamy jungles. And even as we sat chatting over dry, crumbly Scotch digestive crackers, a road is slowly being built, snaking its way through southern China, northen Laos and eventually into northern Thailand. Once open, this road will allow direct trucking all the way up the Malay Peninsula into mainland China. As the illustrations show, Khun Sathorn is poised to take advantage of this highway to make a killing on kumquats and other exotic noshables.
An hour into his monologue I was still wondering where this would lead for me. The club muzak was one of Tchaikowsky’s violin concertos, so I wasn’t all that bored. All at once he stood up, shook hands with me, and started to hustle me out the shiny brass door that read ‘Members Only’.
“ Are you gonna want to hire me for somethin’?” I managed to squeak as he pushed the elevator button for me.
“ Yes, yes. There are many ways you can be used. Here is my office card. Be there on Monday at 9:30 and we will begin.”
Since I had to go to the bathroom, and since this is Thailand, I didn’t worry about getting more information out of him. I took care of my business (marble basins in the men’s room and a basket of snow white linen towels to wipe your hands on and then throw into a wicker basket – lucky for me there wasn’t an attendant on duty, since I didn’t have anything to tip him with), went down to Santa’s Hamburgers for eggs, rice and sushi (they don’t serve any hamburgers there), and took the 104 bus back to my little room in Nonthaburi, where I changed clothes and continued reading one of George McDonald Fraser’s Flashman books.
Came the dawn Monday, I was at the office bang-on-the-dot at 9:30. Khun Sathorn was not; he was out looking for me, under the impression I would ride the skytrain to Nong Chonsi and flounder around helplessly until he arrived to rescue me. We eventually hooked up. He led me to my computer and disappeared for the rest of the day. I looked at the Sino-Thai website for an hour, figuring this was one way to look busy. Then Khun Tip, the office manager, came over and introduced me to the rest of the staff. There was Oot, and Noot, and Oht, and Noog. I’m not kiddin’. Everybody in Thailand has a nickname, which they go by; I kept repeating the names to myself until I sounded like an aviary.
Then I was given some work. Look at these websites, asked Khun Tip; they are all very similar to ours. You want me to make notes on how we can improve our website, I asked eagerly. Nope, just look at ‘em so you get familiar with tropical fruit vendor websites. I looked at mangosteens, tamarinds, longans, lychees, long kongs, baby bananas, durians and jackfruit the rest of the day, with an interruption for lunch, which I ate al fresco at a noodle stand under a banyan tree. The leaves kept falling off the tree into my soup. Since they looked liked the fried pork I was eating I may have choked a few down; it’s hard to tell with Thai fried pork – the stuff is always crispy and oval-shaped and rather flavorless. Late afternoon Ma and Pa Kettle arrived, one of the company’s major fruit growers from down south. They brought in baskets of dead ripe mangos, pineapple and papaya, then sat around poisoning the air with strawpaper cigarettes while the office staff, me included, glutted ourselves like fruit bats. I always get the runs when I overindulge in fresh tropical fruit. The office bathroom was out back, with the merciless tropical sun beating on it. This was nothing like the honeypot at The Heritage Club. It was a Thai squatter – no sitting in comfort for schnook Tim, and since I have recently been rendered squat-sensitive by my bad back I had to lower myself slowly to the steaming floor and . . . well, it wasn’t a pretty sight, nor very hygienic either.
Then back to the dragon fruit and paw paws. Did you know that jackfruit is susceptible to the Malagasy hissing cockroach, or that the seeds of the rambutan, when crushed and processed, yield a fine shampoo used by the former Rajahs of Sumatra? Dragon fruit is actually a cactus vine that grows up the trunks of peepul trees during the dry season. Tamarind pods were used in the manufacture of the explosive cordite during World War One. And, ladies and gentlemen, I found this same statement on several lychee websites: “A natural remedy for Cancer and Blood cleansing.” Clean blood is something I’ve wanted for years.
I studied many different fruits during my employment there; and when it ended six months later my main reaction was to go on a carnivorous binge for several weeks. Grilled pork livers from street vendors; chicken satay at all hours of the day and night; and so many deep fried fish patties riddled with fiery little chili peppers that I began to grow gills.
Then I started looking for a teaching job again.
