Thai Girlfriends -- and Other Strange Things That Happened to Me in Thailand

Joom and I. 2011.

Old girlfriends are like ---- Oops! That's the wrong way
to start a story in this #MeToo era, isn't it? I'd like to
make it clear at the outset of this particular narrative
that I wanted to marry Joom from the first time I
met her in a restaurant and made her a balloon poodle.
That was back in 2010.
But the Thai cultural norms dictated that I first had to
pay an enormous 'bride price'to her mother up in
Jungwat Louei, which I couldn't afford. No money,
no marriage. But we remained a couple for nearly two
years. Saying any more than that would be
indiscreet. As the poet Wadsworth
put it: "Let the dead Past bury its dead!"

(And I think this is one story I won't copy and send to
daughter Daisy on her LDS mission in Southern California.
Even though I think I've handled this sensitive issue with
my usual ten-thumbed aplomb.)


My Thai girlchum Joom owned a black Toyota pickup truck that
seats five in the cab comfortably, and has a contraption on the
back that opens up into a sun roof, so an additional half dozen
people (if they’re Thai) can ride in the back. It’s a fun way to go
to the beach in Rayong after work, with her cousins and other
vaguely-connected kin grazing on som tum and sticky rice in the
back, with copious draughts of Chang beer, while Joom and I sit
in comfort up front in the air-conditioned cab.

Being a modestly-compensated ESL teacher, I always looked
for additional revenue to help support Joom and, in the
felicitous phrasing of W.S. Gilbert, her “sisters and her
cousins, whom she reckons by the dozens, and her aunts.”
One way was to use Joom’s truck as a taxi for Farangs desirous
of going up to Bangkok for the weekend. A little word of mouth
spread out among the backpackers in Ban Phe, the port that
caters to those going to Koh Samet Island, and we soon had
our hands full, or rather our truck full, of paying riders.

We did not plan on capturing a niche market, but like so many
other serendipitous things that occur in Thailand, we got one
anyways.

Mitch was a rugged six-footer with long black hair and a
love of Thai jewelry. He wore several ornate jade rings and
kept ropes of cultured pearls around his neck. We took him
up to Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok, and agreed to pick
him up in two days to bring him back down to Ban Phe to
recuperate from his surgery. We didn’t ask what kind of surgery,
we just figured him to be one of the many standard medical
tourists that Thailand attracts.

We couldn’t find Mitch when we went back to pick him
up at the hospital lobby. Luckily, she was able to wave us
down just before we gave up and left; Mitch was now Michelle.
She had had sexual reassignment surgery, at a fantastically
economical price, and without the months of intense
psychoanalysis required prior to a sex-change operation
in the US.

Having grown up in the Midwest, I initially gawked at her
like a hayseed at his first carnival, but Joom took it all in
stride. Joom complimented Michelle on her new breasts,
and then they sat down together to plan out her new wardrobe,
with me acting as interpreter. Naturally, Joom had a cousin who
ran a night market boutique in Rayong, and had an “auntie” who
worked wonders with farang hair.

Thailand is known for its unambiguous and popular 'third gender'
people, known as the 'Kathoey.' Thais have no problem believing
that a female spirit from a previous life can get trapped inside
a male body during a hinky transmigration of souls, and vice versa.
So Joom was comfortable with Mitch/Michelle from the get-go.

Michelle rested up in a rented bungalow on the beach in
Rayong, going on leisurely shopping expeditions with Joom –
I was not wanted for these excursions. Pardon me for being
sexist, but girls shopping together have their own international
language that needs no translation.

When Michelle returned home she told others who were
thinking of doing the same thing that they should recuperate,
as she had done, down on the beach in Rayong, and that they
should hire Joom to be their driver/wardrobe consultant.
Joom was a bit handicapped with a big, dumb, fat farang boyfriend –
that was me — but she knew how to send him packing
when the girl talk became intense. And Joom had a
number of men cousins who were always delighted
to squire transgendered farangs-on-the mend around town.

And so little by little we picked up a steady stream of
passengers who came to Thailand for a sex change,
and appreciated the kindness and consideration that
Joom unfailingly showed them. It was not an act or just
a mercenary ploy, either. Even if someone did not hire us as their
driver, Joom liked talking to transgendered farangs in her clipped,
eccentric English, and helping them out. She was always
especially sympathetic to new women who had to deal with
the dreaded Thai squatter, the ceramic hole in the ground
that many bathrooms still feature. You don’t get to sit down,
you literally have to squat on your haunches. Her advice to
recuperating sex-change patients who were facing this
ordeal for the first time was to take several stiff slugs of
rice whiskey prior to assuming the position. It helped
anesthetize the pain and embarrassment.

“They make big change” she told me. Then she laughed

uproariously, sputtering “They sometime forget, still go
the man bathroom!” That's what I liked about Joom; she
was crude and compassionate at the same time . . .