In search of the Bar Girl Factory – Part 3 – Isaan upclose and personal

An excerpt from Part 2:

finally it was closing time, and we needed to head home.

I have to say that I would have gladly taken Blogger X’s impish spinner back to my room for a right good thumping, but I wasn’t about to take Stinker to my bed. When she asked I shook her off and looked dreamily at those bodacious hooters on the Imp.

In the end it was an empty bed for me. Blogger X made his own decision regarding his girl; you’ll have to use your imagination to fill in the details of his night.

Hopping out of the taxi we agreed to meet at ten in the morning to decide on our next move. I was leaning towards another night in Burriram, heading back to Cute Coyote Bar on Monday evening to see what was happening there, but now didn’t seem like the time to discuss it. We could sort it out in the morning.

I said goodnight and wobbled off to bed.

Click Here to Read Part 1

Click here to read Part 2

Morning

I woke up in a strange hotel room with whiskey and beer still swirling around in my brain. A few beats passed and then I remembered.

Buriram.

The night before… whiskey in the karaoke bar followed by beer at Tawandaeng.

I’d come home alone.

I was supposed to meet Blogger X for breakfast between 9 and 10 a.m. It seemed like it was gonna be ten o’clock – not nine.

I showered and got into my daytime duds – cargo shorts, a tee-shirt and a baseball cap. I didn’t do much to straighten my room or pack since I wasn’t sure if we were gonna stay another night or drive somewhere else today. My bet was that we were gonna stay. We’d planned on going to the Cute Coyote Club the night before but hadn’t done it. My vote was gonna be to stay in Buriram another night and check it out.

I went downstairs and found a chair with a view of the staircase where I could wait for Blogger X to find his way downstairs. It turned out, though, that he’d been up for a while. He walked into the lobby from outside where he’d been taking pictures.

“Are you ready to go?” he asked.

“Go where?” I replied.

“To Ubon.”

Oh, I said, I wasn’t sure whether we were going today or staying put… I figured we’d discuss that over breakfast.

Turns out that Blogger X was already checked out and had his bags loaded into the car.

Shit.

Well, you’re gonna have to wait while I pack my gear. I’ll be back in ten minutes.

Ubon Ratchatani or Bust

And so the decision was already made. We weren’t staying in Buriram for another night. I was surprised, but not really disappointed. We had plenty of places to go.

We had left Bangkok on Sunday intending to travel to Buriram and Khon Kaen. Our travel plans were very fluid, but I had figured that we’d do one or two nights in each town, depending on how much we found to do, returning to Bangkok on either Wednesday or Thursday.

Once we were on the road on Sunday I’d made a few phone calls to friends. One of those calls had been to my favorite (former) go go dancer. Actually, if memory serves, she called me, but that doesn’t matter. During our conversation she’d asked where I was. I told her that I was in the truck on the way to Buriram, and explained our general travel plan.

As it turns out, she was in Isaan at that moment with her Bangkok roommate, visiting the roommate’s family for a few days. She suggested that we could join up.

It seems that the three-day holiday that had given rise to my trip was for the Buddhist religious time known as Khaopansaa. The highlight of this religious holiday around Thailand is for Buddhists to march around the temple three times holding a lit candle – a parade of sorts.

And every year the pinnacle of this festival takes place in Ubon Ratchatani where there is a large parade with floats through the city streets. Residents build large parade floats which are mostly painted gold.

Grandstands are built and every hotel room in town is booked. The parade is the most important thing that happens every year in Ubon. If I understand correctly it is a night time parade of candles taken to the extreme. (Americans can think of the Thanksgiving Day Parades that bored the shit out of me annually when I was a boy because my mother insisted on watching them on TV. Parades should only be viewed in person).

As it eventually turned out I misunderstood mf(f)ggd when she told me the timing of the parade. I thought it was on Tuesday the 7th, but it was actually held on Wednesday the 8th. She suggested that Blogger X and I could come meet her and her friend and go to Ubon together for the festival. That’s do-able, I said, then I asked where she was.

Turns out that she and her friend were visiting her friend’s family in Amnat Charoen, a province only about an hour away from Ubon. It wasn’t exactly “on the way” but it wasn’t far out of the way either. It meant that we wouldn’t go to Khon Kaen, but we didn’t really have any plan for anything there, so Blogger X and I agreed that this sounded like a good suggestion. We would go to Ubon Ratchatani via Amnat Charoen and enjoy the parade.

Miscommunication

This is where phone communication sometimes breaks down between farang and Thai, even when her English is pretty good and my Thai is functional. Some information is misunderstood and certain cultural assumptions are made.

I assumed that she and her friend were gonna clamber into the truck with us and the four of us would make the run to Ubon together.. She had a different idea entirely. She expected us to join her friend’s family in an excursion that would involve a dozen or so people.

Also, from our conversation I thought the parade was on Tuesday night, but she had assumed that I understood that it was on Wednesday and that we would simply travel to Ubon a day ahead. Blogger X and thought that by heading for Ubon on Monday we were on the right schedule.

So it was that all these different understandings were in a bit of conflict.

First stop: Amnat Charoen

But long before we realized that all these misunderstandings existed, Blogger X was ready to get on the road at 10:00 on Monday morning and – in spite of my earlier expectation that we would probably stay in Buriram on Monday night and go to Ubon on Tuesday – we were travelling north and east.

I called my favorite (former) go go dancer as we were pulling out of the hotel parking lot to make arrangements. When I told her that we were leaving Burriram and coming to see her she was surprised.

She told me that they were getting ready to go to the Temple.

“But we’ll wait for you” she said.

No No No! That won’t be necessary. Go ahead to the temple… we’ll be driving for two or three hours to get there. We’ll call you when we get to town.

Again, cultural assumptions got in the way. I had a vision of her and her roommate taking a motorbike to a temple in town, making merit, walking around the temple with a candle, then heading home for lunch just about the time we arrived in town.

Incorrect.

Here’s a rough timeline of what actually happened for me and Blogger X:

10:00 we left Burriram

13:00 we arrived in Amnat Charoen. I called mf(f)ggd to let her know we’d arrived and make arrangements to meet. She didn’t answer her phone.

13:05 Blogger X and I decided to grab some lunch and wait for her to call back.

13:15 We settled down for lunch in a nice (but cheap) buffet-style Thai restaurant in the “center” of town

13:25 mf(f)ggd called. She was surprised to hear that we were in town already. She told me that she’d call me when they arrived in town. In my head I figured that we’d see them by 2 pm and confidently told Blogger X that everything was under control.

14:05 we were finished with an excellent meal and had been engaged in a spirited conversation in Thai by the staff of the restaurant. There was some harmless flirting going on between us & them. I sent an SMS to mf(f)ggd to find out what was up and how soon she would be arriving.

14:15 mf(f)ggd called in reply to my message. She would be back in town by about 6 p.m. I say something along the lines of “what the fuck?!” and tell Blogger X the news. He accepts it gracefully and says that we can use the time to look around town. If we can’t entertain ourselves for three and a half hours, he says, then there’s something wrong with us.

17:45 I make contact with mf(f)ggd to arrange a place to meet. We agree on Bangkok Bank, which is located prominently on a corner on the main street of the town.

17:47 Blogger X and I make sure that the luggage that we have been carrying in the back seat is safely stowed in the back of the vehicle and covered with a water-proof tarp. It is pissing down rain.

18:00 no sign of mf(f)ggd

18:05 A phone update assures us that she will arrive within 20 minutes… apparently with the heavy rain they are stuck in traffic. Where have I heard that before?

18:30 No sign of them. I call to make sure that they are coming to Bangkok Bank. Yes…just slow moving in the traffic. Blogger X tells me to relax, as I am getting as twitchy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

18:45 My phone rings. It is mf(f)ggd. She is standing outside Bangkok Bank and doesn’t see me. I hop out our vehicle and go to find her.

18:46 The two of us are under mf(f)ggd’s umbrella and moving towards the car. Blogger X hops out in the rain, opens the door to the vehicle and motions mf(f)ggd to hop inside. He is ready to go to Ubon right now. Instead I wave him to join us in a sheltered area.

I introduced the two of them to each other. Blogger X is saying that we are ready to go. mf(f)ggd is a bit confused and her phone is ringing. She opts for the phone and gives directions to someone in a car to drive around the corner to find us. Moments later a white van pulls up behind our black truck. Inside the van is an entire family that numbers about the same as an army battalion. Suddenly I understand why mf(f)ggd has had such a difficult time arranging her logistics with me. She’s travelling with her friend and the friend’s entire family – Thai style.

Without trying to relate the entire conversation, the three of us (me, Blogger X and mf(f)ggd) stood sheltered from the downpour and tried to explain our different ideas about our itinerary. Blogger X was simply trying to get us all in the truck so we could start driving. mf(f)ggd was expecting us to join the family at their home, assuring us that we would be welcome as overnight guests.

After two quick minutes of confusing discussion I opt for cutting our losses. I apologize and tell mf(f)ggd that we’re gonna head for Ubon now. Maybe we’ll see her somewhere in the coming days. If not, I’ll see her back in Bangkok.

Good People

One of the reasons I love my favorite (former) go go dancer is that things like this don’t bother her. She smiled, thanked me for making the effort to see her, apologized for making us wait all afternoon, then gave me a hug & smile and waved goodbye to me.

One of the reasons I’m friends with Blogger X is that shit like this doesn’t really bother him. When we were back in the car I apologized for the fuck up. No problem, he said. We had a good afternoon and we’ll get to Ubon around 8 pm. Perfect timing.

Most Thai girls I know would have pouted, pissed & moaned and complained. They would have been miserable. This girl gave me a smile and a hug.

Most Western men I know would have been pissed about the wasted hours on the trip. This guy genuinely told me that there was no problem – that we’d had a great day and we were still looking forward to a great night.

Who could ask for anything better from two friends in this situation?

“D” is for “Drive”, isn’t it?

Up to this point Blogger X had done all the driving from Bangkok to Buriram and from Buriram to Amnat Charoen. Now it was my turn. I slid behind the wheel in the midst of a driving rainstorm, having not driven since September 2005 in Australia. This was gonna be fun.

“Take us to Ubon” said Blogger X as he closed his eyes and prepared to sleep. I was amazed that he trusted me that much.

The End, The Beginning

Chronologically speaking, that’s the end of Part 3, but I’m nowhere near finished telling the story. We have that big stretch of time from 2:15 pm to 5:45 pm unaccounted for, and it was interesting in it’s own way.

So let me go backwards in time to around 2 pm when my favorite (former) go go dancer told me that she wouldn’t be back until 6 pm.

I daresay that most of my friends, if I told them we had to kill 4 hours in Amnat Charoen on a Monday afternoon in July, would have been a bit pissed off. I’m not sure what most of them would have done. Perhaps looked for a place to have a few quiet beers, or maybe a massage shop. Maybe they would have tried to take a nap in the truck.  Maybe punched me in the nose.

Here’s how Blogger X and I spent the 3 ½ hours that we had to kill.

At the Restaurant

On the way out of the restaurant after lunch, the girls working there all crowded around us, and in true Thai style they all pointed to the prettiest girl in the group and asked Blogger X, “Suay nah?” (Isn’t she pretty?)

She was, but BX decided to play a bit. He pointed to the cook in her apron. She was a sturdy girl, almost as wide as she was tall, with a very short man’s haircut.

“I like you” he said.

A scream of delight went up from the half dozen girls. The cook beamed broadly and covered her face with her hand. She was well pleased.

An excited gaggle of voices ensued as the girls tried to gauge BX’s interest. He was simply playing around a bit, but the girls seemed to be taking him seriously.

We had come to Isaan looking for the girls from the factory… the young, slender, pretty girls who might well be working as go go dancers or beer bar girls in a few weeks or months. Or perhaps girls that would never actually go to Bangkok, but had the looks and personality to do it. We were looking for the products of the bar girl factory.

And there were two likely candidates in this group of girls. Slender brown skinned beauties that appealed to my love of Isaan spinners, but BX had decided to teasingly flirt with the cook instead. The entire group was eating it up.

For some reason that I don’t understand, none of them expressed the least bit of interest in me… it was all about BX.

The flirting went on for five or eight minutes until BX and I tired of it, then we said our goodbyes to the girls.

The fuck up

Blogger X was a bit concerned about the fact that he only had one key for the truck. He figured it would be prudent to try to make a back up key.. There was a key shop across the street from the restaurant, and he decided to go there to try to get a key.

It took a few minutes, and while the key was being ground I realized that I needed to use the toilet. I mean that I had to sit down and take a shit.

Right away.

BX wisely suggested that I should use the very clean toilet in the restaurant, which was of the sit down variety – something not always easy to find in this part of the world.

He told me that he was going to walk around a bit after his key was made, and that I could come find him when my business was done.

Five minutes later I exited the toilet a very relieved man. As I headed towards the front of the restaurant I was accosted by the gaggle of girls. They were asking me questions about Blogger X. Where did he live? What was his job? How long was he visiting in town?

They invited us to join them at the disco that night, and asked if we would like to come. “maybe” I said.

I answered all their questions, largely repeating information that BX had already told them himself. The girls were eagerly hanging on every word of Thai language that came out of my mouth.

Then I made the mistake.

The cook asked if I could give her BX’s phone number. Sure, why not?

Oops.

I actually gave it to her.

I chatted a bit, then wandered down the street to find BX. I told him how keen the girls were to learn more about him. Since we had to pass the restaurant on the way back to the vehicle, we stopped and BX chatted some more. Phone cameras were produced and BX posed for some photos with the girls – especially with the cook. Once again I was ignored. No one was asking to pose with me. No one talked to me at all. It was all about BX.

We spent about five minutes on all of this chatting and photo taking, then went to the truck and took off. I assumed that we’d seen the last of the girls.

Rice Fields, the Market and a phone that won’t stop ringing

After leaving the girls in the restaurant behind us, we decided to see what whe could find in Amnat Charoen on a Monday afternoon. We weren’t expecting too much and that’s exactly what we found… not too much.

We went into the local market and walked around for a while. The most notable thing in there was that we saw one old lady who had plastic bags full of tobacco. I may be confused now (a week later) but I think she quoted us a price of 50 baht per kilo for it.

But the thing that was much more interesting was the thing we spent a lot of time on… we drove out to the dirt roads, then to the end of the dirt roads, put the truck in 4-wheel-drive and went driving out among the rice paddies.

It seemed to be planting season. We saw one or two fields being plowed, and one or two that seemed to be fully planted, but in most of the fields people were out planting rice.

I’ve often seen this from the seat of a bus roaring by on the highway, but being in the cab of the pickup and seeing it from 30 or 40 meters away travelling at 20 kilometers an hour was an entirely different experience.

You could see the water in the rice paddy halfway up the shins. You could see the rice plants bundled and sitting in the water, with one or two people bent over, with their back bent to 90 degrees while they inserted the rice plants by hand, one-by-one.

It was a slow and deliberate job. I’d say that most people I saw planting were probably putting in 20 plants per minute, but they also had to rest often. It’s an awkward position that’s required to bend over and plant rice.

And this is where the micro view and the macro view come together to give you an “oh my god” moment. For two and a half days we drove at a speed of around 60 or 80 kilometers per hour on country roads. For two or three hours at a stretch all we could see on both sides of the road, for as far as the eye could see, was rice fields.

What I’m saying is that we drove perhaps 200 kilometers along a stretch of road, with a view that stretched for a couple of kilometers on each side of the road.

Virtually the entire countryside in Isaan was covered by rice paddies. We’re talking an area that’s probably the size of the entire state of Virginia.

All filled with rice.

And every single one of those little rice plants was delicately placed by hand by an Isaan farmer bent over at the waist.

Working all day in the hot sun and ankle deep in water.

Every single one of those milliions and millions of green plants was placed by hand.

Un-fucking-believable!

We drove the truck for two hours or so over uneven terrain, getting a close up look at the people of Isaan planting the country’s future.

By the way… one tidbit that I’ve picked up from living in Thailand for four years is that rice is harvested twice a year. That means it’s also planted twice a year. So, whatever you imagined in terms of back-breaking labor to put a rice crop in the ground every year — double it.

This is where the bar girls come from. This is what they were doing before they ended up in a pair of heels doing the Bangkok Shuffle at Pretty Lady Go Go. They were shuffling though the water, sticking one plant after another in the ground.

Probably our most priceless moment came fairly late in the afternoon. We were driving slowly along a ridge on one edge of a broad valley filled with rice paddies. Far in the distance we could see three people who had taken a temporary break from their work. They were drinking some water, and they had spotted us. We were moving slowly… no more than 10 kph, and they watched us coming for perhaps a minute and a half. There was curiosity in the tilt of their heads and the way that they gazed uninterrupted at the progress of our truck as it bounced slowly towards them. After a while they weren’t drinking water or doing anything at all, except staring at our truck and wondering who was inside.

Finally we reached them. As we passed, we raised our hands to wave to them through the open window of the cab. The old man, standing about 6 feet away as we crawled past him said only two words that somehow seemed to say it all:

“Ah, farang!”

It was as if there were no mystery at all. The universe was as it should be.

Oddly, although we (Blogger X) shot a thousand pictures of everything else on the trip, we didn’t take any photos of the fascinating scenes of the Isaan people planting rice. All the pictures of rice fields in this blog were downloaded from other places on th internet.  I don’t know why we didn’t get any pictures, but they were extremely powerful scenes, and I feel like I learned a lot more about Thailand by spending those two hours driving through the rice fields.

Blogger X actually asked me once – in all seriousness – if I wanted to stop and ask some people if we could plant some rice with them.

My answer was equally genuine.

Not a chance int the fucking world.

It’s not that I didn’t want to talk to the people. I love talking to Thai people, and I’d love to talk to some real farmers on a real farm.

It’s that the work looked really unpleasant. Not enjoyable at all.

I don’t envy those people the grueling work of planting billions of tons of rice by hand, but I admire them for their ability to do it.

I’ll tell you what. I wouldn’t want to have to earn my living that way.

It helped me understand why being a bar girl doesn’t look like such a bad job. I think I’d rather bend my back and spread my legs for a fat German every day than bend my back under the unforgiving Thai sun all day. Twenty minutes of German sausage instead of 9 hours of Thai rice. And yes, I do mean that if I — Werewolf —  had only two choices in my life; to be an Isaan farmer or bum-boy for a baker named Fritz, that I would probably just buy a tube of KY Jelly and get ready to become his bitch.

While we were driving through the fields of rice, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, Blogger X’s phone rang. He has a hands free contraption in the vehicle, so the cab of the truck was filled with loud static and a Thai female saying – in that special way that only Thais can say it – “Hallloow?!”

BX was clearly puzzled about the identity of the caller, but he answered politely.

The conversation that followed defies description. The caller was clearly a stranger to BX, yet she called him by name.

She spoke no English at all, and with the static, the noise and the suspect reception it was hard to understand exactly what the caller was saying, but it soon became clear that she spoke not one word of English, and that BX was having a hard time understanding her. His answers often were not responsive to the questions she was asking because he didn’t know what she was saying. She had trouble with his accent when he spoke Thai, and it was made worse by the fact that he was often answering a different question from the one she’d asked.

It would have all been either funny or sad, but I knew what was going on.

I hadn’t told BX what I’d done, so he was spending a lot of energy trying to sort out who, exactly was on the phone, since the girl didn’t speak English but she knew his name and had his phone number.

I could see him mentally checking off every Thai girl he had ever known or slept with while at the same time struggling to discern her meaning through the crackle and whine of the mobile phone connection.

Of course it was the cook from the restaurant.

She was asking, where are you?… what hotel are you in?… can I come see you?…

BX was puzzled.

But he remained calm and engaging long past the point where I would have lost my cool and hung up the phone.

The attempted conversation lasted about ten minutes, then mercifully ended when the cook gave up. I whispered a small prayer of thanks that BX hadn’t figured out that I had given his number to a crazy girl.

I was sure we’d heard the last of her.

Like so often in my life, I was wrong.

She called back again. In fact, she called back twice more, each time enlisting help from people to try to communicate. On the third attempt she found someone who could speak a bit of English, but it didn’t really help things along. Finally BX followed my urging to “just hang up the phone”. He had spent probably 35 minutes across three phone calls trying to sort through the confusion.

I was too embarrassed to tell him what had actually happened. I was just praying that the girl wouldn’t keep badgering him. In the final conversation the girl who spoke a little English was asking BX to come by to take pictures with her friend (the cook).

Then we drove past the restaurant again. Out in front was the cook. Predictably, she spotted us driving past and immediately dialed the phone again. I mentioned to BX that she was likely the source of our trouble and suggested that he simply not answer. He decided to heed my advice not to answer and then added, “you think it’s that girl?… but how would she get my number???”

I told him I’d given it to her.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

Oh, I dunno. Cause I felt like a complete dumb ass. A traitor. Cause I didn’t want to tell you what an asshole I was.

I apologized, but BX just laughed. No problem, he said. It was entertaining.

We pulled around the corner, then parked to deal with some luggage that was banging around. We had just hopped out of the truck when the cook from the restaurant pulled up behind us on her motorbike.

Blogger X smiled and said a cheerful ‘hello’.

Do her hair & makeup, put her in a cocktail dress and I figure Nong is the Belle of the Ball. I thinks she's beautiful.

My mouth dropped open, because on the bike behind her sat a tall, slender, beautiful girl that we hadn’t seen earlier.

The cook referred several times to “nong” who was on the back of her bike, and that became her name as far as BX and I were concerned.

Nong was very pretty. She’d have done well in Thermae, Rainbow 4 or any place where guys like ‘em tall and slender. I was ready to take her home with us.

Blogger X chatted with the cook. Some photos were taken and we all smiled and wai-ed and then said goodbye.

From our stop at the restaurant we met and interacted with perhaps 8 girls. Two of them were quite preitty and Nong was absolutely sexy if you don’t mind a girl who’s lean. (And I don’t mind at all…)

Blogger X and I discussed it later on the drive to Ubon – the vibe from every one of these girls was that if we had asked them to hop in the truck with us and head to Ubon, or even back to Bangkok, they wouldn’t have hesitated. They said, almost in as many words, that they wanted to go with us. It was that rock-star thing again. They were excited to meet us. They were up for an adventure. All we had to do was ask.

I’ll stress that I’m not just talking about the cook. She became the focus because Blogger X was flirting with her, but there were lots of signs. The prettiest girl at lunch time came out front after we paid the bill and went across the street to get the copy made of the ignition key. She was prancing around and trying to get the attention of Blogger X but he was a little too absorbed in dealing with the keymaker to notice. I noticed though.

And Nong on the back of the bike was flashing her pearly smile at us. She was encouraging us to join the girls at the disco. It was not gonna happen. We were on our way (or so we thought) to meet my favorite (former) go go dancer and go go Ubon. If I hadn’t had an imminent meeting with mf(f)ggd looming just minutes away I would have definitely made a play for Nong.

I’m sitting here a week later regretting that I didn’t.

It’s possible that I completely misread the situation… after all, since we didn’t ask there’s no way to know for sure if the girls really would have been willing to go with us, but I believe 100% that all we would have had to do was ask.

And Nong was luscious….

End of Part 3

In Part 4 I’ll tell you about travelling from Amnat Charoen to Meueng Ubon Ratchatani, and the evening we spent looking for a girl scene. It will include a description (and if I can manage it, a photo or two) of the sexiest girl I saw on our tour of Isaan.