The Farang Are Coming 3.0 and 3.1

Swampthing.

We traded several emails over the past month, so I knew he’d be arriving yesterday, but I wasn’t expecting to see him until late in the evening.  Work had taken me well out of Bangkok and I was sitting in the passenger seat of a car, still about an hour away from home around seven o’clock last night when the message came on my phone: “I’m a free man… call me at will.  Swampthing“.

He’d managed to take care of his obligations and make it to the hotel early.  I called him, explained my situation and we made arrangements to meet around ten o’clock.

The phone was running hot with messages. Penfold was at Soi Cowboy, Ash and his American mate were on the prowl in my neighborhood.  We finally all agreed to show up at the same bar at the same time for some drinks and a late dinner.

So it was that I found myself at a table filled with an eclectic group of people.

The dinner meeting was actually quite brief — just an hour or so.  Ash was off to a club somewhere, his mate was heading back to his hotel and Penfold had a date with Miss Thailand.  Swampthing and I headed to Mojos.

I’ve written about Mojos many times, so there’s not much new to say.  The band was playing, the coyotes were dancing, people were shooting pool, the drinks were flowing and the food smelled delicious.  I can say that the band was playing a selection of songs that I particularly liked, and I was in a jolly mood.

Swampthing had a female companion on his arm, but I was flying solo, and frankly the place was full of customers and I was getting no attention at all from any of the girls.  So I just relaxed and enjoyed the music.

We’d been there about 40 minutes, and I was probably just finishing my third bottle of beer when things changed.

A group of five farang guys came in with five Thai girls.  The girls were all go go dancers from Soi Cowboy.

One of the girls clocked me as she walked in the door.  I noticed and so did Swampthing.

Being 50-ish, bald and overweight, I don’t get a lot of attention from pretty young girls who already have a guy, so the interest from this girl was notable.

The group settled in at a table just a few meters away from us, and I had an unobstructed view of the table where they were sitting.  The girl in question was clearly not getting any attention from her customer of the night,who seemed totally disinterested in her.  He was watching the band or staring at the TV, but really paying her no attention at all.

Meanwhile I was having a hard time not paying attention to her.  She was adorably cute and just my spec: 153 cm tall, 42 kilos with a face like a cute Japanese cartoon character — big black eyes and pouty lips.

Twenty minutes after they walked in I did something a bit strange.  I walked over to the table where the girl was, approached her chair from behind and just leaned over and smiled at her.  It probably sounds creepy the way I write it, but it must not have been too creepy because she looked at me and laughed — in a good way — like a bashful high school girl who’s just been approached by the star quarterback.  She was clearly happy to see me.

I hadn’t said a word.  Sounds creepy, I know, but it was just a thing that was working…  I didn’t talk ’cause I didn’t have to.

She giggled a little more then in a cheerful tone of voice said, “What do you want?”

“I just wanted to meet you”

She tilted her head towards the guy staring at the TV, “I’ve got a customer”

“”I see that.  But you don’t look like you want to stay with him”

She agreed that I was right, and offered to come join me for 3,000 baht. She said she could make it right with the guy.

Three thousand baht went into her hands, and I went back to my seat.  She grabbed her bag, said something to the people she was with and then literally ran over to my table.

Amazing.

She started dancing with me.  She’s a go go dancer and I’m an old awkward fart, but I was having fun and I think she was too — at least she looked to be having a lot more fun than a few minutes before.

Swampthing grabbed his magic phone and shot some photos of the two of us.

The drinking and dancing went on for another 45 minutes or so, then Swampthing and his companion disappeared into the night.  He later reported that he thought that my girl and I were coming with them, but that he looked over his shoulder at the door and I was still dancing with the girl, so he just went out, leaving me to enjoy myself.

I’m not sure how much longer I stayed at the bar with her, but eventually we went home and took care of business.

She was a doll.  Lots of fun and worth the money and effort.

I woke up this morning around 11 a.m.  It’s unusual for me to sleep so late, and I felt a little like I’d been hit by a truck.  The girl was long gone; she hadn’t stayed to sleep.

I sent a thank you SMS to Swampthing, and got a reply about ten minutes later suggesting that we get breakfast together.  We ended up at the Dubliner around noon and each ordered the small Irish breakfast.  It was wonderful, and the perfect remedy for two bad hangovers.  From memory it was a fried egg, baked beans, soda bread, cooked tomato, sauteed mushrooms, ham and sausage.

Yummy.

It was raining outside in the typical spurts of heavy downpours that you get in Bangkok, so we lingered over breakfast and chatted for abut two hours.

Swampthing told me that when my girl left the group the night before he had been braced for trouble, thinking that her customer might come over to re-claim her.  But nothing like that happened.  The guy simply didn’t care, and the girl told me that out of the 3k she had given money to her friends to repay the barfine to him.

Swamthing also pulled out his magic phone  to show me the pictures he had taken last night.  In every picture the girl looks beautiful.  In every picture I look like an ogre. Swampthing said he took so many pictures because he was trying to get one where I looked decent, but it just wasn’t happening.

Obviously something wrong with his damned phone camera.

I was glad for the photos because I’m as prone to beer goggles as anyone, and it was nice to see photographic evidence that the girls was as pretty as I thought she was.  I’ll probably go by her go go and see her again.

Swampthing said to me this morning that he had been impressed with her last night, not just because she was pretty, but because she was so lively and fun, and that I was lively and fun when she was with me.

Lucky me.

I’ve mentioned on the blog before how beautiful some of the waitresses are at the Dubliner.  The morning crew today was a bit below the usual quality of the evening crew (though by no means a pack of dogs) but around the time we finished eating and our dishes were cleared away the first evening shift girl showed up for work.  She’s one of the ones that I regularly love to gaze upon when I’m at the Dubliner, but it was the first time Swampthing had ever seen her.

I could see his face light up when she walked past the first time.  I think the first word out of his mouth after she passed our table was “lovely”.  And she was.  And is.

I swear I don’t own shares in the Dubliner and they don’t pay me to write about the pub.  It’s got great food, good service and some really lovely waitresses.  Go there if that sounds appealing to you.

By two o’clock or so Swamthing must have been feeling human again.  He was off to take care of some personal business, and suggested that he’d be having a nap before going out to dinner with a business client tonight.

I came home to rest up ahead of my date.  I’ve got about three hours to catch a nap, get a shower and put on clean underwear.

It’s raining in Bangkok, but life feels pretty sunny to me at the moment.