Darkness prevailed abruptly, and a relieving breeze began flowing seawards. A mellow tropical night had just befallen over the Thai coast. The streets of Hua Hin, one of Thailand’s most Western cities, would have normally been rammed. Street-food vendors would labor hectically to cater to the intoxicated tourists’ peckishness. Touts and cocottes would blare incessantly, trying to entice male customers into the ubiquitous sleazy bars. Intemperance and lechery would reign on until dawn… But none of this happened currently. The streets were utterly desolate.
It was the peak time of the Covid pandemic. The tourists were in their countries, the bars were shut, the locals were sequestered in their homes… and we were riding around the quiet streets on our scooter, looking for the odd food place that defied the curfew and could allow us a quick meal.
In a random narrow bystreet, a menu board stood in front of an inconspicuous concrete wall belonging to a small decrepit house. A bare plastic table and two stools lay beside it. We pulled over. The menu featured a few pictures that, though amateurish, depicted the dishes favorably. The prices were as reasonable as you could possibly find in this city; befitting more a takeaway street-food stall than a sit-in restaurant. And we wouldn’t find anything else, anyway.
I revved the bike up slightly to have a peek inside the open gate on the side of the house’s facade. A couple more tables lay in there, crammed within the poky yard. Each one was clothed and bedecked with a lit candle, but there was no sign of either customers or staff. That until, moments later, a jolly-looking man popped out from the house door in the yard’s rear corner.
He was an old white fellow in his late sixties or early seventies. He wore a tatty sleeveless undershirt – his belly formed an all but perfect sphere under it – smudged, sloppy trousers, and sliders. His curly hair was white and bedraggled but thick for his age. He was tanned, but only as tanned as one gets when living in a tropical country and being exposed to the sun only when absolutely inevitable. His blue eyes and benign countenance radiated with the bliss and anticipation of a child before Santa.
“Are you still serving?” I inquired, understanding he is the owner of the place.
“Yes, sure, be seated,” he enunciated in a distinctly British accent.
He showed us to the table, pulled the stools out for us, and almost physically sat us down – as to make sure we ain’t going to flee.
“I’ll be right back,” he said and briskly scooted inside.
Seconds later, he reappeared out of the gate, carrying a colorful tablecloth, a candle, and a menu. After he made the table, he stood above us expectantly and gave us his recommendations. We placed our order, and he shuffled back inside.
He immediately gave me the impression that he wasn’t as excited about receiving customers as he was about getting company. This impression of mine got verified when, not long after, he came out again, this time carrying an extra stool, a beer can, and a pack of smokes.
He set his stool two meters away from our table, sat down, lit a fag, and initiated a small talk. We chatted about the pandemic, the weather, the city, Thailand in general… He used the opportunity to praise his little business and tell us how he has his regular denizens who dine at his every single night, year after year, during their holidays…
His peculiar character had animated my curiosity. I waited for a chance to switch the conversation to his person and get to know what fortuities had brought him there.
Eventually, a plump Thai woman in her late thirties walked out of the house. Smilingly, she served our dishes. She exchanged a couple of waggish jokes with the man and stepped back inside the house. Starved as we were, we tucked into our plates in nothing flat.
“She’s a good cook, ain’t she?” said the man, patently gratified to see us devouring our food.
“Yes, delicious. And very decent portions, too,” I acknowledged. “She your wife?” I asked.
“Yes, my girlfriend, actually. We live here together and have run this restaurant for almost seven years now. She’s a fine woman.”
The subject was getting to where I wanted it. I was going to ask him questions to pry into his life’s particulars, but I didn’t have to. He rather proved too eager to recount his adventures of his own accord. Over the next hour or so that we remained seated there – having a second course and a few beers thereafter – he prattled on incessantly about his situation…
He was born in a small town in southern England, which he hardly ever left until he retired. He completed his compulsory education and worked in the same factory for his entire working life. He got married young and had six children. He led a pretty uneventful life until, shortly after his retirement, his wife broke up with him.
His drinking problem wasn’t the reason for the divorce; he had always been boozing heavily since he was a lad. Nor was it because he was cheating on her; he had regularly been visiting prostitutes, and he had a couple of steady girlfriends during the first years of their marriage, and she’d been aware of it all along… It probably was because she couldn’t tolerate him spending much time at home, now that he was retired.
He took it badly at first, but he got over it relatively fast. Specifically, he got fully over it upon the very instant he stepped into that now-shut bar around the corner…
In a sort of consolatory effort, his mates back home arranged to take him on a golfing holiday in Thailand. But not once did he play golf. Hours after they landed, on his first night ever abroad, in the first foreign bar he ever entered, when he was just about to order his first drink… he fell in love, madly.
He was talked to by a twenty-year-old Thai girl. She was very pretty, in his words, and he got smitten at first sight. He bought her and her friends a few drinks, and later they had sex in his hotel room. He got a little peeved when she asked him for money, but she was in real need; her mother was seriously ill.
He altogether neglected his friends for the remainder of their sojourn in Thailand. He hung out constantly with his new girlfriend. They rented a car and went jaunting to beaches and malls during the day; boozed and danced in the bars during the night…
This holiday came to cost him much more than he had initially budgeted – gifts and his girlfriend’s mum’s medical expenses were particularly expensive – but it was totally worth it; he had the time of his life.
Profoundly grieved, he boarded that plane upon the holiday’s termination. His mates went back to their families and daily routines. But he had none of those. Instead, he had a new plan involving enthralling prospects about the future…
He sold everything he owned – that is, everything his wife hadn’t already grabbed from the divorce settlement – packed his personal effects, and moved to Thailand. His children got shocked and infuriated by that act. All but the youngest one cut all ties with him immediately after his departure; the youngest one cut them a few years later. He speaking about this was the only instance I noticed his intrinsic gleefulness briefly fading away from his mien.
He didn’t think much about his kids – or anything else really – at that time. His being was wholeheartedly devoted to his love. They had fun, and that was all that mattered. Selling all his property, he had accrued some decent savings, which, combined with his pension, would secure them a comfortable living for the rest of his days… Only that the rest of his days were destined to be many more than the mere year it took until he went broke.
Mum’s health was deteriorating. She had to undergo a number of consecutive costly surgeries. It, of course, dejected him a bit that he had to squander his whole life’s toil for somebody he hadn’t even met once, but that was only a trivial sacrifice for the sake of love. Important was that his darling was contented – poor little sweetheart, she was so strongly attached to her mother. Onwards, they would need to be a little thriftier to make ends meet on his pension alone, but they would always have each other at the end of the day.
But the ends of the days they indeed had each other got steadily sparser after mum’s last operation; they basically were confined to the first few days of each month when they met to go out partying. For the rest of the month – while he remained cloistered in some shabby hotel room or another, barely affording his meals as he waited for his next pension payout – she would go stay with her family in the village, caring for her recuperating mother. She wished she could bring him along to her house, but what would they think? They were a traditional, conservative family… their dear little daughter engaged to a farang who’s older than her grandfather!? Scandal.
During the next few months, as he all the more often bumped into her accosting senior white gentlemen in various sleazy bars, he began to suspect that she was with him only for money; that she didn’t love him, and perhaps even her mother was never sick. His suspicions eventually evolved to certainty. He couldn’t take her excuses anymore. He investigated and got to know that she didn’t have any family. She’d been lying all along.
This awareness, however, wasn’t potent to efface his feelings for her. He was infatuated. He never stopped loving her. He kept on living like that – blowing his whole pension with her in a day or two and then fasting the rest of the month out – for a few years. But over time, after he met his current girlfriend and opened the restaurant, he got to put his life in order again.
Now he understood perfectly that she, too, was with him for money. But her needs were much more modest, affordable. She’d had her fun in her time. But now, she’d grown old and fleshy. She couldn’t go for the big wallets anymore. She’d had alcohol problems and hadn’t managed to save up. Now she needed a kind and docile man to provide a calm life for her and her daughter – A sweet little girl kept walking in and out of the house, parading up and down the street and proudly displaying her various toys.
His current girlfriend would as well sleep with other men, occasionally, if an opportunity for a good take arose… But that was alright because he would also spend the odd night with his ex if he somehow got hold of a considerable sum of money. As for the rest, they ran their little restaurant and lived a simple and harmonious life together…
He had earlier spoken about his regular customers, and by the time we left that night, I didn’t doubt in the least the truthfulness of his claim. Most of all, he made for a pleasant and engaging company. Over the rest of our stay in Hua Hin, we kept returning all too frequently for a good meal and a nice chat.
The story you've just read is a part of my "Real Stories of Real People" collection, wherein I narrate my encounters with various remarkable characters I've run into while traveling around the world. The entire collection is published on my blog and may be read here. But if you'd like to get them with you to the beach in your ebook reader or as a physical book, and very appreciatedly support my creative activity, go ahead and grab your copy from Amazon for the cost of a cup of coffee.
