Thai Girl (29 page)

‘Why? Where to?'

‘Bus go from Rayong, not Ban Phe.'

Out on the street Jinda appeared from nowhere and Fon stopped a cruising
sorngthaew
and chartered it into Rayong. Jinda was put in the back while Fon got in the cab with Ben next to the driver. It was a pick-up designed for midgets and the driver insisted on winding up the windows and switching on the feeble air conditioning which made it airless and oppressive. Ben sat sweltering while Fon chatted with the driver as if they had known each other all their lives.

Arriving in town, they spilled out onto the pavement near the bus depot.

‘You eat now?' asked Fon.

Ben was a little surprised.

‘Now?' It seemed a funny time to eat, not even late afternoon.

‘Why not? You not hungry?'

After eating at a noodle stall on the pavement, they wandered off to the bus station, bought tickets and boarded a bus which was about to leave for Buriram. It was more than half empty so they ignored their allocated seats and chose the ones they wanted. Jinda decided to sit at the front and Ben and Fon sat together towards the back, just far enough forward to avoid the smell of the lavatory cubicle. As the bus pulled out for its long overnight journey, Ben realised that this would be only his second time alone with Fon at night and his very first time to sleep with her.

Fon took a keen interest in the passing countryside, enthusing at the first tall limestone pinnacles they passed and appreciating everything along the way. She chatted non-stop, though he could not afterwards remember much of what she said. The denim of her jeans was pressed hard against the thin cotton of his trousers, she was leaning up against his shoulder, she was turning and talking to him excitedly, she was resting her hand on his knee and he was loving every moment of it.

Then she said she was cold in the fierce air conditioning so she got a blanket and put it over both of them. As they snuggled beneath it, she took his hand in hers and played sensuous games. They clasped and unclasped hands, twining them together, playing, caressing, teasing. She explored every sensuality to be found in the fingers, stroking his palms and the back of his hands with hers. Ben felt strangely excited by so limited a seduction, sweetly innocent but full of sensation and promise. He felt impossibly happy to be on the bus with her, rushing through the darkening countryside towards Buriram.

As time went on Fon began to look sleepy, wriggling around like a cat to make herself comfortable. Curled up on her side, her bare feet tucked against the seat, she gently rested her head and shoulders on his lap. With a volition of its own his hand strayed across her thighs to her bare feet, up to her shoulders and into the nape of her neck, his fingers exploring the mass of black hair. She stayed motionless and silent, at ease with the modest intimacy of the moment.

The bus journey became timeless and Ben did not want it ever to end. He did not want to sleep because that would have been a waste, but sleep he did. There were stops at large towns on the way when shadowy figures got on and off the bus, sudden and stark in the glare of the white strip lighting. Finally came a stop when Jinda appeared from the front to wake them; they had arrived in Buriram. As he got down from the bus, it seemed as if they had driven in a huge circle; the bus station and the surrounding streets looked exactly the same as the featureless water-stained buildings of the town they had left some eight hours earlier. It was three thirty in the morning and a moonless night.

‘So what now?' he asked Fon.

‘Wait bus to Nang Rong, then go bus to village. Or we take
sorngthaew
all the way.'

‘How much for the
sorngthaew?'

‘Maybe five hundred baht.'

‘Sorngthaew,'
said Ben, though with no passing traffic, he wondered how on earth they would find one at this unearthly hour of the morning.

Fon went in search of one and within five minutes reappeared in a small pick-up with two tight rows of seats in the cab. Their bags thrown into the back, Jinda climbed in next to the driver while Ben and Fon took the rear seats. The decrepit vehicle crawled off into the darkness, the oncoming traffic flashing angrily at its badly aligned headlights. A mile or two further on they stopped at a filling station where the driver asked Ben for an advance on his fare to pay for fuel. Then the pick-up's engine would not start and they had to get out and push-start it across the forecourt. Dawn was not even in prospect but it was already a laugh a minute.

There had been some unseasonal rain and the lights of the traffic shone on the wet road, the damp earth giving off a warm smell of dust and dung and deep countryside. Though the roads were straight and well-paved, this was the real, rural Thailand that Ben had longed to see. He had left behind the artificial worlds of Bangkok and backpacking and ahead of him lay new and authentic experiences of Thailand.

After some time they reached the outskirts of a town. It was still dark and there was nobody about. When Fon leaned forward and spoke to the driver, he drew into the side of the road and stopped.

‘Okay Ben, get out,' she said.

‘What are we doing? Where are we?'

‘Nang Rong. Go shopping.'

‘Shopping? Now? In the middle of the night?'

‘Yes, now. Not ask questions!'

Ben obediently got out without a word and stared around at the bleak concrete streets of Nang Rong.

23

Fon and Jinda climbed out of the pick-up and walked briskly down a side alley towards the Nang Rong market with Ben following on behind. There was just a hint of the dawn as they reached the open-air market, a tightly-packed clutter of wooden stalls covered with grubby awnings. After the rain the air was heavy with humidity, the ground a dark soup of liquid mud. Despite the early hour, the market was alive with activity, the faces of the buyers lit by the harsh light of the bulbs swinging from the stalls. Ben picked his way through the puddles, trying not to submerge his sandals in the filthy water.

The market stalls were weighed down with vegetables and fruit, few of which Ben could identify, and with fish which were still gasping and squirming. Fon chose a live fish to be collected later and bought meat, vegetables and herbs which she passed back to Jinda to carry. She attracted many sidelong glances, a self-confident young woman with her six foot foreign boyfriend in tow. As she went among the stalls, she freely sampled the fried insects and wriggly bamboo grubs.

‘Here Ben, you eat,' she said as she popped a grub into his mouth with a wicked twinkle. Ben bit on it and it filled his mouth with a tasteless doughy mush.

Jinda and Ben were soon laden with plastic bags full of food. They went back for the fish, now cleaned and de-scaled, and waded through the sludge back to the road. The pick-up was waiting and they drove on through the town and out into the dark countryside. After some time, a glow of light appeared on the horizon and for the first time Ben could glimpse the endless rice fields, scattered houses of wood and concrete and the occasional school or police post as they sped along the dead straight road.

‘Soon come to village. Not far now,' said Fon.

A few minutes later the driver slowed down and pulled over onto the verge in front of a cluster of houses set back from the road. So this is it at last, thought Ben as he climbed down from the cab and looked around at a world that was dripping and dismal.

He followed Fon and Jinda as they crossed a slippery wooden plank over a drainage ditch and walked towards a small house from which an elderly woman was emerging. It was Fon's Mama, a tiny woman in a sarong, with a weathered face the same broad shape as those of her daughters. The greetings were low-key and the moment casual and easy as if this sort of thing happened every day. All Ben could do was to smile awkwardly and look around while everyone loudly talked about him in Thai.

The tiny single-storey house was dwarfed by a tamarind tree and by the larger house next door. It was built of concrete blocks skimmed in cement, with wooden doors and window frames all unpainted. A bamboo pole fixed to the roof was topped with a television aerial and ceramic pots stood under the eaves to catch rainwater for drinking.

He was glad when at last Fon took him inside, adding their shoes to the collection outside the door. A narrow room with white strip-lighting ran the length of the house to a cooking area and washroom at the back. On the right were doors to two small bedrooms, each almost filled by a double mattress laid on the floor and draped with mosquito nets. As he looked in, he wondered where they would all sleep that night.

The floor of the main room was covered with thin blue lino but there was hardly any furniture. The sole focus of the room was some rattan shelving with a television taking pride of place. On the top shelf was a ceramic Buddha still in its cellophane wrapping, a vase of artificial lotus flowers and a picture of King Chulalongkorn in a frame decorated with shells. A split-bamboo bed, a sack of rice in the corner and a spittoon half full of red betel spit were the only other things in the room.

Fon showed Ben through to the kitchen which was bare except for an electric rice-cooker and wok, a twin-tub washing machine and a glassfronted food cabinet, its feet standing in bowls of water to repel the ants. As they went out of the kitchen door at the back of the house, it was now almost light. Ben could see that this was the place for washing the dishes; just a muddy space with a duckboard, a clay pot for water and a blue plastic basin.

The small piece of ground at the back of the house was overgrown and neglected. Fon led him through the tangled vegetation and showed him banana and papaya trees, ginger, galangal and taro plants and a vine of pepper leaves used for chewing with betel nut. Beyond the wilderness, the vegetable gardens and rice fields began. Neighbours were already going to work in the fields, some of them casting curious glances at the house where the visitors had just arrived. One, an elderly man with a battered face and a wicked grin came across with a couple of bottles of beer and offered them to Ben who politely refused. He could think of nothing worse at that time of the morning.

‘So the house is almost new?' he asked Fon.

‘Yes, I build it for Mama,' she said proudly. ‘Old one no good … roof leak, wood broken. New house expensive … one window twelve hundred baht, door eight hundred. Mama think she have good daughter. I die if she work like people on Koh Samet.'

Ben thought of the little old lady who flogged up and down the beach every day selling som tam. He could not imagine Fon's mother carrying those heavy loads.

‘Come, Ben, see buffalo. Baby born yesterday,' said Fon, her face lighting up. She took him round the side of the house through the mud to the buffalo wallow where a tiny pink calf was suckling a black buffalo cow which gazed at them head down, her massive horns swept back behind flapping ears.

‘Wow, a real live buffalo. I must get my camera,' said Ben, rushing back into the house. As he photographed Fon standing in front of the animals, she made great play
of
the
farang
getting excited about something so ordinary.

‘Why you like buffalo? Not have, England?'

‘No, we only have cows.'

‘Smile buffalo.
Farang
take your photo!'

‘And what are the buffaloes for? For milk?' asked Ben.

‘No! You joking me!' Fon laughed at his stupidity. ‘Buffalo pull cart, plough rice field, make manure … and for meat. But now, have small tractor. Before many buffalo, but soon all gone, soon no more buffalo.'

‘So you had a buffalo cart?'

‘Yes, I ride behind Papa, take vegetables to market, carry rice. No have cars before. Never go very far … this our village so we stay here, happy family.'

‘The buffalo looks dangerous.'

‘No, not dangerous! When small, Fon ride buffalo, have race. Beat buffalo hard with stick … always want to win. Sometimes fall off, come home black face. Papa angry little bit, but no problem … he love me.'

‘And what's that wooden building over there, the small one with its floor above the ground,' asked Ben.

‘That one, rice barn where we keep the rice before. Now sell the rice and take it away. Very different today,' said Fon.

‘Yes, everything changes.'

‘But still we have Buddha … temple not change so much. Today, Ben, we go wat with Mama, take food for monks. You come too.'

They went back into the house where Fon's mother was filling some jars with food for the monks. She, Fon and Ben then set off together, crossing the road and walking through the dewy grass. The temple was a modern concrete building with a red corrugated roof in Thai style, surrounded by mango trees and betel palms. Next to it was an open-sided pavilion of rough-hewn wood with a flight of steps leading up to a high wooden floor. Ben, still feeling bleary from the overnight bus ride and suffering mild culture shock, followed the others up the steps, kicking off his shoes.

They joined four or five middle-aged ladies who were watching a group of saffron-robed monks with shaven heads sitting cross-legged in a circle on a raised platform, silently eating from enamel bowls. Fon motioned Ben to sit down on the floor with the women. While the monks were eating, the women waited quietly, only occasionally exchanging words, and sometimes holding their hands together in prayer.

When the monks had finished eating, the women removed their dishes and, sitting round on the floor, shared the fish, meat and sticky rice that remained. There was lots of low-key banter and joking, most of it directed towards Ben. The women gave him shy looks, asking questions through Fon and teasing him about his capacity for chilli. When they had eaten enough, the women sat back and chewed betel nut wrapped in a wad of pepper leaves, the red pulp visible on their lips. Ben noticed them occasionally rocking forward on their haunches, their heads down, as if bowing to a deity. But no, they were spitting the bright red residue through the gaps in the floor boards down onto the earth below.