My first entry on our class site two years earlier.  In memory of Sally Smisson.  The sequel to "The Story of Erik", my latest entry just a few minutes ago.  Hope you find both interesting.

A healthy diet of Kipling, Conrad, and Maugham, and Orwell gracefully contributes to a separation from the local norms in a swirl of wanderlust, finding one's soul wedged against a bulwark along the gunwales of an old rusting freighter looking eastward into blaring heat, the flat baked surface of an ancient Indian Ocean stretching far to the horizon, its outward splay a vast emerald quiver of deep blue rivulets and glittering white sequins, rhythmic solar waves licking its gentle rise and fall. The lure of the Orient, its pulling attraction tearing and burning deeply into the peeling veneer of the human fabric.

An improbable sojourn losing oneself along familiar paths, reaching into the basket of memory facing one's own Patna, slipping along silvery channels off verdant Far Eastern shores where gilded wats and gleaming stupas sparkle in the sunlight, their glint glaring, silhouetted against a backdrop of lush tropical green melded into cloudless china blue.

Kipling's dreamy little Burmese lady calling her British soldier back to her, she of the "yaller" petticoat and little green cap. As intoxicating as the yellow smoke of opium, as tenderly addictive as the sweet scent of jasmine wafting through fronds of coconut palms and banana trees.

So I find myself in a familiar open-air bar off Pattaya's Second Road one evening after an off-season downpour, the hissing steam vexing pedestrians and motorists alike, the heat of the day given brief respite before the shroud of stickiness wraps itself again around the human elements within the cozy confines, the brood of imbibers embracing their dampened spirits with such local elixirs as Chang Beer, Sang Som Rum, and Bombay Sapphire Gin.

The night is dark and misty, the traffic slowed by the downpour, the streets teeming with pedestrians and motorists, herds of roaring vehicles, motos, trucks, sedans, the constant grind of ubiquitous songthaews impatiently seeking lanes to free themselves up to make their next fare, screeching and lurching, then racing on at frightening clips with intrepid tourists clinging to their rail for dear mercy.

Water is overflowing the street gutters and steady drops beat down noisily onto the pavement from the bar awning and broken pipes. The mist is seeping inward under the flap of the awning like a creeping fog, and from my bar stool faces fall into shadow, blurry and undefined, the barroom becoming impressionistic blotches of color and grey.

Under the glow of my bar lamp I sip on a cold gin and tonic, bittersweet to the taste, fingering a green wafer-thin lime wheel, pushing it deeper into sparkling shaved ice, and trailing an S along the condensation down the side of my tall crystal glass (gowl yowl).

Near me, at a large elongated black table covered with bright red linen sit three peculiar chaps, aged men of girth, surely in their seventies, men whose eyes are deep-set, beady, somewhat forlorn, all three with weathered faces and bushy grey mustaches, balding with wild stringy grey hair growing long and untamed down their damp tropical shirts, yet men with a sense of honor, countenances with the look of journey, and the confidence evoked from long nights of soul searching, cavernous concerns for the plights of their comrades. Their penetrating voices fill the air with tales of old and their demeanor is brash and brazen. They appear slightly mao (intoxicated), and they ramble on for the better part of an hour laughing and stoking the humidity with pokers of grandeur and whim.

There is talk of Laos, Burma, Cuba, Bolivia. "Largest plane I ever saw. Russian transport, you know? Watched it land, watched the Burmese unload it--took all day, tons and tons of the stuff--Kalashnikovs, rockets, shells, cannon. The unloading was endless, but then came the loading. Miles of the stuff--sacks of opium piled up high and carried by tractors throughout the night and into the morning. I know--I sat and watched, me and Jimbo. Hot as the dickens, sweat and bugs, and the worry about being spotted. Jimbo has a limp, you know? We smoked a little reefer and stuck to the track. Don't want no more of Burma. Rather be in in Laos. Like the Hmongs--married five, you know, though not officially. "

I could be in old Singapore at the Raffles' Long Bar listening to captains talking about tales of pirates of the Malacca Straights, punkahs putting movement into the still air, the steaminess unabated. Or the famous saloon in Bangkok, the Bamboo Bar at the Oriental-- maroon sarongs, gold piping, smiling faces, olive skin aglow under gas lanterns, lacquered ceiling fans abuzz, broad green ferns rising from porcelain planters, bartenders in white dinner jackets, swirls of grey cigar smoke in concert with delicate swills of fine brandy, snifters and cheroots held together in the same hand, patrons entering slowly from the adjoining parlor after a rubber of bridge.

Then I see an old friend, missing for all these months without a sound, Erik from Stockholm, a troubled Swede who carries painfully the heavy weight of guilt for the loss of his family. He was off with friends and eventually a young Thai lady, some ten clips away in her apartment in Phuket Town, that Christmas night of 2004 while his family snoozed in a guest house on Pattong Beach on the island of Phuket. His lovely blond wife and two towhead kids, a little boy and girl, lie lost beneath the sands of Phuket as the fury of the tsunamis left no traces.

Seems that Erik elected to stay in Thailand, taking on a teaching position in Pattani along the Malay Peninsula, a troubled region, one of three southern provinces where Muslim separatists terrorize the locals-- Buddhist monks, soldiers, policemen, and teachers being favorite targets for the machete, bullet, or bomb.

Erik seeks refuge within Thailand, within his heart, and nestling into the realm of bravery may be the only way for my tortured friend to push his way to some salvation within his soul.  He fled Sweden, unable to bend away from the haunts of family and friends as word spread, but even in imagination his demons drove him eastward again. I may well read one day that the King of Thailand will honor the young Swede with a ceremonial funeral pyre for a fallen hero whose courage carried the day for the hope of Thailand. Erik would like that.

The night drifts on, and in through the rent in the mist come the calculating, the ephemeral, brief flashes of fancy, a Thai beauty, the scent of jasmine. The innocuous swagger in the night fits neatly between the folds of the creeping fog, the elixirs a warming glow of fortitude, a resounding overture unto those who are enamored by fate. The gin is humming as a lovely Thai lady sings the metaphorical lyrics of "Hotel California." It really is true, you know. "You can check-out anytime you like, but you can never leave."

"By the old Sanctuary of Truth, lookin' lazy at the sea, there's a Thai girl a settin', and I know she thinks o' me."

From Thailand-- 'What a lovely place, what a lovely face....

Dan(ny)