Chapter 13 Doi Suthep

Speeding to Bubble I met Yaa inside, dancing until two and moving to Spicy where I ate spaghetti.  It wasn’t bad, cooked just right with a rich tomato sauce, there could have been more meat but it was nice just to taste something from home. I always did my best to adapt to local diets but my body always craved what it knew, especially mornings, bread and coffee was what I craved then. Seeing Yaa was staying till the end I turned to her.

“I have to go, training tomorrow.”

“You not mind I stay out?”

I shook my head.

“I come your room later.”

I lay half awake that night, glancing at the clock imagining where she might be.  The previous night she’d arrived just after five but when the cock began to crow at five thirty she still hadn’t appeared.  Where was she? back at Nen’s in a drunken coma or with someone else. I stared at the door, walking to the window whenever a bike revved into the car park. 

Convinced I wouldn’t be seeing her I made my way to training and distracted myself with a ten kilometre run.  It was a real grind now, plodding down the endless highway, I chatted to Danish Thomas to pass the time.

“So, you going to fight?”

I knew he’d fought before and from what I’d seen he was useful.  Tall and muscular, he mimicked the style of Mohammed Ali, low hands, body swaying from side to side to make his sparring partners miss.

“I’m fighting at Loi Krathong.”

“Loi Krathong?”

“One of the big festivals, there’ll be building a ring down at Thapae Gate, should have T.V. cameras.”

That sounded interesting, getting on Thai T.V. doing the national sport would make you a semi-celebrity. 

“How long are you planning to stay?”

“My first time was a year, maybe the same again, I’m planning to open a gym in Canada.”

“Yeah?”

“My friends over there now, once he finds a place I’ll join him.”

Slowing his pace he complained of food poisoning and waved me on alone.

After training I decided to try breakfast at the place I’d read about, Bake & Bite.  Downtown and a little beyond the night bizarre it was a pleasant café, a counter stocked with fresh bread and cakes. I ordered coffee and cinnamon raison bagels reading the Bangkok Post as I munched.  It was a good paper, not for the quality of the writing, but for the content.  Offering daily advice on living a good life, the news was still there but it talked about Buddhism and the King's vision of a sustainable economy.  The ideas fitted my mine, journalists always talking about economic growth, but what about people, we had to bring the people back.

One of the articles that day followed a business in Bangkok where workers were encouraged to train in professions which appealed to their personalities rather than seeing themselves at the company in the future.  It talked of developing talents rather than grafting people onto corporate goals.  That was where it was different at home, individuals submerged in giant companies they’d never envisioned being a part of out of.  It was a matter of finding a place to fit in and I’d never found one, never found a place personalized enough to make me feel I could thrive.  Finishing the article I moved to the bookstore in search of inspirational reading, browsing the popular novels and stopping at Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  It was a title I’d heard about years ago and nearly picked out a few times but today it felt right. Returning to read in my room I was hooked, back with the bigger questions, back with philosophy, another individual's attempt to explain life and where the meaning lay.   

  

Attending afternoon training Danish Thomas taught me how to skip and once satisfied I had enough to keep practising I moved to smash pads with Den.  That was one of the only highlights now, being pushed to the limit, roughed up with the butt of a pad or a sweep of the legs.  As the second round closed I leaned against the ropes and lifted my head to see Yaa pointing to one of the boxers ‘Look sexy’ she mouthed.

Finishing up, I took her back to my room and lay beside her after making love.

“Where you go last night?” I asked.

“Go Spicy, get too drunk, I stay apartment Nen.”

I didn’t know if I believed her but at that moment, with her in my arms, I didn’t care.

The next morning I left her in bed, training and returning to find her still sleeping.  It was how I’d wanted it, sharing one another’s company, no expectation about the future, no skirting around the edges.  In a sense it was more honest than any relationship I’d been in, no holding back, no subliminal messages, just taking and receiving exactly what we wanted.  Leaving to meet Nen I arranged to meet her that night.  My book filling every spare moment I read of the human body needing maintenance, change the oil, check the breaks, eat, sleep. I read until the phone rang.

“Paul, can come get me, I have problem with ex-boyfriend.”

I met her sitting on her suitcase near Bubble, she looked like a hippie thumbing a lift to San Francisco and by ten we were living as a married couple.  The wardrobe suddenly adorned with petite tops and jeans, a row of make up and deodorants scattered across my desktop.  Lying in bed I asked her what had happened.

“Ex-boyfriend come Nen’s apartment.”

“He’s in Chiangmai?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you leave?”

“He not let me.”

Doing the nightly rounds of Bubble and Spicy we sat until four.

“We go,” Yaa said leading me to my bike. 

“You see my ex-boyfriend?” She said. 

I’d chatted to a French guy sat opposite, he’d been overweight, a puffy face covered by a red baseball cap.

“The guy with the baseball cap?”

“He want me to go back to him, but I never do, hurt too much, cannot love again,” she said.

Riding back up Huay Kaew Road with the silhouette of the mountain ahead of us I could see the temple lights shimmering at the peak.

“I want go Doi Suthep tomorrow?” she whispered.  

“The temple?”

“Yes.”

Stopping to buy milk and cookies she added a comic and we returned to the room. 

“What’s the book?” I enquired as she read.

“Story, give advice on boy and girl.”

“You read much?”

“Sometime.”

Finishing the third of my almond cookies she looked at me.

“Should not eat so much,” she said grabbing what remained of my stomach.

After training the next day I again returned to find her sleeping, edging under the sheets and noticing pale white stretch marks for the first time.

“Have you ever been pregnant?” I asked as she dozed.

“Long time ago, baby die inside,” she replied with her head still buried in the pillow.

“Your French boyfriend?”

“Thai, when I eighteen, I fall down.”

“We’re not using a condom, is that a problem?”

“Not problem, very difficult to have baby after baby die inside.”

We rode her yellow bike to Doi Suthep that afternoon.  Stopping off to wire money to her family in Bangkok she raced up the mountain like a daredevil racer. 

“Hey slow down,” I called as she threw us into another bend.

“Have to say Ya Jar, cha cha.”

“Ya Jar, cha cha.”

She shook the bike from side to side and upped the pace.  Closing my eyes I imagined I was on amusement ride, strapped in with rigorous safety tests creating only the illusion of danger, but it wasn’t like that in Thailand, Aids, cigarettes, accidents, it was all real. 

Pulling into a car park she dismounted and skipped across the road, peddlers hawking paintings and trinkets as a pair of buses waited for their tourists.  Passing through the shops we reached a steep procession of steps guarded on either side by green serpents.

“You carry me?” she said.

I gave a tired look

“If you want to be strong boxer, you carry me.”

I hoisted her to my back and began the climb. 

“You like carry me?” she said kissing my neck.  It wasn’t the effort I’d anticipated, my toned legs working like pistons. An old lady smiled at the romantic gesture and lowering her at the top I gave my body a moment to adjust and watched as she disappeared inside. 

Following into the temple a huge golden cone rose at the centre, we were in a courtyard, a covered path following the walls and punctuated by alcoves of Buddha statues. 

“This my Buddha,” she said stopping and kneeling on the red carpet.

She moved forward completing three prostrations and clasped her hands in silent prayer.  From the side she looked at peace with the world, somehow incomprehensible how the same girl spent her nights chasing the bright lights and drinking alcohol until it took her mind.  Opening her eyes she reached forward and picked up a box of sticks, shaking until one dropped with a clink.  I’d seen the same in China, a horoscope, each numbered stick corresponding to a slip.  Moving to a set of pigeon holes she removed hers.

“What does it say?”

“You first.”

“What?”

“Do the same.”

I kneeled and imitated her, shaking until the number eight dropped to the tiles.

‘Medium luck, must be careful, could go either way’ ‘Great, typical’, I thought,

no long instruction telling me what to do with my life, no good luck, just a shitty ambivalent message’. 

She handed me hers. 

‘Very good luck, you cannot make bad decisions at this time.’

I hated to admit it, but the Buddha seemed to have it spot on.  I really didn’t know what I was doing and Yaa did.  She had a confidence in everything she was doing, the kind which drew people to your cause and made them feel they were there to support you.  I always wondered how people ever reached that point.  For me there were so many variables; the family I’d been born in, the place I’d grown up, how I earned a living.

Continuing our circuit a photographer leaned into our path.

“Want photo?” 

Yaa beginning a discussion all I could think was ‘I’m not spending'.  It was difficult working to a budget, seeing my money gently trickle towards zero.  That’s why I protected it, money meant freedom, time away from mundane jobs, time for thinking, time for exploring. 

“O.K., we have photo,” she said.

“Come on this is expensive,” I protested. “I can take these pictures.”

“I pay.”

She grabbed my arm, dragging me in front of the Buddhist stuppa. Having done my best to smile naturally I peered into the viewfinder.  I looked like a towering giant next to her, I wasn’t tall, but without heels she was less than five feet two.  Yaa taking a ticket from the photographer he vanished and we strolled back through the gate, turning left towards a balcony. 

A huge veranda paved in white marble it ended with a balustrade, the mountain falling on a cushion of trees beneath us.  I could see the red walls of city in the distance, the shopping mall, my boxing camp hidden beneath the trees.

“God this is beautiful,” I said as Yaa stared out like a general surveying her army.

“I buy house in Chiangmai,” she declared.

“When?”

“When have money, first buy car then buy house, big house near the river.”

She seemed able to do anything, steadily managing her way towards the things she wanted.  I was envious that I couldn’t do the same, that I lived in constant fear of being subjected to another tortuous job, another unenlightened boss, forced to live with my father to avoid paying rent and save for another bout of travelling.

Continuing around the temple we passed a smoking monk and entered an open sided coffee shop, half a dozen tables with thick oak tops and a fridge stocked with ice-cream.

“You want anything?” I asked.

“Ice milk”

Ordering hers and taking ice coffee we sat beneath a flowering trellis. 

“What you doing tonight?”

“I go see Nen, not see her so much this time, she think I bad friend.”

“You can’t be with Nen all the time.”

“Since I come Chiangmai I stay with you nearly every night, Nen miss me.  Soon I bring son to Chiangmai, he like Nen.  I tell you already, my brother's son, but he call me mum.”

I mused over that ‘My brother’s son but he call me mum’. Was it her son? It was one of the things you had to accept in Thailand, you never quite knew.  What she did, where she lived, it was up to her to tell it as she pleased, fiction and fact mingled together as it suited.  In a way it was what I did too, able to insert and delete details from my life in the knowledge no facts were checkable. 

“So, what do you do in Bangkok? I mean, if you’re not working?”

“I tell you already, stay apartment, listen music, watch porno.  I go shopping, but shopping every day get very bored, so I come Chiang Mai.”

I could picture her now, days wondering palatial malls trying things on until she found what she was looking for and I could see how she got bored. 

“Soon I go to Pai,” she announced.

“Pai?”

“North from Chiangmai, very beautiful can have party every day, no city in Pai.  You want come with me?”

“I can’t, I need to train,” I replied instantly. 

She scowled but I wouldn’t be sucked into her world.  It was one of the things I’d become good at, separating what was important from what wasn’t.  Giving up on my plan to join The Legion I was in limbo, bringing together a new plan and until I had it training would be my anchor, a discipline to keep me from the bars.  Joining her world would have been fun for a while but reality would have caught up quickly, the bank empty, me on a plane home, her already in the arms of someone else. 

“When you leaving?”

“Go back to Bangkok this week, come back for my Birthday, then I go Pai.”

“When’s your birthday?”

“Next week, nineteen.”

Making our way down the steps she led me back across the road and veered away from the place we’d left the bike. 

“Where we going?”

“Get photo.” 

More stalls selling tourist tack she browsed through a pile of t-shirts and headed for the photos, the girl in the booth passing two prints in a cellophane wrapper. 

“I give you one, I keep the other,” she said.

As I looked at the prints she was dressed casually, yellow fleece top, jeans but I could still picture that black dress. 

“Shall we get some dinner?”

“O.K., I look shop then we go,”

She spent the five minutes scrutinizing the stalls and picked out a gold scarf.  “You think I look sophisticated?” she asked wrapping it around her neck.  I did, as if everything she touched became infected by her beauty.  It was a skill to be like that, to know exactly what worked and what didn’t.  You had to have trained your eye, tried enough outfits until it became instinctive. Turning to the assistant, she grabbed an identical scarf in black and paid for both. 

Back on the bike she turned off the engine and we coasted down the mountain, a cool breeze running through my clothes as I kissed her hair. I directed her to ‘The Boat’ restaurant and entered to find it crammed with university students and families feeding well fed children.  Taking a table in the middle I scanned the menu settling on American fried rice topped with an egg. 

“What would you like?” I asked.

“Papaya salad.”

Catching the attention of a waitress I placed the order. 

“How you getting to Bangkok?”

“I fly.”

“You always fly?”

“Not always, but very cheap.”

It seemed she operated in a different world when it came to money.  As if she’d decided she’d only accept a certain standard of life and by simply making that decision it had all come to be.  The food arriving I tucked into my greasy rice, watching as she moved her food from one side of the plate to the other.  I’d observed over the last two days she’d not eaten anything since I’d picked her up from her suitcase.  When I’d first arrived in Thailand I’d thought the girls were naturally slim, a lucky gene which let them eat whatever they liked but it wasn’t like that they read the magazines, idolized the stars, and they didn’t eat.

“Only eat when need to eat,” she said. “When not hungry, not eat.”

At home I’d been brought up to eat three square meals a day but her idea seemed to make more sense.  If your going to be doing something energetic you needed fuel but if all you do is sit in a chair all day you don’t need the food.  It was intelligent eating, listening to your body and giving it exactly what it needed.  

Finishing the meal she returned me to my guesthouse and came to say goodbye.  Priscilla was just leaving my room, a dumpy receptionist come cleaner who’d enjoyed telling me I was fat when I’d first arrived.  It had acted as a marker, the day she’d said ‘pom’ thin, insead of ‘u-on’ fat I’d known I was making progress. I gave her a smile and closed the door behind us.

“I can leave my things here?” Yaa asked.

“Sure, do whatever you like.”

“When I come back for my Birthday, you can pick me up from airport?”

I unthinkingly agreed and laid on the bed watching as she folded a few outfits into a neat pile.  She turned from the mirror and soundlessly crawled across the bed.

“I want to feel you inside me.”

After she left I called Gunner asking him to meet me in fifteen minutes and left the door ajar as I collected money from beneath the bed.

“Come in buddy,” I said as I heard him knock.

I looked up to see Priscilla, eyes falling to the bed, the freshly changed sheets damp with bodily fluid.  Crossing the room she slapped me playfully on the arm and continued to push me around until Gunner appeared.  Walking to the garden I filled him in on my embarrassing moment and asked him about his week.

“Ah, it’s been good, Off took me to buy a suit.  She showed me a good Chinese tailor in the old city.”

“Expensive?”

“About seven thousand baht for a suit and two shirts, the quality looks good”

“And tonight?”

“She’s coming after work.”

“Going out?”

“No, I think we’ll stay in the room.”

“You like this girl, don’t you?”

“Ah, it’s Thailand, at home I’d never do like this.”

He’d pleased me with the relaxation of his morality.  Moving from an ‘I only sleep with a girl I know’ guy to an ‘If it’s available I’ll take it’. 

“So, how much longer are you here?”

“A week.”

“Going to miss this place, aren’t you?”

He looked on tipping his cigarette.

“Thailand is best left in Thailand.” 

“I don’t think you mean that, can you imagine yourself never coming back?”

“Ah, I don’t know, maybe when I have a wife I’ll bring her here.”

I knew he didn’t mean that.  All the fun we’d had, had been permitted exactly because we were single.  I pitied the guys with their girlfriends, bound to play the tourist, wandering around town mooching in shops or booking onto tours.  No spontaneous nights out, no dragging a girl home to bed.  More than that I wondered what they thought about Thai girls, sat with their dumpy girlfriends surrounded by some of the world’s most beautiful women. 

Even the idea of being a tourist seemed foreign now.  On my honeymoon I remembered telling my wife I was bored as we sat by the pool and it had been boring going to the beach, eating too much, drinking at night.  When I was abroad now I was exploring, living in a place where I could take time to look at the things which interested me.  That’s why the idea of a normal life no longer fitted, four weeks holiday a year and weekends for shopping didn’t leave time for the things I wanted to do.  It was a trade off, stability in return for your time.  It was like poker, a decision to stick or twist.  Stick with a life that looked secure or twist, travel the world, study its thinkers, contemplate your reason for being.  A form of self trust in a way, a belief that things would still work out but an agreement with yourself that you wouldn’t settle until you’d seen life whole.

“Well, you go ahead buddy, but I don’t think I’ll be joining you.”

“So, how about you?  What are you going to do when I leave?”

“Ah, well, I’ve got my girl now so I guess I’m off the market.”

“Gareth might be a good to spend time with.”

Gareth had arrived a fortnight earlier a six foot Londoner with a bald scalp and hulking shoulders.  His second spell at the camp, on his first day he’d stood in the ring, ‘Well who’s up for a bit of Sizzler, eighty baht to eat as much as you like’ he’d invited.  My first reaction had been to consider him an arrogant prick, but on reflection the camp had needed people like him.  People with the ideas and the ability to make things happen, he’d rallied a group and we’d had a good night. 

“Yeah, Gareth might be a good bet.”

Being Gunner's last Friday we decided to head for the fights, stocking up on whiskey before we entered we were watching Ronnie the young Dane.  Just nineteen he’d been relentless since his arrival, a lithe figure, washboard stomach, having already won one bout I was interested to see how he’d fare.    

“Evening chaps.”

I looked up to see Gareth had come to join us in the cheap seats.

“Anyone want some noodles?” he offered.

One of the boxers accepting he came to sit beside us.

“Just had a great moment there, a tip for you boys, never pay to get in.”

“How’d you manage that?” I asked.

“Keep this to yourselves, but I’ve got a little strategy.  Turn up late, nine thirty’s about right, get yourself a beer and a bit of food outside and walk straight in.  The guy on the door's had a few by then.”

That sounding like a plan I resolved to put it to the test on my next visit and I also decided I’d found my next wing man.

In the ring Ronnie had been matched with a sharper opponent than I’d seen others fighting but his fitness came through.  The Thai too slow, Ronnie began landing consistently, stretching his long legs in the teep and throwing punches down at his shorter opponent.

I could see he wanted to knock him out, it was the brashness of youth and a dose of Western pride. The problem lay in his power, as many shots as he landed his opponent didn’t look hurt.  Going to a points decision in favour of the Thai our camp jeered derision and Gunner leaving to meet Off I ended the night early, waking at three to the ringing of my bedside phone.

“I can come see you or you have another girl?” Yaa said.

“Of course you can, where are you?”

“Downstairs.”

A minute later she was in bed beside me. 

“I have problem, go Nen’s bar, girl think I working girl.”

She took a minute choosing her words.

“This girl older than me, think she smart, but I not want her to know I smarter than she.  I listen to what she say and say nothing.  She not like, want fighting with me, want me talk.”

The more time I spent with her the more I was touched by her ways, acting with foresight, each time she spoke she already knew the outcome.  I wondered how she’d become so smart.  The only problem being she was almost too good at everything she did.  Making work a minor element in her life the rest of the time she was destroying herself smoking, drinking, driving like a maniac.  But I wondered if that was that was such a bad thing. If you did more living in a short time than most people could in a lifetime, saw things more clearly by twenty one than most people ever would, was it necessary to prolong it?

Training the next morning I returned to an empty room and read through to the afternoon.  My book was tying up loose ends, the author likening the process of reflecting on life to staring at the sun, needing to look away to avoid going blind.  It was how I’d found philosophy, something which enriched life, but something to be taken in small bites.  He talked of society as a higher form of evolution than man, us serving the system rather than the other way around and that seemed right, people having to make themselves useful without ever seeing the grander plan, society like an organism feeding off us.  Individual creativity was largely confined to hobbies now and we accepted it, because, I guess because Henry Ford had reckoned on it being a good idea, the production line replacing the craftsman.  It had given people everything they needed; oversized homes, petrol guzzling cars, a convenience to combat every inconvenience.   It had annihilated the individual of course, stripped him of his humanity, but that was progress.

Pirsig talked of the need for the majority to do the mundane to make things work and that was how it had to be.  The hippie movement fizzling out because they’d wanted total freedom, but life could never be like that.  Someone had to do the mundane, there had to be order.  In the same way Chinese Communism had fizzled out for having nothing but order.   Life had to be a balance between order and freedom and somewhere in-between came the beauty.  

He went on to describe evolution, caveman to farmer, farmer to trader, the usual state of mankind a plateau, from time to time a breakthrough idea lifting us to a new level, the world moving from flat to round, apples becoming gravity.  He called the process static latching.  Individuals with new ideas often outcasts but if an idea had value eventually it stuck, then society leapt to a new level, everyone adjusting and plateauing again, things always becoming faster, the gaps between breakthroughs growing shorter. 

Lying on my bed I shut the book and lay back allowing the new ideas to conjoin with old.  Plato, the Buddha, Van Pirsig we were all on the same path, chasing answers to life's questions, the best way to go through it, searching out the meaning.  I thought back to reading Lin Yutang in China, how he’d talked about living life as a poem, that seemed to be the key, to balance the act of living with meaning.  Work when you had to, be as just as you could be, spend the rest of the time drinking, eating, dancing, boxing, sleeping.  I slept for half an hour and woke with an idea of my own; perhaps we were ready for another leap.  Perhaps it was time for the individual to wrestle something back from the machine.  For someone to write something about how we’d gone too far with getting things in order, how we needed to relax.