A Lucky Break Part IV

In which my Thai odyssey continues and I buy a ruby ring, visit a prison and say a sad goodbye

Chao told me about the times he’d spent in a cell as a result of his Red Shirt activities.

Here’s the link from Wikipedia if you want to know more about this political movement.

I’d heard of the Red Shirts, but once I started hanging out with Chao and going to rallies, my learning curve was steep. The police didn’t like Red Shirts and Chao said he might have to ‘go away’ for a while if they started to watch him again like they’d done in the past. He often looked over his shoulder.

I got sick with a cold and needed to take a few days off work from the rehab to look after myself. I felt miserable, but Chao brought me food and made sure I had enough bottled water to drink — the water out of a tap could be dodgy.

I noticed that part of the culture at the rehab was for people to turn up to work while they were sick, but that was not my style.

Then I broke my toe.

We were visiting a beautiful Buddhist temple out in the country and I missed a tiny step and stubbed my big right toe. It was agony.

Chao took me to a hospital nearby where the first question from the young Thai doctor was: ‘What do you want?’

I wondered if he thought I was just another drug-seeking Westerner.

‘An X-ray would be good,’ I replied, a little curtly.

Eventually the pain went away but I was in plaster and had to get about awkwardly on crutches. Given the rehab was a maze of uneven paths and steep stairs, I called in to excuse myself from work.

I’d sensed this treatment center wasn’t exactly what you’d call kosher but I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

I got fired by email.

My viscera churned and old feelings of fear and abandonment kicked in. I called Chao. He brought comfort food.

I was devastated but a saving grace was that they would pay me out of my three-month contract which amounted to quite a bit of baht, but then tried to diddle me out of several thousand which I had to negotiate hard for.

There was nothing for it but accept my fate and swallow my pride. I’d chosen to work for a bunch of cowboys, and got the cowboy treatment.

So we went travelling, me and Chao. We caught trains and buses and sometimes hired a private car.

Visiting an historic site one day, a Danish woman traveler who I’d got into conversation with asked if Chao was my husband.

‘No!’ he shot back quick as a flash. ‘She my boss.’

So there it was.

Another time when the landlady was visiting my apartment and Chao was there, I noticed she was acting very in a very cold way towards me, and afterwards asked Chao what he thought was going on,

‘She think we have affair,’ he said, looking downcast. I guess we’d gotten pretty close and our body language didn’t lie. I still hadn’t touched him; not even a hug that I craved.

I said I’d like to buy a ruby and have it made into a ring, so Chao introduced me to his friend, a gem dealer — an interesting American ex-pat who’d washed up in Northern Thailand after he had finished his tour of duty in Vietnam.

He was a self-confessed alcoholic and charming with it, showing me his many designs for rings and assuring me he’d get me a good stone from Burma, which is famous for its rubies.

We had to travel up to near the Burma border to get it; that was a good trip.

A bridge over a river was the border between Thailand and Burma, and I walked across that busy bridge so I could say I’d been to Burma. On the other side I saw a bear in a tiny cage and told Chao I felt sad because it was cruel.

He used the international sign for shush because he didn’t want to offend any sensitive Burmese ears that might be listening. I did as I was told but offered up a little prayer for the poor bear.

The ruby ring, as it turned out, was a lot smaller than I’d expected and I realized that the American ‘gem dealer’ had probably made a tidy profit at my expense. I shrugged and decided to love the wee ring anyway, which my jeweler mate back home, later, said was ‘flawed’.

Oh well. I still love it and it reminds me of an adventure.

One memorable trip was to a floating restaurant in the middle of a lake for lunch, a feast of huge fish cooked in coconut milk; the fabulous dishes kept coming one after the other. Afterwards, very full, I had to have a wee lie down on the gently undulating wooden boards that floated on the calm lake water.

While I was still working at the rehab, one of my colleagues offered me the hire of a motorbike and so I went about learning how to ride one. Chao spent hours patiently teaching me how to ride it, round and round various empty carparks and through winding roads.

I never really got the hang of the bloody thing, but bravely set out one morning and rode it to the rehab, feeling proud of myself for remembering the way and staying upright.

On the trip home, I braked just in time to avoid hitting a wall — something about a righthand turn wasn’t coming easily — and it gave me the fright of my life. And a massive migraine that took days to recover from.

So I gave up motorbike riding as a bad job and gratefully went back to my daily drives with Chao, relieved that my reliable buddy was still there for me. I was fond of his gentle company.

The last trip we did together took us away for a couple of weeks before I knew the inevitable would happen and I’d have to pack up and go back downunder. My baht would run out at some stage and I needed to find another job.

Chao took me on a tour of all the Buddhist temples he’d worked at in his youth as a novice monk. We would sit, usually under a shady tree, with the head monk and they would reminisce and I’d try to work out what they were talking about. He had helped build some of these places where he had learned the ways of the Buddha.

Addicts in jail

Another time we visited a jail where Chao knew the head sherang who spoke good English and I was able to have a lively chat about addiction, guessing — correctly as it turned out — that around 80 per cent of the inmates were there because of their addiction. It was heart-breaking to hear stories of the overcrowding and inhumane conditions that the boss man seemed helpless to change.

My parting gift to Chao was a series of little video clips I shot on my iPhone and posted on YouTube — recording his revolutionary songs as a proud Red Shirt who was dedicated to helping his people, the disenfranchised working class.

I also bought him a laptop and showed him how to do email so we could keep in touch when I got home.

Our last lunch together before Chao took me to the airport was a sad one because I realized I’d probably never see my big brown friend again. Apart from his occasional gentle guiding hand on my arm or shoulder, we’d never touched.

But his goodbye hug at the airport was wonderful and I relished it and got teary later, looking out the airplane window, remembering how his big strong arms enveloped me, feeling his warm strength against my body.

Back in Auckland, my sponsor helped me see that our relationship was ‘inappropriate’ (her word). So I reluctantly wrote him an email and said that I would have to stop all contact, and I hoped that he would ‘respect my decision’.

I felt very sad when I pressed the send button. The grief lasted for months, but gradually I was able to let him go.

It’s best, that way.

Thanks for reading.

Find me at www.solutionsauckland.com

Find my e-book novel at: