Chapter 2

Love in a hot climate:

Expat. communities often include a more disparate set of characters than those found in middle England.
The Coffee Bar crowd in Bangtao is no exception, containing its more than fair collection of failed geniuses, hopeless romantics, drunken, would be, entrepreneurs and, mostly good natured, might have beens.

However, the other day, we were visited by someone who almost woke us up before vanishing from the scene. James is apparently a successful entrepreneur, lecturer and incredibly successful womaniser. He claims to need to sleep with at least one woman every night because he is afraid of the dark.

He arrived one morning full of the story of escaping from a woman in a Patong hotel earlier that day by organising a taxi to pretend to be taking to catch a flight to Bangkok.
The taxi merely circling the block until the lady had left.

Now, the previous day, at the coffee bar he had arrived with two women in tow having arranged to meet a third local lady, who had proclaimed her love for him, to me earlier, despite his reputation.

This escapade ended in a bit of a skirmish in which the lady attacked James, scratching him and tearing the shirt from his back. She was restrained from doing more damage although she certainly had my sympathy - but then, what do I know about local customs.(Somebody suggested at this stage that the coffee bar be renamed "The Sunshine Coffee Bar and Thai Boxing Academy").

But let's return to the day in question. James arrived complete with a taxi driver, on his way to the airport since he was meeting two ladies that night in Bangkok and had a course of lectures to give at a local university starting the next day. He just stopped by for a goodbye drink of iced beer.

It was about mid-day and sitting at the bar was one of my favourite ladies, Dao. She was there, and not at work, because the previous night riding her motorbike home late and perhaps a little merry she had fallen off and shaken herself up.

Now Dao is one of the three ladies who I know in Bangtao for whom I have the greatest respect, but for whom my heart always beats a little faster. She is attractive, charismatic and very bright.

It became obvious that she and James had met before, recently, with violent results. In fact she had repulsed his unremitting attempts to woo her, with a pair of garden shears, apparently wielded with considerable determination and dexterity.

James immediately apologised for his previous behaviour and accepting that it had been entirely his own fault suggested that they could now be good friends. The look in Dao's eyes suggested to me otherwise.

Nevertheless James, bought another round of drinks, paid his taxi driver another one hundred baht and continued his spiel.

Between telling everybody who would listen that he was running away from an irate father up in some northern village and that he was banned from another one for sleeping with a sixteen year old ( "I thought she was twenty") and that the university campus where he occasionally lectures consisted of twenty thousand young girls who were delighted to be treated as his concubines, he continued his attempts at ingratiating himself with Dao.

Dao looked more and more irritated but kept her peace.

It seems to be a part of James's philosophy, which he, indeed, states frequently, that here in Thailand, if a woman says "no" then it is merely a matter of offering her more money until she says "yes". With this end in view he began waving more and more baht around, presumably to emphasise that money was no object.

Meanwhile as the taxi meter ticked the driver accepted one hundred baht every twenty minutes, James downed another iced beer every fifteen minutes and Dao looked darker and darker.

Now James, sensing, of course, a challenge, realized by now that he couldn't just offer money to Dao so he employed another strategy. He waved a five hundred baht note in the air saying he needed change, he turned to Dao and asked her if she would lend him one hundred baht to pay the taxi driver. She handed him one hundred baht and he pounced. He stuffed the five hundred baht note into her purse and told her she was a lucky girl to get such a good exchange rate.

With hindsight I have worked out what she should have done. She should have picked up the five hundred baht note, torn it into pieces and thrown them at him. But, of course, that is with hindsight. In fact she just sat there, confused and annoyed.

At this stage I left the scene as I had booked a massage - and indeed felt the need for it.

An hour or so later when I returned I found that the story had moved on apace.
James had eventually left for the airport and within minutes Dao realised that her motorbike keys had gone missing. Putting two and two together she called James and demanded that he bring them back. James returned, protesting his innocence but agreed to take Dao to her shop in Patong to retrieve her duplicate keys.

By now Dao was about as angry as one can get. When they picked up the spare keys, James suggested that they return to the coffee shop, pick up her bike and head back to her place for some further -er- activity

She threw him out of the taxi and returned alone to the coffee shop. She was shaken and worried that he might return. That night she didn't go home but stayed with friends.

The next day the keys were found in the coffee shop toilet. Now we had all searched high and low for those keys and I am certain that they were not there the previous day.

So how had they got there? I think I will leave that for the reader to decide.

As I said at the beginning, expat. communities often include a more disparate set of characters than those found in middle England.