Sunday, July 31, 2005

The Wild Orchid Club

The Wild Orchid Club was officially disbanded last night. I was standing on the corner of Khaosan and Chakrapong roads. Emily and Tomec were silhouetted by the huge cheesy signs that celebrated the bars, restaurants, shops and guest houses of Khaosan. Just over Emily shoulder Lucky Beer and Silk Bar flickered with the intermittent pulse of the fluorescent tubes that powered them. It was hot and humid. It's always hot and humid in Bangkok and Emily was leaving tomorrow. She was on her way to Ayhudara, one of the ancient capitols of Thailand.

Carolyn had been the first to leave, then Katerine. Maria was disappearing. Tomec, whose visa would expire at midnight, was heading for the boarder tomorrow, hoping to be able to cross into Lao. The members of The Wild Orchid, officially The Wild Orchid Dinner and Cocktail Club were culled from the Wat Pho School of Traditional medicine. Wat Pho is the monastery next to the Kings Palace where the Emerald Buddha finally ended up. It has been a center of learning and medicine since the 18th century.

After Jenni left I spent most of an entire day hiding in my hotel room. In a city of 8 million, like New York, the feeling of loneliness is palpable. In a city of 30 million its a god damn brick shoved down your throat. Fortunately there is Star Movies. My hotel room might have been a dank, green cement, windowless, pillbox but it did have cable and Star Movies is Asia's answer to suicide prevention hotlines. I saw Die Hard one and two. Tears welled in my eyes during Father of The Bride. I saw a Christopher Walken film called Poolhall Junkies that I swear was never released in the United States.

I made a few forays out into the streets for food. I hated Khaosan. Jet lagged I wandered into the streets at 3am. The strip was filled with brutal Australian drunkards who were trying to force kisses on Thai hookers. Hadn't these guys ever watched television? Everyone knows the sacred rule of prostitutes. No kissing on the mouth. If they didn't know that, then they for sure didn't know that two out of five of the ladies they were groping were not even ladies but ladyboys. There was going to be a lot of blown minds tonight. I knew I had to do something. I was already thinking of getting a flight home. I always go through this. At first I hate to leave. Then I hate being there. Then I start having dreams where my cats can talk and are saying things like. "Where are you? Why did you leave us? Is there any better food around here?" Then something changes. I get hooked in. I find my rhythm. By the end I don't want to go back and as soon as I get home I am surfing the internet for airfares.

In my guide book they mentioned Wat Pho had a course in traditional Thai massage. That was it. It would kill two birds with one stone. I would meet people and it would give my days some focus. The next day (after watching a movie at three AM with Anthony Hopkins where he is a black man who looks white and ends up driving into an ice covered lake with a woman who talks to crows and whose husband is a psycho out to kill them both) I took a Tuk Tuk to the temple. I had to fight with three of them to get the price down to 80 bhat when I knew it should be only 10. The real humiliation came when I realized I could have walked there in ten minutes if I only knew my way around town or... Could read the Thai alphabet. First I visited the reclining Buddha. It is an immense golden statue imprisoned in a temple that can barely contain it. You can hardly get a look at it between all of the pillars. It was the night before the full moon so the site was swarming with Thai. They were praying, lighting incense, and dropping hundreds of coins in the scores of metal pots lined up behind where the graven image lay. One of the monks, in psychedelic orange garb, pointed me the way to the massage center. I got a brochure and asked about when courses start. "Anytime you liiike." The woman in white seated behind an ancient wooden desk cooed to me in that gentle Asian way. "Huh. Well, ah what about tomorrow?" "Yessss. How you liiike." "Say.. 10am? "Anytime between niiine and eleeeeven." I was beginning to wonder if she had any idea of what I was talking about. I had been raised within the much stricter organization of Bostonian Academics.

I made my way there the next day, walking along the massive white walls of the kings palace. It was nine am and already the sun was broiling. There were vendors under every tree. I had countless opportunities for noodle soup with fried fish balls, tropical fruits, rice cakes wrapped in banana leaves, CDs, DVDs (of films that hadn't even been released), images of king Rama I-IX and hand carved buddhas. A band of blind people played tinny Thai folk music their faces red with sunburn and their eyes glazed white. I was led by one of the monks to a side street outside the main temple compound of Wat Pho.

Everywhere out side the temple there were tiny shops filled with herbs and potions and charts of human anatomy. At the end of a grimy street, with a broken wooden dock that hung out over the Phrya, in a vaguely 1950s style medical building I filled out an application. The place was staffed with pretty young Thai girls in blue nurses uniforms. I took off my shoes and went to the third floor with my registration card. There was a small air conditioned hall there. The floors were made with six inch wide mahogany boards and lined in neat little rows with mattresses. Everywhere people were giving and receiving massages. My instructor was a middle aged Thai woman named Pornita. She asked us to call her Porn for short. Later when I knew her better I would mention that she might want to change her nick name if she traveled to the U.S.. That was where I met Emily. She was to be the first member of The Wild Orchid Club. Downstairs we would met Tomec and Katerina. Later we would add Maria and Carolyn.

For a week we became the Wild Orchid Club. We dined together, shared stories, discussed politics, evolved philosophies. Nothing official. It was just that nobody really knew anybodys last name or hotel, but somehow we always saw each other somewhere at some point and it was yelled from the bus or across busy streets.
"We meet tonight at The Wild Orchid, 7 o'clock!"

W.O.C. II
During our break on the first day of class Emily and I had lunch In a narrow ally way off the street. We each had a bowl of noodle soup with fried pork balls for 30 bhat a serving. It was made by an old woman who guarded the entrance to the ally. A narrow sliver of sunlight shone down on the collection of potted tropical plants she used to decorate the small place. We sat at a little card table on tiny red metal folding chairs. The old woman's associate, who blocked the other side of the ally with her shiny aluminum cart made us a fresh orange juice. Emily and I talked about massage and its healing power. Then the conversation drifted to the slippery slope of prostitution.
"I used to be a very naughty dancer." She offered in her thick cockney accent.
"Oh, I used to like to dirty dance too when that was in. Now I like Salsa." I said, not getting it.
"No, I mean I used to show my ta tas." She smiled at me and wrinkled her nose.
" I ran away to Greece when I was a teenager and got a job in a club there. Turned me straight off blokes. I even had me a lezzie girlfriend."
There was a pause as I let this new information soak in. She was barely 25 now. It was hard to imagine an even younger more petite Emily with her PiPi Longstocking braids and freckled cheeks on the stage of some sleazy disco in Mykonos. Now she was trying to make it as an actress in London. Massage was her fall back plan.

W.O.C. III
Katerina was the one who broke the mystery of the Thai mass transit system and effectively liberated us from the Tuk Tuks. She figured out by randomly jumping on buses that number 53 would take us to and from Khao San. The buses were framed like the ones I rode in elementary school. The 53 was painted a dark red. At some point the worn out floors had been replaced with six inch wide mahogany slats. They were patrolled by a transit officer in a military style uniform. They conductors often had more braids and ribbons then some 2 star generals do. They walked up and down the ailes clicking a metal cylinder that folded open on its hinges. They cylinders were all personally decorated with sparkles or decoupage and crammed full with coins bills and and neatly rolled tickets. Our bus wound it's way around the markets and temples before dumping us off directly opposite of Wat Pho.

It was me who discovered the public boats. While wandering around Phra Arthit I noticed a peer behind an outdoor bar. At the end of it was a dock and a boat schedule. I was able to decipher that it made its way up the Phrya to Tat Tien which is directly opposite Wat Pho. I told Katerina and she was all for trying it. We made a plan to meet the next morning. Katerina is a very serious young German girl. She has long blonde hair and translucent white skin. She could pass for an eighteen year old high school student but is in reality a 25 year old microbiologist. She got tired of being a stooge for the drug companies and took off for Asia to reassess her life direction. The next morning, while having breakfast where she resided at The Peachy Guest House I asked her. "So what's up with you and Tomec?" Tomec had put me up to this. He is a tall, handsome, curly blonde headed, Architecture student originally from Poland and completely terrified by Katerina's radiance. Everyone is.
"What do you mean?" She responded knowing perfectly well what I meant.
"He looks at you like he adores you. What do you think of him?"
"I don't think of him that way at all." Was her flat response.

W.O.C. IV.
When I made a proposal that we go to see a Thai movie Emily's response was the most adamant.
"I don't. I want to see a proper American movie with popcorn and big chairs."
The idea died with that, but on the last evening of the Wild Orchid Club, the day after Katerina left for home, Tomec asked me if I was still interested in going. Emily texted me that she and Carolyn were having beers at her hotel The Four Sons and watching movies "on the tele." Carolyn, an outer satellite of our club was with her. When we got there the chicks seemed perfectly content to be with their huge bottles of Singha beer and not moving anywhere.

I had asked a waitress at the Wild Orchid for a tip on seeing Thai movies and she wrote down the name of a place on a slip of paper in Thai script.
"Don't pay more than 60 bhat." She warned me. Hmmm. I wish me luck.

We got there for 80 bhat. Sometimes you need to remind yourself that you are arguing over fifty cents. We got tickets for a movie called "Thirty Years Later"

30 YEARS LATER
Director: Rutaiwan Wongsirasawad
Cast: Phairote Sangwaribut, Lalana Sulawan
Genre: Comedy
Synopsis: The sequel of the tophitting teen flick in the 1980s comes back after thirty years pass by. The couple of the decade no more need to fight against their fathers. This time however it is more chaotic because they need to help their daughter's love affair. They are just to realize that this new-age love is too confusing.

The theater was in a big mall and very modern. It was so white it glowed. It must take a small army to clean it at night. The cinema was on the third floor and over the ticket and concession stand on a curved wall were the three dimensional letters for Major Cinema. Really, that's what its called.

The seats were plush red and the carpet in multi colored stripes made it difficult not to tumble down them. Before the movie started we all had to stand to hear the national anthem and see a short featuring Rama IX. They never show him head on in this little film as he walks among a multitude of children, cripples and military personnel. He is always wearing these tinted glasses that make him look, well, creepy. If you mention him to anyone in Thailand the automatic response is.
"We love the king."

On the way back we decided to try getting on a bus. The Mall was closing and people and buses were swarming out front in what seemed to me a completely disorganized fashion. We ran to jump on one, anyone, and a girl grabbed my arm.
"Where are you going?"
"Khaosan"
"Not this bus, 192" Nice. We were going to have an easy trip.

On the way back Tomec was acting morose.
"what's the matter?" He looked at me with soulful eyes. I knew it was about Katerina. "Listen." I said. "Never listen to what women say. So much garbage comes out of their mouths. Watch what they do." That can be said about anyone really. Even though Katerina had verbally rejected Tomec, she spent all of her free time with him, and looked after him like they were partners.
"Slowly, slowly. Its a done deal."
"What should I do?"
"Don't worry about tactics. Just be around. Pursue. She wants you to prove yourself a little." That seemed to cheer him upe. We crossed the Chao Phrya and saw Bangkok by night. Wat Arun was lit up like a Vegas Casino. With the wind blowing through the open bus windows, the town didn't smell half so bad.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cool.

I'm glad to see you posting again -- I was starting to worry something had happened to you.

Doesn't Thailand have a red-light district? Isn't all of Thailand a red-light district? How could you be alone in your room?

By the way, Poolhall Junkies did run for a while in the U.S.

Anonymous said...

Hi R,

I love the Wild Orchid ... story and wish I had been there...and I want a massage... are you gonna need volunteers once you get back? If yes, count me in, please....did you get my email? I imagine by now you are past the lonely stage...

B.

Anonymous said...

It is normal to feel overwhelmed. You are travelling alone, no contacts, don't know the language and the alphabet does not offer a clue. Too bad your friends left. Whatever you do, don't hide in your room. Take another class. Maybe a cooking class would be fun and a good opportunity to meet others. Don't they have official group tours? Margaret

Anonymous said...
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bugpowder said...

to HB

did it? it wasnt actually quite lousey, at least at three am in bangkok it seemed quite ok.I really like Walken, I could even watch him do advts for viagra.

bugpowder said...

To B

Yeah, I am fine. I always go through this. You dont get the highs without the lows, right?

bug