THE ROCK by STEVE ROSSE
The Lost Tribes
Among the tropical ailments that expatriates are prone to here on Phuket, loneliness is by far the most common. It can, in advanced cases, force sufferers to resort to the most embarrassing of remedies: talking to tourists. In an effort to prevent this malady local residents have established a variety of clubs and organizations, designed to provide the patient with an opportunity to hear his native language spoken in the accents of his youth, among people who grew up watching the same TV shows he did.
The American University Alumni, the Alliance Francais and Goerthe Institute all offer films and discussion groups for those with an academic mind, which on Phuket is about three people. There are the Kiwanis and the Lions and the Rotarians, but if you’re not going to talk business you might as well not go. It’s the same for the golf and tennis clubs, and anyway, if you can afford the green fees for a three-hour round of golf you can afford to fly home for a week. There’s the Hash House Harriers, a support group for victims of severe head trauma, and there’s an International Women’s Club, but they keep out the riff-raff by requiring possession of a double-X chromosome for admission.
There are bars that try to fill the void: bars where the Germans go, where the Italians go, where the Brits, Swedes or Aussies go. Only the Swiss go to them all, and to frequent these places you’ve got to be prepared to stomach "home-made" national foods that taste nothing like you remember, and have conversations with geeks that you wouldn’t give the time of day to if you were back home.
But the biggest club here is B.O.O.B.: the Benevolent Order of the Once Burned. Membership is open to anyone who is now twice shy.
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Investors in shrimp farms and owners of condos in Patong are eligible to hold the office of Treasurer, and the president must have signed a legal contract, written in Thai, without having it translated first. Meetings are held wherever two or more members come together, and are run on the Alcoholics Anonymous model: new members stand up before the group and introduce themselves; "Hi, I’m Steve, and I’m a jerk. I sent a bar girl through hair dressing college." The tales of woe bring us together, make us feel better about our mistakes, and reaffirm our commitments to be more careful in future.
Old members bring in stories of temptation overcome, like "I met this guy, and he said that he knew where a new golf course was going into Nakhon Nayok, and we could buy up the land real cheap... but I said ‘No!’" Everybody applauds his strength, and the meeting adjourns for refreshments.
Membership in the club is not limited by sex or race or nationality. However, all members can be recognized by a certain cynical attitude, and by their motto: "Oh, yeah? Prove it!" Sheila is a member. She came to Phuket from Perth, on a yacht that she and her boyfriend had purchased with their life’s savings. While she was in the hospital with Dengue Fever, the boyfriend sailed away with a French girl who was "crewing" her way around the world, and Sheila had to teach English in the hotels for a year to make enough money to get home.
Hans bought an old-style teak house and moved in with a girl from Ubon. The house was built "tongue-in-groove", not a nail in the whole structure, and when he came back from his next visa run he found that the house had been dismantled, board by board, loaded onto a flat-bed truck, and both house and girl had departed for parts unknown. Hans is a member in good standing.
Dan left his comfortable job with a relief agency, doing good work for the hill tribes, because he thought his girlfriend Neung deserved a better life than his NGO salary could provide. He went home for a year, slaved at a job he hated and sent all the money to Neung. When he thought she must have a tidy nest-egg saved up he returned to Phuket to find that for a year Neung had been spending all his money on a 23-year-old Italian football player named Luca. Dan is a member.
And the club isn’t just for expatriates. Oi met an Aussie in a bar when she was seventeen years old, and fell in love. She lived with him in a dirty shack without running water for seven years, during which time he "didn’t give her so much as a cracker, mate!". Then he kicked Oi out and married the niece of the headman of Baan Tanhaa, bought six rai of land from his new father in law, and built his bride a six-room house. Oi went back to the bars, her peak earning years behind her, without so much as a half-baht gold bracelet to show for them. Oi is a member.
Lek met a man in a bar in Patong, and agreed to go back to his rented house in Kathu for the night. At the house there were several more men. Lek spent three days drugged and abused in that house before waking up on the floor to find the men gone, the furniture gone, her clothes and purse gone, and the landlord pounding on the door demanding the rent. Lek is a member.
We’re probably all members. Chances are this is the biggest social organization on the island. And the club is big enough that we all get to meet other people who speak the way we do, eat the foods we do and remember the same dead presidents we do. The meetings help us get that craving for contact out of our system, and that’s important, because without some interaction with your fellows, you’ll find yourself in an over-decorated house, abusing the help and writing bitchy letters to the editorial pages of the Bangkok Post.
Or worse, talking to tourists.
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