Thread: My Story II - The Farang Strikes Back

I made my way through check-in & settled on the plane, half-listening to the captain telling everybody his spiel about wind direction, flight time & switching off our mobile phones. I pullled it out of my pocket & it beeped. I had a text message. It was from her.

It read, simply

Goodbye my love, remember me

If there was anything common about sense, I would have left it at that.

Instead, I began to text her back, gaining disapproving looks from my fellow passangers, who obviously believed that cobblers about the use of a mobile phone being able to bring down a plane. I struggled to come up with a suitable response before the plane taxied to the runway & was told to put my phone away by the hostess before I had chance to reply. I complied. What else could I do?

After we were allowed back out of our seats, I made my way to the toilet, where I could use my phone without being disturbed, but found there was no signal. I attempted to send a message to her, but to no avail. I climbed back into my seat & tried to sleep.

I had half a day before I reached Amsterdam & all I could think of was returning to Thailand, back to my girl.

My girl.

The term had a hollow ring to it, but I loved her & in my mind, that was all that mattered to me.

I was clinging to the idea of returning to Thailand the way a drowning man would cling to a life-jacket. My funds wouldn't allow me to simply hop on the next flight back as I had in the past. Looking back, I should have realised the message she had sent was just more of the same bullshit I had been fed over the previous months, but at the time, I didn't - or maybe I did, but the thought of being with her again was more powerful than the alternative & so I let myself believe I could straighten this mess out.

As I drifted off, I figured the best thing to do would be raise some quick funds back in England & seek some advice from my friend with lots of experience of Thailand on what to do about the guys who wanted to do me in. It seemed as good a plan as any & with that I wrapped the poxy blanket they give you around me & fell asleep.

"Black... Nokia... Phone..."

I woke partially. I had no idea how long I had been out. The cabin was dark & most of my fellow passengers were sleeping. My immediate thought was to go back to sleep before I woke fully. I shuffled in my seat trying to find a comfortable position & deliberately avoided looking at my watch, in case it revealed I still had ten hours flight-time left, or something.

"Black... Nokia... Phone..."

As I drifted off again, I wondered why the pilot was talking about a black Nokia phone over the tannoy. He was saying something else as well, but I wasn't listening. I just wanted to go back to sleep. I brushed a tired hand over my pockets, as you do when seeking to reassure yourself the contents are still in them. I could feel my wallet, but not my phone. I fumbled around on my seat, but still couldn't feel it.

"Would the owner of a black Nokia phone found in the toilet please come to the front of the plane?"

I woke instantly as I realised what had happened.

I squeezed past the passengers beside me & made my way to the front of the plane. As I reached an area where the staff sit, I saw one of them playing with my phone.

"I believe that's mine", I said.

The familiar disapproving look came my way & he said to me, "Have you been using this phone on the plane?"

Without hesitation, I answered his question. "No."

"Don't you know it's dangerous to use a mobile phone on an airplane?"

"I haven't used it."

"But it's switched on, you must have done."

I held out my palm & said nothing. As far as I was concerned this conversation was over, but my inquisitor had other ideas.

"Why was it in the toilet?" he demanded to know.

I had no time for this. Who was this punk to be quizzing me about anything? The way I saw it, there were two ways of bringing this interrogation to an end - be nice & pretend I was sorry, or tell him to give me my phone, mind his own business & fuckoff.

I told him I was sorry.

Walking back to my seat I looked hopefully at my phone, hoping for a signal. It was wishful thinking. As I got back to my seat I gave up on the idea of going back to sleep & turned my mind to how I was going to get back to Thailand & more importantly, how was I going to support myself when I got there. I should have been thinking of how I was going to support myself when I got back to England instead. I had around £500 to my name & with a couple of days in Amsterdam on the cards before I got back, that would be next to nothing by the time I arrived home.

Back in Amsterdam I head straight for my usual hang-out, the Feels Good Cafe. A few cups of tea & a bag of shit later, I had a plan in mind for getting myself back to Thailand. Considering I had spent the thick end of £30,000 last time I went over & wanted a similar lifestyle when I returned, the plan wasn't without significant risk.

After a couple of days I caught an Easyjet flight to Liverpool airport. It's not as convenient as Manchester, but has a lot less in the way of security - always a bonus when you're carrying a 'souvenir' back from the Dam. Unusually, the customs area was crawling with plod. There must have been over a dozen. Some of them wore plain-clothes & I figured they were customs.

I wasn't worried, as with any flight from Amsterdam to Liverpool, the plane was full of Scousers, who all became ashen-faced at the sight of the cops there to greet us. I figured the chances of them picking me out from this motley crew were slim & walked confidently towards the exit.

One of the plain-clothes stopped me & demanded my passport - which was fake. "Where are you travelling from?" she asked.

My nerves started to go. I wasn't worried about the passport - it would stand up to close scrutiny - or the shit in my bag, it was the warrant for my arrest I knew was outstanding. I had been involved in a bit of an incident when I was last in the country & knew if they searched my bag I would be going upstairs, where their electronic fingerprint machine would blow my alias right out of the water. I wondered if my mate Steve still worked in the canteen at Walton prison.

I told her I had travelled from Thailand & my accent immediately set me apart from the collection of assorted Scousers, who were scurrying through customs behind me as fast as people pretending to have nothing to hide reasonably could.

"Did you enjoy it?" she asked with a smile.

I returned the smile. I knew I was going to get through. "Glad to be home", I said.

Once outside I caught the bus back to Manchester - a very reasonable £5.

I made some calls as the bus sped down the M62. I needed a place to stay & would be arriving in Manchester within the hour. I wasn't expecting much more than someone's sofa for the night, but as [my] luck would have it, a mate's wife had left him only a week or so earlier & he was only too happy to let me stay at his house.

We cracked open a bottle of duty free & smoked my bag of shit as I dutifully listened to his tale of woe regarding his wife. When he'd finished banging on, I launched into My Story of what I had been up to in Thailand, pulling out the appropriate photo's at each stage of the tale. I could see he was impressed.

The duty-free, the smoke & my story all came to an end at about the same time.

"Are you going back?" my friend asked. "I want to go with you."

As is custom when two blokes get pissed-up together, we made plans which in the morning would be all but forgotten about.

Over the next few days, I focused on my plan to raise the money to return to Thailand. It wasn't quite easy money, but it was certainly easier than saving up for months on end. The problem with easy money is that there's always a catch. In this case, it was the fact the police had a 40% detection rate for this particular caper.

A friend of mine in CID once told me that the trick to pulling it off, is to only do it only once. They never actually catch you in the act, he said. The way they catch you is by buiding a profile of your MO & crashing through your front door unexpectedly one morning. If you only did it once, they couldn't build no profile, so you would never be caught.

Simple.

In the meantime, I had to find out how to deal with my problems in Pattaya. I called my friend who's spent more time there than even he can remember, but his advice was useless. In simple terms, he told me I should forget all about it. I needed some advice from elsewhere.

With nobody reliable to get the information I wanted from, I turned to the internet.

Having never used the internet in my life before now, I was typing all kinds of shit into Google & getting some pretty stupid results. I don't remember how, exactly, but I eventually landed on Teakdoor. Looking at some of the threads & posts, I figured there were some guys here who knew their shit about Thailand & even better, Pattaya in particular.

Keen to seek their help, I joined up.