Fourteen years ago I was eating in Shakey's Pizza on Sukumvit Road in Bangkok Thailand and saw an elderly "falang" (white foreigner) slowly walk down the sidewalk with a cane.
That's it, I thought. Bangkok's too safe to be any fun any more.
I haven't been back since.
Yet Southeast Asia's "Free Country" still exerts a strong pull.
It's strongly libertarian (where you can do most anything you can afford to pay for), yet is the world's most functional monarchy. (Yes, there's a representative government for ordinary matters -- but the king is still the true head of the country.)
The official religion is Buddhism, but Central Thailand is full of spirit houses and everybody wears amulets.
It's as different from the West as India, but a lot easier to visit.
With its huge and open sex for sale industry, as the port through which heroin from Burma's "Iron Triangle" flows out to the world, and as a center of investment money from Japan, Thailand is a great place to set an exotic international thriller.
If you've been to Bangkok, reading this book brings back some of the memories. It's fun.
Of course it's connected to drugs, and politics, and widespread corruption, and an American driven crazy by anti-communism. And it just so happens that Field knows just the kind of people who can help him connect the dots. Before he's rubbed out by the Thai Bangkok connection.
Yet the protagonist John Field is portrayed as a "lost" man. He's a Canadian who's pretending he really belongs in Bangkok. He's a reporter, but helps expedite business deals and enjoys the bars and massage parlors.
In fact, the recurring theme of the book is a case of apparently incurable clap he's picked up. A symbol of how the country and its culture have infected him.
It's hard to read this novel, fun as it is on the surface, and not catch of whiff of disapproval from the author. Sex is dirty. Although prostitution exists in all countries, it shouldn't be out in the open where respectable people are tempted by it.
In the end, Field returns to Canada with his grown up daughter from his first Thai girlfriend and his teen-aged Thai former brothel girl new wife, who's also infected with VD. So he's finally grown up, discovered responsibility and his true place in the world. Leaving his self-imposed exile.
The author has spent time in Thailand and learned about its exotic side. Perhaps he should have spent more time with ordinary people living ordinary lives, and their extraordinary culture.
I'd rather read about a falang who found he or she really belonged in Thailand -- without patronizing it.
Richard Stooker has an ex-wife from Laos and has traveled to Thailand. Based on his experiences, he knows that everybody should keep emergency preparedness kits on hand and ready to go -- at all times.
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