"How long you here for?" enquired the duskily attractive Thai waitress.
"Just a few days". "You are alone?" "Yes", I admitted.
."What is your room number?"
"Seventy-six", I said. In fact, I was not staying at that hotel - merely having coffee there, but she had omitted to ask that question.
As I left the air-conditioned comfort of the hotel and emerged into the enervating, steamy heat outside, a dark figure approached.
"You buy ticket - 'blue' movie?"
"No thank you," I answered politely, and climbed into a taxi.
The driver handed me a grubby card. It read:
"This driver will take you where there are thirty pretty girls wishing to be of service to you."
I was flattered - thirty is a lot of girls for someone of my age and temperament, but I gave him the name of my hotel instead.
In Bangkok it is desirable to select a taxi-driver who is small and frail, since you will have to have an argument with him at the end of the journey. Taxis are of the conventional four-wheel saloon type, or a little three-wheel two-stroke vehicle normally avoided by foreigners, unless weary of life.
All taxis have meters; in no taxi does the meter work. Guide-books advise the traveller to negotiate the fare in advance, but fail to explain how this is possible, firstly without causing a traffic-jam and secondly when you have no idea how far it is to your destination, nor what is the local scale of charges.
On arrival, the taxi-driver may give you a quick glance, or will stare directly ahead as he says; "Twenty-five Baht" -or, "Forty Baht" - usually about four times the true charge. If you are a good actor and can either burst into peals of laughter or put on a show of anger, it will help.
"I give you ten Baht - and that's too much!" Eventually it should be possible to settle for no more than double the correct fare.
Traffic is chaotically congested in Bangkok, and motor horns blare endlessly. It would be more convenient for the Bangkok drivers if the horn wiring were reversed so that it was necessary to press the horn button to stop it blowing.
At the Airline office, I had just reconfirmed the next stage of my flight. I had done this in several countries now and was learning some new telephone-alphabets, as the clerks spelt out my name over the telephone. This time, the initials of my first names were given as Roger Foxtrot which I thought an attractive alternative. This system of clarification explains why I was once welcomed by someone expecting to meet a Mr. Charley Alice.
As we entered, the appropriate strains of the "Ride of the Valkyries" filled the room, to be followed by a Beethoven Sonata for Violin and Piano, and by works of Mozart and Handel. I commented on this choice of background music to one of the two Vikings (the first I had seen in horn-rimmed spectacles) and he said:
"WE like it!"
The popularity of their restaurant suggests that their customers either like it too, or do not object to it. So far as I was concerned, I realised at last the reason for a vague sense of disappointment after the many orchestral concerts I had attended over the years - they had forgotten the food!
Unfortunately, my companion insisted that we move on to a night-club. Entry to Bangkok night-clubs involves only the purchase of a drink - they are not really clubs. We visited a succession of these, confirming me in a private view that even hardened drinkers find it a boring occupation, and must hope to infuse some element of interest by the "crawl" from one to another, every half-hour. This "crawl" took us on a descending path with each club more sordid and seedier than the preceding one. My companion was becoming noisy and I was becoming apprehensive. The last call was at a bar displaying a notice reading:
"The girls in this establishment are on their own and not connected with the Club in any fashion. The Management refuses to be held responsible in any way for their behaviour or actions."
I had stopped drinking about five clubs previously, and cold sober - watched my companion start to pick a quarrel with a drunk. It was almost three in the morning and the place was still full -There were the “girls”, the dregs of the streets, still- unattached at this hour, listlessly drinking and watching a number of male couples dancing. I tried to make myself inconspicuous behind two glasses of beer I was not drinking, and wondered if my children's lives would be seriously affected by the belief that their: father had been knifed in a drunken brawl in a "dive” in Bangkok. By suggesting that we try another night-club, I persuaded my companion to leave, and once in the street I put him in one taxi and myself in another.
Two, days later he took me around the, Buddhist temples and down the, river and canals. The temples are called “a photographer’s paradise” and are certainly impressive, though I felt as I had in Rangoon that for Western eyes there is, perhaps, too much gold-leaf used. The river and the canals leading from it are flanked with dwellings. Thai infants bob around in the stream like corks; the older boys attach themselves to passing boats and take a free tow for a few miles, casting loose when they have had enough, or see the chance of a tow back again.
Friendly Thai housewives stand in the stream washing their hair or their clothes or their babies, and watching the passing boatloads of tourists.
This is the world of the river; they live "by it and with it and on it and in it". The Thai riverside dweller could say with Rat of "The Mind in the Willows":
"It's brother and sister to me, and aunts, and company, and food and drink, and (naturally) washing. It's my world and I don't want any other."
My journeyings had taken me through parts of the East where visiting Western concert artists were rare. Thai classical ballet and Madras dancing were well enough, but I found myself hungering for familiar music. Wherever I went I seemed to be either too late or too soon for some celebrity. I was too late for Campoli; too early for Kendall Taylor, but in Djakarta sometime later, in the ballroom of the Hotel Indonesia, I attended a recital by a German pianist. This rare treat attracted not only a capacity audience, but, high up in the lofty room, a delegation of cicadas who showed their appreciation by chirruping shrilly, so that we had Beethoven's Moonlight and Appassionata Sonatas, for Piano and Cicada. The louder the music, the louder they sang. It was a memorable recital by a novel combination, not without its possibilities.
In Bangkok - though this has nothing to do with music - I bought a couple of harmonicas with the vague idea that my sons would like them, although I think I knew well enough what would happen to them.
After some practice in the privacy of hotel rooms I had made limited progress. The main difficulty was to find tunes without sharps or flats, which slowly, but tunefully went up and down the scale. There seemed a real shortage of these. "God Save our Gracious Queen" presented no problems, but I felt that to play it in some parts of this region of the world might be considered a deliberate, neo-colonialist provocation, and I always played it very softly, with an apprehensive eye to the windows.
"Drink to me only" was my next achievement, followed a, night later by "Waltzing Matilda". Then I hit a bad patch, when I could neither play anything new, not even this small repertoire which I had acquired so laboriously. No doubt I had overdone the practicing - I have heard other artists speak of the same problem. After an hour in which I appeared to be playing "God Save Matilda" and "Drink to our Waltzing Queen", I abandoned the instrument in disgust.
"Why don't we see a movie?" suggested the American with whom I was sitting in the hotel bar. This, of course, is the danger of making casual contacts - the weaker partner finds himself taken over. However, I was at a loose end and not in a mood for working in my room. The cinema sounded a better idea than sitting for several hours in a bar. Perhaps "The Last Time I saw Paris" would have reached Bangkok by camel-back from Lahore.
The ordinary Asian presumably knows no more of the Western world than gleaned from the movies, television and the behaviour of white tourists, which is a frightening thought. In the hotel lounge I had noted with interest American programmes on the T.V. set, with speech dubbed into Thai. Synchronomously with this (as Mr. Polly might have said) the original soundtrack is also broadcast by a radio channel so that Westerners can turn down the sound on their T.V. sets and watch the vision while picking up the English soundtrack from their transistor radios. All this ingenuity so that the races of the world may share "Batman".
We found ourselves in a taxi and my companion handed a card to the driver.
"What are we seeing?" I asked.
"Something real good! A boy outside the hotel gave me that ticket."
"Just a minute! Do you mean 'blue' movies?"
"Why sure! You didn't think I was meaning for us to see 'Mary Poppins', did you?"
I subsided and resumed my normal state of readiness for an instant sideways evacuation of the taxi when one of the driver's hair-raising manoeuvres proved to have failed. No doubt I would survive a 'blue' movie - it would certainly be an improvement on "The Last Time I saw Paris". My companion was an old Bangkok hand having arrived there two days before I did.
"Say," he continued, "have you been to one of these massage parlours yet?"
"No", I confessed.
"Boy, oh boy! This you must not miss!" he exclaimed extravagantly. "Dusky maidens powdering you all over and singing little Thai songs to you!"
I was not impressed; no-one has powdered me all over since my infancy and I believe I can still recall the panic which afflicts the ticklish in these circumstances.
Our taxi had fought its way through the sprawling, centreless chaos of Bangkok and stopped at a doorway near one of the innumerable night-clubs. We ascended a flight of stairs and for the sum of one hundred Baht (five dollars) each we were admitted to a large room containing twenty or thirty seats and a dozen or so Westerners - including two women and three Thais. Music from a tape-recorder was presumably intended to keep the audience happy and there.
After five minutes another white male came in -followed within seconds by two uniformed Thai policemen, revolvers at hips and, even at this time of night, wearing the inevitable sunglasses which appear to be as much a part of their uniforms as the peaked hat.
"Place stay seated everybody", said the senior man while his assistant remained by the door.
Speaking in adequate English the police officer told us that we were breaking the laws of his country in coming to see obscene movies.
His instructions were to take names and addresses, nationalities and passport details from all foreigners present. No one would be able to leave Bangkok until his Department had decided whether or not to prosecute. Our party now looked like a tableau of Consternation for a modern morality play.
"Say Bud - Sir", pleaded my colleague, "I have to be in Hong Kong Friday".
The policeman shrugged.
"You know", broke in an English voice, "we are not watching obscene movies."
"We have just seized the movies and projector below", said the policeman. "Perhaps you can explain for what reason you are here?"
There was silence. Then the policeman said, "You know, you are foolish peoples. How if I come to your country and break your laws? But here we like tourists and do not wish to embarrass you. Perhaps I let you go this time - only foreigners please - and do not be foolish peoples again!"
I led the race to the door, closely followed by other very white faces and leaving only the impassive three Thais. There was no tendency to talk and no one loitered to ask for his money back. All frantically hailed taxis and made off into the night. In the melee on the stairs my companion and I had become separated and I did not see him until late that evening when he hailed me into the bar where he was drinking with another American.
"Wow!" he exclaimed. "Was I a worried boy a few hours back?"
He started to explain to his new friend what had befallen us. He listened with extreme interest, merely punctuating the story with, "The Hell!", "The Hell you did!" and "The Hell you say!" Then, unaccountably he slapped himself and laughed long and noisily. Exactly the same thing had happened to him two nights previously. Police had entered just as he was seated and waiting for the "blue" movie show. After lecturing the "foolish peoples", the police had allowed them to go, holding only the three Thai members of the audience and the doorman. Again no one had bothered asking for their money back. Clearly a few enterprising Thais had hit on an ingenious way of relieving tourists of surplus dollars. No "blue" movies were required, no screen or projector — just two accomplices dressed as Thai policemen.