Last India Overland (65 page)

I drank a bottle of white wine on the way to Calcutta and another one on the way to Bangkok.

There wasn’t any snow falling in Bangkok. Just a hot wind

blowing. In the back of the cab, I had my window down and I let that wind blow through my hair and beard. I was hoping it would blow away the memory of what had just gone down that night, but no such luck.

I had specific instructions in my shirt pocket about what to do in Bangkok. The cabbie took me to the Crown Hotel. This was around midnight. I checked into a room that had mirrors on the ceiling and walls and the smell of GI sperm hanging in the air like a week-old corpse.

I tried to get some sleep, but I might as well have tried phoning up Farrah Fawcett-Majors for a date.

The next morning I grabbed some fried prawns for breakfast from a sidewalk cart and I phoned up this number that a friend of mine back in Kitsilano had given me. No answer. So I went down to a certain Bank of America where there was supposed to be some money waiting for me. Fifteen thousand dollars, to be exact.

I didn’t feel comfortable walking around Bangkok with fifteen thousand dollars in my pocket. But I knew I wouldn’t have felt comfortable with it back at the Crown either.

I camped out in a honky-tonk bar where there was this Thai guy imitating Charlie Pride and I phoned that number once every hour and it was some time around supper time, when I was more than a little drunk on Mekong rum, that a voice finally answered.

“Chou Bone Chui there?” I said. I’d had a little laugh about it the first time Rice-Eater told me his name. Chow Bone Chew.

“Who wants to know?” he said.

“Michael McPherson,” I said. “Friends call me Mick. One of my friends is a guy named Jim, back in Vancouver, and he says this Chou Bone Chui could put me onto a good deal in imported cassettes.”

“Ah, yes,” said the voice. “I just get a Christmas card from James. He call you Mickers.”

“That’s me,” I said.

He told me to meet him that night around nine at a bar called the Lotus Flower on Pat Pong Road. I told him I’d be there.

I went down to the Lotus Flower early, around eight, to case the place. The tri-shaw cabbie gave me a wink when he took my bahts, wished me luck. I knew what he was talking about. Rice-Eater had told me all about Pat Pong Road. The street where American GIs came for a little R & R when they were taking time off from napalming nameless gooks in Vietnam’s jungles. There were more strip bars than puddles on that street, and there were a few zillion puddles.

The Lotus Flower was maybe typical. When I walked in, there was a girl wearing white cowboy fringes and not much else on the stage at the back of the bar. By the time I got my rum and coke, she was down to red tassels on her nipples and she was shooting ping-pong balls into the audience, look ma, no hands. While I sipped that drink, she opened up a coke bottle, smoked a cigar, blowing out nine perfect smoke rings, and added the strawberries to somebody’s strawberry daiquiri. Just your average family entertainment.

There was another girl, maybe seventeen tops, on the stage, making friends with a python, when a guy walked through the door that I knew was Chou Bone Chui from the way Rice-Eater described him. He had a vivid pink scar in the shape of a half moon on his left cheek and he was lighting a cigarette with the butt end of an old one. Rice-Eater said there wasn’t more than a minute or two in a day when Chou didn’t smoke and that was just because he had to eat something.

I waved him over. He flashed some tobacco-stained teeth my way and shook my hand with a long yellow claw.

“Mickers!” he said, as though I was a long lost friend.

“Chow Bone Chew!” I said in the same tone of voice, which is maybe about the furthest thing away from what I felt, but I can act when I have to, especially when an important deal is about to go down.

He offered me a Camel Menthol, and I took it because I happened to be out of Marleys, and we shot the bull lor a while before we got down to business, and the upshot is that the Ko Samui mushrooms were all picked for us and packed, and waiting for us out on the island, as he put it, all we had to do is go and pick them up.

“Do you have the money?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said, “I’ve got the money.”

Chou was a businessman. He asked to see it.

“When I see the mushrooms,” I said.

He flashed those yellow teeth. “Okay,” he said.

He said well we can leave right now and make it down to the coast in time for the morning ferry. I said fine. We went out to this baby blue Trans Am, we stopped at the Crown to pick up my gear, and a few minutes later we were weaving in and out of heavy traffic in the shanty-town district, picking up speed through a heavy billboard and industrial area, but then things began to thin out, after about an hour of city. Bangkok likes to sprawl itself out like a fat man on a couch.

About the time that the thin ribbon of road is swallowed up by lush green jungle that waved at us like geisha hookers, Chou reached under the seat and pulled out a carton of Camels and a mickey of Mekong rum. He gave me the rum. He didn’t have one himself, which made me happy because he hit a hundred and thirty on that Trans Am awful quick. We started passing buses that weren’t exacdy moving at a turtle pace either.

“Ain’t there any cops in Thailand,” I said. “Any radar traps?”

Chou laughed at that, he thought it was hilarious, and he never did answer me.

Instead he stuck in Deep Purple’s
Live in Japan
cassette and turned it up loud. He’d had his fill as far as conversation with me was concerned.

Fine by me. I wasn’t exactly in a conversational mood anyhow.

We drove all night through that dark jungle. Every once in a while a small town would flash past.

Near dawn, with the tank near empty for the second time, we pulled into a small town, Surat Thani or Phuket or something like that kind of sound, parked the Trans Am in front of a bookstore and had a little snooze on a dock after a fried prawn and scallop breakfast from an early morning fish vendor.

Couldn’t get too many winks, though, thanks to all the boats revving their engines.

And it started getting hot around about nine.

The ferry left for the island at nine-thirty. It was packed, mostly with Thais and a few bald Buddhists in orange saffron robes. There were big fans hanging from the ceiling, moving slow, so slow I don’t think they did much good.

Best thing about that ferry trip was the way the sun bounced off the green water. And we had lots of leg room thanks to Chou’s chain-smoking.

The only thing Chou said to me on the ferry was when he nudged me and said, “There!” He pointed a bit to starboard. All I saw was what looked like the top of a Dagwood haircut floating on the water but what it was, of course, was Ko Samui.

Gen. Delivery, Ko Samui March 27, ’79

Dear Dexter,

I hope you got Kelly’s letter alright. They like to steal stamps off envelopes in this part of the world. What is all this, you say? Well, basically it’s just a few things I want to get off my back. I’ve learned to travel light over the past few months. Not that I’ve been lugging it around. I’ve only had Mick’s book for a couple of weeks. You might even want to read it first before reading this letter. At the very least you’ll want to read the letter again after you read the book, it might make more sense that way. And so I’m going to write it that way.

After Kelly went to Yasodhara, I went back to Kathmandu. The plan was that I was going to go down to Ko Samui with Mick, catch some rays, have some laughs, get a tan, and then go home and work in a bank. That didn’t happen. Mick didn’t show. And when I went looking for him all I found was police cars. I found out from the guy behind the front desk what had happened. There was a body found in the room that Mick and another guy, named Patrick, were staying in. I had to wait two days before I got the nerve up to call the police station and find out who it was. They asked me a lot of questions and they wanted to talk to me. All I said was a friend of mine was missing. They thought I might be able to identify the corpse because it didn’t have any identification on it. And I was able to. It was Rob. He had a big hole where one eye used to be. But I didn’t let on that I knew him, I just said it wasn’t my friend and then they asked for my friend’s name. I made up a name and description, and then they let me go.

So there I was, all alone in Kathmandu. It’s a nice city but not when you’re alone. Especially after the news of the Cambodia invasion. I thought maybe this was it, World War III. I decided to go home after about a week of hoping Mick or Patrick would show up. I flew down to Bangkok. But I couldn’t get a flight out of Bangkok on my open ticket for three weeks thanks to what was happening next door in Cambodia. Every single flight was booked. So I spent two weeks shopping in Bangkok. It has some great shops. I skipped all the temples though. I’ve seen enough temples to last a lifetime.

A few days before my flight I got news that I’d have to have a two-day layover in Taipei, Taiwan. Which is where they’re stoning Americans right and left thanks to the new China policy.

I also had this nagging thought at the back of my mind that maybe Mick went to Ko Samui. He said he was going to go there. I’d also gotten over my anger at Kelly for going to Yasodhara without even so much as discussing it with me first. I thought everything was pointing towards me staying.

I even thought a couple times about going back to Iran to look for Frank.

Basically what I had in mind was that if Ko Samui turned out to be the paradise on earth Mick said it was supposed to be, I’d camp out there for a few months and when August came I’d go to Sri Lanka and talk Kelly out of doing the Firewalk.

So I caught the bus and ferry to Ko Samui. And it is great. It is paradise on earth. Lots of sandy beaches and palm trees and delicious fruit. I’m staying in a thatch-hut on stilts right on the beach. I can get tasty plates of food for something like thirty cents.

Of course I asked around for Mick and Patrick but nobody had seen them. I didn’t find Mick until I went to the hospital to finally get my wrist cast off. Which was really depressing. My wrist is white and gimpy looking and it still throbs at night. I don’t think they set it right. I think I might sue.

I asked the nurse if she’d seen a guy named Mick. Mick is the kind of guy that tends to attract the kind of disasters that demand hospital attention. She said she had. She took me to him. By that time Mick was delirious and almost gone. He kept calling me Hasheeba or Kelly. When I went to see him the next day he was dead.

It wasn’t until then, actually, that I noticed he had a hand missing.

There’s a lot of hassle and red tape when you ship bodies home. The nurse, whose name is Soon, said the best thing is cremation. I told her to just pretend I wasn’t there. She said Mick told her he wanted to be cremated and that he wanted his ashes to be let loose on the Ko Samui breeze when it blows out to sea. So early the next morning Soon and I walked a good five miles to a jetty of sand where the breeze was blowing east. She said a Buddhist prayer and then gave me the small urn of ashes. It was a sad little moment and both of us cried. Mick had a wonderful singing voice and I liked his off-the-wall sense of humour. He did lack a certain sense of direction though.

Afterwards we walked back to the hospital and Soon gave me his personal effects. I was surprised to find out he’d written a whole book before he died. I sat on the beach and read it—for a while. Until the wind caught a few pages, in the Istanbul part, which I feel miserable about. Then I read it beside my hut. I don’t know. I think it’s a crazy idea but maybe somebody might want to publish it. I’m sending the daybook along and Pete’s notes too. All you’d have to do is have someone type it up and then send it to Doubleday. I should get some money, said the greedy bitch, because it’s my idea. Just enough to come back to Ko Samui every winter.

If you don’t want to go to the trouble, I’ll understand. Maybe I’ll do it when I come back in late August. Hopefully with Kelly in tow.

Ko Samui has become sad, actually, because of what happened to Mick, and the waves are rough at this time of year. They kind of pummel you. So I’m leaving for Bali tomorrow. Maybe I’ll find Patrick there.

Have a good summer, Your friend, Charole

Mick

Ko Samui was great. Lots of green palm trees, lots of white sand.

When we got to the dock, there were all these fruit farmers loading their baskets, all these Buddhists passing out pamphlets.

Some guy named Tony asked us if we needed anything.

Chou told him he needed to rent something to drive. No problem, said Tony. He rented him a Toyota truck.

Chou said he had to make the connections, it might take a few hours, and he dropped me off at this camp of thatch-huts. He said we’d have to stay overnight, catch the next day’s ferry back to the mainland.

I said fine. It looked like a great place to hang out for a few hours. Maybe catch some shut-eye. I was tired from the all-night drive. It was right on the beach. Between the thatch huts I caught a glimpse of a few bikinis. I did have my swimming trunks with me.

A few minutes later Chou’s gone and I’m wandering down to the beach in my trunks. There’s these huge breakers rolling in. I go in the water and I get socked by those until I’ve had it with water up my nose and then I go and sit on the beach and just groove on the colours. All that blue sky. All that green water. Glancing every once in a while at the three girls down the beach. One had a black and white striped bikini, another had a black and orange bikini and the other had a yellow one-piece. They were all beautiful Thai girls.