My poor TILAK

You lady from the night, belonging to the Isaan clan of females, playing the game hard and with determination.

The only thing you have to do is earning the Thai Baht for your kids back in your home village, back in the poor north of Bhumipol`s Kingdom.

You`ve come to the beach resorts, Nana Plaza and Soi Cowboy in Krung Thep, you work the bars, you walk the Pattaya boulevard, the seedy streets of nighttime Bangkok, your young oriental mind full of hope.

Maybe a foreign husband who will support you, a trip to Europe, a way out of you wretched life.

You look with amazement at the rowdy punters populating the GoGo-bars, drunk english lagerlouts and rowdy Aussies holding big bottles of high alcohol content Chang beer
in sausage-like pinkish fingers, they eye you with obvious lust.

You look at yourself one more time in the mirror, mascara and lipstick where they belong, manicured eye lashes in place, your high heeled platform shoes waiting in front of the door to the ridiculously little room that you share with several of your contemporaries, your "sisters in arms".

You`re ready to play the Game one more time, another night of putting up with rowdy boozing s*x starved farangs. There is no hope for you, you little poor creature of the night. Even Lord Buddha himself has turned his back on you.

You are out there on your own realising that your upbringing has taught you a responsibility to the baby that your Mum is looking after back in Thailand`s northern provinces, back in that little dusty hamlet where your younger sisters are still working the rice paddies twelve grueling hours a day under the scorchingly hot Thai sun.

I looked at you there and then but I don`t seem to remeber where and when.

With a sudden jolt I wake up realising I was reliving The Dream again, The Dream that though various different ways was always the same in its very essence, The Dream that has followed me through all these years of my life since my first trip to Thailand.

Not a dream that is really negative, nor has it ever been really positive.

The Buddha pendant I wear is burning on my chest while I slowly get my act together, flying over the Indian sub-continent, well on track to my destination.

I NEED A BEER!!!

written by  heraclio on April 2, 2009 from Calcutta, India
from the travel blog: Farang Chronicles.
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