Another Waltz Down Memory Soi
A Retrospective
Here’s another fun story from my first year in Thailand for you. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
So I book a hotel on Soi 22. I know nothing about the street. It’s a hostel, so I’m bunking in a room with this wondrously sweet young Japanese couple. We get to chatting and then they go out to hit the town. I’m preparing to go to sleep.
My heart is still wrapped up, at this point, with a red-haired Australian girl from my long lost past. A girl who made every effort to get rid of me and move on. But how can you move on from something that never happened? Easier for a woman, difficult for a man. Or maybe I just loved and she didn’t in the first place. Well anyway, I open up my Instagram to see she’s posted a picture with some Mexican guy in a hot tub (she later married that fucker.)
Well, I close my Instagram and stare blankly at the ceiling. There’s not much else to be done. Well, actually, there is.
I walk out of the hostel.
“Hello, sexy man! You want massage?”You bet your ass I do. Better make it an oil massage. All the bells and whistles, please.
After that little whirlwind, I stumble into a bar. A dozen farangs are crowded around one extremely attractive bar girl, who has a sort of energy about her that could melt a dozen hearts in one second and then blend them into a margarita.
Well, she’s busy, I think, so I walk to the next table
I don’t remember exactly what happened next, but all those farangs left, and suddenly I found myself playing pool with that girl and her friend.
We drank all into the night. Then she asked if I wanted to go to Soi Cowboy.
“Sure yeah, never been before.”
We drank a lot more, and then after a night of dancing and light romancing, we stumbled back to Soi 22.
But I was staying at a Hostel.
“Oh, cannot go.” She said. “Hai Line Gaw Daii.”
Actually, not having sex with her ended up being one of the best things for both of us. We stayed friends for years, meeting up now and again, shooting the shit, blathering about life.
Naturally, she had her problems. But I respect her too much to get into that.
Then one day, poof! Off of social media and all that.
But it’s ok. I think that she found her peace in life. And she sure as shit didn’t need me to find that.
I guess the same can be said of the red-haired Aussie girl…. but fuck her.
