Connect 4

Prostitution is said to be the world’s oldest profession and despite the vigorous efforts of our political and legal systems, is thriving after all this time. Perhaps nowhere more so than in Thailand where rich and not so rich guys from around the world visit to take advantage of that beautiful country’s seamy trade. It’s difficult to determine the extent of this because for understandable reasons, most men tend to keep the details to themselves. However, I’m willing to go on record here and now, and admit that when I was in Thailand as a younger man, I spent money on a prostitute.

Oh calm down, calm down, it’s not what you think. I didn’t have sex with her. Nor did she have sex with me; or anything even remotely close to it. No, the money I spent was on something even more insidious...gambling. Remember Connect 4; the game where you take turns dropping little colored plastic discs into a frame with the aim of connecting four in a row before your opponent does? She stiffed me to the tune of about 50 cents over the course of the evening.

Now I know what you’re thinking. What kind of sleaze admits to spending an evening with a Thai hooker, and then claims it was playing Connect 4? Just bear with me.

Originally three of us were going out for the night. Unfortunately, Russell was feeling the effects of a little too much Mee-Kong earlier in the evening and had retired to his cabin. In case you’re not familiar with Mee-Kong, it’s the local Thai firewater and at least one good drunk is a rite of passage for backpackers. Popular lore has it that the base of this witches brew is formaldehyde, the stuff they use for embalming bodies. Certainly, it tastes as though it has already been used for that purpose but with a healthy dose of Coca-Cola it’s semi-palatable. Even so, it doesn’t take much to make one fall over and Russell had already reached this point.

If it wasn’t for the fact that he was from the south of England and therefore, a pitiful lightweight when it comes to alcohol consumption, I might have suspected he was faking the whole thing in order to avoid having to spend another night in the company of Windsor. His real name has been lost to the mists of time but we nicknamed him Windsor on account of his uncanny resemblance to the Welsh actor, Windsor Davies. He was what might charitably be described as “A boring bastard” and even though I’d been looking forward to the evening a few hours earlier, bedtime now seemed an interminable distance away.

They tell me that Koh Samui has changed unrecognizably since my visit and the pristine beaches where we lazed in the sun are now fenced off by luxury resorts catering to rich westerners who spend their mornings on the golf course, their afternoons by the pool and their evenings in the resort lounge and think they’ve visited Thailand. Some of the real old hands will tell you the place was ruined by the time I got there but as far as I was concerned, the handful of beach huts and primitive cabins only served to enhance this beachfront paradise.

Other than a couple of bamboo roofed beach bars, the nightlife, such as it was, could be found about twenty minutes down the coast. Twenty minutes during which Windsor regaled me with stories of the beautiful Thai girl he’d met the night before. The one who was totally smitten with him and who he’d had to forcibly evict from his beach hut this morning. Curiously, neither Russell or I had seen her even though we were up and she would have had to walk past us eating breakfast but I digress. Let’s just say it was a long twenty minutes and leave it at that.

We arrived to find eight or nine bars lined each side of the road with the hypnotic beat of trance music from the nearby nightclub thumping through the palms. The bars looked dead so we decided to check out the club first. If possible, it was even more dead. Oh there were people in there - a few dozen western guys in various stages of inebriation all staring at five or six Thai professionals dancing in a circle on the floor.

Riveting though that was, the novelty wore off after a while and as hookers in the bars had looked more attractive, we decided we could just as easily go stare at them and avoid having to listen to trance music. The short walk was enlivened by watching a drunken German attempt to fish his rental motorcycle out of a canal but in no time we were each propped on a bar stool surrounded by a bevy of beauties.

Windsor of course, was desperate to find his fantasy girl of the night before but as she was oh so mysteriously absent we ended up chatting to the ladies who were on duty. Their English was of the comic “Me love you long time” variety but once they’d established that I wasn’t buying what they were selling, things settled down and we were able to discuss the burning issues of the day such as what was my name, how old was I, was I sure I didn’t want a girlfriend, what was my name, how old was I and so on. This was in the days when I could pass for a good five to ten years less than my real age, which seemed to be a subject of fascination among the girls.

"It’s because you’re so small. It makes you look younger." reasoned one, a heartbreaker called Pen. "My little baby man" she said fondly, stroking my face. "Are you sure you don’t want a girlfriend?" Down boy!

Windsor on the other hand, did want a girlfriend. Only problem was, for professionals they all seemed astonishingly reluctant to take his money.

"I’m too tired" one told him, "My feet hurt" said another. The rest were willing if unenthusiastic, but wanted to go nightclubbing first. An evening spent ponying up for drinks would have meant Windsor easily paying two or three times the negotiated rate and he was balking at the prospect. So, like many men eager to assert himself in matters of romance, he resorted to whining.

In disgust, I looked for other ways to pass the time until he was ready to give up. It was then I spotted the Connect 4 game sitting on the bar. Following my gaze, Pen’s eyes lit up.

"You wanna play?"

The night had just begun.