Читать книгу The Twilight Soi - William John Stapleton - Страница 3

The Twilight Soi dwells on the dangers of one of the world’s most beautiful and intoxicating cities, Bangkok. It is named after one of Bangkok’s more infamous small streets, or sois as they are known.

Soi Twilight runs off the main thoroughfare of Surawong in the centre of Bangkok’s oldest entertainment district Patpong and is known to gay travelers around the world. It is here where touts from go-go boy bars such as Ocean boys, Bangkok Boys and Classic Boys hustle for the attention of local and international tourists.

This revised edition of The Twilight Soi became necessary because the first edition was published prematurely under extremely stressful circumstances.

The author hoped that the hostilities and high level of surveillance he was enduring would come to an end once the book’s publication was a fait accompli.

Instead it sent events spiraling off in the opposite direction, leading to the burning of his house, the theft of thousands of dollars from his ATM card and the loading up of his laptop with under-age pornography in an attempt at entrapment. The author was forced to flee Thailand and Bangkok, that city he loved so much.

And so the original optimistic ending entertained in the first edition proved incorrect.

Instead the Cambodian government allowed some of the most corrupt elements of Thai society to pursue a foreign citizen on to their territory in order to discredit the author and block the publication of this revised edition.

The Twilight Soi exposes how a lethally charming go-go boy, the by now famous Aek, became a national and cultural icon in Thailand for so successfully cheating a tourist.

Instead of discrediting the author the fact the author’s opponents were stupid enough to pursue him across national borders opened up of a can of worms, including the exposure of the mafia linkages between the owners of the go-go bars of Thailand and the gay bars of Pnom Penh.

The bar manager of the gay bar The Rainbow in Pnom Penh for example rang the author 110 times in a single day attempting to sell him ice in what was an obvious attempt at a setup.

The Thais relentless pursuit of the author made the rewriting of The Twilight Soi, already available world wide and beginning to sell, inevitable. Whatever its current flaws or imperfections, there will be no further revisions or varying editions of this manuscript.

The Twilight Soi began in an angry place - over theft and deception. But applying Western, or in the author’s case Australian, notions of loyalty, honesty, fairness, decency and an abhorrence of deceit do not apply in a country as profoundly different as Thailand. For historical reasons Australians intensely dislike personal treachery or the betrayal of friendship. Standing on these principles in a city like Bangkok marks you as a fool.

Ultimately being angry both at your own foolhardiness and the actions of others embitters and harms yourself, no one else. At first this book tried to end with more understanding and compassion than it began, but the final betrayals and displays of treachery of the Thais were so vicious he gave up any such honorable intentions; and in this revised edition has simply told the story as it happened, with as much understanding as he could piece together.

Many of the problems experienced by foreigners in Thailand come from its extreme cultural differences with the West. It’s name as the “land of hungry ghosts” is well earned. The natives’ propensity for mythologizing and story telling is little understood by Westerners and ridiculed by surrounding nations; in a sense only they themselves understand it.

In Australia a man’s word is his honor. A liar is the lowest form of life.

In Thailand only a foreigner would be so rude as to point out that a story told in the morning bears little or no resemblance to the story told in the afternoon.

Trust no one is advice regularly dished out by Bangkok’s residents, and it is good advice the author should have paid more attention to, rather than trying to make friends amongst the denizens of the city’s nightlife. Applying Western notions of reasonableness and fair play do not work in Bangkok. Milking foreigners of as much money as possible is just considered part of the job description of any tout or go-go boy.

The Twilight Soi is dedicated to the two Thai protagonists who feature most prominently, Aek and Baw, both of whom the author met on Bangkok’s Soi Twilight.

Aek was, when he first met him, was a go-go boy at one of the better known bars, X-Size. One of the last times he saw him, Aek was back in his little white undies parading the catwalk of another bar, this time Bangkok Boys just down the road.

Baw, after a year’s absence hanging around with a drug dealer girl friend with whom he had become utterly obsessed, was once again masterfully working the tourists up and down the Soi Twilight as a tout. He was an expert at both determining what the tourist wanted and their level of stupidity. He was back on familiar terms with the strip’s managers, who handed out tips for each customer brought to their establishment. Baw could pull in thousands of baht a night, but it all went on whisky and girls, just as it had when they first met and had gone on a wild jag across Thailand together.

In a sense the same life circle had happened to the author. He was back making a living as best he could at the only profession he knew, writing.

We all survive as best we can.

After the publication of the first edition of this book both Aek and Baw continued to dismiss him as a stupid foreigner, “a buffalo’’, despite, or even because of the generosity and personal kindness he had shown towards each of them.

Neither Aek or Baw had been on an airplane before meeting the author but far from displaying gratitude, subsequently cheated and stole from him. This kind of behavior continued with many of those the author met until he woke up to the fact he was not amongst friends.

And that he was foolish for having ever believed a single word that came out of the mouths of Thai sex workers - and for failing to understand their sub-culture and their superb acting skills.

Sadly, despite momentary illusions of intimacy, the public derision of the main protagonists and even amongst those he had never met continued until the day he was forced to flee the country.

The author’s experiences over his 15 months in Thailand made the English expression "poorer but wiser" apposite.

While far from the first foreigner to be ripped off by Thai sex workers, what made the author’s experiences different was that he chose to write about them while still living in the country, creating a cascade of hostility and death threats.

Perhaps writing The Twilight Soi was a mistake; many thought so.

Doing so won him no friends. He received no sympathy for allowing himself to be deceived while Aek became famous for so successfully cheating and deceiving a foreigner.

On a personal level writing The Twilight Soi helped the author to understand what had happened and begin to move on. It also opened him up to continued and vicious attacks accompanied by grotesque levels of surveillance and invasion of privacy. It also left him locked in the past for far too long; brooding over old injustices instead of enjoying the day; demanding the return of a car, a bike, the hundreds of thousands of baht which had been tricked or directly stolen from him; things which were never ever going to come back.

The chance of anyone doing the right thing in terms of returning stolen goods or compensating him for the lies and false propaganda directed against him, particularly the lie that he was Thailand’s number one drug driver, was zero. Whatever his personal alcohol or substance abuse failings may or may not have been, in Australia he would have been millions of dollars richer as a result of defamation suits. Not in Thailand.

For a while he turned into a bitter, angry man who drank too much. At times of the night he was not a pretty sight and this added to the sympathy for Aek and helped justify his thieving and deception. Every young man needs money. Every old man should be able to take care of himself.

The book also created considerable animosity amongst many in Bangkok’s gay and general entertainment communities who thought it unfair to point out thefts and lies in a personal relationship, despite the fact the very public false claims made against him made his life Bangkok almost impossible.

The posting of the book’s progress onto the internet as a way of recording and protecting himself from the repeated death threats made against him also attracted controversy prior to the government blocking the website – in effect preventing free speech and protecting corrupt networks.

While the author has been criticized for doing so, most of the character’s true names in this story have been maintained. They were only too happy to name and publicly humiliate the author by making up false or exaggerated stories in order to humiliate him and cover their own crimes. The only exception is the Michael character in the story, a pseudonym for the author adopted for stylistic reasons. Consequently Robert in the story is a pseudonym for his friend.

The writing of The Twilight Soi was not a considered decision in any sense and proved difficult on many levels.

These problems included the evolving structure of the story line and the virtual impossibility of hitting the right tone for such a personal and confessional story. It was in total contrast to the news journalism – or reportage – which had occupied much of his professional life. He was used to writing about other people’s crises and could turn the disasters in someone else’s life into news or lyrical prose with a deft touch; but not his own.

The obstructions, official and otherwise, including interference his internet service and the electronic harassment he endured through outrageous over-surveillance also made writing The Twilight Soi exceptionally difficult. The first edition was published prematurely as a result. The decision to push the send button and publish The Twilight Soi in a world where computers have made electronic publication easy, was partly compelled by the hope that as a fait accompli his attackers would realize the book could now be downloaded in Mongolia and there wasn’t much they could do to stop it.

This was a false hope indeed.

It is doubtful any other foreigner would have been stupid or persistent enough to write this book or to risk coming into conflict with such dangerous elements in such a dangerous city as Bangkok.

But writing came naturally to him. It was just what he did, much as a brick layer lays bricks or a carpenter builds houses. While he originally had other projects in mind, the story of The Twilight Soi presented itself and he felt compelled to write it.

The question of whether to proceed to publication was an entirely different question. He was in two minds whether to publish and be damned or to regard personal safety and valour as the better part of judgement.

The Twilight Soi could very easily have become a Maurice - the most famous example of the tradition in English literature of an author, in this case E.M. Forster, publishing a book about their lovers posthumously. The book later became a well known film.

Then again it’s all very well for Oxford dons to discretely publish after their deaths, they can afford it. However having unintentionally burnt through so much money in Thailand the author wasn’t quite sure whether such a luxury was open to him.

Despite the ill feeling that continues at the time of writing to exist between the author and the book’s protagonists he would like to thank both of them for the experiences of Thailand they gave him, some good, some bad, some positively malignant.

That both the young men he became involved with wanted to kill him – “you die for sure” was one of Aek’s constantly repeated phrases, “you know I can kill you’’ was one of Baw’s - was a unique learning experience.

While increasing his understanding of the country and its sex industry, the author’s experiences bore no resemblance to the quiet times he expected to have in Thailand in semi-retirement after 25 years of full time work as a newspaper reporter. He thought he would probably end up writing obscure novels in a picturesque house in the valleys of the country’s beautiful mountain retreats.

Whether these works would succeed or fail mattered little.

There were too many words in the world anyway.

The author's mistakes and wayward behavior during some of the periods covered by The Twilight Soi book, including falling off the sobriety wagon in a fairly extreme manner, dismisses him from role model status. But he hopes that in future years both his blunders and successes prove instructive.

He also hopes that in reading this book other tourists, probably like himself older than they would prefer to be, who wander naively into the ruthless complexities of Thailand’s famous go-go boy industry, will learn from his mistakes and not to be so thoroughly robbed, deceived or stolen from. This book is not labeled a "cautionary tale" for nothing.

The Twilight Soi has not so far and is unlikely to ever attract acclaim within Thailand itself. Indeed both the book and the author have been roundly ridiculed.

Never colonized, the Thais are a proud people with a uniquely complex set of cultural, social and sexual mores made virtually inaccessible to foreigners because of the complexities of one of the world’s few tonal languages.

The Thais do not appreciate criticism from any outside source and do not hold other cultures in high esteem. They do not like being called on the question of their routine cheating of foreigners.

The author had no idea he was starting a battle he could not win and no intention of triggering the chain of events that were to follow. In retrospect he should have realized he had been foolish to have been fooled and gracefully joined the long queue of tourists who had fallen for the lies emanating from a pretty face in this uniquely beautiful but often poverty stricken place. Ultimately the price would have been far less than coping with the events that overtook him.

They also have little time for the self pity and idiocies of foreigners who allow themselves to be cheated by prostitutes and no sympathy for those foolish enough to fall for the love stories spun by the nation’s sex workers.

Many have queried the author’s motives in writing such an often embarrassing and deeply personal tale as The Twilight Soi, including the accusation he wanted to bring attention to himself. Due to the nature of his profession as a journalist and writer, the author has been well known in his own country for almost his entire adult life. In coming to Thailand he was perfectly happy to opt for anonymity.

The Twilight Soi is unique amongst the many thousands of stories the author has written over his decades as a magazine writer, author or staff journalist for one particular reason: everyone in it is guilty.

The sex industry is a service industry of a unique nature which attracts billions of dollars to Thailand and spreads that money far more democratically through the community than, say, for example, the major hotel chains. While it may be an unrealistic aspiration in such a rough, tough and jumbled milieu the boys should not be encouraged to think of tourists as nothing but fruit for the picking.

Thailand’s image has been tarnished by the straight forward stealing from foreigners or in other cases the elaborate cons perpetrated by the one section of the community tourists most often come in contact with, its sex workers. The moment sufficient assets or money are acquired the pretence at love and romance, which could extend for months and even years, promptly ends.

The young men who work in the Bangkok bars of the infamous Soi Twilight, at least those encountered by the author, were guilty of repeated thieving, lying, deceit, disloyalty and even blackmail. They could also be fascinating, fun, and extremely charming. But their loyalty is to each other, their friends and their employers, not to the tourists who pass through their lives as customers in a perpetually passing tide.

The bars’ mama sans are guilty of foisting upon the often naive, lonely or drunken foreigners who enter their bars male prostitutes who should not and cannot be trusted under any circumstances.

The Twilight Soi attempts to make the point that many of the tourists being so routinely robbed and pillaged come from entirely different social backgrounds to the world they experience in Thailand and thus make easy targets.

In many cases they may be alone for the first time in their lives, or at low ebbs after the breakdown of jobs or relationships. To treat them with what is little more than contempt should be discouraged by the authorities in the interests of the country’s tourist industry. At the same time the physical attractiveness, relaxed attitudes to prostitution and sexual liberation, indeed athleticism, of the Thais will always make its sex industry one of the country’s major attractions and money spinners. As they say, when God was handing out sexual feelings the Thais were standing at the front of the queue.

But it is clear that legislative reform is required to force the go-go bars and brothels to take on the obligations to their customers beholden on any normal business operation.

The Twilight Soi derives from the author’s experiences of particular go-go bars and there are definitely better-run establishments; nor are all the boys thieves. But many a sorry tourist has many a sorry tale to tell, suggesting the author’s experiences are far from unique.

“They do it to everyone, they just didn’t quite realize who they were doing it to this time or what would happen,’’ he heard one couple comment in a restaurant overlooking the beach at Pattya.

A few days later, at that beautiful terrace of the Shangrila Hotel in Bangkok where the author spent an afternoon celebrating what he had originally thought was the end of the book and the beginning of a new life, a professorial type at a nearby table mused for quite some time on the tastelessness of publishing The Twilight Soi. He finally shrugged and observed: “Life is a university.”

The go-go bars and their management, along with some of the networks they are associated with, are guilty for failing to take any responsibility whatsoever towards their international customers and for the money or belongings the boys often steal or trick from tourists.

And while one might think picking up a young man from an established bar would provide some guarantees, don’t bother complaining once you have been robbed. Such actions will get you nowhere. The bars take their commissions without taking any responsibility for the actions of the young men whose services they sell.

In Aek’s case the X-Size Bar which so glowingly recommended him as a decent, honest boy, made no reparation for the blatant deceit, repeated stealing, dirty tricks, abuse, slander and vilification perpetrated against the author; and no apology whatsoever for the repeated death threats delivered against him once he dared to complain.

Indeed X-Size went out their way to disparage him as a difficult customer. Any customer who has the audacity to complain is difficult. This bar should be avoided at all cost. From the author’s personal experience, any tourist entering X-Size, located in the heart of Soi Twilight, has a high chance of being robbed and when it comes to the sex you’re supposedly paying for, little chance of getting value for your money.

The industry, unused to tourists with the nerve to criticize them, ridiculed the author as “Aek’s buffalo’’ while helping to make Aek a cult hero in the nation’s gay bars, nightclubs and discotheques – and a national hero for having so successfully stolen from and deceived a foreigner.

Only in Thailand could a thieving and dishonest male prostitute whose best friend and mentor was a pedophile become a national hero.

The author’s comments on the genuine cultural phenomenon centered around the Aek and the buffalo story, with him as the demon and Aek the hero, would ultimately be bad for Thailand, its moral centre and its international image were also ridiculed with references to his own lifestyle.

Eventually he was happy enough to have made a once unknown go-go boy a national and even international figure; standing, he wasn’t quite sure for what, sexual liberation, a finger in the face of the old or for normal social conventions. Or the fact that money doesn’t buy a person, much less love.

While the object of ridicule in clubs and discotheques as a buffalo, he had never at nearly sixty expected to become a disco figure of any kind; so finally he had to overcome his embarrassment and accept that Aek had become a part of the popular culture; thanks to him.

Normally the activities of foreigners in Thailand, no matter how outlandish, are of little interest to the locals except as further demonstration of their drunken, unsophisticated, tasteless and foolhardy behavior.

The attention focused on the author, thanks to the propaganda war being waged against him by what was sometimes known as the “gay mafia”, although there was as much rivalry as cooperation between the operators, was out of all proportion to his alleged indiscretions - a liking for young men in their twenties and a tendency to get smashed at an age when most of his contemporaries were living quiet, discrete lives.

It is easy to find foreigners in many of the tourist areas of Bangkok including in Nana, Soi Cowboy and the original red light district of Patpong who are far more inebriated than the author ever was; and behaving in a far worse manner. A lot of foreigners come to Bangkok and go a bit crazy, at least for a while. You can walk down Nana, the tourist district, any night of the week and find foreigners far more messed up than him, their clothes dank with alcohol sweat as they stumbled between bars, lighting one cigarette off another. In many cases two drinking buddies would have their eyes blackened from the night before, and would struggle with their cigarette while juggling a half empty can of beer and ogling every Thai girl they passed.

In the sea-side resort of Pattaya, little more than two hours drive from Bangkok, during the high season there are reputed to be an estimated 100,000 girls working any night of the week. Even at 7 a.m. in the morning, as some drunken, ragged relic of a human deluded by alcohol into believing he is having a good time, stumbles from one of the city’s many bars, there are girls along Beach Road waiting to offer their services.

Many tourists come to Thailand for one simple reason: to party and to take advantage of the country's relaxed attitudes to prostitution and the unique physical attractiveness of its people. That he was pilloried for doing much the same at an age when he had fulfilled most of what was expected of any responsible adult, worked most of his life, brought up his children, was absurd.

The propriety or otherwise of his private life would have been little known if not for the the grotesque invasions of his privacy and the propagandizing efforts of Bangkok’s mafia and their willing media cohorts. Part of this propaganda was propelled by the spy cameras Aek installed in his computer and later he realized were placed throughout the house, even in his bedroom and bathroom.

“You should see what he looks like with his shirt off,’’ was one comment he would sometimes overhear. No, he didn’t look terrific with his shirt off. Most people his age don’t, but nor do they have their physical imperfections broadcast to the world.

This level of personal invasion would never have been tolerated in his own country or in much of the rest of the world due to privacy legislation or out of simple respect. In Thailand he became public entertainment.

The official and unofficial obstructive behaviour endured by the author and the public ridiculing of him, which pandered to the nation’s worst xenophobic instincts and celebrated dishonest conduct, was scandalous but indicative of broader problems in the industry.

On the other hand the author ignored the many warnings about Thailand’s sex industry or simply did not think the cautionary tales applied to him. He had no idea how easy and practiced the tricks played on foreigners were.

The vicious end games against one of the few foreigners foolhardy enough to speak out publicly on the subject, accompanied by a blizzard of slander and often enough outright lies to conceal their own crimes and to discredit the author, all played out before an easily manipulated public, were something to behold.

No guest of any country, however naïve, elderly, stupid, ugly, drunk or even stoned they may be, should be subjected to the systematic removal of their money and assets as if it was a blood sport.

If as a tourist you find yourself on Soi Twilight you should take care to understand the motives of those whose bodies you are admiring - that unlike you, the boys are not looking for love, companionship, friendship or sex. They are just working. They want your money. Or as a massage boy later quipped to Michael as he passed an establishment in Pattya in the midst of the controversy that continued to pursue him: “We love you, we love your money.” But you would do well to follow the advice delivered by one of the protagonists in this book: “Don’t believe half of what you hear or half of what you see.”

From the author’s experience many of the boys working on the Twilight Soi are at once charming thieves and aspiring gangsters. Do not join the long queue of the unsuspecting. Protect yourself. Do not be fleeced.

The world class massage parlors that dot Bangkok often represent better value for money than the go-go bars. The massage boys tend to work hard to make sure you are happy, even if their only motivation is the size of the tip. They are doing a straight forward job, not creating the illusions the go-go boys are such masters at creating.

Hopefully The Twilight Soi will highlight some of the more dubious practices of Thailand’s go-go boy industry and contribute to its reform, moves which would improve the country’s image as a whole. As well it might help prevent other travelers, both gay and straight, from falling for the practiced lies trotted out by Thailand’s sex workers.

The bars and their sometimes exploitative management, if the boy’s complaints are to be believed, are guilty of failing to take proper care of their staff and of leaching as much money as they can out of the young men they fill their catwalks and stages with each night.

The municipal authorities and the Thai government are also guilty of failing to reform Bangkok’s go-go boy industry, commonly described as being run by "mafia" like interests.

The police are guilty for protecting establishments whose practices should be exposed. The poor wages of the Thai police by international standards means bribery is a standard and well accepted part of civil practice which helps to provide services that might not otherwise be available. However police wages is an issue which should be re-examined as a priority to ensure they fulfill their duties on the part of the public as a whole, not just for vested interests with money and power, as occurs for example with the go-go boy industry.

The local Thai media and entertainment industries were guilty of the outlandish lampooning of a sick and emotionally distressed guest in their country. Making fun of a foreigner for acting abnormally following the breakdown of what that individual was naive enough to have been led into believing was a genuine relationship was an utterly tasteless display by segments of Thailand’s popular media.

The industry’s wiser heads should have known better.

The author is guilty of the recurrence of alcohol and addiction problems which have plagued him since early adolescence. He should have had the wit, the wisdom and the maturity not to have relapsed in the first place or to have taken prompter action to remedy his personal situation. His relapse allowed those opposed to what he had to say an easy hook on which to discredit him.

Thailand’s international reputation is also tarnished by the continued operation of well known bars where under-age boys can be easily bought or arranged for; such as Bangkok’s Night Boys in the network of streets of Silom’s Soi Six, managed by Aek's mentor, protector and teacher, a thug, pedophile and mafia figure known as Tong - one of the people most determined by his rumor mongering to discredit the author and the story he had to tell.

Months after he had been near the stuff these people were still peddling the the propaganda he was smoking that uniquely Asian drug yabba, a drug with a well deserved reputation for driving people crazy, and that he “lop loohen mak mak”, deceived greatly.

The author deceived no one, admitted his mistakes and simply objected to having had money tricked and stolen from him. He may have not been entirely sober or always substance free, but nor was he a liar, a thief or a cheat. He did not hurt anyone, except himself. He did not issue death threats. He did not intimidate anyone. And he did not steal, as those who spoke so strongly against him had done.

Tong twice assaulted the author despite his previous generosity and hospitality. A simple request for the name of the bar’s lawyer was met with a flurry of calls in a determination to have him bashed. Such criminal organizations should be closed down if for no other reason than the interests of the tourist industry as a whole.

The cascade of hostility manufactured against the author began inadvertently. A story on the author’s blog, volume two of the series simply called Days, which originally and inadvertently brought him attention from some of the nastiest elements of Bangkok, was titled “Night Boys on The Bewildered Soi”. It described how easily under-age boys could be bought.

As a restless spirit and hopeless insomniac who rarely slept more than an hour or two a night, but stuck at home in Sydney minding young children as a single father, the author had since 1994 begun the habit of doing a daily blog. He would often write 600 or more words at about three in the morning, before taking the dog for a walk while the children slept.

He had been doing the anonymous blog for so many years with little or no consequence in the real world apart from the odd compliment or query from the few friends who knew he was the author, it never occurred to him it would have any local consequences or be read in Thailand. It was just a personal outlet. He felt better once he had untangled the thoughts swirling through his head; and there was always the thought that maybe one day it might all fall into a place as a book, a record of a decade, something.

Unfortunately the story showed up readily on internet searches and led to a series of events he had no desire or intention of provoking, attracting the attention of some of Bangkok’s nastiest elements.

Bars such as Bangkok’s Night Boys, which are by no means unique in a country where poverty is endemic amongst the rural sections of the population and in the provinces boys as young as 12 or 13 can be bought for ten dollars or so, are in direct contravention with the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child and the UN's campaigns to eradicate child prostitution in the region. Thailand is a signatory to the Convention.

He opened it with a quote from Dies Irae (Day of Wrath), a famous thirteenth century Latin hymn thought to be written by Thomas of Celano. The poem describes the end of the world and the Day of Judgment. At the time he often played it at home as it suited his mood.

The hymn read in part:

“Day of wrath! O day of mourning!

See fulfilled the prophets' warning, Heaven and earth in ashes burning!

The day of wrath, that day Will dissolve the world in ashes

Lo! the book, exactly worded, wherein all hath been recorded: thence shall judgment be awarded…

When therefore the judge will sit, whatever hides will appear: nothing will remain unpublished.”

The author's attempts to repair the damage he had done, bring a stop to the propaganda war directed against him return some semblance of normality to his life all failed.

Firstly, in Aek's company and in what he hoped was a conspicuous display, he withdrew the complaint he had made to X-Size. It made no difference. He also took the material which had offended some of the city’s most dangerous people off the internet.

The author also talked to the bar’s owner, explaining what had happened and how he had no wish to take on the gay mafia of Bangkok, something beyond the capacity of any individual. He just wanted to live a peaceful life. But his attempts to fix the mistakes and the powerful enemies he had inadvertently created made no difference to the level of attacks against him.

So out of frustration he opted to go in the other direction; and tell the whole story, including admitting his own mistakes.

The repeated death threats he began to receive induced him to place the evolving document onto the internet each day for his own protection, an action no author would normally take. His thinking was that the higher a person’s profile the harder it was to kill them. The more obvious his enemies became, the more likely they were to come under surveillance or suspicion themselves.

Later he came to wonder: would the Thais really care whether one of Australia's better known journalists was killed or not? Just like Americans, much of the rest of the world holds little interest for Thais.

In any case the government moved quickly to block the website, not just in Thailand but around the world; thereby using tax payer funds to protect criminals.

Another difficulty involved with the writing of The Twilight Soi was that the author had become accustomed to having the backing of a multi-billion media company whenever he strayed from the often routine stories of general news reporter into more controversial areas.

Most of his professional life when Michael ventured into disputed or confrontational arenas he was hidden behind a computer screen, a byline, a microphone or a multi-billion dollar media company. If someone didn’t like what he had to say, they were perfectly welcome to write a letter or complain to the management, under whose instructions he was usually operating anyway.

Since leaving News Limited he no longer had the resources of a multi-billion company to back investigations which strayed into more controversial areas.

The author was used to being crazy brave, all for the sake of telling someone else's story. If they threatened to take legal action he had one simple response: "If you want to sue an eighty billion dollar company go right ahead."

He missed the first rate security expertise, the legal advice, the guidance and the physical protection that would have been automatically offered any of the journalists working for the world’s leading news organization, if News Limited decided this was a story they wanted to back or throw resources at.

Whether The Twilight Soi would have attracted such support amongst his former place of employment and the present hierarchy for their publication’s largely public service, legal or business oriented readership was a moot point.

Of course there were worst stories happening to people every day of the week than the one the author tells here. People were starving to death or being killed in war zones in various parts of the world. Michael wasn’t lying in bed dying of cancer. He hadn’t lost all of his money and assets.

But nearing 60 after a lifetime of hard work and after having just brought up two children on his own, this was a time he thought belonged to him, to enjoy himself. It was not to be.

At first the vilification, ridicule and outright hatred directed at him from people he had tried to befriend and to understand was both hurtful and hard to understand.

At the same time the public support for Aek, deliberately rubbed in his face, was difficult to deal with emotionally.

People cat called him, labeling him a buffalo and a farmer, two of the Thai words for stupid or unsophisticated. It was true enough that having come from the relative backwater of Sydney he was completely unfamiliar with the ways of Bangkok’s infamous go-go bars.

But nor are many of those who visit Bangkok.

Many of those busy labeling him a fool had no university degrees, had never had their work published on the front pages of newspapers, had never travelled around the world, had never written books and were on the whole working for miserable wages.

But the mob is a powerful thing and nothing was going to stand in the way of their ridicule.

In the old fashioned world of journalism he had first entered in what came to seem like the profession’s hay days of high principle, way back in the 1970s, attention to detail and the importance of getting “the first draft of history’’ correct were seen as fundamental and noble goals.

You can attempt to blacken and discredit a journalist as often as you like for their misfit natures and lack of conformity to normal social mores. It was the story itself that mattered.

Back then, journalism was a world full of unusual and colorful characters. Reporters were better known for their dissolute ways than their saintliness. From his experience, the public, fascinated by the inner-workings of a media they might all have personal views about but could only observe from the outside, were disappointed if the journalists they met were not eccentric in one way or another. In truth the peculiarities of his own personality meant it was doubtful he could have survived, much less thrived, in any other profession.

Traditionally reporters liked to think they were writing the truth in a fearless way for the public good, making journalism an admired profession. In Australia many thousands of aspirants in Australia lined up for the few cadet positions the major papers offered each year.

Now the world has entered an entirely different era, of 60 second sound bites and news as info-tainment.

In an inter-connected, over-populated world deluged with information, the complex nuances of a story and the art of writing have become increasingly unimportant.

In breaking up with Aek the author should have realized he was dealing not just with one charming but ruthless go-go boy who assumed telling stealing and telling lies was just part of his job, but with mobsters protecting large revenues and with the issue of national pride.

In the end The Twilight Soi is a story about power, mob mentality and money as much as it is about personal failings, gullibility, deception, treachery, betrayal, love and loss.

For those who did nothing but dish out ridicule and abuse or took any opportunity to steal from the author – may no one ever be as spiteful, childish, dishonest or cruel to you as you were to that “ting tong mai dee maw falang, that crazy, bad, drunken foreigner who lived in your midst.

To those few who showed him friendship and consideration whilst living in Thailand – thank you.

Any attempts to negotiate with the bars mentioned in this story over claims for damages or this book’s content and timing of publication through the simple request for the names of their lawyers were thuggishly rebuffed.

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Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let airplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun:

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W H Auden

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