Читать книгу Not for Publication - William John Stapleton - Страница 7

Among the images playing in his head in that cold Kathmandu guesthouse were lavish, lascivious scenes from a televised cabaret show in Thailand’s sex central of Pattaya, two hours south of Bangkok.

Pattaya, built beside a narrow strip of dirty grey sand edged onto a warm, garbage filled sea, was said to be the world’s largest open-air brothel.

The hundreds of women past their prime and lady boys not pretty enough to work the bars lingering under palm trees along the wide esplanade leant credibility to the claim.

Australia had some of the best beaches in the world, their golden sands and crashing surf the backdrop for innocent summer love and lazy afternoons.

But these indifferent sands held no such hope; except to the Europeans who sunned themselves with apparent joy, fresh from another of their interminable winters.

The entire cabaret show had been dedicated to glorifying the success of a go-go boy in lying, stealing and deceiving a foreigner, maximising his take.

At the same time the gullible Westerner was lampooned as a Les Patterson-like figure: stumbling drunk, sloppily dressed, with buck teeth. The foreigner had been him.

Xenophobic to the core the Thai audience, which included some of the most dangerous characters in the country’s sex industry, loved it; laughed themselves silly.

The only one not laughing was him. The customer. The one whose money they had so gleefully plundered.

The actors portraying two of the central figures in the story Michael had dared to tell were much better looking and more talented than the characters on which they had been based.

Some of the dancing and professionally choreographed skits showed off the Thais innate musical and acting talents.

But it would have been a damn sight cheaper, more decent and have had far less consequence if, instead of ridiculing an elderly foreigner, they had just apologised for cheating him and given back the money stolen.

With the edgy, testosterone driven pride of Thai men, saying sorry to a foreign tourist or returning money was not in a sex worker’s code of conduct.