Maya - Illusion

“Guess what I am going to be studying?”

“Er, um, teaching? Nursery school assistant? Child Care? I don’t know, I give up.”

“Business Administration,” she announced proudly.

5 ONE HUNDRED DAYS

Lek had not felt so empowered since she had stopped working in Pattaya. She loved Craig, as far as she understood the definition of the word, because she had no doubt that love meant different things to different people. Her idea of love did not entail any restriction of freedom. The only thing that stopped her doing absolutely anything she wanted, was that she didn’t want to hurt Craig’s feelings.

She had already told him several times over the years that if she caught him playing about, she would take him for every penny he had and then dump him and she knew people who could advise her how to do it.

However, she did feel ‘beholden’ to him, because he had worked so hard for nearly a decade and had spent all his savings on them and was now selling his house too. She felt that she would never have done that for anyone except Soom, not even her mother, whom she loved dearly.

In Pattaya she had been in charge of her life in a way that would never have been possible in Baan Suay – heck, it wasn’t even possible now. People in the village worked hard, but there was little entertainment during the day, so those not at work watched TV and gossiped and then told their family when they came home and then they talked about it in their turn the following day in the fields.

She hated the gossip and the scrutiny. When she had first gone back seven or eight years before, it had been even worse, because people had held her ‘job’ against her. It was easier now, because she had ‘proved’ herself and the villagers had mellowed a little with the departure of so many young girls to the cities to seek their fortunes.

Lek knew how that worked and she knew what most of them would be doing, if not by day then by night and on the weekends.

In ‘her day’, twenty years before, those who went away, usually went to fulfil a goal. She had gone to save the family farm from foreclosure, but these days most girls went because they wanted the deposit for a car or wanted to leave the country with a foreign husband. She had wanted both of those things, but had fallen in love with Craig and he had fallen in love with Thailand and she had wanted to stick by her daughter at least until Soom didn’t need her anymore.

Now that Soom was at university in Bangkok five hundred kilometres away, her life seemed empty. Yes, she had Craig, but it was not the same. He was working all day and didn’t enjoy the same party lifestyle that she did, but he didn’t often get jealous about it and she knew where he was.

Now things were different again though, she had a business, albeit a small one and she was studying, even if it was only four hours a week. She felt that she had regained some control over her life, although her philosophy and her religion told her that Karma ruled destiny. That was a deep one for her at the moment, so she was going to go with the flow; be as good a person as possible; and throw herself into her work and studies.

And she did so. With a vengeance. Lek did the housework including the garden in the early morning as the sun was coming up; she studied a bit with Craig in his office in the afternoon and she watered her Suan – her market garden in the evening so that the sun would not boil the leaves of her precious trees, which were little more than bushes, but bore so much hope. This meant that she could not always be there for evening drinks in Nong’s, but Craig understood and, hey, you can’t have everything.

She was happy with the way things were turning out. The bushes had not died, which had been a danger, but it was past and her school work was not as hard as she had expected, largely because she had helped out with the administration of her cousin’s bar for so many years and had helped her parents with the paperwork on their farm before that.

In fact, the point of the course was to help small farmers cope with the modern requirements of the Thai government. Increasingly, the government wanted proof, documents, evidence, receipts, wage slips et cetera and most Thais knew nothing of these things in the villages. Lek did have prior knowledge from the bar, so she was actually a few steps ahead of her classmates who ranged in age from fifteen years younger to fifteen years older than herself.

She loved being one of the smartest in the class after thinking that she was one of the thickest for miles around for decades. It was doing her self-confidence and her self-esteem a power of good.

The course did not include computers, that would have frightened most of the farmers off joining, but she did want to ask Craig to teach her the basics of email and Facebook, so that she could keep in touch with Soom who used them extensively, as all young people were doing in Thailand. Facebook was like an epidemic and she wanted to know what it was all about too.

She made a point of being there for the five o’clock drinks that day.

“Telak, I want to have a Facebook page and an email address, do you know how to set that up for me?”

“Yes, Lek, I can show you how to do that. I can either do it for you or show you. It’s not difficult, when you know how, like most things. We can do it tonight or tomorrow, if you like.”

“Tonight would suit me, darling, if you are not too busy.

“Lek, I just offered. If you want, we can take a few bottles home and I’ll show you when we have finished this one.”

“Yes, please! I am anxious to learn. It will save money too, telak, if I can email Soom instead of phoning her every evening. In fact, while we are drinking up, I’ll phone her and ask her to text you her Facebook page and email address. You will need those, won’t you?”

“I know her Facebook page already, but you can ask for her email address. That would help.”

Lek got on the phone immediately, but that was nothing new – she only needed half an excuse to phone someone up and none at all where Soom was concerned.

When they got home, Craig set up his laptop while Lek poured him a beer and got an extra chair so that she could sit by him.

“Right, the first thing to do, is decide what you want your Facebook page to be called. You can change it later, but it is better to get it right the first time.”

He let her think about that for a while.

“Lek and My Garden,” she said.

“Yes, you could have that, but, I don’t know...”

“Lek in Baan Suay”

“Again, yes, but..., I don’t know, I always try for something memorable and ‘Baan Suay’ – I may be wrong – but no-one has ever heard of it...”

“Lek in Pattaya’...”

“OK, let’s go with that for now. Like I said, you can change it later if you want.”

Craig showed her step by step, how to set up her Facebook page called http://facebook.com/LekInPattaya and then they moved on to the email.

“I can set you up with Hotmail or Yahoo or add you to one of my web sites, if you want.”

“What is the difference?”

“Most good names on Hotmail and Yahoo have already been taken and free addresses look juvenile and amateurish anyway, but if you use one of my sites, you can have any name you like, except Craig, and it looks professional.”

“OK, I’ll go with you.”

He showed her a list of his web sites.

“Pick one that you like...”

“How about this one?”

“Sure, ‘Behind The Smile’ it is. And your name?”

“‘LekinPattaya’”

“There is no reason to use your Facebook name. That is a different thing, you can be ‘Lek Williams’ or just ‘Lek’ here on my domain if you like.”

“OK, ‘Lek’.”

“So, on the Internet, that becomes ‘Lek’ – they prefer small letters – and your ‘street address’ is ‘behind-the-smile.org’ so your full email address is now ‘lek@behind-the-smile.org‘. Easy, wasn’t it?”

“You made it look easy, yes, but I don’t know whether I could do that on my own.”

“Look, Lek, no-one is born with the knowledge. We all have to learn what we know. Fifteen years ago, I didn’t know how to create an email address, last year, I didn’t know how to create a Facebook page, I still don’t know what Instagram is all about, so you just find out, if you’re interested, don’t you?

“You never saw the need for email or Facebook before today or a few days ago, now you do. Maybe your Mum will see a need for it next month. Or maybe not. It doesn’t matter, does it? I can’t change a nappy, but not having had any kids and not likely to either, that doesn’t matter either, does it? No-one can know everything. You pick what you need and leave the rest. Don’t worry that you don’t know what other people know.”

“I can see what you are saying, but it is easy for you to say because you do know. Now I want to know too.”

“Lek, some people want to build clocks, some people only want to know how they work and even more just want to tell the time. Use the Internet as a tool, if you want, by all means, but let others do the spade-work, if you don’t want to learn how to. On the other hand, learn how it all works if that’s what you want.

“I can teach you a lot of it, but really, you don’t need to know how a clock works to read the time from it.”

“OK... so, now I have an email address and a Facebook?”

“Yes. You just tell people that your Facebook address is ‘Lek in Pattaya’ and that your email address is Lek at Behind The Smile dot org – it is that simple. No need to explain anything, if they don’t understand then they wouldn’t know how to use the information anyway.

“So, if people ask me my email address, I say: ‘Lek at Behind The Smile dot org’ and my Facebook is Lek in Pattaya... It is that easy... Really..?

“So, I can send Soom an email now? And put a message on her Facebook?”

“Yes, like this for email.... and like this for Facebook.... Now just type something and click here. This is in English and click here to change the keyboard, this thing, into Thai.”

“Wow, and that is free?”

“It is for you... but I had to buy a computer and I pay TOT six hundred Baht every month for the Internet, and I pay every year for the domain name – the behind-the-smile.org bit - but after that it is free, yes.”

∞

Lek found out over the following few weeks that she was not really interested in knowing how the clock worked, but she did wanted to tell the time and often. It seemed that whenever, Craig got to up to get a cup of coffee, Lek was at his computer when he got back. It was easy to see what her next Christmas present should be.

Saturday school was a joy to her. She didn’t need to be able to use a computer for it because they did all their work with figures on a traditional paper spreadsheet, but Craig showed her how to transfer all the figures to Excel and let the computer take care of the calculations for her.

She was soon hooked. Lek went from being one of the most atechnical people in the world, to one of the most knowledgeable about using a computer in the village. At least among those over twenty-five years of age and not that that was difficult in a village which had only acquired its first computer a few years before, but it was a big achievement nevertheless and one which she would have said would have been impossible a month before.

She passed her first end of term exams at the top of the class and derived great pleasure from helping those in her form who were struggling to keep up. Craig was very proud of her and when Soom came back for the end of term break just before Christmas, she was flabbergasted at the transformation in her mother.

When Craig bought her a laptop, she and Soom spent all day setting it up together and copying programmes from Craig’s and Soom’s computers. Soom’s English was pretty good, but she did all her computing in Thai, mainly because the teachers and her fellow pupils could not speak English so well, but Lek did not have that problem, so she wanted her computer set up in English.

Craig was dismayed that Soom was having to dumb down to doing everything in Thai instead of English, not because the Thai language was deficient, but because it was restrictive. He had met dozens of bright computer kids in Thailand who could not converse about their computers in English even though they had learned the English terminology. Their pronunciation was just so bad and they had learned that from their teachers.. Computer became ‘com’; programme, ‘progra’; monitor was ‘scee’; keyboard ‘keybo’; hard drive was ‘ha dive’ - it seemed such a waste.

Those kids would forever only ever be able to work in Thailand for low wages. He wanted Soom to speak correctly and learn computers in English, but the quality of the teaching staff was such that she was being taught wrong – nobody in the world would ever understand her except Thais. He was glad that Lek was avoiding this trap, although it meant learning a whole raft of new terminology, which she could either learn correctly or badly.

The converse was that no Thais would be able to understand her now, although the rest of the world would, not that she had any plans to be an International, jet-setting computer wizard yet.

Soom, Lek and Craig were able to have three-way discussions on computer-related topics for the first time ever, not that many people would find that enviable.

∞

Their sixth wedding anniversary was on the 20^th of November, but they didn’t want to make a big fuss about it. More important in the practical sense was that Craig’s three-month visa would expire the same day. That would be a clash for ever more unless they changed it so Lek asked one of her cousins to take them to Naan for the day on the 14^th of November to get a visa.

Neither of them had been to Naan before although the province was less than three hundred kilometres away and none of the three expected to enjoy the trip. It was all up mountain on the western side and mostly down mountain on the east, but the scenery was fantastic.

They left at six a.m arrived at eleven, were done by noon and on the way back. Lek and Craig wished that they had gone alone, because that remote mountain province was just the sort of place they liked to explore.

They arrived back in Baan Suay at six fifteen and they took the driver to Nong’s for a ‘thank you’ drink, although he didn’t stay long as it was not a place he felt happy drinking in. Most people in the village felt like that, and so did Lek to a certain degree. Villagers preferred to drink at home.

As the driver was leaving, Craig asked Lek to tell him that they would put him up for a night in the city of Naan, if he took them next time, but Lek didn’t look keen and may have said something else.

Lek gave him three thousand Baht for his trouble and he went away a happy man.

∞

Other than Lek and her computer and Soom coming home for a fortnight, Christmas was a washout for Craig, but that was neither a surprise nor a disappointment. He had become used to it. When he had first arrived in the village, no-one had even known what Christmas, or ‘Kisma’, Day was. They were all Buddhists, so why should they? But gradually, over the years a few people had cottoned on and some even surprised him by wishing him ‘Happy Kisma’. He rarely said it first to anyone over the age of ten, because the youngsters were normally told in school about big days in all major religions.

Craig did his annual tour of the village hot spots during the morning, drinking a beer in each of the five local shops, telling those who were curious why he was out drinking so early, what day it was. Most were none the wiser when they walked away bemused.

There were now two Internet Cafes in the village, which created two fifty-metre radius Wi-Fi hotspots. Luckily for Craig, there was a shop in each of them and the owners had been good enough to give him their passwords so that he could surf from outside. One covered Nong’s shop and the other was at the far end of the village about five hundred metres away, which gave him a good excuse to get the only exercise he ever got.

They had almost totally given up celebrating Christmas. In the beginning, when Soom had been younger, it was fun to decorate the patio with trimmings and lights that played tunes, but when they broke, they were not replaced and no-one missed them. Craig had also used to cook a Christmas Dinner of roast chicken, roast potatoes and the like. Soom and Lek would eat some out of politeness, but he had always eaten most of it himself and cold, so he stopped. Likewise with cakes.

For the first few years he had baked a couple of cakes on Christmas morning, but one year he had used mono-sodium glutamate instead of salt and they were as hard as concrete. Not even Bpom and Bpouy, the dogs, would eat them. Everybody, including Craig, had had a good laugh, but he didn’t cook any more at Christmas ever again. Their wedding had been the last time, six years before.

There was a baker in the village now anyway who would make bread in the European style at twenty-four hours’ notice and fantastic chocolate cakes and pizzas. Bread had been something that Craig had missed badly, now he only needed a dairy farmer to make some cheese and he would be as happy as a skylark.

Despite the fact that Christmas was not a time for celebration in Baan Suay and the surrounding area, there were normally more parties than would be usual in the West. This had always come as a surprise to Craig, even though he had been there some years. December is also Thailand’s winter, so the ‘cool’ evenings were ideal for garden parties and the New Year was the perfect excuse. Cool in Thailand though meant about 25°c, so there was no hardship.

The parties started in late November to early December and there were dozens of them. Craig liked to limit them to two a week, but Lek often went to four. The village council held a party, the town council too; the schools all held parties and so did many businesses, most of which allowed friends of employees or customers. The banks held them and local government agencies did as well. Big farmers held them and so did the church charities.

Then New Year’s Eve, every family held their own party then. In the midst of all this merry-making, one family had a more sombre task to perform, because it was one hundred days since Joy’s death on the 27^th of December. Thais take the One Hundred Days funeral celebration very seriously and so it was with Joy’s family too.

Lek responded to the call to action at five o’clock in the morning and went next door to help cook for the monks and guests, who would arrive at about ten, since the monks had to finish eating for the day before noon. The monks chanted for the departed spirit of Joy and the well-wishers prayed for her happiness in the afterlife, then the monks went back to the Wat and the music, food and card-playing began.

Lek actually wanted to leave at that point and get on with some studying on her new computer, but her friends hadn’t got used to her new ways and persuaded her to share a bottle of whiskey and play cards. Craig watched disapprovingly from the desk in his office. She knew what he was thinking, but did not feel that she could do anything about it. Craig didn’t mind too much about the odd occasion either, but he didn’t want it to become a habit, because the only two women he knew who played cards regularly were outrageous liars and always broke.

He had lent one of them five hundred Baht for her daughter’s birthday party years previously on Lek’s advice, but he had never seen the money again. After months of her saying ‘I’ll pay you next week’, Craig had told Lek to tell her to ‘get stuffed’. Lek hadn’t said that, of course, she would never be so rude, but she did arrange for her friend to work three days in the house garden at half rate to pay it off. She had never asked them to lend her money again.

Joy’s family gave Joy a second day of remembrance with the monks which followed the same pattern as the first and then she was left to carry on with whatever her future had in store for her.

∞

Thailand celebrates three New Year’s Eves. In general, the Chinese New Year is the least celebrated, then there is the Western 31^st December and the biggest by far is the old Thai New Year in April. However, the Western New Year is still pretty big by any standards.

Lek went to her mother’s house to start preparing for the party at seven a.m. and there were already people – family and elderly neighbours - there by then. Some were even drinking alcohol too, but then the Thais are not hypocritical about that sort of thing. They work hard and if they have a day off, they make the most of it by doing whatever they like no matter what anyone thinks.

This would be one of those days, but not for Craig. New Year’s Day had always been just another day for him, but not so with Lek. She had always celebrated it with her family before she had gone away and she had earned more on that night in Pattaya than any other too. People were more generous when they were drunk and there were not many sober foreigners in Pattaya on New Year’s Eve. Practically every bar had its balloons out and a pig roasting.

In the village they settled for a dozen different dishes of food and a couple of chickens, but in fact the fayre was better than in most Pattaya bars.

However, it was an all-day affair and shortly after midnight, most people were ready to go to bed. Most people except Lek and her cousin Beou that was. Beou had missed Joy’s funeral for one reason and another, so she had come for the Hundred Days and stayed for New Year. She had said that she would be back in Pattaya for the next day, so they wanted to chat together for an hour or so. Craig thought it best to take a couple of bottles home with him and leave them to it.

Lek and Beou talked about the ‘good old days’ mostly.. They talked about some of the idiots that they had had come to the bar, the antics that some of the drunks had got up to, like falling off their stools or giving all their money to one of the girls that they had fallen in love with for the moment.

They talked about holidays they had had together on the islands near Pattaya – the ‘firm’s outings’ as they called them and those that had been paid for by wealthy or crazy patrons. Some of the Arabs had been extremely well-off and one man in particular thought nothing of closing the bar for the afternoon and taking all the staff to Ko Lang a few miles off the coast.

They also talked about old colleagues, those that had done well, those that had done not so well and those that were no longer with them, like Goong. Goong’s father had passed away a long time ago, but her brothers still held Lek, Ayr and Beou responsible for ‘taking’ her to Pattaya with them, even though she had told them and everyone else that it was her idea – that she had wanted to go, because she couldn’t bear the thought of decades of boredom and drudgery living and working in an isolated village.

They had chosen not to believe her and stuck to their own version of ‘reality’. Neither of the women knew whether the brothers knew that she was now ‘on the other side’ because they wouldn’t even recognise Lek’s existence, nor Beou’s. Goong’s father had died in ignorance, because that had been Goong’s express wish and it seemed rather pointless to tell the brothers now anyway.

They had assumed, or at least were telling everybody that Goong had married a wealthy American and was living in New York. They said that they were proud of her for doing so well, despite having been ‘led astray by her friends’. Their logic did not extend to explaining how she would have met such a man if she had stayed in Baan Suay, where Craig was the only falang that anyone could remember seeing there in decades.

They were drinking Thai style, whiskey out of a shared shot glass, but Beou filled it up, raised it to Goong, said, “Wherever you may be, friend’ and drank half of it. She passed the glass to Lek, who repeated the toast to their absent sister and added: “May you always be as beautiful as the last time I saw you”.

The mood became down-beat, not quite solemn, after that, but they were both a little drunk and lost in their private meanderings down their private lanes of memories, so they said goodnight and went to their respective homes.