We're pleased to have writer Jake Needham as our guest blogger this week. Jake is an American crime
novelist who lives in Bangkok. His crime novels
set in contemporary Asia include: THE AMBASSADOR'S WIFE, A WORLD OF
TROUBLE, KILLING PLATO, LAUNDRY MAN, and THE BIG MANGO. His latest Inspector Tay novel, THE UMBRELLA MAN, will be released next month. The print editions of Jake's
novels are distributed only in Europe, Asia, and the UK, where they have all
been bestsellers. Happily, the e-book editions of his novels are available
worldwide. Jake has lived and
worked in Asia for over twenty-five years. Read more about Jake's books at his website, http://jakeneedham.com.
When I am in the United
States and my city of residence comes up in conversation, I am usually asked —
and almost always in a tone laden with wariness and suspicion — why in the
world I am living in a place like Bangkok.
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| Bangkok. All photos courtesy Jake Needham. |
Sadly, I cannot simply reply
with Humphrey Bogart's famous line when he was asked how he came to be in
Casablanca. I can make no claim to being misinformed. I had lived in Asian
cities for a long time before I took up residence in Bangkok, and I knew exactly
what I was getting into.
I have come in a perverse way
to look forward to this track conversations with my fellow Americans seem to
take whenever they learn that I am living in Bangkok. Instead of expressing
curiosity about my life in the distant and exotic city that I call my home, my
interlocutors seem far more intent on telling me what they think of the place.
Of course, very few Americans
seemed to know much of anything about any place that is not America, but still
it surprised me that I hardly ever meet anyone back in the United States who
has anything at all to say about Bangkok, other than on one of two topics.
Food is one of those topics, naturally.
Everyone claims to love Thai food. Going out for Chinese is cheap. Going out
for Thai seems somehow hipper. Of course, most Westerners have no real idea
what they are actually eating in either case, but Thai food is both cheap and
hip, so how can you beat that?
The other topic, as you might
guess, is sex. Bangkok is inexorably linked in most people’s minds with stories
they have heard somewhere -- although I notice few people admit to remembering
exactly where -- of an unabashedly dissolute life and the ready availability of
free sex. Well, perhaps not exactly free, but certainly pretty inexpensive sex,
at least by world standards. Thai sex is a little like Thai food, cheap but
with a kind of exotic style to it. Can’t beat that combination in any context,
can you?
With all that going for it,
you might think that the idea of me actually living in Bangkok would be pretty interesting
to most people, wouldn’t you? You might think that, but you’d be wrong.
A couple of times I tried
joking that, well, a man could sure make a lot worse choice than taking up
residence in a city that is internationally famed for food and sex. But when I
saw the solemn expressions that crack generally engendered in most Americans, I
swiftly eliminated it from my repertoire. Maybe the suggestion that food and
sex are important parts of life makes Americans uncomfortable. Maybe I ought to
have more friends from France.
Anyway, the inevitable view
people express when they find out that I live in Bangkok is something I have
learned to live with. Oh, the place is no doubt interesting, people murmured,
but yet . . . somehow it's still a city where a lot of people go who aren’t
particularly…well, nice.
To be absolutely honest with
you here, I have to admit that perception isn't really too far off the mark.
I have often thought there has
to be some kind of international network devoted to coaxing social rejects and
dropout cases worldwide into coming to Bangkok, because come they do. By the
thousands, they walk away from third-shift jobs in places like Los Angeles,
London, Berlin, and Toronto, pack what they have, buy a cheap airline ticket,
and make their way to the Land of Smiles.
Some are looking for a cheap
tropical paradise; others hope they’ve joined a nonstop orgy; but almost every
one of them is intending in some way to make a fresh start on a life that until
then had very little to recommend it. Many of these refugees from reality
probably couldn’t have located Bangkok on a map before they decided it was the
place for them, maybe they still can’t, but now Bangkok had become their last,
maybe their only hope.
In the empty hours, this army
of the dispossessed takes control of the part of the city where most foreigners
live. Tuk-tuks, little three-wheeled motorcycle taxis, fly back and forth most
of the night ferrying carousers between the two clumps of bars that anchor the
neighborhood: Nana Plaza on the west and Soi Cowboy about a mile to the east.
They are all there. The
lonely, the frightened, the guilty, the lost, the vulnerable, the depressed,
and the psychotic. Soaked with sweat, they rush back and forth from one bar to
another, reeking of that peculiarly sour, metallic odor habitually given off by
the emotionally overmatched and underachieving.
So, I hear you ask, how in
the world did you end up in Bangkok?
It happened this way…
Back a couple of decades ago
now, HBO hired me to produce a movie they were making from a screenplay I had
sold them. It was to be filmed in Bangkok and, since I lived in Asia and
presumably knew something about it, they thought it sensible to add me to the corps
of so-called producers that every movie drags around behind it like a modern
version of the old time camp followers that every army attracted.
Regardless of HBO’s wisdom in
putting me on the payroll, I must tell you now that I am grateful beyond
measure that they did.
The woman who is now my wife
was born in Thailand and educated in England (thank heaven it wasn’t the other
way around). She was doing a stint at the time as the editor of the Thai
edition of the UK magazine, Tatler, and she came out to the set one day to
interview me. A year later we were married. Twenty years later, we have two
sons and are still living in Bangkok .
So there you have it. That is
how I came to be resident in a city that most Americans seem to think of as little
more than adult Disneyland for the dodgy and the disreputable. Only with better
food.
Admit it. You're actually a
bit disappointed, aren't you? Maybe you expected something a little more…well,
spicy?
I rest my case.
