Help

I knew Neil about twenty years ago. I did not know him well. I did not know him badly. He had had a long and interesting life and had seen dark times, but come out the other side a positive and kind person, which if you knew his story is quite an achievement. I was in my 40s back then and he a lot older and from a different time to me. He was now happily married and settled, doing a part-time job and was one of the people to help me with work, although now he was thinking of retirement.

I was sitting in a Pattaya bar with Neil drinking a beer, and he a coke. He had long since stopped drinking the grog as he liked to call it. He had asked me about what I had done before coming to Thailand and had talked about his life. We talked about the challenges of life living away from home. It was then that he told me this story, which had happened a few years before.

*****

Neil was hot lugging the bag and little backpack, today. Being in his sixties now didn’t help. He sat down outside a little shop on one of those cement semi-circular benches at a round cement table – brightly coloured of course.

“I will order a drink”, he thought. “Now what should I have and will they understand me?”

He sat and took a few breaths and felt the sweat run down his back and brow. One drop running into an eye and stinging.

“A coke. I will have a coke”, he thought. Neil had given up alcohol a long time ago after the grog had led to divorce. And to loss of job and homelessness. He was not going back there.

Leaving his bags on the bench and taking his wallet from the backpack he ambled to the large glass fronted refrigerator and took out a cold glass bottle of coke. He popped the top on the opener on the door, and walked to the entrance to the shop. An old woman eyed him from inside. No smile. No frown. Just a blank look at him, seeing the coke in hand. She came over and took the note he held out in his hand. She walked back and returned with a little change and a straw. Neil moved back to his table and put his things on it.

The drink and the rest cooled him. He needed that and an aging fan ran in arcs sending a breeze of air every now and then into his shaded area.

“Not long now”, He thought.

The border point was only a little way ahead and then through, onto the bus and over the bridge and another checkpoint and he was back in Thailand. That got him thinking of his wife who he had left behind in Pattaya and their little house. It would be good to get back and settle into his routines again and that meant the football. And that meant Essendon. Neil was a big fan and had gone to games regularly when younger. Until things had gone wrong with the grog. He shuddered still thinking about those days and the struggle to get to where he was now. But he was content. Neil was sitting thinking about it all in a world of his own as water ran down the side of his half empty coke bottle.

“Hey mate! G’day”

It knocked Neil out of his rhythm of home and Moo, his wife.

“G’day” Neil stammered recognizing a fellow Australian accent. He had been deep in his own thoughts though and hadn’t placed where, exactly.

“Stralian, too, eh mate?

“Yeah”

“Hey mate not much time here, you see me and my mates here? Can you take a picture for us?”

“Sure”

“OK just come over here mate. We’ll just drop our bags on the other bench. I’ll show you.

The speaker held his camera up.

“See, no need to change anything. Just get us all in and take a shot and then another one”

The others, and Neil noticed there were three of them, had piled their bags on to the table and bench opposite where he had been sitting. Now they came over and in a group they posed. Smiles, hands aloft and laughing. Neil noticed that they were a lot younger than him – late twenties maybe and wearing jeans cut off around the knee and vests or t-shirts with necklaces. It was very different from Neil in his slacks and sneakers. He suddenly felt old and formal. But he was pulled in and needed to take the pictures. The job was quickly done and then it was time for them to go and they grabbed bags while taking turns to thank Neil. Then they were off to the border.

“Funny,” thought Neil, “So different from the past. No introductions. All so quick. The young these days…”

It was quiet. Neil returned to his table and noticed the coke was half gone now. He would sit and slowly finish it. He sat and thought about the differences between the young today and in his time. For him travel had been working a year in Earl’s Court in London and then heading back to Australia via a few places in Europe and Bali. Now there seemed to be a lot more people travelling and more often. There was more money around and better transport and visas were easier. He smiled thinking about it, but sat and slowly attended to his coke.

*****

Neil walked with his bags trying to stay in the shade down towards the immigration huts at the border. He tried to stay in the shade, but even so he was once again running with sweat.

“I need a shower when I get through the border,” he thought. He would book a room in a cheap guest house and spend the night and then take a bus back to Pattaya. It was too demanding to cross a border, grab a skylab to the bus station and then spend a night on a bus on which he would not sleep. And then he did not feel good in his sweaty clothes and liked to keep some hygiene and decorum. A cheap guest house with air conditioning and a nice shower would do, and he hoped it would be quiet.

As he thought, he neared the immigration point.

“I better get my passport out with the new visa,” and be ready to be stamped out of Laos and then into Thailand. There was something about paying an exit fee, he remembered – a few Thai Baht or few thousand Lao Kip, but he had that in both currencies, so no problem.

There were a few benches and chairs at the Laotian border and he sat down on one. There were few people around in the middle of the day and he was happy at that. Opening the back pack he delved in for his passport, but could not feel it. He remembered, or thought he did that he had put it in the small compartment at the front, but he must be wrong.

“Old age and memory,” he thought. “I must remember to be calm. He opened the main part of the bag where he had a few clean clothes kept separately from those dirty ones in the bigger bag. Sure enough, within a few minutes, his hand was on his passport. He breathed a sigh of relief. Neil was a worrier and age and his experiences had not made that any better. He really was not wanting to have the headache of a lost passport in a country he did not know and with the money he carried running low. Thinking of money, he realised his wallet was in the back pack too, but he had not seen it yet. He put his passport into his shirt breast pocket and resumed his search.

As much as he searched, he could not find it and the panic set in. He felt his temperature rising and could feel his hear beating faster. Sweat ran from him even though in the shade and not moving.

“Calm down,” he was thinking, “it must be somewhere”.

Search where he may in his bags, though he could not find it.

“Now where did I have it last? Oh yes! I got it out in the shop, or I think I did.” He decided he must walk the route back even keeping an eye on the ground as he went to see if it was at the shop.

*****

There was nothing on the ground or in the bushes lining the walk, Neil had not expected there to be though. He was sure he must have left it at the shop.

He arrived and went to the, now empty table, he had sat at. Nothing on the benches. He turned to look at the table but that too was clear except for the bottle of coke he had left there, in which now a line of ants were climbing and crossing the table too. Neil felt the panic again and forced himself to calm down. He entered the shop and tried to ask the old woman, but she smiled and shook her head. Her English was lacking he thought, but he was sure she was right and it was not there.

His mind wandering everywhere, he left the shop noticing an Arab man sat alone at the other table now dressed in the full robes. It crossed his mind that he did not know what those robes were called.

“Calm, Neil,” he tried to reason with himself, “what are you going to do? You have passed other problems in your life. This is a small thing. What are you going to do?”

He ruminated. “Ok I have enough Lao cash and coins in my pocket to get through the border and into Thailand. I will do that and then use my ATM card”. It was then he remembered he had left that at home, to keep to budget and not get tempted by any expensive distraction before he returned home with a part-time job lined up as in reality, Neil had little in the bank anyway, and literally had no Thai coins or cash on him now.

“I will have to find some Australian or maybe a Brit or American and see if I can borrow a few hundred for the bus back and forget the night in the guest house. Just do whatever is necessary. Maybe I can pawn my old fathers watch? But first get to the other side. Something would come up.”

He turned to the Arab man. Neil did not find it easy talking to foreigners of different cultures. He came from a time where he had met few, but he asked in slow English, “Did you see anything left on that table?” as he pointed to the empty coke bottle and ant trail.

“No! I am sorry my friend,” he replied.

Neil quickly said thanks and went on his way.

*****

There was no drama getting through the Lao immigration or through the Thai entry point, and for that Neil was happy. Being back in Thailand made him feel better. At the immigration exit were tour touts and waiting taxis and a slow but steady stream of Thai and western travellers. He ignored the touts and taxi drivers. Neil being a proud man found begging as he saw it, something difficult to accept and it took him back to his homeless days. The thought of that made him shudder and he decided that he must just get on with what had to be done. After all it was his own stupid fault leaving or dropping his wallet somewhere. It was at this point that a thought crossed his mind.

“Those bloody mungrels! They must have taken my wallet when I was doing the pictures for them. Australians, too. Bastards.” Anger and humiliation now joined his panic. This was not good for his blood pressure, which he had problems with anyway. Neil was panting and breath was short.

*****

Approaching someone for a loan of a little money was not something that was easy, it turned out. Even when Neil had written down his name, address and future place and was trying to show his passport to passersby. He concentrated on the steady but not huge stream of westerners walking through the land crossing to taxis, tuk-tuks or meeting a friend.

“Hello! I need some help, I have lost my wallet and need to get home, I wonder if….” Was probably not the best approach and the kind of people walking through a land border were probably not the best people to get help from.

“Fuck off!”

“Sorry, I have no money”

“Sad to see an old man like you begging”

These were just a few of the responses he got. But Neil was having no luck. He thought, belatedly, of going to the police office at the crossing and asking for help, but now the uniformed police were already paying attention to him and he felt uncomfortable and feelings of doing something wrong hit him. Again, he felt his heart beating faster and he felt hot and beads of sweat were forming on his face. He felt unwell. But he had no choice. Now he was in Thailand and had no money – not even one Baht.

He thought of calling home and asking Moo to send money, but where from? There were no phone boxes in sight and most of them in Thailand seemed to be broken anyway. He had no coins to put in them. Could he do reverse charges? That though he did not know and his Thai was almost non-existent. And where would she send it to, even if he could contact her? Everything he thought of seemed to lead to a brick wall. He would just have to continue asking and hope he found someone more receptive, but his confidence in doing what he felt so wrong to do was fading.

He continued for a few more.

“I heard you asking for help.” A voice said.

Neil turned and saw the same Arab man he had seen sitting at the shop when he had returned to it.

“Yes, I am sorry. I am not bothering you. I will see if I can find someone from home.” Neil replied.

“You are asking for help. What do you need, friend?”

Neil was shocked and could only stammer, “thank you but why do you want to help me?” He immediately felt bad about being so rude in his quick response. He had always been taught to be polite as a youngster. “Sorry! I should not have said that.”

“It’s OK. You sound like you have a problem. When someone asks for help, what can we do? We must help them in the way we can. It is all we can do. So, what do you need, can I help you with this worry you have?”

“I am sorry to say that its money. I lost my wallet. I think it was stolen at the shop I saw you at, or maybe I just lost it, but now I have no money and no cards and no way to get home. I am sorry to ask but maybe a few hundred Baht. Here is my name and address and I can repay you later.” Neil held out the paper he had written on.

The man took out his wallet and counted out ten one thousand Baht notes.

“Here, this is all I have, but I hope that it helps you and is enough.”

“That is too much. Please, I only need a one note.”

“My friend, this is the help I am offering, please take it. My rewards will come in other ways in life if I deserve them. Please take it for when you do, you are helping me too.”

Neil confused and shocked, took the money and asked, “But if you have given me all, how will you get home or to your hotel?”

“I am being met by a friend here in his car. I have no need for money right now. Do not worry about me. Can we give you a lift somewhere?”

“No, no. it is fine thank you. You have been kind enough and I will just get a hotel room to rest and clean up.”

“OK. Well, if everything is OK, then I will be on my way.”

“Yes, sure. Thank you.”

With that Neil saw the stranger walk off to a large but battered old Toyota, and that was the last he saw of him. Neil noticed he was still holding the paper with his name and address along with the ten one thousand Baht notes.