My Motorcycle Journey — Part 5
U-Tapao AFB, Thailand
Situated on the Gulf of Siam, the warm sandy beaches of Rayong, Thailand had all the activities of any resort town. There was even an outdoor, walk-in movie theater with no walls or roof so close to the water you could hear the waves during the movie. It was like going to a drive-in without the car. Viewers brought their own beer and snacks.
I learned to water ski behind a little motorboat right off the beach. Snorkeling, scuba diving, fishing, sunbathing, volleyball, it was all there, including small Japanese motorcycles for rent! Honda CB’s and Yamaha RD’s. Ten dollars a day. No mileage fee, no insurance, and no helmets.
There was also an Air Force Base called U-Tapao where I would spend the next year.
My roommate’s name was Dennis, but his two front teeth stuck out so far, everyone called him Squirrel. On our days off, we would get to the beach early, rent two scooters, and take off for parts of Thailand where GIs never went. We sat in cafes, smoked Thai stick, used sign language and broken American Thai to order strange-named meals made with suspect ingredients while washing them down with big bottles of 25-cent Singha beer.
On several excursions, we would spend $5 to get a bottle of Mekong Whiskey, a bottle of Sprite, a bucket of ice, and sit on the deck listening to the sounds of the jungle and Thai music. White Horse amphetamines kept us from falling asleep. If the Bossier Strip was ranked worse than Las Vegas as America’s most sinful city, Thailand was even better!
The Gulf breeze blew sand over all the roads around the beach. At the end of the block where the bike shop was, just before we turned onto the main road leading away from the beach, there was a stop sign. The first time we took off from the rental shop and came to that stop sign, I slowed down using both brakes.
That’s when I discovered that the Japanese had decided to get into the motorcycle industry by copying Harley-Davidson. They put the rear brake pedal on the right and the gear shift pedal on the left. Triumph and Matchless, both being British, had the pedals on the opposite sides.
The front brake is the same on all bikes, on the right handlebar. When I squeezed the front brake handle while stepping on what I thought was the rear brake pedal, only the front brake worked. And it worked really well.
With the front wheel locked up and the rear wheel still driving, I slid off the sand-covered road onto the beach laying the bike down in the sand. Squirrel was laughing so hard he forgot to put his kickstand down on his bike when he stepped off to help me and it fell over as well.
When we returned the bikes that evening, we each tipped the owner another 200 baht, a small price to pay considering we had put a couple hundred kilometers on the odometers.
Back in Rayong, while sitting in a bar listening to American rock and roll thundering from the speakers, I watched a young woman dancing on the stage. She was tall and thin and shapely with black eyes, smooth skin, and long jet-black hair. She was one of several topless go-go dancers but she never smiled. She had dancer legs and wore tall white go-go boots with tight pink shorts. I stared at her until it finally made her mad. She flipped her middle finger at me and kept dancing. She wasn’t smiling.
I came back several times over the next few weeks and watched as other GI’s tried to talk to her and were instantly shot down. When I told Squirrel I wanted to meet her, he said, “Choke dee, buddy. Good luck with that one!”
But then one night, she didn’t flip me off and when she finished dancing, she came over and stood next to me at our table. I was so surprised, all I could say was, “You dance really good!”
She glared at me and for a second, I thought I was doomed. But then I saw her black eyes relax and she smiled, “Ching Ching? You like?”
I grinned like an idiot and said, “Yeah, really! I like! You’re very good — Sexy.”
I bought her a drink and sat with her at the bar. I noticed all the other guys staring jealously as I moved closer. When our shoulders touched, a warm electricity ran through my body. I had never felt this good about anything in my short 20-year lifespan.
Her name was Fawn, but it was spelled like phone and it meant rain, not baby deer. She smoked cigarettes and drank very little but she didn’t partake in any drugs. Surprisingly, she actually loved to laugh. She was also feisty. And fearless.
When GI’s spend a lot of time in bars, they’re bound to find trouble. One night, after a drunk punk kept mouthing off and got into a fight with one of our guys, she bopped him on the head with a whiskey bottle. Another time, she clawed the face of a drunk who kept stealing drinks from our table every time he walked by.
She seemed to genuinely like me and we moved into a bungalow downtown where, for 5 months, we lived a whirlwind life of dancing, playing Thai Rummy, site seeing on motorcycles, and having crazy, wild sex.
I started worrying when my year was almost over that I would be shipped back to the states. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to extend my stay. I drunkenly thought that if we were married, the Air Force would save money by not shipping me and my wife back to the states. They might let me stay.
So off to Bangkok we went to see the Justice of the Peace. I bought a cheap ring from a street vendor on the way, signed a paper written completely in Thai, and paid 100 baht — five dollars — for our license, also written entirely in Thai. We were only 21 years old and we were married.
Of course, when my year was up I received orders to Loring AFB in Limestone, Maine. I had been holding on tight to the dream of staying in Thailand but apparently, the Air Force not only likes to practice moving people around, it’s a major part of its strategy. And evidently it doesn’t need to save money, either. The Air Force could not have cared less about my marital status.
No amount of drinking or drugs could sway me from wondering if I had made a huge mistake, it was too late, I was married, and I was headed to Maine with my new wife.
I raced to get Fawn a visa and a plane ticket and in early November 1974, I met her at customs in the San Francisco airport where she arrived a little shaky having just been on her first plane ride across the ocean.
She had brought gifts for my parents — a sarong for my mom and a pair of baggy silk lounging pants for my father. We were both nervous but excited, and surprisingly happy. We climbed into the ’66 Galaxie and headed home to meet the folks, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge on the way to San Rafael. Fawn stared out the window with wide eyes and a big smile.
Stay tuned for Part 6 of I’ve Always Wanted A Harley
And feel free to go to JerryRoth.com to get your copy of my new book, What Would the Boss Do?
