Herman, fishing for happiness in Thailand

The other day I was sitting here in the village pub of my quiet town, quietly sipping my diet coke, when suddenly a nice looking and somewhat older gentleman stood at my table and asked if he could sit down for a chat. He looked and moved like a muscular old panther and shyly I quickly pulled in my own bulging belly.

It was early evening and I was sitting there alone, but I was still a bit surprised and shocked that a complete stranger had just invaded my personal space. Sometimes you come across someone from a long time ago who has undergone a great transformation and it is therefore difficult to recognize that person. So I quickly started digging into my memories before letting him into my table. I expected the question 'don't you recognize me?' I get asked that quite often, because apparently old acquaintances from another life recognize me quite often. Not that I look so young, but more because I have apparently become an old version of my younger self. But that question did not come. And in the few seconds of my doubt, the visitor had already pulled out a chair and taken a seat at the small wooden table. Right across from me. Okay, I said somewhat ironically, take a seat, but in the meantime he was already sitting and his coat was also hanging over the back of the café chair. In the background an evergreen was playing from the jukebox. I hadn't requested the picture, nobody actually, because the place was otherwise empty, a typical Monday evening when people are still full of the weekend. I asked myself, but the question if we knew each other.

Unknown yet loved

To make a long introduction short: he knew me from Thailandblog. He turned out to be a long-term visitor and of course also a reader of what he had always found to be a great source of all kinds of information about Thailand, for about 15 years now. Not really a 'repeater', he just read along in silence. Until I suddenly showed up a few months ago and he had noticed my unique and fluent writing style with that typical South Limburg humor and great connecting force between the different camps that want to call the shots. He said the latter with a hearty laugh, so I knew that it was just a popular introduction that I should not attach too much value to. Soon the cat was out of the bag: from the context of my posts and the comments on them he had been able to deduce that we came from the same village. How he had found out what my local pub was, he did not say, which was perhaps better. I did not remember ever having written anything about that here. But I am not the suspicious type, which my wife often tells me, because she thinks that I sometimes make myself very vulnerable. So be it. It is too deeply ingrained in me to change course now and become a suspicious sourpuss. Don't get me wrong, I am not a naive fool, so anyone who thinks they have found an easy target for any kind of abuse, I must unfortunately disappoint.

His name turned out to be Herman and he used to have a shop in our centre, a kind of fishing accessories business. I did indeed vaguely remember something like that, but because I have absolutely no interest in fishing and the necessary equipment, I had never visited his shop. He sold ponds, fishing rods, fish food and that sort of stuff there, but also live ornamental fish, some of which he bred himself in the back garden. Loyal customers from far and wide had managed to find him for many years, until at one point he had had enough of the fish smell so much that he sold all his belongings and moved to Thailand. Not as a half-destitute AOW grandfather, but as a relatively fit and wealthy fifty-something. The large amounts of omega 3 had kept him young and tight, according to him. That was also clearly visible, although the years were now starting to count for him too. Oh well, who doesn't actually. What exactly he wanted from me, other than to exchange some Thailand adventures, was still not clear to me, but he quickly provided clarification.

Chosen to tell his story

He had a story to tell, but was better with his voice than with his pen. And because he found my unique storytelling style absolutely irresistible, he had 'chosen' me to come and tell his story on Thailandblog. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that, although I thought his renewed praise was a bit thick, but tastes differ and I am the last to throw away a well-deserved compliment, they are given out too sparingly for that, although that is going better and better on Thailandblog, for which my sincere thanks to the fans of my writing. In itself the proposal suited me well, because my own Thailand-related experiences and therefore content were slowly but surely starting to dry up; after all, I had already published about thirty particularly gripping and refined stories on Thailandblog in a short time, albeit with varying success, but always coming from the deepest and sometimes even deeper regions of my inner life. Although I have also had to make things up (very occasionally), but always in the style known from film and TV: based on true events. Lately I have been sitting at home more and more often on my phone (my typewriter) pulling the last few hairs from my almost bald head in the unrealistic hope of generating some new inspiration. So borrowing from a complete stranger could be a welcome addition to my own drying up fantasy and repertoire of stories. It is therefore definitely not plagiarism that follows but an authentic story from the heart of Herman, for whom I simply served as a super-dimensional, but honest external mouthpiece on that occasion.

The story of Herman

There followed a few hours at our table, which he enthusiastically filled with stories that each and every one deserve to be told here, but we had to make a selection because, as I assured him, we are not going to write a book, but just a post for Thailandblog. Fortunately, he understood. I know from my own experience how difficult it is to kill a newborn literary child by means of the delete button, simply because there is no room for it in this world that is already full of writing.

After the fish had come out of his nose so badly after years, his shop closed for good and the suitcases plus a couple of containers were packed for a permanent departure to Thailand where he had already spent many a sunny holiday and had been making plans for years to take over a modest hotel somewhere on an idyllic palm tree beach. He could take over the otherwise successful business one-on-one from a Dutch Farang he knew who wanted to completely retire and only wanted to relax with other pensioners on a terrace on the beach and gossip about other old people while enjoying a cool bottle of Heineken and a pancake with syrup or the delicious carrot stew at Casa de Piet at the end of the local Beach Road. Just doing what he felt like doing without paying any attention to the dictatorship of the fashion industry and the opinion of his peers, who still liked to pull down trees with their bare hands in their free time, figuratively speaking. Herman of course still fell well into the latter category, not in terms of age, but in terms of activity pattern. The perfect match had been found for a smooth transfer. Great.

Herman really enjoyed living full-time in Thailand. He knew how to tackle things and breathed new life into the somewhat tired hotel. He took over the entire workforce so that he did not have to immediately start harassing local employment agencies after arriving, looking for rare, competent new professionals from the hospitality industry. The newly purchased establishment was therefore running almost by itself and Herman could easily divide his attention between his business and private life.

Busy in the bedroom

The latter soon resulted in an exciting 'menage a trois'. With two ladies at the same time, mind you. Not to be confused with a short-lived erotic adventure to be experienced for double payment in an erotic club that specializes in that. No, Herman had the pleasure of officially and continuously living together with a two-headed set of ladies, all together just not his age; a privilege that is usually reserved for our Muslim and Mormon blog visitors, although some, perhaps somewhat more mature readers here will not consider this kind of connection as a blessing, but rather as an extremely tiring and twice as expensive affair than a regular liaison between one specimen per gender.

I read here a short moment of clarification, contemplation and reflection for the readers who may wish to take offense at Herman's perhaps ungodly misconduct in their view, with which he completely disregards the dignity of women, the generally accepted standards for love relationships and so on. I do not promote polygamy nor condemn it. Like (probably almost) every healthy man, I have dreamed about it in an uncontrolled dream, for which I cannot experience any responsibility, but in the morning I have thrown the unachievable idea far away from me and lovingly and of course completely devoted myself to my truly fantastic wife and no one else. I never share such exciting dreams with anyone else, that much is clear.

According to Herman, however, in their case it is a completely harmonious and voluntary family life, not hindered or determined by the prosperity of the farang component. When visiting his elderly parents in the Netherlands, there was of course a lot of gossip in the street or the village, but because Herman is of course a hotshot in this, he secretly laughs up his sleeve, at least when he is not strolling through the South Limburg landscape with one lady per hand.

The inevitable 'unfortunately': not only in the Netherlands do such romances that deviate from the norm lead to envy and disapproval. No, also in Thailand with its widespread existence and also acceptance of the concubine, this kind of pleasures should preferably take place out of sight and not in the way Herman expressed it.

The hellish pain that heartbreak can cause

Unfortunately, the last ex of one of Herman's flames also fell into the category of critics. I sensed a little from the words of my talkative table companion that there had been a certain overlap between the two relationships of the young woman. The discarded and otherwise Thai lover had come to the lobby of the hotel to tell the story, a discussion that had been rather short-lived and had resulted in a fairly long stay in the intensive care unit of a local international hospital, the first few weeks of which in an artificially induced coma. Apart from a partial reconstruction of his jaws and teeth, my fellow villager fortunately had nothing left of it, except a quickly recruited kind of paid bodyguard who, like his attacker, was particularly skilled in Muay Thai, but in a higher class. Because the skirmishes with the ex had not been recorded on film, there was no lawsuit, but there was the installation of numerous security cameras, which is in any case not an unnecessary luxury in our increasingly grim society. I recently bought a pair myself, even without prior punishment from a jealous ex.

Covid throws a spanner in the works for pad thai

Shortly afterwards, Covid-19 unfortunately entered that same society. Herman urged me not to start again about the social rift that that tiny virus had caused and to focus exclusively on the financial fiasco that had been the result for him. OK then, after all, it was his story and I was just his mindless megaphone. I therefore firmly assured him that I had absolutely no intention of reopening such old wounds, which completely reassured him and encouraged him to continue to confess.

Because Herman usually housed mainly farangs in his middle-class hotel, his entire business suddenly collapsed after the government hermetically sealed off his borders, while it was not even 100% certain that this was the most adequate remedy against the spread of the initially somewhat frightening disease that had the world in its grip. Opinions are still divided on this. He was very lucky that he had paid the hotel in cash at the time, thanks to the generous proceeds from the liquidation of his worldly possessions in the Netherlands and some black money that he had channeled over the years. This allowed him to survive for a long time without the ever-greedy creditors knocking on his door. As a generous employer, he even managed to save his staff from starvation in these difficult times by deploying them for renovations and other unnecessary activities that therefore mainly fell into the category of job creation. He had to eat into his capital somewhat, but unlike many of his competitors, he came through the crisis more or less unscathed, which in theory gave him a good starting position when the tourist industry slowly started to pick up again.

No, business-wise he had certainly not come off badly.

Sad news from the Netherlands and also from Thailand 

His elderly father had died in the Netherlands from a condition linked to Covid 19. He had not managed to leave the country in time to stand at the deathbed or to take part in the masked cremation ceremony, which, like many others, had caused him enormous pain. Video calling is considerably less human than holding the wrinkled hand of the person to whom you owe your existence when he passed away. Although the latter was also undesirable at the time, due to the 'risk of infection'. Fortunately, his mother and brother had been home when things went wrong with his father and he had had a dignified farewell from behind his transparent, virus-proof plastic tent. After flying was allowed again, Herman says he was still able to say goodbye to his dearly departed in a personal way, but it was not heartfelt, which also became clearly visible when he reported on it emotionally for the blog. Feelings that I can hardly express in words here, as the reader undoubtedly now feels.

Because he reported extensively on Facebook about his trip to the Netherlands and the renewed farewell to his beloved father, people in Thailand soon noticed that he was 10.000 km away from his hotel. An opportunity that his aforementioned rival in love seized wholeheartedly to put into practice chapter II of his pent-up hatred and anger in the form of a scandalous but highly effective arson. According to Herman's version, the frustrated ex had entered the hotel as an unwanted guest through an unguarded back door where there happened to be no camera, in the middle of an unspecified night in the recent past, with a jerry can of petrol under one arm and a box of matches under the other arm, and a short time later the building was completely reduced to ashes, fortunately after alarmed guests and ditto staff had left the building safely through the front door. All without burn marks or worse. Herman naturally found it terrible news to hear, while he was fulfilling his sad duties in the Netherlands.

Who wielded the tinderbox?

But because he apparently reacted somewhat nonchalantly to the disaster after he had flown back to the mountain of ash, which had already been partly blown into the sea, he was invited for an extensive interview by the local police, who apparently had some suspicions about him, as is often the case with burnt-down and not very lucrative catering businesses, even though they are on the way to recovery. I also found Herman himself to be somewhat unmoved in his story of what can still be called a gigantic personal drama, but he assured me firmly that he is just a cool frog who can keep his emotions in check. Moreover, he had been in the Netherlands at the time of the fatal fire and therefore absolutely not capable of personally setting his own pride on fire in faraway Thailand. Touché. I thought everything was fine the way he told it to me and apparently the police and insurance company were ultimately of the same opinion, even if it was with gritted teeth. Neither Herman nor the suspected ex were officially accused of any malpractices and so handfuls of millions of baht came Herman's way. Those lovely thick bundles of 1000 baht notes that always make my mouth water when they are pulled out of a plastic bag in the bank by an insignificant looking market trader. He generously gave away another round of diet coke, which I put to my lips with relish. He himself took another sip of his foamy beer that was crafted in a traditional brewery not far from our village. Not too strong, not too weak. No, just a nice and hearty beer, although I have absolutely no clue about that myself and have to rely on the statements of the brewery on their website and numerous bus stop advertisements, when that was still allowed. The jukebox had undisturbedly started playing its umpteenth tune on autopilot and rolled out a soft and exceptionally high-pile carpet of nostalgia at the feet of our intimate encounter, in which we could sink wonderfully up to our ankles.

The conversation has dried up, but the laughter has not been forgotten

Our conversation slowly came to an end, however, and I quickly went through my mental notes with the narrator. Many themes had not survived the final selection, which was a pity because the subjects of police corruption, floods, prostitution, robberies, fights with defaulters and salmonella outbreaks would have been interesting in their own right, but the line had to be drawn somewhere. Also, certain subjects were not immediately suitable for publication on a public forum.

Finally, I asked him if he wanted to say something about his current daily activities and where he was doing them.

He leaned back with both hands on my neck before he gave me this last piece of information. He literally said: do you know what it is Rick? I have worked incredibly hard my whole life, first in that stinking air at home and then in the heat of Thailand and all that hard work has made me financially independent, also thanks to my fire insurance. I now never have to work for my bowl of rice and soon I will also receive my state pension and therefore a nice piece of soft roasted chicken, the way they can only prepare it in Thailand 5555. I have a beautiful villa on the beach, which I share with my two beautiful young women. We love each other very much and have a lot of fun together every day. I exercise quite intensively in my own home gym to keep myself fit, so that I can continue to enjoy my good life for a long time. And when I want to relax, I can walk to the beach in a few minutes in my flip-flops and at my leisure and meet a group of Dutch and Belgian friends there, all happily retired. Can we have a really exciting debate in the shade about the quality of Belgian versus Dutch beers while enjoying a juicy Singhaatje, he laughed mischievously again with a twinkle in his eye. Or about the young girlfriends of those old rascals. And of course I also know that behind my back there is extensive gossip about me, about my own wives and about my hotel fire. But do you know what the best remedy is against something like that? Just gossip along 5555.

His laugh resounded powerfully through the fortunately still empty café. A strong self-made man. I was a bit jealous. Again: Do you know what it is Rick? No, tell me, I said. Seize the day, don't wait until it's too late. Life is long, but not infinite and before you know it, Father Death will be standing at your front door with his scythe raised. I almost experienced it myself and I wouldn't wish it on anyone, although in the end it can't really be avoided.

I thought those were nice last words, thanked me kindly for his candid confessions and left the building leaving behind a few small Euro banknotes because it is not really my habit to let others pay for my diet coke. He called after me: make a nice post of it and give my regards to the readers of Thailandblog and I called back: it will be fine Herman, but maybe the door had already slammed shut behind me.

So here it is: greetings from Herman.

About this blogger

khun Rick

Khun Rick dates from 1959 (currently 65 years old), grew up and still lives in South Limburg. After 40 years in the civil service, now almost 5 years with early retirement. Since 2001 he regularly visits Thailand as a tourist, but met his wife in the Netherlands and can often be found with her at his mother-in-law's in Udon Thani. Traveling together is his passion, eating (unfortunately) too and sports a necessity. And of course writing: used to be serious and now more light-hearted.

Read the latest articles here

Older posts from this blogger

• CultureDecember 8 2024The long road to a new identity
• CultureDecember 2 2024A posthumous ode to the man I never knew
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• CultureNovember 27 2024The long road to happiness called Thailand