So what exactly have you done
with your life Dick I hear people ask? Surely you haven’t always been a
narrator?
Of course I didn’t just go straight from chatting up Swedish models in the Scotch with Simon to owning a bar in Pattaya. Life isn’t like that. Getting the boot from Arsenal. Marriage. Divorce. Managing a punk rock band. Meeting Oscar. Making porn movies in LA. Marbella. Philippines. Thailand. Sitting in Sopers Hole, BVI with a laptop writing this crap. Obviously a lot of stuff happened in between.
I’ll admit it, when I sailed off from Pattaya with the girls I wasn’t sure what I was doing. Koh Pangan for the Full Moon Party I suppose. Sail down the Gulf of Thailand and then what?
I thought about going to the Caribbean. Bloody madness really. I don’t know if you’ve ever sailed across the Pacific from West to East but it’s not easy. Ning and Nong were useful when it came to cooking and other odd jobs but none of us knew the difference between a spinnaker and a flying jib. Fortunately we were lucky with the weather so we had a chance to learn a few things about sailing. We stopped in odd places like Sihanoukville, Nha Trang and Sanya depending on the visa situation. I decided to stay close to the coast….at least as far as Hong Kong. That’s where we met Nyum. She was from Vietnam, just out of an internment camp and hanging around the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club. Don’t ask me how she got in there. Same way I did most likely. Lovely girl and smart as a whip.
Nyum has had a very interesting life. Her father was a dentist in Saigon. He was also a Recividist. I looked it up. That’s someone who starts to have second thoughts about Communism. When the Viet Cong took over people like him got sent away for Re-education. I’m glad I wasn’t a Recividist in Vietnam. I would have hated being sent away for Re-education. Come to think of it I don’t think I would have made a very good Communist at all. Nyum’s dad didn’t like the idea of being Re-educated either. Somehow he managed to get himself, his wife and Nyum on a leaky boat. But it didn’t do him much good. His plan was to get to America and make false teeth for horses but he was drowned with Nyum’s mother in the Gulf of Thailand after being robbed and thrown off the leaky boat by Thai fishermen. Nyum drifted around for few days clinging to a packing crate. She thinks this is when she learned Celestial Navigation. A Russian freighter picked her up and took her to an internment camp in Hong Kong where she learned English watching TV.
I’d read a book about the Manila Galleons. The Spanish used them to run gold from Acapulco to Manila. Apparently the only way to get back was by going north to 38 degrees as Alonso de Arellano and Andres de Urdaneta discovered in 1565. I discussed this with Nyum. She did a few calculations, the girls did a bit of shopping, and off we went. Nyum figured we’d hit the California coast somewhere round Mendocino.
Of course I didn’t just go straight from chatting up Swedish models in the Scotch with Simon to owning a bar in Pattaya. Life isn’t like that. Getting the boot from Arsenal. Marriage. Divorce. Managing a punk rock band. Meeting Oscar. Making porn movies in LA. Marbella. Philippines. Thailand. Sitting in Sopers Hole, BVI with a laptop writing this crap. Obviously a lot of stuff happened in between.
I’ll admit it, when I sailed off from Pattaya with the girls I wasn’t sure what I was doing. Koh Pangan for the Full Moon Party I suppose. Sail down the Gulf of Thailand and then what?
I thought about going to the Caribbean. Bloody madness really. I don’t know if you’ve ever sailed across the Pacific from West to East but it’s not easy. Ning and Nong were useful when it came to cooking and other odd jobs but none of us knew the difference between a spinnaker and a flying jib. Fortunately we were lucky with the weather so we had a chance to learn a few things about sailing. We stopped in odd places like Sihanoukville, Nha Trang and Sanya depending on the visa situation. I decided to stay close to the coast….at least as far as Hong Kong. That’s where we met Nyum. She was from Vietnam, just out of an internment camp and hanging around the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club. Don’t ask me how she got in there. Same way I did most likely. Lovely girl and smart as a whip.
Nyum has had a very interesting life. Her father was a dentist in Saigon. He was also a Recividist. I looked it up. That’s someone who starts to have second thoughts about Communism. When the Viet Cong took over people like him got sent away for Re-education. I’m glad I wasn’t a Recividist in Vietnam. I would have hated being sent away for Re-education. Come to think of it I don’t think I would have made a very good Communist at all. Nyum’s dad didn’t like the idea of being Re-educated either. Somehow he managed to get himself, his wife and Nyum on a leaky boat. But it didn’t do him much good. His plan was to get to America and make false teeth for horses but he was drowned with Nyum’s mother in the Gulf of Thailand after being robbed and thrown off the leaky boat by Thai fishermen. Nyum drifted around for few days clinging to a packing crate. She thinks this is when she learned Celestial Navigation. A Russian freighter picked her up and took her to an internment camp in Hong Kong where she learned English watching TV.
I’d read a book about the Manila Galleons. The Spanish used them to run gold from Acapulco to Manila. Apparently the only way to get back was by going north to 38 degrees as Alonso de Arellano and Andres de Urdaneta discovered in 1565. I discussed this with Nyum. She did a few calculations, the girls did a bit of shopping, and off we went. Nyum figured we’d hit the California coast somewhere round Mendocino.
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