Acknowledgements
The cover girl’s name is Chalita.
Please send any queries about work to me and I will forward them to her.
Owen Jones
Look Out for the Sequel:
“Maya - Illusion”
Table of Contents
1 Starting Again
2 Settling In
3 Whither Now?
4 Baan Suay
5 A Touch of Reality
6 The Final Weeks in Pattaya
7 A Leap of Faith
8 The New House
9 Construction
10 Independence Day
11 The Little Things in Life
12 Mothers’ Day
13 Bless This House
14 The Cure for Cabin Fever
15 Another Visa
16 Bpom and Bpouy
17 A Surprise Visitor
18 Moral Support
19 Maya - Illusion
20 Wedding Plans
21 The Stag Night
22 The Village Wedding
23 The Ship Hotel
24 The Pattaya Wedding
25 The Honeymoon
Glossary
Book Three: Maya –Illusion
1 1 STARTING AGAIN
As the wheels of the aircraft touched down on the runway at the new Bangkok International Airport called Suvarnabhumi, Craig knew that he was going to have his hands full with Lek. She suffered badly from travel sickness – it was her one big weakness, but she even got sick on the bus going to the market, so a flight of 11,500 kilometres and fifteen hours was always going to be a problem.
Lek had taken five of the green tablets which were her favourite anti-travel sickness pills. She always seemed to have about twenty of them in her bag. One tablet would make her appear a little drunk, but five made her seem like an escapee from a lunatic asylum. He had seen it on the outward flight. He looked at her sitting next to him; her eyes were glassy and she was humming something quietly to herself.
“Are we there yet?” she asked, “That was quick. Have we stopped off somewhere?”
“We’re in Thailand,” he replied a little too testily.
Craig was fifty years old and had never asked a woman to marry him so far, but he thought he might like to ask this one. She was a handful, as they say, that was to be sure, but there was also something about her that he found very special.
He didn’t like her taking those pills though, but he knew how badly affected by travel-sickness she could get. She’d had to throw up in her new crocodile skin handbag once – her pride and expensive joy – because they had gone on a short bus ride and she had forgotten to transfer all her paraphernalia into the new bag. It was either be sick in her new bag or on the floor of the bus and she would rather die than do that and lose face.
Later, she would have to be assisted like a drunk through the airport, baggage control and immigration and suffer the stern stares from the Thai officials who would assume that she had drunk too much cheap alcohol on the plane.
He was glad that she had chosen to wear long, baggy trousers.
The plan of the day was Lek’s usual one whenever anything unusual or exciting happened to her, namely to get down to ‘Daddy’s Hobby’ in Pattaya and tell her friends all about it. In fact, it didn’t have to be anything unusual at all, it was just the place where Lek felt most at home in the world. ‘Daddy’s Hobby’ was the name of the bar that Lek’s cousin owned and where he had met her. Craig didn’t mind going there one little bit. The two dozen bar girls always made a big fuss of him and Lek even encouraged them to do it.
Within a couple of hours, he’d have girls hanging off his shoulders, sitting on his lap and plying him with drinks while Lek recounted the details of her recent adventure in the UK. She should have come round a bit by then too.
Just in time to share a couple of bottles of whiskey with her ex-colleagues.
Still, it would be very pleasant and the apartment that he had booked before they had left was not far from the bar.
He was wondering whether that would be a good time to propose – in front of her friends, when she least expected it and when she would get the maximum amount of attention and admiration. It would certainly give her face a boost, not that it was flagging in Pattaya. All her friends thought she was a star - one in a million.
Craig thought so too.
However, first things first, he thought; people were starting to disembark. Craig thought it best to wait for most people to get off before he tried to coax and manhandle Lek down the aisle, so they just sat there and he tried to get her to get a grip on herself.
