Thai Girl by Andrew Hicks

got her pension, has tea with her friends and watches her favourite telly programmes. My cousins take the grandchildren round at weekends and she makes’em fat with piles of cakes. There’s no decisions to make and she doesn’t want anything different. I really envy her.’
    â€˜Sounds awful,’ said Emma. ‘Moving on’s not easy but it’s exciting too.’
    Some serious eating from the collection of dishes in the middle of the table was not going to stop Clarissa challenging Samantha.
    â€˜No Sam, your auntie just made the best of a bad job. It’s you who’s got everything … your health, good looks and boyfriends if you want them, sexual freedom without being seen as a slapper. Career, money, travel, control of your life. Your auntie had none of these. She was messed up by the war I suppose, and by womens’ low status … no expectations and no chance of anything better. You were born at the best possible time … you can have whatever you want.’
    â€˜No I can’t. Anyway I’d rather have fewer options and more security. I’d like an easy life, like the Thai workers here on the beach.’
    Maca guessed Sam’s bluntness was because she’d drunk too much and perhaps to tell these middle class plonkers how easy they’d had it in life.
    â€˜Look Sam,’ he said. ‘Try telling that to the girl who served our food tonight. Imagine what she’d give for the money you earn, for regular hours and holidays … all dreams beyond belief. People get trapped, the Thais too, desperate to move on in life. That’s why some of them even sell their bodies.’
    â€˜But I could never ever do that,’ said Samantha. ‘Never!’
    â€˜It’s easy for you to say that, but you’ve never been so hopeless. Lots of the bar girls have children, and women’ll do almost anything for their kids.’
    â€˜Well, maybe, but work on the island still looks an easy option to me.’
    â€˜Okay then, imagine being a worker on this beach,’ said Maca. ‘The island was almost uninhabited before it was hit by tourism and now all the guesthouses need cooks, cleaners, waiters. So there are hundreds, maybe thousands of migrant workers here, most of them from Isaan, the North East. It’s hard to make a living farming rice, so families send their young away to find work. The waitress is from there … her broad face and dark skin are typical Isaan. I’ll bet she sends money back to her Mum and just scrapes by herself … you wouldn’t believe the long hours and low wages. She may go home in the rainy season to help on the farm, but that’s her world … never been anywhere else and never will.’ He stared out at the bright lights of the distant fishing boats and paused for breath.
    â€˜Sounds all right to me. Not a bad life,’ said Samantha defensively, but even Maca was now beginning to get irritated with her.
    â€˜No way! The beach workers have the same problems you talk about … new aspirations and no security. Thailand’s changing fast with crazy materialism. It’s all there in the shops even in Ban Phe … televisions, videos, motorbikes, clothes, cosmetics. And the Thai soaps on the telly are showing a new urban life-style, raising expectations sky high. And of course she sees us, the farang always on holiday. Like you, Sam.’
    â€˜Why me?’
    â€˜Because you’re a princess … well dressed and made up, the world at your feet. And we farang never apparently do any work. All we do is sit around drinking and eating the best food, reading trashy novels, and having sex. Unreal! Seeing us, it’s getting much more difficult for a Thai beach worker to accept her limited horizons.’
    â€˜So what’s the future for a girl like the waitress, Maca?’ asked Emma.
    â€˜I guess she’ll fall for one of the men working here, get pregnant and