Noises, bleeding noises

By Seymour Cumming

Will someone do us all a favour and tell the generals at Wing 41 airforce base that the WAR IS OVER! Yes that's right fellas, the Vietnam War expired decades ago, the communist insurgents have all laid down their weapons and become songteaw taxi drivers and the terrorism in the south is 1800kms away. You can stop flying F14s over our sleepy tourist city and bloody waking us all up with sonic booms.

Jeepers, people in Thailand love making a noise. All around us angle grinders compete with barking dogs and farting tuk tuks. Electric planers scream and ban saws whine as they try to outdo the songteaws that cruise the suburbs with amplified advertising commentary in a contrived baritone voice. Bleeding hell, what does a man have to do for peace and bloody quiet here?

Damn, all this construction, you'd think this was bloody Iraq, so much for retiring in the tropics. Crickey! It's enough to drive you balmy. This bunch just loves making noise. Here in Thailand making a racket is fun, it means things are happening, the country is going forward.

I suspect that if they stopped making noise the country would fall into a deep depression. Heck, silence here is something to be feared. No TV soapies, no karaoke, no slushy romantic love songs, no tuk tuks, no bike drag racing. Imagine it! It would be hell.

For sure, the whole bloody country's under construction. It's getting so severe that wearing of hard hats has become compulsory! But noise means progress. More money, more mobile phones, more gold, bigger 4X4s and Volvos and whiter face cream. Yup! Everywhere you look they're building a new karaoke bar or ambitious large apartment block.

Trouble is, they're so keen that they forget to notice all the other empty buildings nearby. Eventually the money runs out and they abandon them, unfinished, and bugger off to start something new. And when they do finish something, they suddenly realise the folly of building a building big enough to house the whole of bloody Rhim Kham. Crikey! Green Peace must be peeved with this country.

And then there's the ubiquitous mobile phone ring. It might be in the classroom or movie house, perhaps an important meeting or job interview or even in the middle of a bit of the old sherbang! Just when you're at it, off goes your girlfriend's phone; the latest Kylie song, a James Bond theme tune or some retro seventies pop revival, Holy shmoly! Turn the damn thing off will ya, it's ruining my orgasm. The truth is, they just can't bear to be without some sort of reminder here that we aren't ever alone.

When the next economic crash comes (soon I'm told), we'll all know it because when we get out of bed one morning everything will suddenly be deathly silent. The angle grinders will fall silent, the tuk tuks will all be repossessed and the karaoke machines would've been pawned for mobile phone money. Jeez, I can't wait.

Well, 'If you can't beaten them, why not enjoin them' says my girlfriend, so I think I'm gonna form one of those heavy metal rock 'n roll bands. We can get a gig at one of those romantic Ping riverfront restaurants and call ourselves 'Ping Pong and the Rackets'. My mate Pong-the-punk can sing and there's Somchai with his weld-art drum kit. His mate Bangit is pretty talented with the angle grinder and I'll show up with my bagpipes! Too right. We'll go off like a suicide bomber!

Investigative-journalist-at-large, Seymour Cumming has previously been a used car salesman, fruit picker, 'shock jock' and newsroom war correspondent. He has written for Farmer's Weekly, Nyet!, Chessworld and Cross-stitching Magazine.

He's been to more than 50 countries, some for less than a day, and is currently working on a travel novel, but he's written the author's biog, and not progressed much beyond that. His controversial commentary on ex-pat life in Thailand appears in Chiang Mai City Life Magazine.