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again.

I Get Thai With A Little Help From My Friends
    On subsequent visits to Lek’s, it became apparent that many of the other bad boys from ISB had likewise found their way to the door of this tiny abode. His was not the only opium den in Bangkok, but he did have quite a loyal following – particularly among ISBers.
    Dennis K was one of them. I had first met Dennis at the American Teen Club one weekend when we drunkenly bumped each other while clumsily waltzing our girlfriends around the dance floor. With a blustery exchange of would-be tough guy invectives, it was correctly established that we were both inebriated assholes.
    Later that evening, after delivering my date to her home, I stopped by Lek’s. Dennis and another couple of farangs were there. Over the bong, we soon found common ground despite the fact that Dennis continued to insist that he surely would have kicked my ass if he had not been suffering from a sore ankle. He was on the school baseball team and had injured his ankle that season, so at least that half of his claim was true.
    The huge US Air Force base in Korat about 200 kilometers northeast of Bangkok was home to a fighter wing that targeted radar and surface-to-air missile sites in Vietnam and Eastern Laos to ease the ingress of the B-52s’ flying bombing sorties from other bases in Thailand. It was also the location of the military hospital where Dennis, whose dad was an US Army Sergeant Major, spent the best part of that summer having corrective surgeries.
    Some of my other closest friendships were established at Bahn Pee Lek and the seed for a future illicit enterprise was planted there. A few members of this group brought it to fruition, often sadly and sometimes tragically, in the decades to follow. At that time though, life was sweeter than mangoes on sticky rice with coconut milk.
    It was 1967, The Summer of Love, and that spirit was most intense in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. Some hitherto unknown singer named Scott McKenzie had a Top Ten hit tune called “If You’re Going to San Francisco” that was basically a sappy ballad of hippie philosophy. At about the same time, a few guys from ISB were clambering aboard a narrow gauge train for the long overnight journey from Bangkok to Vientiane, Laos. A number of ISB students had previously lived there and over-hyped the place. In some odd sort of way, though, making the trip secretly to this place our parents forbade us from going to was seen by some of our classmates as a rite of passage.
    Also aboard for the trip was a three-man group of musicians from New Zealand. They were the first real long-haired hippies I had ever seen. On their way to this almost mythical place in Southeast Asia that some fellow freak in London had told them about, they sang their altered version of the Scott McKenzie hit, which they called “If you’re going to Vientiane, Laos”. While they crooned, my companions and I fought to keep from laughing at them. In our defense, we were all rather drunk. The trio would yammer on in their own particular hippie jargon while constantly looking to each other for conversational support. They spoke of their British friend who had years before lived in Vientiane and attended the tiny American School there. Since they seemed so uneasy and unsure of their environment, all of us were pretty much unimpressed by them.
    We spent the whole of the trip in the train’s dining and bar car because its large padded seats were much more accommodating than the worn and narrow wooden benches of the crowded passenger cars. As long as we continued ordering food and drinks, the wait staff were happy to have us.
    After the train arrived at the railway’s terminus station in Nong Khai, the capital of the northern Thai province with the same name, we were obliged to board a ferry to cross the Mekong River and then catch a bus for a one-hour ride west to the Laotian capital of Vientiane. The country had not yet fallen to the