Chet Nairene

Three Exotic Travel Adventures Nobody Ever Reads (But Should)

Chet Nairene — Sat, 02 May 2026 22:49:25 GMT

Who doesn’t love a good exotic travel adventure?

When one isn’t free to go roaming the earth (like when you are too busy working for a living), great travel writing or expat tales can be the next best thing. Armchair travel can parachute you into dramatic foreign settings and provide the vicarious thrills of unfamiliar cultures and unexpected delights.

Now, if you haven’t already drunk deeply from the cup of Paul Theroux’s extensive works (from The Great Railway Bazaar to Burma Sahib and more) please stop reading this right away and scurry over to Amazon and get ahold of some PT. No writer, living or dead, comes close to matching his prowess in writing about exotic lands, whether in novels, short stories or travel narratives. He is the unparalleled Hall of Famer in this genre.

But assuming you have already been sated on PT’s books and have also read your share of well-known peers like Bruce Chatwin, Bill Bryson, Pico Iyer, Dervla Murphy, etc., what comes next?

Do not lose heart, there is a broad fascinating world of older travel/expat international literature worth your attention. (And if you have ever enjoyed some of the short stories of W. Somerset Maugham set in the British Raj, you will already have an inkling how good some of that older writing can be.)

So without further ado, for your reading pleasure I hereby present three all but forgotten literary travel / expat gems . . . books you have probably never read, but should. Two are fifty years old and the third is from 1933, out of print but readily accessible on eBay.

THE SINGAPORE GRIP (1978) — J. G. Farrell

This first selection is a real corker and was even the basis for a teledrama series filmed in the UK in 2020. Anyone who loves international settings for their fiction and enjoys PBS period-piece dramas like the Gilded Age or Downton Abbey will enjoy “The Singapore Grip” and how it uses dark humor and meticulous research to dissect British imperialism.

This satirical, grand-scale novel follows the idealistic young Matthew Webb when he is summoned from Europe to Singapore in 1942 after the death of his father, a partner in British merchant firm of Blackett & Webb. Matthew is a young, idealistic outsider raised on League of Nations principles and when he enters the corrupt, self‑satisfied world of British Singapore, something’s got to give.

Drawn into the rubber empire of his late father’s powerful firm, Matthew acts as a reluctant moral counterweight to colonial excesses. His naïve critiques of racism, exploitation, and class snobbery collide with the brutal realities of war and the collapse of empire.

The setting for this story is lush, exotic and cosmopolitan, an outpost of the Raj that is blind to its own vulnerability. Author Farrell employs razor-sharp satire and Waugh-like social comedy, with brilliantly drawn characters and gripping depictions of the Japanese advance. There is also a dollop of romance.

And what, you might ask, is the meaning of the title? Well, the “Singapore Grip” was reputedly a sexual maneuver SE Asian prostitutes achieved via pelvic floor muscle control to hold their client . . . but in this novel, the term also served as a metaphor for the untenable hold colonial Britain had on Asian commerce.

“The Singapore Grip” has been widely reprinted and is available on Amazon.

Bonus: If you find you enjoy Farrell’s writing (you will), you can try the other two books in his ‘Empire Trilogy’: “The Siege of Krishnapoor” set in 1857 India and “Troubles” set in 1919 Ireland.

OIL FOR THE LAMPS OF CHINA (1933) — Alice Tisdale Hobart

This second recommendation is missing from most lists of good, immersive expatriate fiction, but shouldn’t be.

Author Alice Tisdale Hobart lived in China for decades, starting in 1914, when she traveled there as the wife to a Standard Oil expat executive. Soaking up the atmosphere and culture, she became a prolific writer and over the years churned out a dozen novels, all praised for the authenticity of their settings and deep insight into East‑West relationships.

Of her five novels that I’ve read, I liked ‘Oil’ best of all. It is also her most famous work and was even made into a movie. The story features a mixture of adventure, cross‑cultural missteps, romance, political upheaval, and insider realism drawn from Hobart’s own life in China. (Hmm, something like a Chet Nairene novel, I dare say!)

The main character is young Stephen Chase, sent by his American oil company employer to sell kerosene in remote regions of China. There he learns customs, gets married, and endures warlord chaos, boycotts, and revolution. Stephen evolves from an eager young company man to a disillusioned expatriate, betrayed by the very company he devoted his life to, coming to realize that the corporation he served was more ruthless than the China he struggled to understand. This story takes us to Manchuria’s frozen frontier and the lush Yangtze Valley, two sharply contrasting worlds rendered with intimate cultural detail.

Bonus: If you enjoy ‘Oil’ there are plenty of other Tisdale books to read, all set in exotic locales. Her writing is uncluttered and easy, not feeling particularly dated at all and quite accessible to the modern reader. She pulls you right into the heart of China of a century ago.

Note: Many or most of her books are out of print, but can readily be obtained, inexpensively, on eBay of Bookfinder.com.

THE INCREDIBLE VOYAGE (1977) — Tristan Jones

This, the last of my three recommendations today, is the one that can be classified as something of an oddball but entertaining work. I find it quite unlike most anything else I’ve ever read.

“The Incredible Voyage - A Personal Odyssey’ is the memoir of Welsh sailor Tristan Jones, a raconteur and utter character, who seeks to establish the “world’s global vertical sailing record” by taking his vessel ‘Barbara‘ from the globe’s lowest body of water, the Dead Sea, to its highest, Lake Titicaca in Bolivia.

In order to do so, over six harrowing years, he survives sniper fire on the Red Sea, capsizes off the Cape of Good Hope, suffers storms and starvation, sails his boat up the Amazon and even hauls his boat over the Andes.

The entire way, we find Jones always easy with the facts, stretching the truth at will . . . but the reader is already in on the joke and never really minds. The story is just too much fun for inaccuracies to stand in the way.

Tristan blurs reality and embellishes at will, but the spirit of his quest is irresistible as his route spans the globe through deserts, oceans, jungles, and high mountains—one of the most unusual travel itineraries ever attempted or written about. His sojourn through towns of the Andes highlands is especially culturally colorful.

This book is well named. Tristan’s story is indeed incredible, in so many ways, featuring an array of hard-to-believe and outrageous escapades, salty humor and improbable survival stories mixing truth with tall‑tale bravado.

‘The Incredible Voyage’ has been reprinted in paperback and is available on Amazon.

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Blame the Paper Route: How a Chance Encounter in Seventh Grade Redirected My Life

Chet Nairene — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 16:55:11 GMT

A freezing afternoon, a friend’s homemade shortwave radio, and the stunning arrival of voices from Moscow, Johannesburg, and London ultimately launched me onto a path through Southeast Asia. Now, years later, experiences there provide raw material for my quirky fiction.

Dear Friends:

Every so often, someone asks how I ended up writing funny expat fiction set in Southeast Asia. The truth is, my path began long before I ever boarded a plane to Malaysia in 1984. It started twenty years earlier, on a freezing winter afternoon in suburban Chicago, when I was a seventh‑grade paperboy with numb fingers and a friend invited me inside to warm up.

He was excited to show me something, a shortwave radio receiver he had built himself, from a kit. He switched it on, and suddenly the room filled with voices from Johannesburg, Moscow, London.

I was stunned. The world cracked open in an instant. Within weeks of witnessing this miracle, I marshalled paper route funds and bought an Allied Radio Star Roamer kit to build my own. I strung up an antenna across my backyard and started logging stations, eventually hearing hundreds in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America.

My world instantly expanded far beyond the snowbanks of Illinois. An international version of me was quietly born. That shortwave radio didn’t just expand my horizons, it rearranged them. It set in motion everything that would follow. It made the world feel both vast and reachable, planting the seed for the international life I would eventually live.

I always seemed to have a way with the written word, so it made sense that my first professional step would be into journalism. I spent five years at a small newspaper in Wisconsin, writing feature stories and financial pieces — and, far too often, about mundane stuff like anniversaries of local shoe stores or interviews of local crackpots, guys who made baskets out of walnut shells. I had dreamed of becoming a foreign correspondent, but after half a decade in small‑town journalism, I realized that dream wasn’t going to materialize on its own.

So I made a break for it.

I went back to school, earned an MBA from a top program, opening the door to the international career I’d always imagined, a three‑decade sojourn through Malaysia, Hong Kong, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand. As a business executive, I wasn’t writing fiction then, but without realizing it stored up experiences—moments of humor, confusion, wonder, and cultural collision. The kind of moments that only made sense years later, when I finally sat down to write.

So when I eventually retired back to the USA and began writing fiction, I discovered something unexpected. I wasn’t just transcribing memories, I was using them as launch pads. A funny misunderstanding in Bangkok might become the seed of a chapter. A tense meeting in Manila might morph into a plot twist. A quiet moment in a Korean temple might echo into a character’s inner life.

Everything I write is possible and real — but imagination does the heavy lifting.

There’s one more layer to all this. After living in different cultures for so long, one absorbs pieces of the host culture’s worldview — especially in Asia, where the spiritual and the everyday so often coexist without friction. That sensibility has seeped into my stories.

For instance, in one of my novels, stunning events unfold that the Asian characters understand instinctively, because they reside within that cultural framework. But my main character, a Western expat, struggles with it . . . as do some of my Western readers! Their comments often say, in effect, “Surely that part didn’t really happen, because there are no spirits, in reality. So they must have imagined that metaphysical event, right?” Not so fast.

In Asia, the line between the visible and invisible is thinner. And that tension — between worldviews, between explanations — is part of what fascinates me as a writer.

So when you read my stories or novels, you’re not just getting scenes from my past. You’re getting insights and experiences from along the long arc of a life shaped by curiosity, by travel, by cultural immersion, and by that seventh‑grade moment when a radio crackled to life and the world rushed in.

I hope you have been enjoying the short stories I have been publishing the past month on Substack and Medium. And if you’d like to explore more of the worlds that grew out of those years, there are also two novels where it all comes together:

Thanks for reading, and for being part of this journey.

Chet

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Pacific Dash - From Asia Vagabond to Casino King https://www.amazon.com/dp/B093QYS47V

From Hong Kong high schooler to backpacker to king of the Asian casino world — the wild, improbable journey of Dash Bonaventure.

Dash Bonaventure’s life changes the moment his family relocates from the cornfields of Illinois to 1960s Hong Kong. What begins as a teenage detour becomes a lifelong odyssey across Asia. After college he returns as a backpacker, drifting through Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and beyond — falling in love, nearly losing his life, and saving another’s.

A chance job on an illegal floating casino in the Straits of Malacca pulls him into a shadowy world of gamblers, hustlers, rogues, and dreamers. Over the years, Dash climbs from broke drifter to a central figure in the rise of Asia’s high‑stakes VIP gambling trade, eventually becoming one of the most powerful Westerners in Macau’s casino boom.

Pacific Dash is a sprawling, humorous, and heartfelt tale of reinvention, misadventure, cultural collision, and the strange ways fate shapes a life.

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Pacific Odyssey - The Curious Journey of Lew 2.0 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CXX3CTHQ

A fallen New York tech executive flees to Asia — and stumbles into a world stranger, deeper, and more transformative than he ever imagined.

Lew Clarke arrives in the remote Asian backwater of Amazia expecting a quick escape from his ruined career. Instead, he’s swept into a chain of events involving political intrigue, spiritual undercurrents, and a cast of characters who understand the local forces at play far better than he does.

As Lew navigates a culture where the visible and invisible coexist, he’s forced to confront not only the mysteries around him but the failures within himself. What begins as a desperate attempt to outrun his past becomes a journey toward meaning, connection, and unexpected redemption.

Pacific Odyssey blends humor, suspense, and Southeast Asian mysticism into a story about second chances, cultural dislocation, and the thin line between coincidence and destiny.

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The 1980s Peacock Honeymoon Gamble

Chet Nairene — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 17:57:24 GMT

A young expat manager in Kuala Lumpur wakes to find two peacocks in his yard, triggering a full‑blown office stampede to divine the perfect four-digit betting number.

Photo by Jorge Salvador on Unsplash

In mid-1980s Malaysia, we resided in a white cement bungalow on Jalan Gallagher, perched atop a lush, tree-covered Kuala Lumpur hilltop, just a short distance behind the pristine Parliament Building but not quite near high-rent districts like Kenny Hills and Damansara Heights.

Surrounded by frangipani trees and night-blooming Cereus, the entire area was a peaceful, even exotic retreat for mid-level expat families from the USA and Western Europe. The jungle butting up against our property provided a wondrous variety of wild visitors, including occasional forays by marauding gangs of monkeys to rummage through our trash.

Our bungalow boasted a substantial back yard that spilled down the hillside, filled with bushes and banana trees and surrounded by a whitewashed cement wall topped by a black metal fence. The spiked tips reached about five feet off the ground, good enough to keep a dog inside but not very effective for repelling motivated thieves. For that reason, a guard was employed to protect the house at night, leaving duty each morning just before dawn, around 6 a.m.

Mornings atop our small hilltop retreat were the best time of the day, when cooling breezes wafted in through open windows and colorful tropical birds serenading us over morning coffee on the balcony.

But this one particular morning I came down the stairs to find Rosmah, our amah, up in arms and excitedly gossiping with Govind, the driver, who looked sharp as usual in his tan bush-style outfit. The two stood in the driveway beside our family’s boxy white Volvo sedan, which Govind had been giving a morning wash. Apparently still in shock, he had dropped the soapy sponge which now sat dripping on his shoes.

The attention of both was riveted toward the verdant back yard as the maid pointed off into the distance, at something just out of my line of sight.

“Good morning, Mr. Charles. Look, sir!” she exclaimed while handing me my coffee. Her frozen digit honed-in on an unexpected and stunning sight, a stately pair of peacocks, utterly glorious creatures, marching around the yard as if they owned it and conducting a lordly inspection of the premises.

“Hey, get outta here, peacocks? Where’d they come from? Bet the larger one is a male.” As I later confirmed, they were indeed Malaysian peacock-pheasants, wild birds several few feet long, more than half of that devoted to the extravagant tail. The male in particular was striking with his tail bespeckled by brilliant, hypnotic, iridescent blue-green eye-spots plus small black spots and bands everywhere else.

Well that was a new one on me — wild peacocks in Malaysia? I’d only been posted there a few months so far, and every day I seemed to bump into yet another startling new feature in my remote new home in Southeast Asia.

But why were Rosmah and Govind so worked up? Laughing and excited, the two household staff stumbled over each other’s words, anxious to tell the story.

“Sir, bird probably come from jungle, close by,” opined our stout, matronly amah in her plain white shirt and sarong. “Just jump over fence.”

The driver bobbled his head, adding on. “Yes, but still very odd, sir! Peacock not really from here. I never see before in KL — “

“Aduh, Govind,” the maid retorted with a small chuckle, “when I was small girl, one time only, I see wild peacock in Malaysia. Back when family live in kampung near deep forest.”

Ahah, so this was a rare sighting — a monogamous pair of flashy but endangered birds, apparently a species rarely seen outside the zoos. And like our monkeys, they probably arrived via our adjacent jungle. But what led them to prowl around my yard this morning, and more than that, what possessed them to stay?

The usual buzz of morning activity was already revving up and our household jostled to life. There were sounds of our kids waking up and starting to play, the bell on the gardener’s bicycle dinging to announce his arrival and the bread man’s van pulling up out front, squeaky brakes announcing his presence.

Surely these secretive wild birds had no business hanging around here, so why hadn’t they flown off already? But, I then wondered, could peacocks even fly? Probably yes . . . otherwise how did they enter the fenced back yard in the first place?

The unexpected event was all fun and amusing, but the time had arrived for me to depart for the office in KL’s rustic downtown. Twigged by this fresh and unresolved mystery, I regretted having to leave the birds behind. But I brought my two little sons down from their second-floor bedroom and stood with them at the broad open doorway of the veranda. “Look!” I said, happily pointing out into the yard.

“Fancy bird!” chirped my three-year old, dancing around the floor. “And so pretty, Dad! Ooooh, look — spots! Nice bird.”

“B- . . . Brrr!” mimicked his baby brother, grinning as he wriggled around in my arms for a better look.

My employer was a famous American insurance company with a broad portfolio of businesses across Asia and I, Charles Jones, was a recently arrived young expatriate manager, assigned to run their modest operation in KL.

After graduating with a master’s degree in risk management and insurance from Kansas State University’s prestigious program, I was in my mid-twenties, already a father, and welcomed the idea of life abroad, some international experience. Good for one’s career, it was said. Angela, my lovely and adventurous wife, was an Asian Studies and history graduate, open to whatever life threw at us. We agreed that raising two little boys in a friendly, exotic host country might be just the ticket. So after a year’s indoctrination and training at my employer’s New York City headquarters, the company deemed it time to dispatch me to KL to take over operations from a fellow being promoted to a larger role in Japan.

The business in Malaysia was relatively modest, considered an appropriate ‘career starter’ for new, high-potential expat managers like myself. The former British colony had a strong agricultural sector and our insurance marketing focused on the sweet spot of commercial accounts like tobacco, rubber and palm oil plantations.

In all, my office team was comprised by about fifty numbers wonks like myself (accountants, actuaries and mathematicians) plus abundant clerical staff. A team of sales people essentially lived on the road and visited upcountry customers on a rotating basis, returning to KL for a monthly weekend of meetings I conducted.

I sat in my small glass-walled room, still slightly dazed by the morning’s experience of finding two full-sized peacocks strutting around my backyard like they owned the place. I had just hung up after chatting with Angela to confirm the birds were still prancing around the backyard.

Gazing out at the bullpen of workers, I smiled at the ever-present buzz they constantly pumped out, permeating the large open-plan room. Nearly all were ethnic Chinese, even though that group represented only a third of Malaysia’s overall population. The explanation given to me, as a new arrival in Malaysia, was that the Chinese just had a natural affinity for numbers and gravitated toward commerce. Whatever. Seemed about right.

I found them to be a delightful people, although seemingly unfamiliar with the Western concept of quiet, polite speech. No “inside voice” employed here. Loud, simultaneous conversations continuously took place everywhere across the large room, at full volume amid laughter, waving hands and nodding heads.

Jenny, our diminutive tea lady in a brown outfit, wheeled her trolley through this ordered chaos, moving down aisles between desks in a never-ending circuit, refilling just-emptied tea and coffee cups. She also played the handy role as office ‘gopher’, always ready to trot off downstairs with a smile to the main floor kiosk to purchase cigarettes or fetch the latest edition of a Chinese newspaper for stock quotes or other timely information.

About midmorning the day of the peacocks, Mr. Lim from Accounts walked into my office. He was a slight, balding man with gold-rimmed glasses that constantly slid down his nose. He carefully placed a stack of account applications into my in-basket and greeted me.

“Heya! Good morning, boss. Mr. Charles, you okay? Today looking like, what is it . . . disturbed, ah? Like saw ghost, maybe?”

My Chinese staff never shied away from landing the unexpected blunt, nearly intrusive comment, like telling people when they looked fat or that their clothing didn’t look good. There was a cultural collision at work here, I gathered, an overlap between friendly and nosy. So Lim’s comment came as no surprise.

I chuckled and began relating to him my quirky tale of the peacock invasion. But as I began speaking, I noticed how the office buzz diminished, like somebody had turned down the volume. The staff, it seemed, were all hushing to eavesdrop on their boss’s conversation.

Well, I thought, why not entertain them a bit? Taking that as my cue, I piped up and told the morning’s story in a stronger voice, even embellishing some. At one point, the revelation of the birds in the yard, two typists gasped in unison. And across the room, a clerk yelped a little “Oh!” and dropped his stapler, clattering to the floor.

A swelling murmur, the distinct sound of growing interest, swept across the room in waves.

About this point, materializing in my office as if from nowhere, like a summoned spirit, our office bookie appeared. Ah Chye was a garrulous and high-spirited man, a showman. He was officially a courier on the company payroll but, in reality, spent most of his days mainly running the informal office gambling book.

Back in 1980s Malaysia, and continuing even unto today, a lively gambling culture provided a colorful, ever-present backdrop to daily office activities. Betting was a shared ritual, not unlike the annual March Madness college basketball frenzy in the USA. But in Malaysia, among the Chinese, it was a year-round and every day thing.

This being a Wednesday morning, Ah Chye was already busy collecting numbers and bets from staff to book for that night’s lucky draw, the “4D”. The government’s national four-digit lottery drawings were held every Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday evening.

Deeply rooted in Chinese numerology and superstition, Malaysian office gambling ran as an illegal adjunct to the government’s legal “4D” lottery and thrived as a blend of folk belief, dream interpretation, numerology and community ritual.

Anything, at any time, could kick off a frantic search by bettors for propitious four-digit numbers to play in the lottery. Everything and anything could be reduced to a propitious four-digit number. Signs were seen in strange dreams or announced by unusual occurrences, such as a car crash or, say, the near-impossible visit of endangered, rarely-seen peacock-pheasants to the fenced property of a the new gweilo (ghost man) boss.

Before long, other staff (several whom I barely recognized) also squeezed into the office beside me at my desk, Mr. Lim and Ah Chye. All were armed with their own personal, well-worn dream number books and 4D dictionaries, indispensable guides to identifying specific four-digit numbers that correlated with nearly any situation or thing one could dream up.

Ah Chye’s face — sleepy when I first greeted him earlier that morning, upon arriving at the office — now took on new vigor. His eyes were bright.

“Two peacocks, ah? Whole morning? Never leave?” He nearly salivated with greed as he thumbed through his tattered book. “Ah, so: Peacock number? 0604! Very strong number. Very elegant bird. Very proud. Very lucky. But two peacock . . . two mean double sign.”

The staff all crowded into my chamber nodded gravely, as if I’d just survived a supernatural visitation rather than a wildlife encounter. The rest of the office team, standing just beyond my office glass, watched with barely-restrained interest.

Then, as if a secret signal had just been given, the office exploded into kinetic action as Ah Chye began to collect small slips of paper from the entire team. Staff waved their hands anxiously and reached out papers that he collected before making matching notations in his ledger.

Everyone, it seemed, was betting the same numbers: 0604 (peacock), 0664 (doubling the 6 for two peacocks) and 0406 (a mirrored version, reversing the peacock number, just in case).

By lunchtime, my fowl backyard visitation had become an office legend.

Upon returning home that night, I first checked the yard before going inside the bungalow. No peacocks in sight.

Our wizened old gardener, Muthu, just finishing up for the day, explained: “Birds jumping over fence, sir, two of them, just now. Late afternoon. Going home to jungle. But first, making romantic time today in Sir’s yard. Zip-zip-zip, haha.” He made a jerky movement with his hand and wrist whose meaning was obvious. “So next time, maybe baby peacocks also coming?”

Good Lord, peacocks copulating on my property? How had our little hillside become a romantic rendezvous spot for endangered fowl?

Over dinner, I shared the entire office portion of the day’s story with my wife, especially playing up the scene with Ah Chye making book in my glass office amid a peacock-inspired betting frenzy. Angela laughed, finding it fascinating how my staff had all hoped, somehow, to slipstream upon my potential luck.

“So either they must like you, Charlie, or else they think you are lucky, maybe?”

“Heh. Well, they’re right about one thing: I’m the luckiest guy in the world. Look at this lovely family, my great job. And all of it, none of my doing.” I gave her a peck on the cheek and smiled at the two boys, making a mess on their plates. “But what is most likely is that they are all just superstitious, gambling-mad Chinese, ready to bet on nearly anything . . . even an odd story from their young new gweilo boss, about copulating peacocks — ”

“What kind of peacocks?”

“Oops. Never mind.” I glanced at the kids. That slip-up had sailed right over their heads. “But yeah, you heard me right. Actually, hon, my staff didn’t know anything about that particular wrinkle, a belated addition Muthu only now just told me about.” I chuckled. “But goodness, wouldn’t that have driven them nuts, with all their propitious divining and number-crunching?”

Angela brightened. “Yeah. But anyway, how much did everybody win? I imagine you bet, too? Did you win enough to send me off to Bangkok on that girls’ shopping getaway week?” Her friends had been talking about that idea for a while. It seemed unlikely to go away. I sighed.

But she was right about one thing — it already being late, the evening’s 4D numbers surely were already drawn. So by now, little boys were scampering around KL’s streets, roaming tables at restaurants and bars to sell (for just a few cents) small scraps of paper listing the day’s winning numbers. “Sure, I went along and placed a small wager but it musta lost. If any of those peacock numbers won anything, somebody would have phoned me by now. So forget about Bangkok.”

She stuck out her lower lip in a fake pout and then laughed.

The next day at the office, the truth came out in disappointing detail. Nobody had won anything on the various peacock digits. Not one even came close.

The entire event soon faded from memory — Sic transeunt numeri pavonis (Thus passeth peacock numbers) — as the office moved on to wallow in a new smorgasbord of captivating omens. Mrs. Wong, the senior mail room clerk, dreamed of a giant durian appearing in her baby carriage. Jenny, the spritely tea lady, spotted a cloud on the horizon shaped like a fire-breathing dragon. And my secretary’s cousin’s puppy barked exactly twelve times at midnight, just before urinating in the shape of a figure 8 on the living room carpet. Ah Chye was in Seventh Heaven.

Facing such stiff competition, my peacocks were just yesterday’s forgotten news . . . that is, until Friday morning, when everything changed again.

I arrived to find the office in a state of electrified panic, with staff all trying to not look concerned but stealing looks at me whenever I glanced away. Even before I could sit down in my office, Ah Chye came dashing in, waving his ledger and betting slips like a man possessed. “Boss! Boss, ah! You sit down first. Very important.”

I sat and drew in a deep breath. What now?

“Mr. Charles, you okay today, heya? No problem, ah? Everything happy?”

Good grief. “Yes, Ah Chye, I’m just fine. But thanks. Now if you’d just let me get to work and — ”

He held up an abrupt hand, silencing me, and leaned in close. I could smell breakfast (garlic-fried rice) on his breath.

“Now, chief, just listen. News. Big, maybe.” He turned and waved at Miss Chan outside my door, the quietest clerk in the building, and she entered my office.

The mousy little woman cleared her throat while stepping forward like a reluctant prophet. She spoke in her usual quiet, almost inaudible voice.

“In my dream, Mr. Charles . . .”

“Louder!” barked Ah Chye, seconded by a grumbled assent from the rest of the office staff, huddled outside the office glass to listen.

“Sorry,” she said, her voice now elevating a fraction. “In my dream, sir . . . your car . . .”

“Yes, my car? Please go on.”

She coughed. “Well, it was upside-down . . . in a ditch.”

“No!” gasped the entire office team from just beyond the glass.

“But your license plate, sir . . . it very clear. Very bright. Like cinema. Number 4406.”

Yes, that was my license plate number. Everyone stared at me as if I’d been personally chosen by the gods of numerology.

Then Ah Chy slammed his palm on my desktop. “So that explain everything!” He grinned at me, nodding his head. “That it! Peacock omen was not yet complete. Universe now giving us part two. First the birds, now plate number. Must combine!”

He began furiously scribbling down numbers: 4460, 4406, 4664, 6044, 0466, and 0644.

He paused, looked up at the ceiling as if receiving a transmission from the ancestors, and wrote down 0644 again. Then he underlined it, added a star and underlined the star, too.

Mr. Lim from Accounts concurred, nodding solemnly. “Yes, that one. Sure to come. 0644. Very strong. Very fated.”

Miss Chan bowed her head, appearing on the verge of tears. “Mr. Charles? Boss, ah . . . so sorry! I didn’t mean to dream your car upside-down.”

I began reassuring her but Ah Chye waved that off, interjecting: “Don’t worry! Is dream only! Important thing is number. Very auspicious. So strong!”

And just like that, as if a signal had been given, the entire staff began to flood into my office to form a wriggling queue to hand over betting slips to Ah Chye. He wrote down their names and numbers but collected no cash — one of the benefits of playing the 4D illegally was credit betting, along with bigger payouts. The staff chattered away, thrilled at this opportunity, as joyous as if buying shares in a guaranteed IPO.

The rest of my day settled into the usual humdrum of shuffling papers, processing claims and writing telex messages for transmission back to the head office in New York.

By later that afternoon, I had all but forgotten about that evening’s impending 4D draw. But judging from the shared excited grins and winks staff exchanged, it was clear they anticipated a jackpot win, riding along on guaranteed luck from our new, improved peacocks-plus-flipped-car-dream numbers.

At 5 p.m. staff began to file out for the weekend but Miss Chan stayed later and knocked at my office door. Timid as a mouse, she crept in and stood silent in front of my desk, eyes downcast. She bowed meekly and then looked up offering a timid smile.

“Sir? Just by the way, I wanted to tell you . . . in my dream . . . you were fine and climbed out of car. No injury! Only complaining about mud on your shoes.”

Ah Chye, never one to miss a bet, had also stayed later and was hovering just outside my office door. He grinned to received this new information and wrote something on his ledger. “Boss, ah? Just now, I add one more number: 0001. For new beginning! Sure win!”

“Bravo,” I said with a smile, I dismissed both him and Miss Chan. “Have a nice weekend. And here’s to our good luck, all of us. ?The entire team. Together.”

I probably don’t need to tell you the number did not hit. But two additional observations are essential to put the bow on this story.

First, from that moment forward, I understood how my time in Malaysia would become a life-changing experience, almost magical. A true blessing. My team was fabulous and I would grow to love each and every one of them, bonding like family.

But the second observation is, in retrospect, how I had never anticipated how much Asian patterns of thought and culture, like superstitions and numerology, might penetrate my Western way of thinking and affect my beliefs.

A first hint that Chinese numerology was rubbing off on me was all the guilt I felt for weeks after that Friday night, when we again lost the 4D.

Because afterwards, I realized the loss was all my fault! Thinking it nothing, I had unintentionally failed to share a final, key piece of numerological input.

The winning four digit number was indeed peacock-related, and ever-so-close to Ah Chye’s can’t-miss birds-and-car-crash number: 0644.

But the winner turned out to be 0611. Meaning? Copulating peacocks, of course.

The Great Singapore Super Bowl Caper (Part 3 - The End)

Chet Nairene — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 15:44:22 GMT

Photo by Karim Oussayar-Francoeur on Unsplash

Yes, that would be safest, to proceed early directly to the Super Bowl hotel and sit in lobby for an hour, waiting for the ballroom doors to be thrown open at 6 a.m. That way nothing else could go wrong. Hopefully.

Murph and George whirled through the revolving door to encounter a scrum of U.S. expats, all with the same idea. It seemed like half the Americans posted to Southeast Asia were there in the lobby, along with local friends and business associates. Many wore suit and tie for the Singapore workday starting later, but equally many were partisans decked out in the orange and blue of the Chicago Bears or red and white of the New England Patriots.

Families, rowdy drunks and bemused Singaporeans leaned against the ballroom walls or sat on the floor. Some long-term expats even brought along their local wives.

But the electricity in the room was irresistible. Murph started to feel pumped, just to suddenly be among so many other Bears fans. They outnumbered New England at least three-to-one. He struck up conversations with instant friends on topics ranging from Mike Ditka’s monster mustache to Walter Payton’s incredible heart or how many sacks Richard Dent would rack up. Many there fully expected the team’s relentless ‘46 Defense’ to pitch a shut-out at QB Steve Grogan and his Patriots.

Precisely at 6 a.m. (after all, this was Singapore), the doors swung open and the crowd began flowing into the vast, chilly ballroom. All eyes were immediately drawn to a large movie-type screen suspended overhead, where the live satellite TV feed from the Louisiana Superdome was already in progress. NBC’s Bob Costas was blathering and pontificating as usual. The picture’s colors seemed perhaps a little washed out, but still quite satisfactory in the darkened ballroom. And for this football-starved overseas crowd back in 1986, the technology was appreciated as nothing short of a miracle, a ticket to utter sports nirvana.

Wynton Marsalis performed the national anthem and a sappy song/dance troupe called ‘Up With People’ did a halftime show tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King.

But in the main event -- amid a flood of beer, mimosas and champagne, Eggs Benedict and fried ham slices -- the delirious expat crowd oohed and aahed as the powerful Bears team steamrolled New England by a score of 46-10. And truth being told, the game was actually never even that close.

The entire spectacle like the anointing of a super team that could dominate American football for the next decade. Murph, a Bears fan from birth (a hereditary thing in Chicagoland), was transported to total sports ecstasy.

But by 11:30 a.m., despite drunken fatigue and lack of sleep, his common sense gained some momentum and started to get a little anxious. The game was all but over, long ago decided, and the final score would only be a formality . . . so when was this going to end?

The clock was not his friend. Murph had forgotten about the built-in delays that enabled the game a longer run time, so expensive Super Bowl commercials could be sold for the U.S. market (no, as entertaining as they might have been, those weren’t picked up for the satellite feed).

It was already 44-3 at the start of the 4th quarter and there seemed to be a little too much lolly-gagging going on. Coach Ditka had even already maneuvered a touchdown for defensive lineman Refrigerator Perry, a little of the “in your face” typical for the Bears larger-than-life coach. The only real suspense left was when he’d arrange a touchdown score for Sweetness Payton, the legendary Bear.

So by now, travel logistics and scenarios dominated Murph’s thoughts. Would they still be able to make it to the DCM’s 2:30 meeting? Missing that – especially the why leaked out – felt increasingly career-limiting or even terminating. It didn’t help that the DCM was notoriously anti-sports, an effete Ivy League elitist.

By noon Murph could wait no longer and decided to give up on seeing the game conclusion and trophy presentation. He collared George and headed out front of the hotel to find an airport taxi. It took them ten minutes to work their way to the front of the hotel taxi rank. Finally, just as they were getting into the cab, checking their watches every few seconds as if their dire situation might improve, a drunken bassy voice rumbled out from behind them.

“Hey, you a-holes, wait! Ditching a brother again? Real nice.” It sounded like real nyshe. Good Times Oscar pulled open the taxi door and roughly squeezed in beside the other two, stinking of cheap whiskey, vomit and gaudy perfume. Laughing, he rolled down the window to catch a peck on his cheek from his girlfriend of that evening, Puan Ebi, the sweet little prawn gal, who had been standing outside and waving at him. Now wearing tight blue jeans and a frilly pink top, no makeup and a Hello Kitty baseball-style cap, she looked like an innocent farm girl, maybe about 18, max.

“Don’t forget these, dear Oscar,” she said, handing him his wallet and passport.

“Ya know, guys, I’ve always loved prawns,” chuckled Oscar.

Murph shook his head and gave him a playful poke. “Don’t even bother trying to explain. That’s for later, GTO. By the way, you missed a pretty great game. But you also missed a lot of rather bad shit that went down last night. All eminently worth missing, so I guess you evened out. But where on earth did you get those clothes?” Oscar’s sharp attire from the night had vanished and instead he was clothed in baggy, dirty khaki pants, greasy rubber flip-flops and a torn powder blue sweatshirt with the stenciled face of a Malaysian soccer star.

GTO just shrugged and looked embarrassed. “Um,” he mumbled, “all from her big brother. He gave me these cuz I lost my other clothes.”

As much as Murph was curious how that happened, he restrained himself for now. It was clear the man was too utterly hammered to go into details.

Soon Oscar dropped his chin to his chest and fell dead asleep. As if synchronized, George, just a few moments later, also fell fast asleep on the other side of Murph in the middle of the back seat. Then he joined them.

The next thing anybody remembered, the taxi driver was yelling at the three of them to wake up and pay and get out of his cab! They were at Changi.

The groggy trio sprinted through the airport, hoping to catch the 1 p.m. shuttle back to KL. With any luck, that would put them in a cab from Subang in time to reach the embassy before 2:45. A late arrival was better than none, yes?

But it didn’t work out; they only made the 1:30 p.m. flight.

“We’re all dead,” proclaimed Murph as the wheels touched finally down on the tarmac in Malaysia around 2:15 p.m. “Dead as in dead, deader, deadest.” He envisioned himself soon flying back to Chicago, fired and humiliated, to look for work.

They piled into a cab by 2:45 and immediately dozed off again. The cab driver, though, a goateed Malay who seemed to enjoy a challenge, nearly set a land speed record getting them to the U.S. Embassy. Awakened by his tooting horn, the trio paid the fare plus a healthy tip and trudged into the consular offices well after 3 p.m., looking like condemned men off to their executions. Now it was clear: this was the worst idea ever.

The offices were mainly empty, of course, because everyone was surely in the DCM meeting. Must have started on time.

Hearts thumping with anxiety, they peeked in the back door at the meeting hall, a small theater-like room, and saw th place was packed but nothing was transpiring. Nobody was at the podium . . . had they made it back in time?

It wasn’t unusual for the DCM to get caught on calls from Washington, forcing everything else – like this meeting – to adjust. But accompanying this near-miraculous development was a concerning twist: in the packed room, only three empty seats remained. They were first row and center, in front of the podium. They’d be sitting almost in the lap of the DCM when he spoke.

No other choice.

The three scurried in with Murph hoping they didn’t smell too much from booze. As it turned out, Oscar’s bizarre outfit was drawing most of the attention, essentially giving him and George some cover. Nobody seemed to even notice them.

Moments later the DCM walked briskly to the podium and squared a handful of papers. After glancing around the packed room his eyes trained upon the three misadventurers in the front row, but again mainly focusing on GTO.

In a remarkable show of utterly chill attitude, how much he was above distraction, the DCM ignored them and started the meeting, reviewing the upcoming month’s expected highlights, visitors, special holidays and so forth.

But less than five minutes later, a low rhythmic buzzing hiss started to emerge from the front row. Oscar snoring. He had again collapsed into unconsciousness and was starting to sprawl forward in his seat, soon to touch the podium. Murph and George, on either side, fought to ignore this spectacle while also remaining conscious.

The DCM, still as cool as a November breeze, no longer ignored the scene playing out in front of him. “Gentlemen, what do you know about the situation here with our friend, Corporal Jenkins?”

Knowing only bold action might save them, Murph jumped up and gave George a follow-my-lead look.

“Sir, I heard that the corporal was very sick all night and I doubt he slept a wink. I gather maybe he got a bad prawn or something that did him in. He’s supposedly been vomiting ever since. So no wonder he’s out cold now. But knowing how important your monthly briefing meetings are, he was determined attend.”

“Hmm, good man. Dedicated . . . though unwise.”

“Yes, sir. But we’ll end this distraction for you and get him back to his quarters, straightaway, so he can recover.”

After a momentary quizzical look, the DCM shrugged and nodded. “Very well. Carry on.”

He dove back into his briefing and ignored the two men dragging their unconscious pal out of the room. Murph and George avoided eye contract with everyone there, fighting the whole time to stay under control and not burst out in joyous, relieved laughter.

(THE END)

The Great Singapore Super Bowl Caper (Part 2)

Chet Nairene — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 16:45:41 GMT

Photo by Paul Zoetemeijer on Unsplash

Murph arrived at Subang Airport to find George already waiting at the Singapore Airlines check-in and looking jittery. Though it was the prearranged time to meet, 7 p.m., there was still no Oscar. After waiting another ten minutes, they decided to head for the gate. Oscar could catch up with them later, no problem.

But just as they turned to start down the concourse, a bassy voice boomed out from behind them.

“Hey, you a-holes, real nice! Wait up!”

Murph chuckled and winked at George. “GTO, right on cue! The late (as always) Good Times Oscar.”

Oscar Newton, their friend, a man of color, came trotting up. He was stocky and handsome with a gleaming smile and bright eyes under a tight military buzz cut. Oscar’s clothes were impeccable as always — dark slacks, custom silk turtleneck shirt, expensive-looking shoes. “Okay, men, so the games can now officially begin! But what was that bullshit, trying to ditch a brother like that? Don’t forget, you Singapore rookies: GTO is your personal guide to all the best food, women, and partying on the island. The secret Singapore! Y’all’d be lost without me! ”

And that was true. GTO was the only one with Singapore experience, veteran of a half dozen R&R trips during his two years working embassy security in Malaysia. On the other hand, Murph was still yet to visit the island. And George had only squeezed in a superficial taxi tour during a several-hour layover at Changi Airport.

The muscular black man closed his eyes and rubbed his hands, as if conjuring up images of the delectable night awaiting them. “And fellas, believe me, just wait till you see the lay-dies down there! Chinese, Indonesian, even spicy little gals from the subcontinent, if you like that. Oooo-wee!”

That’s fine, thought Murph, but just get me to my Bears championship game on time. No social disease, thank you. That’s all I want.

They clambered aboard the Boeing 737 and were directed to seats by two charming Singapore Airlines stewardesses who seemed all hypnotizing smiles and curve-hugging batik sarong kebayas. Murph couldn’t stop grinning. Wow, this trip is going to be incredible. What a great idea! . . . And to think, it almost didn’t happen. Sometimes, spur of the moment decisions are best, right?

After landing and clearing Singapore immigration an hour later, they piled into a cab at the Changi taxi rank and Oscar barked out directions. “Newton Circus, bruh, and step on it!”

Murph and George exchanged looks.

“Faaaaack, Oscar,” complained George, “What, you think we’re ten? No thanks to any circus, man, even if it was named for you. Murph, it may already be time to fire our guide.”

The soldier just laughed. “Heh! Trust me. No family connection and Newton Circus is only our first quick stop, but an important one.” He leaned toward the front seat and tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Hey, Mr. Cabbie, why so slow? We gettin’ old back here. Step on it a little?”

The taxi driver — an older, unsmiling Chinese man in glasses and a rumpled shirt — just grunted and accelerated a little, triggering an irritating speed limit bell that started sounding an annoying, unending series of ding-ding-dings. Just as intended, the bell soon drove them all crazy and Singapore’s friendly social engineers won. Grumbling, the driver slowed down again and they all thanked him.

Just after 9 p.m. the taxi delivered them to a traffic roundabout where eight roads converged. Located there was an outdoor food court extravaganza.

“Hell yeah,” barked George, “why didn’t you say so before? I’m hungry!”

Built in 1933, Newton Circus was named after Howard Newton, the municipal engineer who designed the roadwork. Food only came much later, in 1971, when the Singapore government relocated illegal hawker stalls.

The three hungry males ran swift reconnaissance through the food stalls, finding themselves torn between the abundance of local delicacies. About the many tempting selections, George said, “I almost regret having only one stomach.”

“Yeah, me too, but I’ve chosen.” Murph pointed. “That one, over there, that’s for me.” He eyed an over-sized poster photo of mouthwatering food with exaggerated color. Oyster Omelets. “One of these great big eggs with oysters has my name on it. Can’t go wrong, right?” He looked over at the soldier. “And what about you, Good Times?”

The soldier shrugged. “Me? What else. As always, GTO gotta chow down on nasi lemak plus maybe a half-dozen of them salty duck eggs. Love em, can’t get enough.” Oscar probably ate nasi lemak, coconut rice with chicken rendang curry, five times a week back home in KL. George went for his old stand-by, bak kut teh, succulent pork ribs in fragrant broth.

Appetites satisfied, the three soon packed themselves into another taxi and sped off down toward the downtown sector and Orchard Road.

GTO couldn’t stop smiling. “And now, for our second stop, gentlemen, I give you Orchard Towers.”

“So what’s there?” asked Murph.

“Infamously, it’s called the four floors of whores.” At that, the other two burst out laughing. “But you’ll see for yourselves.”

The taxi rolled down glittering Orchard Road, attractive with expensive storefronts and hotels but rather dead by 10 p.m. on a Sunday evening. Yet, when they pulled up beside the well-lit Orchard Towers, the sidewalk out front and entryway were littered with all variety of folk just hanging around: young, overly painted-up women from all around the region and Europe, too; tough-looking clusters of dark young men lurking in the shadows; and plump, soft-looking older Western men perhaps cruising the scene for a pick-up.

The three entered the building and encountered the thumping bass line of dance music. They rode a zig-zag of escalators upward to the high-floor source, the Top Ten disco.

“Huh, this musta just opened,” said GTO. “Wasn’t here last time I visited a few months ago. But anyway, all those other bars and clubs and stuff we passed, coming up, that’s the four floors. Get it?”

“And those painted women we passed?”

“Yup.”

George gazed around the Top Ten and its seething dance floor. “Seems like a place crawling with the beautiful people.” It was true, the disco was overloaded with sensuous Asian women who were overdressed, bejeweled, made-up to the tens and probably all on the clock. Late on a Sunday night, with not enough male patrons in the place, the women were mainly dancing with each other.

“Well, thanks, GTO. This is just great,” Murph said, “but not really why I flew down here.” Murph had his priorities straight and kept thinking about his Bears being in the Super Bowl in just, what, nine hours? He only wanted to bide his time, drink a little, and not risk anything going off the rails.

“Okay, Murph, be a fairy if you wanna. But this is absolutely why I’m down here in Spore. They don’t call me Good Times Oscar for nothing.” GTO laughed. “But if you want something quieter, there’s a nice little cowboy bar downstairs. You can shoot some pool, sip some beers, feel like you’re in Dallas.”

He was right. The Western bar provided a simulated Texas, with country music playing at a comfortable level and attractive mini-skirted waitresses slinging beers in cowboy gear, white boots and hats.

“Well, yee-haw, Georgie, let’s play us some pool, podner!” The two fell into a pleasant distraction, playing pool with two longtime Singapore expats. One, who called himself “The Silver Fox,” had white hair in a luxurious pompadour and said he ran an oil trading business just down Orchard Road. Knew everything about Asia and was a wonderful raconteur. Amid such excellent company, and despite Murph’s intentions to the contrary, beers continued to steadily flow down his gullet so, by 1 a.m., things were indeed starting to get pretty stormy.

As he held onto the pool table, trying to steady himself and stop the swaying room, he reminded himself: this trip really was a great idea . . . no?

Around 2 a.m., Oscar rolled in fresh from the Top Ten disco with a stunning Indonesian woman on his arm. Her name was Rosmah but also sometimes Puan Ebi, an Indonesian nickname that meant Little Miss Prawn. She was sultry and wrapped in revealing attire, tight black leather and satin plus killer make-up. “Hey, guys, Puan Ebi and I need to go over to her place for a little while, uh, to wash my socks. They’re feeling itchy, you know, and might distract me from the NFL game. I’ll meet you guys there at the hotel ballroom in—” he looked at his watch “— four hours for breakfast. Order me a great big omelet with plenty of crispy bacon, okay?”

Murph gave him a drunken smile and nodded. But he wondered two things. First, would they ever see Oscar again that weekend? Well, he was a big boy and could take care of himself. And second, what was the little gurgly feeling starting in his stomach? An image of oysters — brownish, slimy oysters — flashed by and his stomach clenched again. He tried to put it out of his mind and returned to the pool table.

A half hour later, the bar proprietor announced closing time so all remaining cowboys needed to mosey on off, out of his place.

George was also impaired, only a few beers more sober than Murph. The two stumbled and lurched their way out of Orchard Towers to find a small crowd gathered out front, mainly working women standing around, looking for one last score for the evening. Also still meandering was a good number of men, just rousted at close down from the tower’s bars and clubs.

Murph stumbled right into a gaggle of evidently European women — maybe Hungarian, Bulgarian or Romanian, who knew? — probably tourists at work. Their faces were overly painted, too much makeup especially around the eyes, giving them a sexy but vampirish look. One threw her arms around the inebriated Murph, caught unaware, and began kissing him while the other two caressed him everywhere. Murph moaned with pleasure.

But despite his own inebriation, George knew what was going on and began hollering.

“Hey, hey, break it up!”

His voice was loud and drunken as he grabbed the women’s hands and pulled them free, tossing them aside. Then he pushed in between his intoxicated friend and the Eastern European hooker embracing him and tore his friend away, yelling, “Murph! What’s wrong with you, man?”

“Huh? What’s wrong with me? Why, what’s wrong with you, you son of a—”

“Shut up! Just check your pockets – now! Still got your wallet and passport?”

A look of sudden panic washed over Murph’s face. He did a quick back-pocket pat and yes, found his passport still there . . . but no wallet! And those three gypsy women had already vanished. When Murph and George started to call out for help, if anybody had seen anything, or where the women went, the only responses received were wistful smiles and shaking heads. “Idiot,” came a stage-whispered comment from somewhere behind them.

For the first time, Murph started to worry, maybe this trip wasn’t such a great idea?

The two walked up Orchard Road, hoping the Hyatt Hotel coffee shop operated round the clock and was still open. But after a few blocks, Murph’s stomach gurgle developed at last into a full-blown internal cyclone.

He dropped to his knees and immediately heaved out all the contents of his digestive system. Most prominent in the puddle below his nose were bright yellow egg bits and brownish pieces of slimy oyster. It had all spewed out with such unusual violence that the stomach spasms stole away all his strength. While still on his knees, trying to just regain his breath, a voice came from over his shoulder.

“That’s against the law, you know. All that mess on the sidewalk.”

He looked over and saw shiny black oxford shoes that went with that voice. His eyes followed the pants leg up to the face of a stern Singapore policeman in full, snappy uniform and sharp airline pilot style cap. He was suddenly stone cold sober. Post-vomit syndrome.

“Believe me, officer, it was unintentional. But I need your help! I am from the U.S. Embassy in KL and somebody has stolen my wallet.” He explained all the details to the blank-faced officer, who occasionally tsk-tsked his story.

“Orchard Towers, I see. Follow me.” The cop led them back to the front walkway. “Now show me exactly where this happened.” Once the cop saw that, he crooked a finger at Murph to follow him. “Here, check in there for your wallet,” he said, pointing at a large, overflowing nearby trashcan

“Where? How? I don’t see it?”

“Just start digging, lah,” he said.

Murph rolled up his sleeves and began to rummage through the disgusting heap of viscous refuse. Had he not just recently thrown up, he certainly would have now. In his post-vomit total sobriety, he carefully searched section by section. About a foot into the trash bin, he eventually found the missing wallet.

“Oh my God, here it is! A miracle!” All his credit cards and ID were there. Only the cash was missing.

“Not a miracle,” the policeman explained. “Trust me, you are not special at all, in this regard. They only wanted your cash. The rest, they dispose of as quickly as possible.”

It was getting near 5 a.m. now and all of Singapore was closed, but they still had another hour to kill. The two decided best to proceed to the Super Bowl hotel early. There, with any luck, would be easy chairs in the lobby to sit and wait. Would Oscar even show up? Fat chance.

Murph started to think this trip was maybe a bad idea. They’d probably be late returning for the DCM’s monthly meeting and (worst case) get fired if details of their misadventure got revealed.

But at least he’d get to see his Bears make history.

(END PART TWO)

The Great Singapore Super Bowl Caper (Part 1)

Chet Nairene — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 22:09:37 GMT

Photo by Dave Adamson on Unsplash

A tall Western man entered the interview cubicle at the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur. A junior consular officer smiled and greeted him, motioning toward the chair across from him. “Good afternoon, sir. Please take a seat. I’m Jack Murphy.”

“Good afternoon to you, too,” said the visitor with a slight Boston accent. Smelling of kretek, the local clove cigarettes, he smiled and reached inside his jacket inner pocket to retrieve a blue passport that he placed upon the desk top.

Those were already enough clues for Murph to size him up—probably a long-term American expat seeking passport assistance. “Renewal?” guessed the embassy staffer, though his tone was more statement than question. The Bostonian nodded back.

It was Friday afternoon and the twenty-four year old junior officer was already exhausted, physically and mentally drained after a long week.

He spent the first half of each day on visa work, sheer drudgery, conducting a hundred interviews before lunch, each just a snippet two or three minutes long. By now, six months into the job, he could accurately surmise an applicant’s category within the first thirty seconds: a Malaysian family going to Disneyland, a nervous college student headed off to America, or an attractive young woman visiting her “boyfriend” in California (a red flag). He had learned to read faces and body language, the subtle dance of truth and fiction. He approved many applications and denied more than a few, too.

But his afternoons devoted to American Citizen Services were lower key compared to rapid-fire visa mornings, dealing with passport issues and all the interesting, odd problems overseas Americans brought in for help.

He helped the Bostonian with some paperwork, drew a deep breath and looked up at the clock. Only a few more hours till the weekend.

Murph well understood all this initial drudge work was a rite of passage, a small price to pay on the path toward his future success. His turn in the barrel, that’s all; wouldn’t go on forever. He did not lack for confidence. Dreaming big dreams and ever ambitious, he took pleasure reminding himself his Foreign Service career was now off and running, just as planned.

He’d been in KL a half year already and found the steamy place enjoyable despite a decidedly backwater vibe. People were sweet and fun and the tropical climate was a welcome change after the brutal winters in Chicago. He enjoyed seeing palm trees and 90-degree heat in January and reminded himself it was sub-zero back home and snowing in DC. Born in Cicero, Illinois, to modest middle-class means, he lusted from a young age for an international life and followed a well-worn route to his current situation. Pairing a University of Chicago undergraduate degree with an MA from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, he went on to ace the State Department exam and blew them away in the interviews. And the rest, as they say, was history.

But at times his post, in the small nation of Malaysia, felt a bit closed off as a cultural enclave, almost suffocating him. For example, the International Herald Tribune was rationed, arriving only days later via Singapore (just across the causeway), delayed to allow black marker deletions by Malaysian censors. The effort was self-defeating, though, drawing attention to the forbidden articles. A few mysterious black marks in an otherwise innocuous IHT story triggered spirited debate at the consular office, speculation what ever was that all about?

Local TV in KL also mainly unwatchable for a young American. A commercial channel was said to be coming soon, but for now in early 1986 there were only two state-run TV channels from RTM, coming on the air each night at 5. They started off with an Islamic Call to Prayer and government PSAs against dadah (drugs) and went downhill from there with an evening line-up of Malay soap operas, government news, soccer matches and no English programming.

To snare a taste of back home and uncensored news, Murphy began tuning American Forces Radio on shortwave, broadcast via a relay station in the Philippines. The signal was often poor.

He also discovered bootleg videos for sale at a small shop in the back of Wisma Mirama, around the corner from the KL Hilton. Horrendous quality and nothing recent, mind you, but still some English language content, for what it was worth.

With so little Western media to divert him, socializing and personal relationships took on a much more important role. Murph formed close friendships with a crew of other young U.S. expats around his age. The men swapped U.S. sports magazines and NFL videotapes received only months late from home, played racquetball over many lunchtimes and basketball all day, Saturday and Sunday.

But most of all, they met many evenings at one fellow’s place or the other, to drink beer and just talk. In so Islamic a country as Malaysia, although there were some bars associated with classy hotel Western restaurants, they were in general not very simpatico for unsophisticated young American males who just wanted to pound beers and pontificate about sports and women. Expensive, too.

Saturday evening, Murph’s gang gathered at the poorly air-conditioned apartment of George Keene, another junior consular officer. The six males made excellent progress denting the stock of Anchor Beer their host had put on ice. Because the preceding afternoon, in its entirety, had been devoted to furious matches of pick-up basketball at the ISKL gym, the beer tasted twice as refreshing in the tropical heat.

George, the host, was complaining. “So I had to go inside Pudu again this week, visit that kid from Seattle,” he said. “Poor guy is locked up in there and clueless. He got caught at Subang with hashish secreted in his bag and, of course, claims no knowledge how it got in there. Says it wasn’t his—”

“It never is,” scoffed Murph, sighing and taking another gulp of Anchor. Jeez, that kid was about his age. “But regardless, whether one knows the law or not, Malaysia still threatens it will hang you for possession. Drugs or guns. I sure wish the word got out better . . .” No American had thus far been executed under the regime’s draconian drug and gun laws, but there could always be a first time.

After a few heavy moments contemplating that, he changed the topic. “Hey, whatever got into you guys today? Ran me ragged out there. If you are going to insist on playing all that fast-break basketball, I’m gonna have make you wear some body weights. Slow you down. I mean, it’s unfair, what with you and Roger being runners and all . . .”

“You could always join us, buddy,” said George. “Why not? We run at each day at dawn, while it’s still cool. Love to have you.”

Murph shook his head and spit out a sarcastic laugh. “No way. Sorry, heh, but I’m usually too busy that time of day, you know? Not for me. Anyway, I don’t need any new sporting interests. My plate’s already full with the Chicago Cubs and Bears . . . Speaking of which, man oh man, how about my Bears?”

It was late January, 1986 and his Chicago Bears, the Monsters of the Midway, were on the verge of a historic Super Bowl victory and an NFL Championship, culmination of a season deemed by many fans as one of the greatest of all time. And Murph had been a die-hard fan Bears fan ever since he’d been a kid.

“Just think of it: Walter Payton, Jim McMahon, Willie Gault . . . all of ‘em in the freakin’ Super Bowl! But it pisses me off how, at this historic time, they’re playing this weekend but not a hint of coverage anywhere here in Malaysia. Nothing. So here’s me, the world’s biggest Bears fan, and I’m on a Bears Super Bowl starvation diet. No radio, no TV, no nothing. But naturally, plenty of boring soccer on the air. Cripes.”

“Well Murph, you can always go out on your balcony and tune your little portable shortwave, right? Haha.” All the men chortled.

“Sure, I’ll try. But one only hears every other play, through all the static. Christ.” Murph slammed the counter top with his palm. “It’s just unfair! If only there was some way to, oh, you know . . .”

George reached over and tapped Murph’s arm, in a kind of settling-down maneuver. “Now just a minute, pal, just shut up and listen. I’ve got something to tell you about but don’t want you blowing a gasket, getting all upset.”

Intrigued, Murph smiled and cracked open another cold beer. He ran a hand through his mop of curly black hair and took a long, slow swig. “Okay, Georgie-boy. You may safely proceed. I am now about as cooooool as a frozen cucumber. Nothing but nothing, at this point, could upset me. Do your worst. Go ahead, hit me.”

George’s eyes flashed with excitement. “Well, what if I told you I know about a live satellite broadcast of the Super Bowl—”

“Wait, what?”

“Yup. Straight from New Orleans and projected on a big screen . . . and only an hour away from here, give or take.”

Murph jumped up like he’d just sat on a tack. “What the hell you talking about?”

“Yeah,” George went on, “a friend down in Singapore says one of the Orchard Road hotels is going to have a live broadcast of the Super Bowl. Big party for the American expat community. Doors to open at 6 a.m. Monday and the live broadcast starts at something like 7 a.m. Also a big buffet breakfast with beer, champagne mimosas, you know. They’ll probably dress up some local hotties like cheerleaders and give away door prizes, too. Maybe even a raffle, all kinds of good shit like that. Should be fantastic.”

“Wow, a satellite feed right here in Southeast Asia? That’s high tech and new. Never heard of that before. Very nice for the expats down in Singapore. But doesn’t help us very much.” Murph ran a finger around the top of his beer can, playing with the condensation. “If only there were some way . . .”

That night the idea hounded him and kept him awake, feeling sorry for himself. It would be a lifetime peak event for his Bears and, transitively, for him as a Bears fan. Why did this kind of thing always seem to happen to him?

His mind began racing through scenarios, logistics for a lightning strike trip down to Singapore. Out of the question, of course, as he had to work Monday. But still . . .

The shuttle flights between KL and Singapore ran all day long, only about 35 minutes in the air. The plane literally climbed to altitude, cruised for five minutes, and immediately began descending.

Was it even slightly possible to sneak down there and experience his Bears making history? How could he miss Walter Payton’s one and only Super Bowl? Sweetness had been his hero forever and was sure to retire soon. He might never get another shot at a championship appearance.

But such a misadventure had the potential to be truly dangerous.

It would require going AWOL from work Monday morning, disappearing without obtaining permission. But perhaps arrangements could be made, get somebody to cover? Might be doable. It just so happened that Murph’s boss would still be in the States on home leave, a helluva lucky break. But in a rather unlucky one, the boss of his boss, the Deputy Chief of Mission, slated his monthly meeting Monday afternoon at 2:30 p.m. It would be a fatal error to go missing from that.

But with any luck at all, they could get back in time.

If the game started at 7 a.m. in Singapore, and then give it four hours playing time, they could be in a taxi speeding to Changi Airport by 11 a.m. That would put them on the noon shuttle back to KL. Worst case, the 12:30? That meant they would land in KL by 1:15 or 1:30 at the latest and grab a cab back straight to the embassy.

Even factoring in traffic, their arrival at the KL embassy would be well before the DCM’s huddle meeting. It all seemed eminently achievable.

Murph pondered this and waited a few more hours, trying to be reasonable, before phoning George precisely at 9 a.m.

“Whaaaa the hell . . . whoozis calling, middle of the night like this?” the voice rasped over the line.

“Georgie babes, it’s me!” Murph was giddy.

“Goddamn, Murph, I knew it would be you! What the hell? It’s hardly dawn.”

“Crack of 9 a.m., amigo, and I’ve got a brainstorm to share, a real beaut. You ready for this?” A short pause for drama. “You ‘n’ me and maybe ‘Good-Time Oscar’ . . . let’s us fly down to Spore tonight to see that Super Bowl, live and in glorious color! And have a mimosa or two, lah!”

He laid out his plan. They would travel with nothing at all, just their passports. Invite Oscar Jenkins, their close friend infamously loyal to the New England Patriots, the other team in that year’s American football championship game. Oscar, a Black marine who worked in embassy security, knew no fear and was always ready for a new adventure.

The three would catch an evening shuttle to Singapore, stay up all night drinking — why incur the expense of a hotel room? — and then head to the hotel ballroom at 6 a.m. to eat a sumptuous breakfast and watch the game. Fly back to KL around noon. And if they arranged for someone to cover their key duties on Monday morning, nobody would be any the wiser.

“Wot say, amigo: good plan?” Murph chuckled at his own nerve.

“Gee, man, I don’t know . . .” George sounded shocked fully awake by so audacious an idea, just being dropped on him like that. “Sounds kinda risky.”

“Nahhh, man, don’t be a pussy. With any luck, as long as nothing goes outrageously wrong, this should work. We’ll be okay.” He laughed. “This will be the greatest thing in our lives. Unforgettable. We’ll tell stories about this trip for decades.”

George’s chuckle came floating back over the line.

“What can I say, Murph? Okay, you bastard, count me in. You book the tickets and I’ll call Oscar. But we need to make some calls, see if we can quietly get our desks covered for a few hours Monday morning.”

(End Part One)

Betting Your Life on Wangmatics (Part 3 - The End)

Chet Nairene — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 15:00:12 GMT

When Western numbers wonk Tim Dempsey gets tutored on Frankie Wang’s bizarre, intuitive betting system, his quantitative brain is utterly ‘blown’ . . . but in the most delightful way

Photo by Amanda Jones on Unsplash

It was 2 a.m. and the casino floor still buzzed with activity, just not as much as earlier. The amateurs had all gone to bed by now so the place was mainly occupied by gambling addicts and the desperate, folks trying to erase the night’s previous painful losses.

We picked out a nearly deserted roulette table, quiet enough to hear each other speak, and sat down side-by-side. Frankie bought in for $1000 of roulette chips, tossing one of his big plastic ‘cash’ chips at the croupier.

“Red color, please,” he said and smiled at the sleepy croupier. The woman was dressed in a white shirt and black vest with garters holding her sleeves. She smoothly pushed a convoy of red chips at him, five stacks of twenty each. Frankie turned to me. “Now just watch for a little while. I will explain what I am doing.”

“Any bets, please?” called out the croupier. A few other gamblers up late with us at the table placed small wagers but Frankie just sat and waited.

“Uh, what’re we doing?” I said in a low voice.

“Be patient. Just wait. Not yet.”

We sat watching the table for maybe ten spins and I was getting bored. Should have gone back down to KL with Tommy in his Fiat. But then Frankie made an abrupt sidelong comment to me, “Okay, time we can bet. It’s working now.”

“What’s working?”

“Why, my way to gamble, of course.” Frankie’s way was the betting procedure I would personally dubbed Wangmatics, something which, once learned, upended my life.

He began scattering his bets all over the green baize. I could detect no pattern or consistency to the distribution but when I started to complain, he just patted my hand.

“First step, we must fix your eyes. Out there, on the green felt, what do you see?”

“I see numbers 1 to 36 plus zero.”

“Wrong. No. Better to see sectors and colors. For instance, the number 3? That is low and red. Or 26? High and black. And 16, that’s a middle red. Train your eyes and brain like that.” I adjusted my concentration to focus more upon the twelve rows of numbers and colors. Numbers in low third, middle third, high third. Red or black.

While I was doing that, Frankie suddenly leapt into action.

Like a starter’s gun had just sounded, he began doing his full beautiful act in its entirety, the mad piano player again in action, his arms flying this way and that, chips being plopped down and pushed here and there.

But he also narrated to me as he went along.

“So, last winner was 27. And high red often goes to low black.” So plop-plop-plop-plop he dropped chips onto numbers 2, 4, 6 and 8. “But high red also repeats a lot.” Click-click as more chips were scattered on the likes of 24, 27, 32, 34 and 36.“ Then he slapped down a veritable tower of six chips on number 14.

“Whoa, why so heavy like that, on 14?”

He laughed and shook his head. “Just playing. But when my way is working, 27 often goes to 14. Why? 2 times 7 is 14.”

But then he also put an equally heavy stack on 9.

“Wait, let me guess. Because 2 plus 7 is 9?”

A huge grin painted his face, the proud teacher, and he patted my hand again. “Why, yes, yes! Gweilo is getting the hang of it!”

Indeed I was, bit by bit.

There were maybe fifteen or twenty major rules to his system, plus a host of minor twists, and for convenience I began to internally call it all Wangmatics, though I never told Frankie that. In some bizarro fashion the process really appealed to my quant side, as it all revolved around playing around with numbers. Yet it totally lacked cold, hard, scientific objectivity. It was math by feel, numbers as art.

Some of his rules made no particular sense, but still appealed. For instance, after 11 came up as a winner, he would immediately place big bets on 22 and 33. All three black, repeated digit numbers.

“Why?” I asked.

“Just because,” he said. And I agreed, because felt like a good idea. And sometimes it worked.

I knew deep in my gut that casino games were designed to slowly grind players down. They thrived via immutable laws of probability. So what was going on here? Maybe his playing methodology had somehow detached itself from the physical realm, where probability laws reigned. Yes, while still math it seemed based in some inexplicable other realm . . . yet with impact here.

I know, I know. This all sounds like fantasy land stuff. Pure wacko. And only hours before, I would have been first to make that same pronouncement.

But the amazing thing is that, simply put, Wangmatics actually works. So with me, his dutiful student at his side, Frankie went on another run. Over the course of several hours, he pulled down another $18,000.

All along, he explained exactly what he was doing and why. And increasingly, it all made an odd type of sense to me. I was getting it, absorbing his vibe.

By 4:30 a.m. we were in a yellow and black taxi, heading back down the dark hilly roadway, to arrive back home in KL after sunrise. I was dopey from no sleep but giddy to have participated in his big win, which seemed as much a miracle as multiplying loaves and fishes.

Frankie generously offered me $500 cash, no strings attached, to cover my personal loss that evening. He claimed I’d earned it by bringing him luck but I refused, though thanking him for the nice gesture.

My head swam from the many revelations, so alien to my normal way of thinking. Wangmatics as a system felt right, comfortable and easy, somehow personal, like tapping into unknown, hidden rhythms controlling everything. It felt like surfing the tempo and intuitive twists that aligned with what was to physically transpire.

I was stunned and could only chuckle to myself as we sat in silence in the cab, dozing. But about halfway home, I just had to speak up.

“Hey, Frankie, that was astounding. Wow, simply great! Thanks for the lesson. Now, was that everything there is to your, uh, system?”

He cocked his head and gave me a funny look. “Aiee-yah! System? I don’t know if is system. Just my way to win, lah. Isn’t it? But still one last thing for you to learn . . . but is most important part.” He paused a few extra beats, maybe trying to be over-dramatic, which irritated me. I couldn’t restrain my curiosity.

“Okay, then please tell me that last, big super-secret.”

“Listen carefully. This is key, boss.” He looked me in the eyes. “Frankie way of betting only works . . . when it works. Is clear? Understand, can?”

Now wait a minute. He was telling me his system only worked when it worked? Well duh! Maybe he was too tired to think straight.

“Yeah, okay. Thanks, I got that.”

We both slept the rest of the ride down to KL.

Oh jeez! Sorry, pal, look at me, rattling on like this! Dunno what got into me. I know you must have work to do—other Bellagio guests need their morning coffee too, right?

I’ll try to summarize and wrap up my story quicker.

So that Wangmatics experience ‘up the Hill’ planted a seed somehow and I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. When I least expected, questions about Frankie’s incredible runs returned to pound me. I mean, what he did appeared to contradict everything I believed true in the world. It was like a suspension in the laws of probability, the math foundation to our existence. Vexed like that, my scientific mind wouldn’t rest until I resolved this.

Of course it was inevitable I’d try out Wangmatics on my own, go up the Hill to see what happened.

So, few days later I made an experimental run to Genting and took a stab at playing his system, but only with mixed results. At least I broke even, a better result than before. Several days later, a second casino visit saw me becoming more proficient at Wangmatics and getting the hang of it, more comfortable and playing more automatically. A pleasant several hours in which I was close to zoned-out, almost like meditation. It felt more like art than science, more like music than math, an odd thing for me, the total math wonk, to enjoy.

But enjoy it I did . . . and afterward, I came down the hill a modest winner, $1200.

I began taking every possibility opportunity to pop up to Genting, many evenings after work and all weekends, mastering this simple, intuitive system while putting my own spin on it, formulating some of my personal own rules, too.

Perhaps a month in, a milestone winning trip occurred: $10,000! Not only that, but other visits if I didn’t win, I tended to about break even or just be a little down.

The Genting roulette croupiers and chip-stackers began to recognize me, and I them, exchanging knowing nods and smiles. I started tipping generously, which more than paid off. Often the team would allow all my late bets to stay in play, well after they’d called out “No more bets!”

Eventually, I found that I only felt alive when sitting at the tables. Grim days of running down gasoline statistics were hellishly boring, a waste of my existence. All day long, each day, couldn’t wait to shut down the office at 5 and run up the hill, not mentioning it to my fellow staffers. Frankie and Tommy didn’t really need to know, did they? But they probably suspected the reason our 24/7 work life had morphed into a stodgy 9-to-5.

While in the casino, thanks to my cerebral filters, I never even noticed all the noise and smoke. (Yes, back then in the 1980s you could still inhale nearly a pack of secondary smoke in a few hours). While gambling, I floated in a transcendent buzz of pleasure and never felt more alive than when conducting battle against the wheel.

And when riding a hot streak, which was often, I felt like a master of the universe.

One day, the VP of Human Resources from GOD headquarters in Oklahoma showed up at our little office in KL, a surprise visit. Turns out the Malaysian client had been complaining about the work going too slow. Once the head office began looking into the matter, my new avocation came to light, explaining the slippage.

“You’re out, Dempsey,” intoned Preston Maxwell sternly.

I laughed in his face. “Well, Max,” I said to the fellow who’d hired me less than a year earlier, “that’s fine with me. I don’t need this crap job. I’ve got better things to do.” He looked at me like I was crazy.

After briefly considering options, like whether to stay out there in Asia (plenty of casinos), I decided, in my new, heightened state of consciousness, to head back to the U.S.

I said my good-byes to Frankie and Tommy, who both seemed overly concerned. “Don’t worry, fellas,” I said, “you’ve done more for me than you could ever imagine.” Their faces told a different story.

I flew home knowing I could prosper on my own, anywhere, as a ruler over the laws of probability. I headed for Atlantic City and indeed went on an epic run, several weeks mainly at the tables of Harrah’s, Trump Plaza and the Golden Nugget. By the time I’d finished, I’d racked up a $205,000 payday!

I wondered, why ever work again? The money was free! It felt too good to be true.

But every good story has a catch, right?

It appears I’d forgotten about Frankie’s “most important lesson” — that seemingly insipid comment about how Wangmatics only worked when it was working. I now understand he meant the system couldn’t be forced.

Well, it took only a couple months of the system being ‘down’ for me to fritter away the entire $200k.

That was the beginning of a new chapter in my life that continued to this very day because, ever since then, it’s been a wrestling match. Between my enthusiasm on one side (okay, maybe hubris and greed, but so what?) and my poor memory, on the other, about the “most important lesson”.

In my life as a professional gambler, I’ve wandered and rambled my way from AC to Reno to Vegas, through Europe and at times back to Asia. They know me well in Macau, Walkers Hill in Seoul and down at Marina Bay in Singapore.

Over the past three-plus decades, I’ve at times enjoyed a net worth north of $20 million. Truly. And other times, I haven’t had two nickels to rub together. Because, you see, the hardest part about Wangmatics is realizing when the system isn’t working, maintaining control then and not forcing it. I keep giving myself pep talks, exhorting myself to just fall back to my old quantitative playbook at the first sign that the system isn’t working. Just make small bets and play the odds. Sounds easy but it is maybe the hardest thing in the world.

There’s a vast difference between knowing something and wanting something. And when you want something too badly, you sometimes fool yourself into seeing things that aren’t really there.

So, back to your question a while ago:

Am I rich? Right now is not optimal, but hopefully soon again.

Well, tell me something, a little favor? Is there perhaps a freight elevator nearby, a way to exit the hotel with a little less attention? I don’t really want to go into details right now, but it would really be very helpful to know.

Thanks, you’ve been great. Here, lemme just write down your name, Vincent, so I can catch up with you with a big tip next time, okay? Little short on cash right now.

Hmm, no need, you say? Okay, up to you. But maybe I’ll see you around again, sometime . . . and thanks for the coffee.

(END)

Betting Your Life on Wangmatics (Part 2)

Chet Nairene — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 18:43:04 GMT

When Frankie Wang and Tommy Su invite their American boss to “go up the Hill” with them, the burned‑out quant imagines a night of vice. Instead, he is pulled into an evening that will upend his assumptions about luck, life, and the limits of data.

Photo by Leo_Visions on Unsplash

Frankie Yap and Tommy Su came across like two blood brothers who were exact opposites, antithetical twins born of the same mother culture. One supplemented where the other was weak so that perhaps that’s why the two men, so different from each other, remained friends.

The bespectacled Frankie, a Hokkien Chinese, was chubby and ebullient, bouncing and lovable. A joker. His wiry partner on the other hand, Tommy, was a thin Teochew, serious and often silent. I soon learned to listen whenever he spoke, as it was often important.

Both proved to be hard workers with good business skills and I enjoyed listening to their spoken English, how this residue from Malaysia’s British colonial days was overlaid with a sing-song cadence from Chinese and spiced with various Malay interjections. Talk about multicultural! The two were very yin-yang, with Frankie being the emotional and intuitive one and Tommy dispassionate and objective. More of a quant, like me.

The duo soon became my dear friends— a good thing, too, since for six months we saw each other nearly round the clock, seven days a week. In fact, only twice during those early months did a day go by when I did not see them. Both times were following terse, somewhat mysterious announcements they were “going up the hill.” That, of course, meant nothing to me but not wanting to seem like a nosy Westerner, I didn’t press for details. None of my business, anyway.

But the third time I heard them reference ‘the Hill’ I just had to ask. It came at a streetside food stall, during a work break over a late night bowl of bak kut teh.

“Sorry, Frankie, but what’s up with that — up the hill — is that just some kind of Malaysian saying, or is there really a hill somewhere . . . and why do you need to go up?” I chewed on a delicious pork rib stewed in fragrant, spicy broth and awaited an answer. Both exchanged a quick look, appearing surprised at my audacity. Then Frankie burst into a beaming smile that made his fat face look even jollier, deep dimples cratering his cheeks. I couldn’t help but smile, too.

He dramatically nudged his partner. “Alamak, Tommy-ah! Seems maybe our gweilo chief is finally ready to go up the hill. Isn’t it?”

The slender Tommy cast a long, thoughtful glance in my direction and fingered the single long, black ‘lucky’ hair that grew out of a mole on his chin. (As a Westerner it always irritated me – snip it off! – but que sera, right?)

Tommy began to unbutton and redo the collar of his white business shirt, a habitual nervous ‘tell’ that I’d already noticed. Finally he said something unintelligible to Frankie in a Chinese dialect and it sounded serious. They nodded in unison.

“Yes,” Tommy replied to him, allowing himself a thin smile, “it time maybe boss also can, lah. Give Lim Goh Tong angry fight.” Without further explanation, they told me to be in front of my hotel at 6 p.m. and to bring my passport, checkbook and a credit card. They had a surprise for me.

My heart bumped with sudden excitement and a touch of pleasant anxiety. Where were we going? They didn’t really expect me to fight some Lim guy, did they? No, that was surely a joke. But still, what was I getting myself into?

I began running scenarios, like any good consultant. Maybe that Lim fellow owned a whorehouse somewhere and that was their personal code for visiting a brothel, something like that? After all, both were bachelors, weren’t they? Well, they certainly acted like it. But the passport? When was the last time a hooker asked to check your passport?

Whatever. I’d soon see, and suspected an experiential gateway was about to be thrown open for me. After six hot weeks in steamy Malaysia, locked inside a stuffy office poring over documents or traveling to gray government offices to wrestle with stubborn bureaucrats over precious data, a most welcome and totally new experience was about to unfold, right when I most needed it.

Despite the exotic tropical setting, my life had settled deep inside a boring, repetitive rut. Every day, every hour was ordered and nailed down. Gas station data, diesel sales, geo-coordinates. Blah.

Just after 6 p.m. they pulled up at my modest hotel in Tommy’s rusty little yellow Fiat, the tiny vehicle bouncing on bad springs and comically backfiring like the clown car in a circus. I squeezed into the back seat, sharing room with mounds of files and cardboard boxes of documents. Facing me from the dashboard was a four-inch-high painted plastic figure, a funny Chinese god or holy man, I didn’t know which.

“Who’s that?” I said, pointing.

Tommy, busy driving, shrugged and let Frankie answer. “Just for luck,” giggled Frankie. “Tommy needs more.” Tommy feinted shooting an elbow at his plump partner but was easily dodged.

The little vehicle sputtered down Jalan Ampang and soon left the city on a road that climbed into the hills beyond the city, toward the Malay Peninsula’s mountainous spine.

Whaddya know? So we really were going up some hill!

“Okay, fellas, time for the big reveal. You’ve really got me wondering, making me bring along money and my passport, are we driving up to Thailand or down to Singapore? Helluva long ride, if so. And this doesn’t seem the best direction for that. And who’s that guy you said you wanted me to fight, Lim something? Time you two reveal what the hell is going on? And that’s an order. Haha.”

Both laughed. Tommy nodded at Frankie.

“Yes, chief,” Frankie said, is a real fight, all right. Angry fight.” He pointed a chubby digit ahead at the darkening hills and curving road, winding its way ever higher. “We are going to fight Mr. Lim Goh Tong, owner of Genting Highlands resort . . . and take money from his casino.”

Ah, finally, so that was it. A night out gambling with the boys.

I’d already heard some stories about Genting Highlands and its casino but, disinterested I paid them no particular attention. I recalled hearing the stories about Lim Goh Tong, the fabled Chinese entrepreneur, a real larger-than-life character, who somehow got a license from the Sultan of Pahang to build the country’s only casino, just a couple hours out of KL, up into the hills just across the provincial borderline into Pahang. The near-fable had that Lim personally led the exploratory crew on foot, starting from the capital in Selangor State and climbing into the mountains to finally locate a site for the current-day hotel and casino. “Build it here,” he ordered, sniffing the air. “This is the place.” Something like that.

There were other stories, too, Chinese metaphysical stuff about a dragon or something, locked inside those hills, a threat that had to be appeased before the casino could prosper. I loved all those Chinese fairy tales but to the locals, this was serious stuff. Different strokes.

“So why the passport?”

The boys explained that everyone needed ID to enter, even locals, to enable Genting to enforce the government restriction against Malays entering the casino, since Muslims were prohibited from gambling. Of course, that didn’t explain how the mob at Genting never really lacked for Indonesians, Pakistanis, Arabs and, yes, connected Malays — Muslims nearly all. But never mind.

It was about 8:30 on a Friday night when we arrived and the parking lot was jammed to overflowing. We parked far from the hotel casino and had to walk a good way to reach the front door. All this time, and while climbing up the entryway stairs, I felt a happy tightening in my chest, adrenaline pumping, intrigued by the unfamiliar prospect of trying my luck. A sweet anxiety was coursing through me and I enjoyed it.

Now, remember that I was the truest of true believers in the totally objective, quantitative nature of the universe. Having long studied the math behind commercial gaming, I long understood that literally no one could win in the battle against casino games. It was just math. Oh, sure, it was possible to get lucky for a little while; streaks did occasionally happen due to volatility of results . . . but overall, in the long run (and usually long wasn’t that long) the house percentage ground everyone down. That was as true as 2+2=4.

I’d never been tempted to gamble, not even take a flutter.

On an intellectual basis only, the utter numeracy of casino gambling had long fascinated me. The theory behind it. But now, on a dull Friday night after months of my dull 24/7 consulting work life, a spin at the gaming tables might prove just the tonic I needed. Something I might quite enjoy.

Since I already knew winning there was impossible, only an illusion, I limited my gambling stack by cashing a check for just US$500, making that my hard-and-fast limit. Going in, I treated its inevitable loss as just the price for a one-time night of expensive entertainment.

Entering the front door, I saw a security check ahead of us across the bustling lobby, before the main casino entryway. We showed our passports but, instead of heading through the main doors and straight onto the cavernous gaming floor, Frankie led us down a few side hallways. They doubled back to enter the gaming floor from a less-used side entry point, almost like sneaking in. “For luck,” Frankie explained with a wink. “We counter Lim Goh Tong’s feng shui.” Evidently, in Chinese belief, there is something about the casino entry layout that maximized the house’s advantage and minimized the chance of one’s money to get out. Frankie’s side entry foiled that. Okay, sure . . .

As we entered, the deafening roar from the tables almost knocked me over. The raucous, juiced-up crowd was probably eighty percent Chinese, seething and writhing and jamming the floor, people standing near tables, yelling and throwing their hands high in the air upon wins, groaning upon losses. Most of the gamblers stood and crowded the tables, pushing forward to get closer to the action, reaching over shoulders of seated patrons to place bets.

Every time a big win happened, often and anywhere on the casino floor, a thunderous outcry emerged, reinforcing a contagious feeling that luck was happening there. People were winning, right? These games could be beaten. Lim Goh Tong’s casino was paying out money.

The games offered, by the way, were fairly straightforward: blackjack, roulette, baccarat and sic-bo (aka “big-small”), a fast-moving Chinese dice game. There were no craps tables anywhere.

I have to admit feeling an overwhelming rush of sensory overload, my pulse elevating at the sound of shared thrills. It was like being present in a happy riot. No danger, just excitement. Pretty crazy stuff, exhilarating as all hell.

So about 8:30 p.m. we split up. Tommy went off to play baccarat and Frankie waddled over toward the roulette tables. As for me — remember, always Mr. Numbers — it would be blackjack. Though a casino virgin, I actually knew quite a lot about the game on an academic basis. Intellectually. I’d even learned a simple blackjack card-counting strategy that supposedly reduced the house advantage. So it was that I took my ‘angry fight’ over to play twenty-one.

Everything all happened fast, like I was in a daze, but in less than an hour, despite all my mathematical arrogance, I was down to the bones of my ass, my last fifty dollars. Cursing my bad luck and stupidity for giving in to a foolish whim, one that I rationally knew better than to pursue, I pushed away from the table and went for a stroll around the casino.

My attention was drawn by an enthusiastic scrum of players, including many gray-haired Chinese grandmas and young hooligans, cheering and hooting at two big-small tables, set side-by-side with the dice shaker in between. The dice game action moved fast: one, two, three, blam! and three dice were revealed and the result yelled out, to boos or cheers. The squares of winning bets lit up, beautifully so to successful punters, all along the long detailed milky white glass of the betting tabletops.

That’s when I noticed Tommy collecting chips from a winning bet.

“Hey, nice, a winner! So how’s your luck going?”

“So-so,” he said with a shrug. I soon learned it was Tommy’s habit to visit the sic-bo table at the end, playing against the odds and betting longshots, hoping for miraculous high payouts to recover after being already pounded at the baccarat tables. He sought, hoping against hope, to multiply his remaining stake.

Why not? Following his lead, I spread some chips on the white glass layout and waited to see my winners to light up. It was easy hunch-driven gambling, based on intuition only, no real math, and one didn’t need to know anything to play. Probably why it was so popular. I hit on a few long-shots before gradually losing the rest of my stake. Tommy ran out of his chips almost the same time.

It was 9:30 p.m., too early to call it an evening, but Lim Goh Tong had already cleaned us out in just under an hour. We briefly considered restocking our cash but, with both riding such losing mojo that night, deemed it unwise.

So instead we set off to find Frankie.

We found him seated at a prime middle position at one side of a green felt roulette layout. Huddled in front of him were — wow! — fifteen or twenty stacks of chips, bright red towers each a half foot tall. Looked like he was doing well. Really well.

Not wishing to disturb his action, or change his luck, Tommy and I stayed away and just watched from a distance. Overall, it was delightful.

I quickly became familiar with the pattern. Each time after all winners had been paid and the felt betting layout was cleared, a new show started as the gamblers descended and laid down bets.

Looking something like a mad piano player, Frankie bolted into action, reaching this way or that, scattering chips to various betting squares all over the betting layout. His chubby hands floated above the three columns, twelve figures deep each, moving in a graceful, continuous motion, no starting and stopping, as if all was predetermined. Did he even know what he was doing, or was it all by feel, just random bets?

After a minute of his gambler’s kinetic ballet, Frankie had covered probably a third of the numbers and on any single number, 1 through 36, he might be playing anything from one to five chips. On some numbers, evidently those he deemed propitious, he’d built a red stack five to ten chips tall. Other bettors’ chips were also intermixed sometimes in the stack.

For extra oomph on some numbers, chips sat on all four edges of that special number’s box, surrounding the winner in a pretty and symmetrical way, like telling the gambling gods, now here’s a number I really like. Please, huh?

After a while, Frankie would lean back and take a deep breath, gazing at his handiwork across the entire layout. Upon spotting a few numbers where someone had joined him by placing their chip atop his tower, he reached over and topped off those stacks with one more of his own red chips.

By now the croupier would start calling out, “No more bets!” while frantic gamblers did just the opposite and tossed down a few more chips.

At last, with the ball spinning one way on its elevated track and underneath, the wheel spinning the other direction, both decelerated until the ball fell with satisfying clicking sound onto the wheel, getting captured eventually into the numbered slot of the winner.

Then the croupier slapped down a fancy glass marker called a dolly that looked like an oversized chess piece atop the winning number.

It didn’t take long to realize that marker, nearly every time, wound up landing atop one of Frankie’s towering stacks, paying off 35-to-1 for each chip. Sure, maybe he’d lost a lot on all the other numbers he bet, which were just mucked and swept away by croupiers, but overall he always seemed to have more than enough on the winner to net out a big payoff.

And yes: it seemed to happen every time. How was he doing that?

The Genting roulette workers scrambled to sweep up all the losing bets, hundreds of them from all the players, and stack them up fast enough to pay off bets. They had a particular challenge with Tommy’s red chips, as he was putting so many into play but being paid off even more. During those payoffs, red stacks pushed back at him across the green felt were also being topped off with several large blue plastic $1000 chips.

Frankie would just smile like it was nothing unusual and casually slip the large cash chips into a pocket of his jacket or jeans or into his little man bag. Then it would start all over again. Getting ready for the next spin, he sent out a large portion of his red chips again, soldiers deployed for battle, scattered across the betting grid.

I didn’t know what his strategy was, but it sure seemed to work. Clearly, he was up big. And I mean BIG.

Around 1 a.m., before we three set off for home, we sat down in a little coffee shop just off the casino floor to gather ourselves and prepare for the two-hour drive back into KL.

Personally, I felt like an idiot for having wasted $500 like that. Totally avoidable, as I totally knew beforehand that it was pure fact that casinos were designed to take your money, not pay theirs out. That’s how the games were designed, based on the immutable laws of probability. Math. I knew better.

Tommy, having also lost his entire stake, was equally dour, and muttered under his breath.

But to no surprise, little Frankie the winner remained ever jolly, chuckling and making small jokes while reaching into all his many pockets, here and there, to find yet more $1000 plastic chips. He took a sip of his coffee, looked up at a chandelier, thought for a moment and then laughed as if remembering something— then would reached down into his socks and removed another six of the big plastic chips from each one.

In all, he’d made a $35,000 run that night — and forty years ago, in the 1980s, that was an excellent annual salary in the U.S. for a rising mid-level executive.

“Frankie, wow, that’s a real haul. Ever done this well before?”

The little fat man smiled, his eyes shining through round spectacles. He nodded. “Oh, yes, lah! Almost always. Tonight quite good. Sometimes more, sometimes less.”

I couldn’t believe it. He was insisting that he usually won? What did he take me for?

But still, how did it work? What was he doing?

Everything that I thought I knew as being true in life, about existence itself, was suddenly being slightly shaken. Put into question.

Then, as if reading my mind, he said, “Boss, want me to show you how? I can teach you, my way. Right now can, lah, tonight! Sleep all day tomorrow. Is Saturday.” He turned to Tommy. “You just drive home. Boss and I take a taxi back to KL, tomorrow.”

At the most basic level, something weird was going on, and my internal equilibrium was all but shot. I remembered something just then, from freshman year Psych 101 class, something called cognitive dissonance. It occurred when reality diverged from what one knew to be true.

Well there I was, a true numbers maven, nearly genius level, and I’d used all my powers of high level math but still came up a loser that night in the casino. I had proven a fact, that there was no way to beat the house.

And yet, there was Frankie, his pockets bulging with 35,000 arguments to dispute that.

And he was offering to share the secret, his system . . .

Something I came to know as Wangmatics.

(END PART TWO)

Coming Soon, the conclusion:

Part Three: A Life-Changing Lesson in Wangmatics

Betting Your Life on Wangmatics (Part 1)

Chet Nairene — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 17:08:32 GMT

Posted to Malaysia on a consulting job, Tim Dempsey tries to decode why Frankie Wang always wins at the casino—until Wangmatics pulls him past the math and into a world for which he’s hilariously unprepared.

Thanks, yeah just put the coffee tray on that table over by the window okay? Oh and the drapes? Sure go ahead and open ‘em. Hey, haha, you’re right, that’s one helluva view especially from up high like this. But the spectacular sunrise over Las Vegas is something probably few ever get to see. I mean who’s up at this time, right?

I think that lovely red tinge has something to do with dust particles in the desert atmosphere.

Sorry what? No, good guess but I’m not up early for my flight home. Turns out actually I’m still up late from a busy night at the tables. How’d I do? Oh broke even I guess.

Yeah, Sultan’s Penthouse – the Bellagio always gives me this suite every time I visit. And that’s a lot. Sure go ahead, you can ask me anything. I won’t be offended.

Heh. Rich, me? Like J.P. Morgan once said when asked to predict the stock market, “It will fluctuate.” Well same goes for my personal wealth. I’ve been very rich and then flat broke, totally busted, more times than I can count. Don’t be fooled, sleeping in one of these grand suites don’t mean you’ve got money. The casinos give ‘em out but not because folks are rich. They hope you’ll get poorer, losing a bundle at their tables.

Yes Tim Dempsey III. But stop with all that ‘sir’ stuff already. Just call me Trey. Hey if you have a minute why not pour yourself a cup, too? Sit down and relax a few minutes.

You seem like a sharp young man, on your way. College? I knew it. From the name on your badge, Vince, I can tell your folks wanted you to be a winner. You know, from vincere, Latin for ‘to conquer’. In fact you remind me a bit of a younger version of myself. Maybe some of my story will resonate for you.

When I was about your age, finishing college back in the 1980s, my dream was to become obscenely rich. Non-fluctuating wealth. And I believed I was really on my way with a master’s degree in applied math from MIT and an MBA from Harvard. That combo back then was pure gold, like a winning Powerball ticket. Employers fought for the privilege of hiring you.

You see I’ve always been a ‘quant’. Totally obsessed with numbers with an unshakable gut belief that pure mathematics rule the world. My mantra was that everything could be counted, calculated and modeled or predicted. All of existence came down to pure math, the entire world obeying strict numerical rules.

Back then my youthful arrogance knew no bounds. I was a genuine numbers savant, my ego bulging with overconfidence. And as far as business and finance went, utterly quantitative worlds, I felt I knew everything.

When I graduated from Harvard’s MBA program, companies lined up to fly me around the country for head office interviews. But in the end it came down to choosing between six lucrative job offers from six companies.

Five were Wall Street titans: investment banks and hedge funds that offered heart-stopping salaries and promised eventual generational wealth . . . but only years later, after I had served a near-term sentence in their data salt mines, laboring 100-hour work weeks grinding numbers and churning out spreadsheets. Fresh MBAs were their luxury worker bees.

But oddly enough my heart was won over by the sixth job offer, lesser paying and from a small consulting firm in who-knows-where Oklahoma, a world away from the apex of business civilization in New York City, as far as job-hunting MBAs were concerned.

The company called itself Geo-Mathematic Optimization and Design (yeah I know, kinda tacky: GOD?). But to a math junkie like me their utterly quant-based business was irresistible, selling what looked like sheer magic to common business folk, all based upon their unique pioneering proprietary algorithms.

Numbers. My bailiwick!

GOD would marry business data with geography and sell incredibly valuable insights, allowing clients to win every business bet. Or better yet, avoid all losers. (Remember, this was the dawn of the computer age.)

They fed mountains of data into the mainframe computer in Tulsa and merged it with input from newly-emerging computer mapping technology.

Here’s how it worked. Imagine a map, of anywhere. Now overlay on that the location for every, say, gas station (or hamburger stand or whatever, doesn’t really matter, works the same). Then add the actual results for each site. Then comes the magic part. The GOD system can now instantly crank out precise data for any other point on that map, that is, ones which don’t yet exist. Dead accurate, later auditable predictions.

So what GOD was actually selling, to nervous executives, were guarantees against failure. These are guys who must make million-dollar location decisions and more than anything sweat making the wrong move. Nobody wanted to build a pricey new outlet that burned cash and blew up a career.

GOD could sell this to nearly every company, insurance against failure! And with a monopoly on such perfect guidance, GOD was set to flourish for years. As an utter numbers geek I knew I needed to hop aboard that train, pronto.

So I packed up and moved to Oklahoma. The first half-year was intense, indoctrination on how the algorithms worked and how the beast was fed. I went along on some sales calls, as a bag carrier, and watched rain-making in action. At last it came time for GOD to monetize their investment in this fresh Harvard meat. Me.

“Hey, Dempsey!” called out my supervisor one morning. “Good news. You’re getting your first real assignment. About time, no? Now get out there and start making us money. You’re gonna lead the backup team for Scotty’s contract with some oil company in Malaysia. Gas stations in Southeast Asia somewhere. Dazzle ‘em with your footwork.” He motioned for me to leave, our mini-meeting over, but before I reached the door he added, “Oh, and I forgot to mention . . . you’ll be living there four to six months, give or take. Maybe even a year. Dunno yet.”

What? A year in Malaysia? I didn’t even know where the place was. A bit dazed, I returned to my cubicle to research my new home.

Naturally GOD was an early adopter of personal computers so I found the floppy disk that contained the entire Encyclopedia Britannica and turned on my MS-DOS desktop machine. Once the screen warmed up and the blinking greenish-white MS-DOS cursor appeared, I slid the floppy disk into the drive and before long was reading about my soon-to-be new home in Asia.

Hot, tropical, lots of Chinese people and even more Muslims. Friendly folks, spicy sweet food and even some English spoken there, since it was a former British colony. Hey I could make all that work.

This was the game plan:

A couple of partners—bosses at GOD, top earners like Scott Manoyan—would lead the mission. Slick and handsome, they were skilled at charming clients with presentations as scripted, polished and moving as a Broadway performance. Afterwards, in the evenings, they would schmooze and romance the client’s top brass, wining and dining those fairly unimpressive fellows. Think of it like the high school cool kids being nice to loser kids but only until the latter signed up for expensive consulting services. Once the contract ink dried our top honchos would jet back to Tulsa and leave behind a work team to do the actual grunt work.

Yes, correct. That would be me . . . plus a handful of analysts. Our job in Malaysia would be to collect accurate data on — no kidding — every gas station in the country. All that data was sifted and organized and then massaged by our mainframe in Oklahoma, resulting in whatever magical, impeccable predictions the client might want.

But to enable such wizardry, my team first had to roam the country and track down data, visiting government offices, dealers, local village halls, and what-not. Months and months of drudge work. Based out of a crowded backroom office in the funky little capital city of Kuala Lumpur, my compact team labored morning to night. And since we didn’t speak Malay or any Chinese dialects, and didn’t know our way around, our client provided us with a small local support team. Enter Frankie Wang and Tommy Su.

Those two unassuming young men, our new Malaysian Chinese brothers, became as close to us as grease on a wrench. And while their careers would later flourish after absorbing a transfer of our American technology, I personally gained far more in return. Frankie and Tommy revealed secrets to me about life, existence itself . . . and how it was all just a big gamble.

(End Part One)

Illusion Confusion (Part 2 - The End)

Chet Nairene — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 22:50:24 GMT

Aoki-san heads toward his long‑awaited rendezvous with Toy, convinced romance awaits, while everybody else seems to know a Bangkok shocker looms and he’s hilariously unprepared.

Aoki rose from the table for his back room assignation with the luscious Khun Toy. After passing out two nights running, missing his chances, fulfillment was finally within reach. He laughed and joked with his drinking companions and gulped down the last of his straight brandy. Flashing a big smile, he dramatically brushed off his shirt lapels and then excused himself: ‘Pardon, I go W-C’.

His staff and all their hostesses understood as Aoki’s diminutive figure waded toward the rear of the crowded bar room, slipping along the wet floor. All his salarymen correctly assumed a rendezvous was about to transpire, right there on the premises at the Hey Joe bar.

And though at first they smiled and joked, happy for their boss, they started to become nervous after time to consider it all. One finally uttered what was on all their minds: I hope he has fun. But what if something goes wrong?

Anxiety began to spread among them like a contagion. Something just didn’t seem to make sense. Hadn’t Aoki in the past, with strident hetero masculinity, always proclaimed disgust over homosexuality? Didn’t he repeatedly express horror and revulsion at the very concept of transsexuality? Only a few days ago, in Tokyo, he even denounced Thailand’s laissez-fair attitude in this area of human relations. So it all just didn’t add up, this impending tryst of Aoki with a katoey.

Was it possible–– against all odds –– that despite his past two nights with Toy, their boss somehow remained still unaware of her status? Nobody knew, but one by one, all recognized the potentially dangerous situation brewing. If inexplicably caught by surprise and shamed by his own naiveté, Aoki might direct his fury at them for failing to protect him, their chief.

Why, they could all get fired!

A few rose to leave, proffering weak excuses in transparent attempts to evade potential blame. But the others barked at them to sit back down, growling and waving fists. No one was going to run away to gain deniability (‘I wasn’t even there!’). There was strength in numbers so the unspoken plan was, in the worst outcome, they would all go down together.

They sat and stewed, soaking in fear and regret, fretting how would they explain to their wives if they got sacked? How did one lose a job during a business trip with the boss to Thailand? Normal features of such a trip were temples, elephants, a tropical river cruise, spicy food, gonging music and sugar-white sandy beaches . . . not the end of one’s career.

The men ignored the painted, perfumed bar girls who sat next to them, gaily coaxing them to drink more or nibble small pieces of star fruit and mango, skewered on toothpicks. The gloomy businessmen scowled as the women, ever working, refilled their glasses to the brim with brandy or scotch. But their alcohol consumption had already ground to a halt at the increasingly quiet table.

The irritating noise of other drinkers, so cheerful elsewhere in the bar, spilled over them and just made things worse. They all wished they could be somewhere else. Anywhere.

In the meantime, Aoki closed in on the ladies bathroom for his rendezvous with the vixen Toy. Ambling down the dirty, dim back hallway, he passed an alcove where candles and incense burned before a protective deity that watched over all mortals who worked or relaxed at the Hey Joe. Aoki winked at this ‘Buddha of the Bar’ and whispered a silent thanks.

A plump attendant in a wrinkled white shirt and men’s corduroy pants was stationed just outside the entrance to the powder room. Rifling through a Thai film star magazine, she stopped, looked up, and nodded in recognition at Aoki. He winked back and tossed her a crumpled twenty baht note. She caught it with one hand and, with the other, directed him into the ladies’ rest room. Then she graced him with a small wai for good luck, no doubt expecting a second (and larger) tip afterward for ensuring their privacy.

Aoki entered the nearly-vacant washroom and chuckled to see Khun Toy reclining fetchingly on the small stuffed sofa. Her clothes were already partly unbuttoned. The lights were switched off and the dark room flickered with purple hues that leaked in the window from a faulty neon sign across the alley, at a karaoke lounge.

Aoki made a dive for heaven awaiting him on the sofa. Toy looked into his eyes and warned him to take care to avoid, in the heat of their upcoming passion, being impaled upon any of the rusty springs protruding through the couch cushions.

Now, this next part tends to go fast . . .

Perhaps a minute later, maybe less, shrill cries from the back room echoed throughout the bar –– sounds of anger and shock. Glasses slammed down at nearly every table and eyes were trained toward the source, the rear of the lounge. The disturbing sounds continued, two raised voices: one was throaty, ferocious and male; and the other, delicate and female, trilling placation and fear.

The powder room door burst open with a bang and out exploded Aoki in just his boxer shorts and unbuttoned dress shirt that flapped as he ran. Sweating and distraught, he stumbled through the bar in a panic, shoving past laughing and cheering patrons, and out the front door, yelling for help.

Right behind him trailed Khun Toy, clad in only her lingerie, desperately calling out. As she sprinted after the Japanese executive, her angular, pretty face was a crumpled picture of misery, with eyes wild and tears streaming down her cheeks, tracing looping trails of mascara.

What had transpired on that sofa to trigger such an uproar? Nothing too different from what you might have predicted, but with a twist.

Toy had undressed and presented her backside to her lover, Aoki, for sex, assuming the worldly Japanese man would like this. After all, Toy still needed a final surgery to create a lady’s sweet cave and assumed Aoki would understand.

But what Aoki had in mind was ‘missionary style’ sex, face-to-face lovemaking with normal hetero penetration. So when he reached out to turn Toy toward himself that was also misunderstood. Toy interpreted it as Aoki requesting her, the katoey, to go first . . . and penetrate Aoki’s backside. After all, the Japanese man did enjoy sex with katoeys — so said his friends — and was therefore open-minded and experimental about various sexual practices, right? Wrong.

And what a mistake!

The totally unexpected sight of Toy’s throbbing, erect member stunned and terrified Aoki. Worse yet, once Toy’s tumescent, veiny shaft began to move in the general direction of Aoki’s bony, virgin backside, it was all over. Screaming and terrified he was about to fall victim to rape (for all he knew, a common tourist sex crime in SE Asia) Aoki made a mad dash for the door, knocking over chairs and drinks and howling for his life.

Toy, dismayed and utterly confused, chased after her darling, calling out for him to wait.

This improbable chase burst out the front door of the Hey Joe and headed up Soi Nana. Maneuvering up the darkened street and trailed by the whimpering Toy, Aoki dodged food carts that served hot soup and skewered chicken bits. He brusquely shoved strolling tourists aside and leapt over a line-up of motorcycle taxis, to the delight of the gaggle of drivers, smoking and gossiping. He jitterbugged around numerous random roadside obstacles, attracting the attention of sleepy soi dogs that barked their disapproval.

In her lacy purple lingerie, the more athletic Toy followed him in close pursuit, weeping and imploring the entire way for him to stop already. The katoey reached out her long, slender but well-muscled arms, seeking to embrace the fleeing customer. Farther back, bringing up the rear, was the pack of Japanese managers and bar girls, along with curious pedestrians who had joined the parade out of pure nosiness.

Aoki, driven by pure adrenaline, his eyes peeled wide and heart pounding like a timpani, cut over onto Sukhumvit Road and sprinted down the glitzy main drag, dodging the evening stream of cars that crawled in both directions, bumper-to-bumper. Many flashed brights and tooted horns at the Japanese man and his odd entourage.

After a quarter mile, Aoki dashed up the inclined circular driveway and through the hotel’s broad glass front door. The doorman, decked out in a military costume suitable for The Emerald City of Oz, betrayed not a speck of surprise . . . as if nude, terror-stricken customers entered his lobby that way, every evening, panting and gasping for breath.

“Sawasdee khap, Mr. Aoki,” said the hotel man, maintaining his normal routine. “So good to see you again.” Coughing briefly, he then motioned with his chin at Toy. “Also very good to see your friend again, sir.”

Every eye in the lobby was locked on the unfolding scene: the trim, sweat-glistening Asian man in his boxers hounded by a distraught, tear-soaked, semi-clad ladyboy in silky underwear. Grand entrances like that, though not unknown, were certainly uncommon at Bangkok’s five-star hotels, despite the doorman’s notably blase composure.

Hotel guests began to pop heads out of doors and alcoves adjoining the lobby — the gift shop, newspaper stand, the coffee shop — while other startled patrons stole looks at the source of all this commotion. The lobby’s glass elevators, hovering many floors overhead, were jammed with customers leaning against the glass, jostling and elbowing to purchase a better view of the incident below. Toy, panting like a puppy and her eyes flitting to and fro, drew up alongside Aoki and threw her arms around the exhausted executive, a beaten man, too winded to fight off the embrace.

“My darling,” Toy said in a sweet, little girl voice, winded and still puffing, “I’ve finally caught up with you. I don’t understand. Why did you run away, my love?” She tenderly stroked his arm and, with a handkerchief that magically appeared from who-knows-where, mopped perspiration off Aoki’s glistening brow and bald head. Then Toy gently removed his glasses, gave them a quick polishing, and deftly re-balanced them on the bridge of his nose.

Hotel patrons witnessing the scene tittered in amusement while in-the-know front desk staff exchanged glances. Amused bellmen shrugged their indifference. Startled American and European tourists snapped pictures on their iPhones, surely the highlight of any vacation trip to Siam. Curious taxi drivers doubled parked on the hotel front ramp and left their cabs to follow the bizarre pair inside.

Aoki’s shock finally began to abate. Though still a bit numb, he simply no longer had the strength to resist. But it was also evident he was in no genuine danger and probably never really was. There was to be no unsolicited attack on his nether region by some man masquerading as a woman.

“It was all just a misunderstanding,” he mumbled to Toy with sheepish smile while waving away hotel folk who sought to help. Apparently the entire staff already knew Khun Toy as a good person, and gave her their seal of approval. Regarding her katoey-ness? Yes, okay, not news. Mai pen lai, no problem!

Aoki had to wonder if he was the last person in Bangkok to become aware of this critical (and highly pertinent) information.

About then, his team of Japanese executives and their stragglers arrived at the hotel front door and, once determining their boss was in no imminent danger, immediately turned right around and left. No worries . . . and no need to be a witness.

Solicitous housekeeping staff handed Aoki a thick brown blanket. In a chivalrous gesture of compassion, he reached over and wrapped it around Toy, who shivered in the frigid lobby in her lacey lingerie. Staff then fetched a second blanket for Aoki, which he tossed over his shoulders, like an Arabian sheikh. (Having settled down and regained some awareness of his appearance, he tried to salvage some dignity.)

Calm returned to the lobby as the two, wrapped in their warm blankets, walked over to the hotel coffee shop and sat down for a snack (rice porridge with salty eggs) while attempting to sort out deep mutual misunderstandings.

Over the next hour, the two chatted, trying to amicably resolve their seemingly irresolvable issues. But the earth had indeed moved and the universe rearranged itself –– things between them had irrevocably changed.

Letting total honesty guide him, he felt compelled to advise her that considering her just-revealed physical situation, he could no longer proceed in any physical relationship with her. No offense was intended, he explained, but that was simply contrary to how he was wired. Pure hetero. Aoki still felt an affection for Toy, as a person, felt bad about the foolish mix-up, and desperately hoped her feelings could be salvaged.

Toy’s eyes welled up at the blow but, before her tears could fall, Aoki shocked her for a second time, insisting that despite it all, he still found Toy rather thrilling, even desirable, despite her being katoey. He simply didn’t know what to make of it, nor how to process this contradiction.

So, dear reader, one must naturally wonder: did they stay friends? The answer is yes . . . and actually much more.

It took a long time and quite a few business trip visits by Aoki to Thailand, but eventually he stopped battling his contradictory feelings. Inevitably, their affair heated up again. And that’s when Toy pitched her idea at him: Perhaps Aoki could financially cover her surgery to complete her transformation to womanhood? After all, he would be the primary beneficiary.

“Thailand hospitals number one in world for katoey operation,” Toy chirped. “World class doctors, Aoki-san, all Number One! Train in USA or Europe. Doctor slice open man’s snake, take out inside and stitch back together. Then push empty snake sack back up, make lady pleasure cave!”

After hearing this idea, long and often enough, Aoki-san finally surrendered to Toy’s unrelenting enthusiasm and optimism and agreed to make this ‘investment’ in their physical relationship. He would pay for surgery to complete Toy downstairs, allowing their intimacy to be physically complete as boyfriend and girlfriend.

The operation was performed at Bumrungrad Hospital by a five-star surgeon, the most skillful in Bangkok for such matters, and by all accounts it was highly successful.

Ever since, the resulting flames of their love have been fanned ever hotter, with Aoki eventually insisting that Toy retire from her career at the Hey Joe and settle into a monogamous relationship with him.

At last report, the happy couple were shopping for a luxury apartment somewhere in one of Bangkok’s ritzier neighborhoods. And as for Aoki’s men? Still utterly terrified by their corporate Goliath, they swore each other to secrecy over the matter. Some matters are just too dangerous to discuss.

Mai pen lai –– never mind.

Cool Runnings

Chet Nairene — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 01:53:31 GMT

(This interview first appeared in TALES OF THE ORIENT in Jan 2023, soon after Pacific Dash was published, and is reprinted courtesy of good friend Simon Ostheimer.)

Please tell us more about your new book, Pacific Dash

Pacific Dash is a fictional first-person account of Dash Bonaventure, a young 1960s American whose life journey drags him across Asia. Dash is utterly impulsive (his next prudent plan will be his first), but makes up for that with outsized good luck and karma. The story begins in 1968 with him as a reluctant expat student at the then-new Hong Kong International School. International adventures immediately start to find him. Dash covers a lot of ground, for several decades spending time in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, HK, Macau, Taiwan and Myanmar. He finds himself in love and at other times in trouble. One day at a Bali losmen (a cheap homestay), things really take off when meets Little Fatty, an engaging and chubby Malaysian businessman who hooks Dash up in the illegal casino business, located offshore from Singapore.

Tales of the Orient by Simon Ostheimer is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Dash gets around! How did you come up with the story?

Ever since taking up fiction writing, I had been juggling several good story ideas, but Pacific Dash (my “backpacker novel”) was always the one I wanted to lead with. I knew it would be pure fun for the reader and a pure joy for me to write. My primary goal is to entertain and transport readers to exotic places, crammed with interesting people, odd experiences and cultural nuggets. I wanted to share so many of the things I love about Asia - the wonderful people, the food and spirituality, the bars and temples, beaches and even gambling. So, what better way to introduce all that than through the eyes of a young foreigner who is totally unprepared for what he’s about to encounter?

What led you to start writing your own fiction?

It’s funny, but during my career as an expatriate executive in Asia, friends often said (usually after a few too many beers and colorful stories), “You really ought to write a novel.” Yeah, right, someday. But upon retiring I started to think, hey, why not?

Like Dash, I understand you also lived in Asia for more than 25 years. How much of your own story is this?

As the old writing adage goes: ‘Write about what you know.’ And I certainly know Asia. Many (but not all) of Dash’s experiences are based upon things that happened to me or to my friends. Therefore, while the resulting story is off-kilter and quirky, it should also have an authentic ring. But Dash and I are punched from different molds.

He is something of the accidental, unintentional traveler in Asia. I, on the other hand, made happen my desire to live and work in Asia. It was just something in my DNA and I had to obey. My fascination with Asia, Africa and Latin America all probably began with my childhood hobby, tuning into foreign radio stations on shortwave.

Early in my working life, I was a journalist at a small daily paper based in the central US. I entered journalism hoping it was a ticket to a fulfilling life abroad as a foreign correspondent but wound up, instead, at a small daily paper in Wisconsin, writing obituaries and features. Eventually I quit, backpacked around Asia and brewed up a new plan, to gain an MBA degree with a concentration on international business.

Back in the 1970s, companies virtually lined up to hire Wharton School’s newly-minted MBAs so I had my pick of international jobs. Since other students wanted to make millions in Wall Street investment banking jobs, I was somewhat unique. Back at that time, the internationally-focused MBA wasn’t really yet much of a thing.

Having dinner at the races with former Hong Kong Chief Secretary Anson Chan

What exactly did you do over all those decades in Asia?

I worked in many senior executive positions for one of the biggest US multinationals, including various roles as marketing director, supply chain manager, GM and country chairman. My family lived in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Philippines, Korea and Thailand.

In what ways do you think Asia shaped you as a person?

In general, living as a long-term expat cannot help but broaden one’s horizons and provide new perspectives. I certainly more objectively understand my home country and its foibles, having been outside the US media echo chamber for three decades.

With regard to Asia’s influence, I am probably much more patient and open-minded. My favorite piece of advice, often received from Thai friends, was a reminder: ‘Please don’t think so much.” So un-Western, but so true … to be more in the moment. More zen. Everywhere we went in Asia, we met with warmth and accommodation, from the poorest of villagers to the wealthiest of business magnates. It touched our hearts.

Of all the places you’ve lived, which are your favorites?

That’s too hard, a bit like trying to choose a favorite from your children. Impossible!

But a particular thrill I will never forget was living in Java in the 1970s and exploring Indonesia by motorbike. Remember I mentioned my childhood shortwave radio hobby? On Java I visited scores of little ‘RPDK Tingkat II’ shortwave radio stations (‘friends’ already tuned from America and corresponded with), went to all-night wayang kulit puppet shows and visited the Mount Bromo volcano on horseback at dawn.

We also loved our years in Malaysia, in my opinion among the most enjoyable people in Southeast Asia. But matching that was the excitement of life in scintillating Hong Kong during the run-up to the 1997 sovereignty handover to China. I learned that there is nothing like an energized Hongkonger executing a plan – if the rest of the world was as diligent and hard-working and dedicated, we’d already be in nirvana.

Korea was fascinating in its own way, to live well within range of the North’s missile batteries. And life in the Philippines was a daily challenge, with poverty everywhere and stalking the business landscape. Company survival was a top of mind challenge.

The novel seems pretty accurate in its historical detail (Hong Kong chapters in particular were spot on). How did you achieve this high level of authenticity?

Another piece of common wisdom fiction writers often hear is to write the type of story they enjoy reading. I love novels that just flood the senses with interesting places. So for Pacific Dash, I tried to channel Dash and plumb my experiences, feeling myself back in those places, seeing things around me, hearing the noise and smelling fragrances. And then I just typed away and took dictation as Dash told me his story.

Books about expats having ‘crazy’ adventures in Asia is a pretty packed genre, how do you stand apart?

Yes, though it seems most of those are non-fiction, silly first-person travel memoirs like ‘My Amazing Month in Zamboanga’. But my niche (as seems to be developing) is in humorous, action-packed fiction that is driven by the cultural clashes experienced by young Westerners in Asia, who really don’t quite know what they are getting into.

Chet playing golf with friends in Korea

Have you written much before? What for you was the hardest part about writing your first piece of fiction?

I had five years’ of writing and editing as a journalist and three decades of business writing to draw upon, so I was somewhat surprised to learn, upon launching into the novel-writing endeavor, that all of that experience was entirely useless when it came to writing fiction. I had to entirely relearn how to write. Along the way, I joined a writers’ circle that, every few weeks, savages each other’s work. My earliest drafts had been as dense as an encyclopedia … but over time, I’ve learned that simpler is better.

Writing is only the half of it, then there’s the marketing…

Book marketing is no fun! At first, one writes and hopes the story itself will be enough. Wonderful fiction finding its market. But inevitably, that is slowly learned to be a delusion. The most successful novelists these days have a huge social media presence that works hard promoting their books. That is not my particular situation.

So for me, the best way forward is to achieve some critical mass by getting my next two novels published and out into the public eye, asap. There is definitely synergy available as some readers may be attracted to one book and find the others through it.

I understand you’re a big fan of writer Paul Theroux

Paul Theroux (PT) is the golden god of travel writing! It is a dream of mine to someday be able to chat with him. There are two PT’s and I love them both. First, there is the writer (or, more accurately, the modern-day inventor) of adventure travel narratives. And second is the fiction writer. Both are astounding talents, though each quite unique.

My favorite of his travel books is, of course, his seminal work The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia. Reading this during my backpacking days was like finding a missing part of myself. PT went on to spawn a universe of copycats.

Now, PT the novelist is an entirely different phenomenon. His writing is grouchier, catty and grabs you by the throat, refusing to let go until the very end. My favorite of his novels is the politically incorrect My Secret History, a roman à clef I’ve read at least six times. The chapter about the protagonist’s days as a twenty-something teacher in Malawi back in the 1960s, very sexually active, could probably not be written today.

Are there plans for more books? Will they be about Dash?

Oh yes. I have had two other novels already in progress for a number of years already.

The first is about a young American tech businessman who gets in over his head with Asian occult forces. Something like a mash-up between Bonfire of the Vanities and Poltergeist. The second is my Thailand novel, which still needs more revision. Thailand is such an amazing place that to capture it well requires quite the deft touch. I’ve learned to be rather tough on my drafts. Pacific Dash was written and rewritten seven or eight times, with the result that, each time, it got cleaner and simpler. Better.

Illusion Confusion (Part 1)

Chet Nairene — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 17:10:38 GMT

A buttoned‑up Japanese salaryman meets a dazzling ‘ladyboy’ in a Bangkok bar and innocent misunderstanding detonates into a hilarious spiral of pride, panic, and cultural confusion.

A group of randy Japanese business executives arrived one evening at the Hey Joe Bar on Soi Nana, a red light district in Bangkok. They considered themselves ‘geographic bachelors’ (single when outside Tokyo) and were ready to cut loose after a long day of boring meetings. Attended by bar girls, they drank heavily and smoked nonstop, laughing and challenging each other to down tall glasses of straight brandy or icy mugs of beer.

The group had journeyed to Thailand for a regional semiconductor conference that entire week. Their head office was in Tokyo but two large chip fabrication plants were in Thailand, near the historic temple town of Ayuthaya, an hour north of Bangkok.

A wizened older gentleman with neatly combed silver hair and several prominent gold teeth lorded it over all this showing-off. Clearly the boss, his name was Aoki (or, as they respectfully addressed him, Aoki-san). With no apparent embarrassment, all the other Japanese executives demurred and acted totally subservient whenever engaging with their capo, always taking great pains to adopt extra polite language. Even in the middle of drinking contests, they all called him Aoki-san and showed respect, with heads bowed and a reverential tone.

His men seemed to agree with whatever Aoki said, smiling and nodding like metronomes. His jokes or comic observations all launched avalanches of guffaws, gales of inordinately loud laughter. Clearly this was more than just healthy respect –– they were all terrified by their dictatorial boss, like mice before a lion.

As the evening wore on, drinks continued to flow as expansively as only a profligate Japanese corporate expense account could enable. A lovely hostess perched beside each man, chatting and smiling while making sure alcohol was continually consumed. Over time, the mood at the table morphed from happy to hilarious to, eventually, numbed ecstasy.

After several hours sucking down scotch or brandy, a few lost control and passed out right at the table. Others sprinted for the toilet in back, to vomit, then returning to the table newly sober though with stomach acid breath.

Of course, in any such group, a lucky few are blessed with constitutions capable of processing extreme quantities of liquor without obvious damage, and Aoki seemed to number among that elite. Intoxicated and happy, he stayed under control as he pounded down tall cocktail glasses filled with brandy, chasing them with cold bottles of Sapporo beer.

Attending to the corporate chieftain was a startlingly attractive Thai woman called Toy. With cascading black hair and drenched in an intoxicating, tropical flowery scent, she was both flashy and a bit large (though not outrageously so) for a local woman. Farang-sized, perhaps. Her slinky pink silk dress wrapped itself around dizzying curves while her wrists sparkled with silver bangles. A brilliant white choker lovingly caressed her latte neck, accentuating facial perfection. Fiery eyes smiled while hinting of a darker sexual intensity.

At some point, fairly early on, it became apparent Aoki planned to pay off her “bar fine” later and take the beauty back to his hotel for the night. A smile split Aoki’s face as his eyes, and hands, never stopped exploring the tender hills and valleys of Toy’s breathtaking femininity. But with the skill of an NHL goal tender or World Cup net minder, she deftly deflected any sorties that strayed too close to her panty region. Frustrated, Aoki would laugh dismissively, as if teasing (“Ah, you catch me”), and reach for his drink. Then he would sit back and gaze around the bar, as if it were fascinating. After a few minutes passed, newly emboldened, he would then again embark upon another tentative exploration.

Unknown to all the Japanese businessmen, at least at first, was that Khun Toy was a katoey . . . or as the Thai nickname translates, a ladyboy. Even more interesting was that her powerful customer, Aoki-san, was also unaware. Earlier just that week, he had ranted to his salarymen against katoeys (‘so disgusting!’), denouncing the live-and-let-live romantic vagueness often seen in Thailand. He was the type of narrow-minded male who became enraged just to consider that katoeys might even exist.

Thus the evening was set up for a dangerous potential collision, one both cultural and sexual . . . with Aoki primed to unwittingly take a katoey to his hotel room, believing her an exotic, natural-born woman.

If any of his underlings came to fathom what was going on, none warned the boss. Didn’t they owe their chairman a heads-up about the appalling melodrama destined to soon unfold? Perhaps, but none spoke up, cowed by fear of both his anger and likely shame. Aoki, for them, was akin to mini god, an uber powerful overlord who could at will squish them like bugs between his fingers. No one dared risk delivering foul news to such an intimidating and dangerous man.

So while loyal to him, their intense (and well-founded) fear overrode all else. Best to not become involved, not even nit noi (as the Thais said, not even a little). It was far easier to just step back and look away, see nothing and know even less.

After a few hours, the entire table had sussed out Toy’s secret and it confounded them. Surely Aoki also knew? Or maybe not. In any event, he appeared enraptured by her. They were left to ponder the unthinkable: perhaps their titanic, swaggering, macho boss did know but actually did entertain a fetish for ladyboys? That of course made no sense. Such a powerful man could have any woman he wanted––they’d seen that so many times before, nights on the Ginza. Yet, what other explanation was there? Only one thing was certain: nobody was going to raise such a dangerous and unaskable question with him.

By the end of the evening, the executives all left the bar to scatter to their various hotels across Bangkok. Only Aoki stayed in the posh, ultra-exclusive Hotel Sukhumvit. By the time he and Toy reached his suite, the man was so intoxicated that he immediately passed out on his hotel bed.

What was Khun Toy to do?

Just this: she cleansed his face with a warm, wet wash cloth, slipped the unconscious businessman from Nippon into his pajamas and tucked him in for the night. Then she counted out some cash from the black wallet in his alligator leather satchel, only what was fair, the preagreed amount for her evening’s work, and went home.

The next night Aoki, with a huge smile, directed his minions to return to the Hey Joe. That relieved his team’s worries, indicating (they surmised) Aoki’s previous night had gone off with no problems so all their trepidation had been for naught. Aoki bowed a friendly greeting at the proprietor and waved hello at the bar girls. “You look hungry, my dear child,” he said to a young hostess, handing her a zip-lock baggie of mango slices just purchased outside at a stall on Soi Nana.

A moment later, Toy cruised through the bar, trailing a thick cloud of perfume, and cautiously approached the Japanese guests’ table. To her delight, Aoki jumped up, seeming overjoyed to see her again. And for the next several hours, the boss sat with Toy and drank heavily, with her assistance and encouragement.

For his staffers, unaware of what transpired in Aoki’s hotel room, his behavior confirmed the obvious, that Aoki-san actually did swing the ladyboy way. There was no other explanation. They all knew (a) Toy had gone to Aoki’s hotel; (b) that she was absolutely katoey, as confirmed by other hostesses; so (c) the boss had this astounding secret side. Amazing!

Not that any of them could easily process the proposition that their alpha male commander copulated with a katoey, no matter how beautiful. But seeing how contented their fearsome boss was in her company, they could relax. The pressure was off so they could drink, laugh, and play with the girls, worry-free.

Toward the end of his second visit to the Hey Joe, well after midnight, Aoki and Toy set out for the glitzy Sukhumvit Hotel. Full disclosure, in truth it was actually the escort Toy delivering the alcohol-polluted, totally impaired corporate titan back to his flashy lodgings. With one of his arms wrapped over her shoulders, the strong Toy held Aoki around the waist and propped him up at the front desk. Flashing a saccharine smile, the clerk on duty handed over a key and asked whether a morning wake-up call was needed. Toy smiled a ‘no’.

Bellmen leaning against their trolleys in the lobby watched knowingly and sniffed, nudging each other.

Toy guided Aoki into the elevator, his legs wobbly and eyeballs rolling back into his head. Other hotel guests in the lift stared intently at the floor numbers flashing atop the elevator doors and tried to ignore the scene playing out in front of them.

Arriving at Aoki’s room just before 2 a.m., Toy steered the man as he collapsed onto a padded leather chair. Again totally poisoned by alcohol, there would again be no chance of his consummating their intimate business transaction . . . to Toy’s growing disappointment. She was already becoming somewhat fond of the foreign businessman, having enjoyed his attention the past two evenings. Aoki seemed like a man of the world, powerful and debonair enough to appreciate the charms of a Thai katoey, unlike so many foreigners.

After again tending to the Japanese man’s evening toilet — washing his face and slipping him into sleepwear — she gently rolled him into bed. But as she began pulling up the top sheet, Toy noticed the man’s erect male member, standing proud and tumescent. What to do? It felt unfair to send him off to dreamland like that, all tense and unsatisfied, so she opted to provide relief for a good customer. Oral and by hand, it took only a minute.

Then she gargled with a tiny bottle of mouthwash kept always in her purse and prepared to leave. First, of course, she again paid herself, plus a healthy tip. After all, her mouth relief was considered very, very good. All her customers said so. And no matter that Mr. Aoki was not awake, he still had to pay.

While slipping currency from the man’s wallet, she spent a moment examining other contents in the alligator leather satchel. Passport, air tickets, photos of his family back in Japan, credit cards, and phone numbers. She carefully replaced everything, back in their original places, and put the wallet back into the man-bag beside the bedside table.

Finally Toy pulled the silk bed-covers up to his chin, gave him a peck on the forehead and left.

She nodded at the bellmen as she exited the hotel front door and hailed a tuk-tuk down at the street. The driver gunned the engine, feeding fuel by twisting the handle of the motorbike built into his tuk-tuk passenger cart, and buzzed off across the Chao Phya River to Thonburi and the small apartment Toy shared with three other girls.

All the way home, little plastic amulets with little golden Buddhas hung from the rear-view mirror and rattled back and forth, clicking against the scratched plastic windscreen. Toy found their rhythm soothing and hummed a happy little tune.

She wondered if she’d ever see the nice Mr. Aoki again, the funny little man from Japan who always fell asleep before they could make love. And if so, would they ever finally do it?

She very much enjoyed his company and presumed he must be quite rich, since he was a Japanese big boss. And in his own way, he was quite the gentleman. Sleepy, she yawned and dared allow herself to wonder if maybe, just maybe, he could be falling for her?

As for Aoki, all still remained a blank surrounding his two post-bar liaisons with Toy, having twice been unconscious twice and remaining blissfully unaware of her surprising status. At least with his men all staying at cheaper hotels all across town, none witnessed his misadventures, sparing him embarrassment. They remained uninformed, free to assume whatever.

So the third night, after an expensive, multi-course dinner at a big flash Chinese restaurant, the Japanese entourage descended upon the Hey Joe yet again. As they arrived, the manager intercepted them at the door and guided them to an extra-special table. VIP treatment for free-drinking, high-tipping repeat customers. Everybody in the bar smiled and treated them like big men, on the level of top Thai politicians, military generals, or real estate tycoons.

All that day, Khun Toy had fretted, worried that a disappointed Aoki might be angry and never return to her place of employment. So upon spotting Aoki’s entourage marching into the Hey Joe this third night, the katoey sprinted across the room to his table, being met by smiles all around.

But this evening, having learned his lesson after two false starts, Aoki came armed with a better plan. He decided: Why wait?

So after just two drinks and a mere hour of electronic dance music, he whispered his bold idea to Khun Toy. He wanted to enjoy her, this enchanting Thai woman, as soon as possible –– that very moment, in fact! Was there a place for that at the Hey Joe, somewhere private on the premises?

Delighted by Aoki’s audacious proposition, Toy grinned her agreement and planted a big, wet kiss on his cheek. Her mood effervescent, she got up to make preparations and secure a vacant back room. In a pinch, the lady’s toilet might do.

Correctly suspecting what was going on, Aoki’s crew felt safe to lovingly tease the boss in clearly a veiled salute to his prowess. They laughed and announced, “Oh no, Aoki-san, girl run away. She divorce you!” Giggling, they warned he might return to his hotel alone, forced to make love with his ‘left-hand wife’.

Toy determined that the ladies’ powder room would work for their tryst. There was even a little sofa in there, where the girls sometimes rested. She fixed her lipstick and reapplied mascara while chatting with another hostess who also was sitting at the Japanese guests’ table. To Toy’s delight, she reported that the other men were chattering (a real revelation to them) that Aoki evidently loved katoey sex. What a happy surprise! A thrill of delight and relief coursed through Toy, at that news.

This night would be wonderful, one to never forget . . . perhaps the start of a serious long-term relationship? So many thoughts raced dizzily through Toy’s mind. If Aoki enjoyed himself in the back room, it could well lead to much more. What if he became her regular boyfriend? He could help pay all her bills and vastly improve Toy’s life. Purchase expensive clothes, maybe even lease an apartment in the tony Sukhumvit area? She might even be able to stop working at Hey Joe . . . retire! It happened all the time. After all, Aoki-san was a rich and powerful man. Probably jealous and not accustomed to sharing his treasured possessions; and certainly not his beloved, right?

Toy even daydreamed about following him back to Japan.

Oh, and there was one more important thing to consider: her downstairs plumbing still needed conversion, the expensive ultimate step in her transformation. Perhaps she could convince her beloved to underwrite that investment? After all, as the future primary beneficiary, it made sense for him to pay for her sex change surgery, no?

Coming soon, the exciting conclusion . . .

Part Two: Aoki’s Surprise

About Chet Nairene

Author of the delightful, exotic PACIFIC TRILOGY — three humorous novels of adventure, identity, and misadventure across Southeast Asia!

Read them all on Amazon →

PACIFIC DASH Dash Bonaventure thinks his family’s move to Hong Kong is temporary — a quick detour before heading home. Instead, Asia grabs him and never lets go. One minute he’s a confused expat kid, the next he’s backpacking through Indonesia, working on an illegal casino boat, falling in love, dodging trouble, and somehow rising in Macau’s gambling underworld. A wild, funny, big‑hearted coming‑of‑age misadventure.

PACIFIC ODYSSEY Lew Clarke blows up his New York tech career and grabs a sketchy lifeline in the obscure Asian backwater of Amazia. Forced to go there in person, he discovers his brilliance is useless, everyone smiles like they know something he doesn’t, and survival requires a whole new operating system. A sharp, funny, humbling misadventure of reinvention.

PACIFIC DREAM ( Coming May 2026 to Amazon!) After twin betrayals nuke her life, Marielle Margaux flees to Thailand and accidentally becomes caretaker to a battered woman… then several… then a baby… then an entire chaotic orphanage. Soon she’s juggling infants, hustling for money, dodging officials, and crossing lines she never imagined. A wild, heartfelt, darkly funny tale of reinvention gone sideways.