A club so private, we're its only members

Friday night lights ... but where are the players?

It's late Friday afternoon and Lian is called to stand by in the spa at the brand-new North Hill Golf Club. A group of 50 guests of the club, weary from a complimentary 18 holes, will be arriving at any moment. Maybe. So the spa needs to be all staffed up for Thai massage, mani-pedi or whatever it takes to impress these prospective new members.

Our dinner plans are trashed, but no problem: we've been wanting to try the fancy clubhouse restaurant anyway, so this is our chance. Lian goes ahead on her motor bike to don her uniform, and 20 minutes later I pedal along behind. It's a beautiful ride along the wide, empty road that divides the old nine-hole course and the new links. At sunset the megawatt floodlights illuminate the fairway for night golf. But I see no players.

The side road to the clubhouse is all but deserted. A quarter-mile down I wheel into the parking lot and leave my bike next to Lian's cherry-red Honda. No one else around but the gatekeeper and the doorman.

I want this lamp!

Inside, the lobby of this gorgeous (if a little gaudy) clubhouse is quiet as a library. I walk to the spa, where Lian is at the front desk with the manager, awaiting the first wave of massage-needing bodies.

"They say many golfer come soon," she tells me. "You can wait me upstairs for dinner?" Which I interpret to mean: Darling husband, you should go see what the bar looks like.

The Happy Hour crowd in the clubhouse bar.

Here's the first word that comes to me as I walk into the bar: grand. As in, look, there's a baby grand piano in the corner equipped with a vocal mic. Are you booking your plane ticket to Thailand yet, Tim Trautman?

I settle into a plush couch with a tumbler of Jack over ice and wonder: how many millions of baht are they losing on this place every day? Because I have three servers fussing over me and I am the only customer in this huge room.

Forty-five minutes and two drinks later Lian tracks me down -- the golfers' massagapalooza failed to materialize, so the spa cut her loose. Jack Number Two and complimentary peanut dish in hand, we step across the hall to the HOLY GOD IS THIS ROOM WHITE!!! restaurant. I neglected to make reservations but the waiter manages to seat us anywhere we want because we are tonight's first and only guests.

Our new favorite place for Date Night.

Our dining experience is sensational for its ambience, the view of the fairway at night, our deftly prepared entrees, and the bill that comes to a shade over twenty bucks, including bar tab and gratuity.

As we are ready to leave, the long-awaited golfer stampede comes rumbling in, but it's not 50; more like seven, and only half of them sit down for dinner.

"That manager, he tell me they want to have a new promotion for more customer," Lian shares. Hmm ... maybe I could work out a copywriting trade?

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From the inside looking out, I totally get the allure of gated communities.

This week I finally got around to buying a bike lock, but I have yet to use it here on the rez. Tom, the Sausage Guy around the corner, says he routinely leaves his keys in his truck at night. Thanks to diligent security, aided by the decorative bars across every door, window and driveway of every house, the crime stats in this placid bubble of non-reality are pretty much zero.

Which makes reading the day-to-day news from my neighborhood back in Portland all the more depressing: car break-ins, bike thefts, burglaries, all manner of intrusions. There's a lot I miss about home, but not that.

I know it'll be there in the morning.

Saturday night's alright, alright, alright

It's Saturday, mid-month, time to go pay the rent. But neither of us wants to venture out in the afternoon "Big Sun," so we keep putting it off until early evening. After dinner Lian and I walk up the street to the house of our landlady, Tuk. Tuk is a single mother, mid-40s, who looks like she could be Lian's fun little sister. Last week I bought my almost-new bicycle from Tuk.

We'll be back in a few minutes, we tell Lian's son, Dao.

Beer, Thai style

Halfway there we can already hear party music coming from Tuk's streetside dining patio: she and a few neighbors are taking a late supper and we're invited to join in. Thai people are big on impromptu gatherings and it's impolite to refuse, so we sit down to a whole second supper. And lots of beer, served Thai-style: in a glass over ice and mixed with club soda. A brilliant way to self-pace.

We get to meet a few more of the nabes: the mild-mannered software engineer who lives next door to us, the Chiang Mai cop with the imposing physical presence of Frodo Baggins, and the housewife across the street. We learn that the folks on our lane take turns hosting potluck dinners every few weeks, and that Tuk always hosts an epic New Year's celebration. (New Year's lasts about 10 days in these parts.) I am warned: there will be karaoke.

"Chai-oh" -- A Thai toast with the new neighbors

Tonight's music is mostly '70s American rock, in honor of the farang new bitch, me. Tuk is the perfect hostess, keeping all beer glasses brim-full -- even Lian's, whose mai ao, kaas go cheerily unheeded. (Luckily I am here to help my wife keep up.) As I've mentioned before, Lian's skin turns radiation-burn pink when she drinks any amount of alcohol. But it turns out to be a Thai thing: every other Asian face at the table is equally incandescent. Fascinating.

As the evening wears on, Tuk leans across the table and asks me a most endearing question: "Do you like whiskey?" I answer by showing her the Dalwhinnie single malt on my iPhone wallpaper, and she presents a just-opened bottle of Chivas. Graciously I accept a taste or two.

Eventually we say our good-nights and find our way home, the glow of Lian lighting our way. By the time we fall into bed it is almost midnight.  And we clean forgot to pay the rent.

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This morning Lian is off running errands on her motorbike and I am upstairs figuring out how to dislodge pigeons' nests from the awnings above our back bedroom windows. (We're tired of cleaning pigeon crap off the patio twice a day.) Suddenly Lian bursts into the room gibbering with agitation and darting around the room, unable to sit still. Finally I get out of her what happened: as she was making a U-turn on the big highway, a car sideswiped her and almost tipped her bike over in heavy traffic. Stopped in the middle lanes, she had a heated argument with the driver, a young girlie going too fast. They both left before the police arrived to complicate things further. (Very little damage, Lian was only slightly hurt, and the police would want a bribe to make everything go away.)

But here's what really has Lian steamed: this was the third time she's tried to pick up her new business signs from the printer, and each time he's been closed. So, by her thinking, it's his fault that she almost got wiped out. She fumes: "I hate that man."

Koolpunt & the Gang

I want a job writing almost-coherent Thai tag lines.

I get around.

One day blends into the next. Lian jogs as I ride my bicycle through the architecturally themed neighborhoods of our gated community, or past its brand-new golf course. We promise ourselves that sometime soon we'll try (insert Thurston Howell III voice here) "dinner at the clubhouse."

"Buddy!"

Most days we stop in at the Buddy Mart around the corner for bread or frozen passionfruit bars or whatever. For lunch we might visit this fine little guittio (noodle) joint off the main drive, just a five-minute walk from home.

Soup is good food.

Crews of thickly dressed landscape workers in rice paddy hats groom the public areas and sweep the sidewalks with fan-shaped straw brooms. Uniformed security personnel man the cross-barred checkpoints every quarter-mile. Need a lightbulb changed or a toilet fixed? You call the Main Office and a handyman arrives 10 minutes later. (The service is free but we tip the guy anyway.) Private landscapers are available to spruce up individual yards, for a price. In my case, that price is eighteen bucks. And they do a damn fine job!

English spoken here.

One or two evenings a week while Lian cooks dinner, I wander up to the Buddy Mart for exactly one beer with the rotating cast of ne'er-do-wells who gather at the wooden tables out front to solve the world's problems. Occasionally I buy a frozen package of farang chow from the Sausage Man, Tom, whose storefront is two doors down. Chorizo, andouille links, lasagna, cottage pie ... it's all good, and a necessary relief from my life sentence of rice-rice-rice with no possibility of parole.

Somewhere in this hectic schedule I manage to pencil in a few hours of work ... and dream of the blessed day when I can finally retire.

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My charitable side wants to interpret this as a deliberate play on words, a clever way of exhorting readers to "Be Living." But likelier it's the work of a HomePro marketing editor who alllmost knows English.