“When the rains came”

(and some delicious lamb soup)

The “Dream House” at Sapan Sam before the rains.

In the beginning of 1963 I moved to my second house in Bangkok. It was situated in the innards of Trok Chan, an area off South Sathorn Road at the intersection called Sapan Sam. One had to head into Soi Ruam Chit and at the end of a little dirt road directly on the left was my new villa. Everything seemed to be marvellous about the house. The land-lady was most charming and friendly, the house was built from wood and had two stories, with the downstairs containing a large kitchen, an enormous sitting-dining room with a cement floor and a bathroom with an Indonesian style “Mandi Bak”, and a large reservoir for cool water to throw over your head with a dipper. Upstairs it featured two bedrooms and a veranda with a large balcony. It had a large garden with a romantic sala, a thin green tree snake, a mango tree and it was facing some wet-lands with an assortment of birds, and in the far distance some buildings near the Chao Phya River. It also had a telephone and the rent was …… 800 Baht a month, which was, even for those days, a bargain, especially as telephones were a rarity. It was in short too good to believe.
I started to give dinner parties around the large low, sturdy teakwood table I had made to order. One of the items I always longed to have in my life, it cost me 400 Baht and it is still the main feature in my living room here in Pattaya. It is not for sale but would probably cost 10,000 Baht at present, if not more, as it has become an antique as well. Friends would come and join me for supper, with among them the late Darryl Berrigan, the American founder and chief editor of the Bangkok World, a newspaper which sadly enough was subjected to euthanasia by the Post Publishing Company about ten years ago. It had been sold to them shortly after Berrigan’s death in October 1965. We - his friends - called Darryl “Berry”, and one night after we had enjoyed a meal, he asked me to do a food column for the World, as at that time there were very few foreigners who had any idea about Asian spices and cooking and since I was familiar with them through my Indonesian background I could enlighten the expatriate readers on the subject.
My shaky English was no problem Berry said, as he would edit the writing, and so it was that my first article was published on April 2, 1963. It was called “Fried Rice Easy to Fix”. Looking at those articles, one can not help noticing the poor printing and proof reading in those days but the Bangkok World had undeniable charm as a family newspaper. Bangkok was a friendlier place then, the expatriate community was small and everybody seemed to know everybody else.
I moved into the house in the dry and the hot season but as soon as the rains started, it became apparent that there was a catch to this bargain.
On August 25, 1963 I wrote: “Since the latest downpours, it has become impossible to reach my house without swimming part of the way. I have to postpone all dinner parties until I have purchased a rowboat to ferry the guests from the street to the house and vice versa. The kitchen and the bathroom are both flooded and catfish (Plah Duk) splash happily about in the kitchen while mangrove crabs have taken up residence in the bathroom.”
I was cooking on a set of charcoal burners on the floor in those days and described how my chopping board had floated out of the kitchen into the garden. The crabs in the bathroom were a liability and one had to watch them all the time while bathing, as they were apt to attach themselves to bare toes. This proves my point again when people tell me that the flooding of Bangkok is something of recent years. Even the very first time I ever visited Bangkok in November 1952 I found the area in the neighbourhood of the Memorial Bridge completely under water. The traffic was also impossible in the early sixties as the klongs were being filled in and bridges were widened. I remember that I frequently left the bus I was “riding” in as it was stationary and walked the rest of the way, one time as far as from the wireless circle (now the Belgium Bridge) to my house on Soi Siripot (81) over the bridge in Prakanong.
During the deluge I did invite some bachelor friends to my Trok Chan house for dinner one day but warned them over the phone to leave their car on the main road, as it would become stuck in my little lane. They did not believe me and carefully ventured down the narrow path of no return. Right in front of my gate, the car sank in the mud, water seeped into the engine, and fortified with at least a crate of beer and an ample supply of Mekong, we struggled until four in the morning to get the blasted thing out of the mire onto the road again. I can’t recall what happened to my dinner, I supposed we ate it in shifts or I served it on plates at the scene of the disaster. Shortly afterwards my land-lady told me that she wanted to move into the house herself and I, with my entourage, moved to Din Deang, Pracha Songkroh, where the flooding was even worse.
Alas, those were the days when we were young and flexible as well as irresponsible, and they will never return. In the article dated August 25, 1963 during the flood, I gave a recipe for “Goat Soup”. Since I do not agree with it anymore, I revised it. This soup may be made from real lamb or from our local goat..