"Pssst, want to buy some hash?"
I was sitting on my bungalow porch, surrounded by coco palms over looking the white sandy beach of a warm clear blue sea on a tropical island in southern Thailand. I looked around and saw a little white woman about 5 feet tall and maybe 90 pounds around my age. She looked at me and again said, "Want to buy some hash?"
I asked, "What do you got and how much?"
She answered, "Nepali fingers, $60 an ounce or $2.50 a gram. Five gram minimum."
I told her, "Let's smoke some and see how it is."
I invited her up onto the porch and called my girlfriend Kelly out. We introduce ourselves. Her name was Wendy. We all took a seat, burned some finger’s and pronounced them good so I bought ten grams.
When I paid her, Wendy said, "I can tell you guys are dopers so just give me $20 and if you want an ounce it'll only be $50.”
We thanked her then sat around smoking Thai weed mixed with Nepali hash the rest of the afternoon.
She asked us how long we'd there.
"A month" we said. We asked her the same.
"A year" she replied.
"Wow!" we said, "That's a pretty long time.”
I then asked her if she knew some of the other ex-pats on the island and of course, she did.
She asked where we were from, "California."
We asked her, "South Florida. But I ain't been back in the states since 1974 and except for a year every now and then when I come to Thailand to do a little business to make some money, I've stayed in India the whole time."
Twenty years in India, this really impressed us. She asked us if we'd ever been there.
"Yeah." we answered, "On and off for the last 15 years."
Then we all talked about the places we had been and some of the more interesting people we had met, a few of whom Kelly and I and Wendy all knew.
Wendy's story was unlike any other ex-pat stories we'd ever heard. Most of them either had some kind of cash coming in from their respective countries. A few of them working only enough to make some extra bucks or just to socialize. Or they married a foreign national and lived life overseas working at a job their spouses knew about or provided so they could support themselves and their families. But Wendy had been a temple rat for 20 years in India. An unbelievable feat!
Most westerners who try it don't last more than a couple months to a year at the most. A temple rat is a white Sadhu. These people own nothing other than the clothes on their backs and whatever they can stuff into a large shoulder bag, then they wander throughout India going from temple to temple. All temple in India are open 24 hours a day, every day and with the exceptions of a few who don't admit non-Hindus, anyone can live in the temples for free as long as they like. Most of the temples will even feed you twice a day and all you need is your begging bowl. Wendy told us that in all her years in India, she and with her on again, off again Italian boyfriend Guseppi, had walked around a lot of it including a walk down the west coast from Goa to India’s southern tip. A journey of over a thousand miles that took them almost a year. She and Guseppi never worked in India except for scoring dope for the tourist. They simply lived off the temples and the kindness of the Indian people. Their main reason for being in India was simple; cheap plentiful potent dope and an extremely easy going lifestyle.
Whenever they did want some money either Wendy or Guseppi would fly to Thailand with some essential oils and hash to sell to the tourist. Which was what she was doing now. Besides the hash she had the oils to sell but Kelly and I weren’t interested. They didn’t get you high and we smelled good enough already.
She told us she could also get us grass, acid and mushrooms.
We already had a grass/shroom connection so I thanked her then said, "Just the hash for now."
After that Wendy came over almost every afternoon. We'd supply the weed and she'd supply the hash then we'd all sit around getting high and telling each other amazing doper adventure tales. A pleasant way to while away a few months in Paradise.
Wendy told us that once she and Guseppi had spent six months on a houseboat on Lake Dal in Srinagar smoking hash. They never once left the boat until they had run out of cash. All their needs were taken care of by the boat people. And the hash was that good!
After a couple months Kelly and my visa’s were up so we had to go to Penang in Malaysia to get new ones. Wendy told us that she never worried about such formalities. She'd just stay in country as long as she wanted. Then either, using her old well worn passport she'd make herself a “valid” visa stamp, smudging it a bit, or she’d throw away her old passport with the expired visa stamp in it then get a clean new one from the US embassy telling them she'd lost the old one. She told us that she'd never had any problems.
On the way back from Penang I found $600 in travelers checks in the seat of the mini-van we were riding in. I asked the other passenger if any one had lost them but every one said no, so I pocketed them.
When we got back to the island I told Wendy what I had found. That night she brought a guy over to our bungalow. After he looked at the checks he said he'd give me 2500 Baht ($100) for them. Since the checks were worthless to me this sounded pretty good but I saw Wendy shaking her head no. I told the dude that I’d think about it.
After he left, Wendy told me the guy was trying to rip me off. If I gave the checks to her, she would give me 4000 Baht.
I gave her the checks.
The next day she went to the stationary store for supplies which she used to make a new ID sheet for her passport with the new name and signature on it. "But Wendy" I said, "it's a guys name."
She told me, "The clerks who cash these are all overworked and underpaid, and they know very little English. Their job is to cash checks so that's what they do, and since it don't come out of their pocket they don't give a shit anyway."
A week later she handed me 4000 Baht and told me that about $100 went for expenses. After paying me, she had made over $300 in Baht for herself. A good deal all around.
One night after Kelly and I’d been there for almost five months and were about to leave, Wendy came over with a packet of pot. She told us that it was Cambodian and was suppose to be killer. I rolled up a couple numbers and we commenced to smoking. Twenty minutes later we were all very quiet and very high when Wendy croaked, "Hey Tai, did we smoke both them joints yet?"
"Nooo." I hissed, "We only smoked half of the first one."
Wendy looked at me through silted eyes, stroked her chin then whispered, "Man, this is some really good shit."
It was so good that I told her I'd buy all she could get.
She nodded.
Next day she came over with just 4 five gram packets for $4 each telling us that was all she could score because her supplier had smoked some and had decided it was so good that he was keeping the rest, a half kilo, for himself. She told us she knew of another guy who had twelve packets of it and that he'd sell them, but she didn't like him so we'd have to go and get them ourselves. We went, saw the dude and bought them all.
A couple weeks later Kelly and I said good bye to the beach and Wendy. We then traveled around India and Nepal for the next seven months. After a high old time on the subcontinent we went back to the island for a little R&R before returning to the good old USSR. There was Wendy still selling dope but not essentials oils. She had run out.
For extra cash she was now managing a restaurant for some absentees foreigners. We asked her how much longer she was staying. She told us that her 1993 visa had run out in November of the previous year so she would just change the “3” to a “5” then exit Thailand “legally” into Malaysia where the authorities didn't check too close. In a few more months she’d be back in India.
Once I asked her if she ever planned to return to the USA.
She looked at me as if I was crazy then said, "Hell no! Why would I ever go back to that Fascist rat race when I’m already in Paradise. In fact Tai, I think you and Kelly are nuts for ever going back when you got it all right here."
Right on Wendy. Right on!