The former barracks for US soldiers in Bangkok languish unused and neglected in a compound flanked by hotels and condominiums. Photo: Tibor Krausz

Tibor Krausz
Published: 11th Jan 2021

“I got off the plane and saw a Thai woman for the first time, and that was the end of the great China scholar I wanted to be,”

Barrett served as head of a local team for the Army Security Agency, the US military’s signals intelligence branch, as part of a top- secret surveillance operation during the Vietnam war (1955-1975). His task involved listening in on Chinese troops via antennas erected near Bangkok’s old international airport as Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) got under way.

Hastings, a native of London, wound up staying in Thailand the way many other long-term expats have done – by chance. A budding journalist working on Fleet Street, he set out that year with friends on an overland hippie trail from England to Australia. Thailand was meant to be a mere way station en route after sojourns in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

“Thailand was completely different from anything else I’d seen before,” recalls Hastings, 69, who publishes a long-running expat lifestyle magazine called The Big Chilli.

Foreigners with limited means lived on a shoestring and still felt spoiled. “You could get a bowl of noodles for three or five baht,” Hastings says. “A very nice breakfast cost US$1. A beer cost US$0.50.”

The most galling for him has been the loss of Washington Square, a time-worn entertainment venue popular with Vietnam war veterans that had bars with names including Texas Lone Star Saloon. It was closed down years ago and a luxury mall is rising in its stead, next to two other similar malls already there.

The vacant interiors of the old low-rises, which were revamped into love motels after the Americans left, are covered in grime. An eerie air of decay haunts them. The Thai caretaker, whom Barrett befriended in the 1960s, still lives here, but he is sickly and bedridden inside his gloomy home.

full.https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-l ... -rise-laid

Living in Bangkok now, I still think it's a low-cost paradise, albeit a high-pollution one.

But of course the low-cost part is highly subjective. Especially for retired expats, the exchange rates and rising cost of living have been hell.

Maybe not a Chinese scholar, but obviously a serious literary man nevertheless

The Go Go Dancer Who Stole My Viagra and Other Poetic Tragedies of Thailand,
Dean Barrett, Village EastBooks, 2005,

The main section of the book, Poems on Thailand, includes "Lek, the Farmer's Dark-eyed Daughter", "The Silly Old Man with the young Thai Girl in the Texas Lone Star Saloon", "Noy of the Horny Toad"

Nice read. I've read and enjoyed quite a few of Dean Barrett's books and also Jake Needham's, pretty sure I've still got them all packed in my old book container on the balcony, might be a good time to revisit them.