Bangkok Hard Time by Jon Cole Read Free Book Online Page B

heard of. I was not going to give them one of the twenty-dollar bills Dad had given me for my trip. I told them to wait a minute and that I had something better than spare change. Before I checked my bags at the counter, I opened one suitcase and removed a pack of Falling Rain cigarettes from the unopened carton. I then checked my bags in and received my boarding pass for my flight leaving in an hour or so.
    The hippies followed me outside to the top level parking deck. From there, you could see the lights of San Francisco in the distance. I opened the pack and told them it was ganja as I handed a filtered menthol cigarette to each of them and lit one for myself. From the quizzical look on their faces, it occurred to me that they did not know that word. “It’s reefer,” I elaborated. The air that before had smelled acridly foreign now smelled like Thailand for a few moments as the smoke wafted up.
    One of the dudes smelled his cigarette and made a scrunched-up face. “What is this? You said that you had some pot,” he whined.
    I said, “Just light it up.”
    The whole scene soon became reminiscent of years before on the roof of the Grace Hotel, only without the Thai music. They each lit their cigarettes and started puffing away. The dude who questioned what I had handed him coughed after a few puffs and said, “Yuck … this reefer has tobacco in it.” That was the last peep I heard out of any of them. Minutes later, after I had finished my smoke, I recognized their silent slack-jawed demeanor. Their cigarettes had gone out and they each had stupefied stares on their faces. I left them standing there, well knowing how they felt.
    Back inside the terminal, I was thirsty and needed change for a twenty. I’ve often thought of how preposterous their recounting of this story later would sound to other hippies: meeting a really dorky-looking kid with short hair at the airport who, instead of spare change, gave them a filtered menthol-flavored cigarette from a package with Chinese looking writing on it … and then the spaced-out stupor that had followed their sampling the cigarettes. Some people surely would believe them since you can’t make up that kind of crazy story.

University Daze
    Attending Arkansas State University in the fall of 1968, I was trying to fit in and get with the higher education program. At the end of each day, I would return to my dorm room and take a ganja cigarette from my ever dwindling supply of Falling Rain. Upon firing one up, I would soon be wishing that I was back in Bangkok.
    Freshman year at ASU was boring even with the pretense of attempting to enjoy college/party life. In spite of not really trying and being stoned half the time, my grades were above average, particularly my English classes.
    I believe I had Mrs Saluga, my 12 th grade English teacher at the International School Bangkok, to thank for that. She had been so engaging that I always wanted to hear what she was saying. I never imagined the admiration was mutual, since it often felt as if I surely incurred her displeasure somehow. But the passing grades she gave me in her classes proved that she was satisfied with my scholastic qualities, if not my moral character.
    In the basement of our dormitory was an exercise room where I met another freshman student practicing a Karate kata. After an introductory conversation, he invited me to accompany him to classes at the Kang Rhee Tae-Kwon-Do dojo in Memphis, Tennessee. The trip from Jonesboro, Arkansas to Memphis was only about one hour. Once there, a surreal coincidence transpired.
    After filling out a contract for a once-a-week training session with no idea of how I was going to pay for it, I met Master Kang Rhee. During the introduction, I presented my martial arts ID card that my Karate teacher in Bangkok had given me, showing that I was a brown belt in his school. I then said that I would be happy to begin my training under him as a white belt. The reaction to this was