Interviews with the Author

www.stickmanbangkok.com,   24 June 2007

So when did you first come to Thailand?

In the late seventies.

Why?

I was living in Hong Kong and then Singapore and we came for family holidays.

Family holidays?

Yes, with my English wife and children.

How was Thailand back then?

In many ways it was exactly the same. Bangkok had serious traffic, pollution, pretty girls… Patpong and Pattaya were totally wild. Since then Bangkok has got taller, the skirts have got longer and the countryside is perhaps more developed. The towns are now much bigger and brasher, but the more it changes the more it stays the same.

You’re married to a Thai woman now?

Yes.

How long have you been married?

Four years, though we’ve been together longer.

And you moved here because of her?

Not exactly. On taking early retirement, I started spending winters in Thailand and as I was single, after a time the inevitable happened. With a Thai girlfriend, suddenly I wasn’t an outsider any more. I had a family and a home and so I settled.

So the reason you will be known amongst my readers is because of your novel, THAI GIRL. Do you wanna tell me a bit about it? I am embarrassed to say that I personally have not read it yet!

When I was first retired, coming back to SE Asia was a natural move. I hate English winters so I found myself travelling around Thailand and the rest of South East Asia as a backpacker, revisiting old haunts. More and more I gravitated towards Thailand, my companion a notebook in which I recorded my experiences and impressions. I’ve been a writer all of my life, my subject being rather dry, namely academic law. I always wanted to write something with a better storyline and I found I’d collected so much rich material that I wanted to stitch it together into a story. As Thailand’s the subject, a love story was inevitable.
I didn’t want to write yet another one about bargirls so I wrote what’s perhaps a literary first, namely the story of the Thai woman who says no to a plausible passing farang. It’s about a young Englishman, Ben and his friendship with a beach masseuse called Fon and how he learns about himself and Thailand through a roller coaster relationship with his Asian dream. If you look at my Readers Forum on www.thaigirl2004.com, I’m sure you’ll be persuaded to read it!

So, the book has no hookers and no sexpats?

There’s both hookers and sexpats in it. The story’s about the reaction of Western travellers to Thailand and of course one of the things that fascinates them is the nightlife. What’s the fabled ‘Thai girl’ really all about? So like everyone else Ben visits the bars in Bangkok and talks at length on the beach to his traveller friends about Thai girls. He also meets Jack Russell, the thinking man’s sex tourist, who takes him on an educational tour of the Sukhumvit bar scene and from Jack, Ben learns all about sex for sale in Thailand.
So to that extent, there are hookers and sexpats… but you’ll have to decide whether Ben becomes personally involved or not when you read the book.

So, what’s your opinion on the whole hooker scene here in Thailand?

What a question! Opinion, thoughts, feelings? Maybe they’re all different. The nightlife in Bangkok is intoxicating for any normal person but it’s so in your face, it’s a bit freakish. What can one say? The problems for the women and for Thai society are enormous, ranging from cross border trafficking, public health issues, problems of illegality and corruption, exploitation of underage girls. You name it, every social problem comes with mass prostitution, whether it caters to Thai men or to farang.
There’s also an immense problem for Thailand and its reputation. I feel this myself whenever I tell them back home I’m married to a Thai woman. That’s partly why I called the book “Thai Girl” because in part it considers the nature of Thai womanhood. What do the words,‘Thai girl’ mean on the international stage? Sadly Thailand has become associated with cheap and easy women. This reputation is partly earned but it’s also a tragic reflection, considering the delightful modesty for which most Thai women are known.

You live in Surin, don’t you?

Yes.

Tell me about life in Surin!

My wife and I have built a house in her family’s village where most of the neighbours are related to her in some way or another. Rice farming is the primary occupation but of course it’s not enough to sustain people and families are broken up as the young and healthy migrate to find work elsewhere. It’s a sleepy place for me, having lived in Hong Kong, Singapore and London but I still find it fascinating because every day I learn something new about a rural society which so epitomises the real Thailand.

How do you keep busy up there? Or should I ask ‘Do you keep busy?’

Yes, I keep very busy! Cat, my wife, is a dynamo and has something planned for us everyday. Some of her family live with us in the house and the usual process of living together in a large family keeps us thoroughly engaged. You know… shopping, eating, cooking, doing the garden and farming make the day very full. And of course I write.

And do you know many other Westerners up in that part of the country?

There are a few. We have one particular friend in the local town and we spend a lot of time together. Another Brit is about 40 km down the road, but otherwise I have no contact with other farang.

Any particular reason for that?

Close by there are very few farang. In Surin town which is 40 minutes away there’s quite a number but I’m not sure I always have much in common with them. They can be found at the farang pub drinking beer, and while some are fully involved with their families and local life, for those that have little interest in what’s going on around them, it must be a pretty dismal exile.

Going back to your book, has it sold well?

Yes, it’s sold extremely well. There are 15,000 copies in print and it’s been republished in Singapore by Monsoon Books, a very successful small publisher. (www.monsoonbooks.com.sg) As a result the “Thai Girl”s now available on Amazon and in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and most places in S.E. Asia where you’ll find an English language bookshop. There’s also a distributor in the USA.

Was this book a one off?

It was certainly a first because I’ve not written fiction before. It’s been a very enjoyable experience so I’d like to write another. First of all though, I’m writing the story of my life with Cat in Isaan which I hope to publish and call “My Thai And I”. I’ve written the first draft but the trouble is I’ve got so much material it’s difficult to cut it down and knock it into shape.

There are a lot of books written by Westerners living in Thailand now. Do you read many of them?

No. Almost deliberately I avoid them, partly because I’m a little skeptical and also because I don’t want to be influenced by them. If anybody accuses me of copying others, I can deny it.

Now, you have written some submissions for this website. Do you read the readers’ submissions on this site or much else online relating to Thailand.

I haven’t read much online because small town internet cafes are hot and noisy but I’ve just recently got satellite internet and I now very much enjoy your Readers’ Submissions. It’s one of the best collections of writing about Thailand that I’ve come across.

There’s a feeling amongst many Westerners that Thailand is changing, and not necessarily for the better. What do you make of that?

I don’t have that sense myself, partly because I’m reasonably secure with an annual retirement visa. From my own perspective of several decades in Asia, there are ripples on the pond from time to time, but as I said before, the more things change, the more they stay the same. People shouldn’t be too paranoid and must adapt to what’s happening around them. In life things are always in flux and there are challenges to face wherever you are. People say exactly the same of England. “I can’t live there any more… it’s all gone wrong!” they say. Then they come to Thailand.

So what do you miss most about England?

When I’m away I can honestly say I don’t miss anything much, except my adult children. I think I’ve a capacity for focusing on and enjoying the place I’m in at the moment. Perhaps most of all I do miss quality English newspapers but now that I have the Internet I can get what I want online.

You’ve got satellite internet up there? How does that work?

To begin with, it didn’t work at all! It was a total nightmare! Constantly I was pushing Cat to phone TOT to come out and get it working and it took about two months for it to function adequately. The technicians kept coming out and saying it was fine and then fiddling with it, but finally it’s a great link with the outside world.

So you have a satellite dish on your property?

There’s a massive dish beside the house.

And what does it cost?

The monthly subscription is 2,200 baht plus VAT. You can choose the speed you want for the price. At first we had the cheaper speed but it was too slow so we upgraded to a higher speed. It’s not fast but it’s enough. I could pay more for more speed but I really don’t need to. Time’s not a big issue!

So that’s the only option for the internet?

For me yes, because there are no telephone lines in our village.

So, why not live in Bangkok, Khun Hicks?

Because there’s nothing to keep us in Bangkok. No family, no job, no commitments. Bangkok’s a great city to visit but less good to be stuck in, so a home in the country and an opportunity to come to town is probably the best of all worlds. We have a cheap room in Sukhumvit Soi 71, a nice group of friends there and access to great Isaan food whenever we want it.

One column on this site from the past caused something of an uproar. It was suggested by the writer that he would be much happier if he avoided poor people in Thailand, yet it sounds like you do the complete opposite. Care to comment?

I have an active conscience and I do find beggars deeply disturbing. Cat and I have just passed some beggars on the overpass by the MRT… women begging with children. Cat told me that children are abducted to be used like that. Otherwise I have no problem being around poor people. Glossy shopping malls like Siam Paragon make me more uncomfortable.
In the village, although they have no money at all, I don’t feel they’re poor as such. If they still have their extended family and their rural traditions, they have something that city people have lost. Urban poverty is much more discomforting, though first generation migrants to Bangkok often retain something of their rural warmth and dignity.
In our soi in Bangkok we’re surrounded by poor migrants from Isaan and through Cat I’ve made many good friends. Yesterday when we went back to our room after several months away, we were greeted as long lost friends. These are poor people but I feel at ease with them and we’ve never had any bad experiences. I think it’s when urban poverty is several generations old that it gets more difficult and I do wonder about the future.

So, to Thailand’s future. As a former law professor, how optimistic, or otherwise, are you?

I am by nature an optimist. As to politics, only time will tell. It takes many generations for institutions and democracy to mature in a young nation state such as this. I see establishing the rule of law as the key to nation building and I’m happy that the current interim government has made this a central aim of its administration.
Urbanization in Thailand, particularly in Bangkok, is a nightmare though and I cannot foresee a very positive future for the big cities. Nonetheless the Thais seem remarkably good at preserving the very best of their own personal qualities and traditions despite urbanization. I only hope that institutions such as the extended family and the positive influence of Buddhism can endure to save Thailand from becoming just like everywhere else.

www.english.ohmynews 7 January 2007

Author Finds Happiness With His Own 'Thai Girl'
[Interview] Andrew Hicks, expat and author

Peter Hinchliffe (Hinchy)

In Andrew Hicks' bestselling novel "Thai Girl," a young Englishman comes face to face with the reality of life in Asia.

Ben and his girlfriend, recently graduated from university, decide to go traveling before facing the stern demands of the world of work -- and where better to go to than to Thailand.

Their relationship becomes strained when Ben shows too great an interest in the girls in the go-go bars in Bangkok. Emma decides to leave Ben and goes traveling alone, leaving him to his own devices.

The novel lifts the lid on commercial sex, which sadly is the first thing many Westerners think of when Thailand is mentioned. Ben learns why many girls from the poor rice farming regions of Thailand sell themselves to Western men. Despite his growing understanding of the compelling reasons, he continues to be appalled by the idea of money for sex.

On the island of Koh Samet in the Gulf of Thailand he meets and falls in love with, Fon, an attractive and vivacious Thai girl who works as a masseuse on the beach. For the remainder of the story, the reader travels on with Ben to discover the outcome of his unrequited passion for Fon.

"Thai Girl" is by no means a salacious novel but a touching and engaging love story which entertains, and at the same time brings a greater understanding of and sympathy for a wonderful country.

Andrew Hicks and his wife Cat
©2007 Andrew Hicks

OhmyNews: Andrew, I understand you first visited Thailand in the 1970s?

Yes, I enjoyed many family holidays here with my English wife and children when we were living in Hong Kong and Singapore.

When did you decide to write "Thai Girl" and did you travel around gathering material for the book?

On taking early retirement from my university in the West of England, it was only natural to return to Thailand. I became a backpacker again and revisited all my old haunts in South East Asia, spending more and more time in Thailand.

As I was always alone, my only companion a large writer's note book, I carefully recorded all my thoughts and impressions of people and places. Soon I had a huge resource of material, mainly about how backpackers relate to what they experience in Thailand.

I'd always wanted to write something with a better story line than company law and now was my big chance, so I took it. I enjoyed every moment writing "Thai Girl," but I never really expected to get it published, let alone see it become a bestseller.

You are somewhat older than the characters you write about. Do you sympathize with Ben? See something of yourself in him?

Yes, I'm now almost three times the age of my protagonist, Ben, but once I too was 22 and wet around the ears just like him and I haven't forgotten it. It's part of the male predicament to fall hopelessly for a woman who won't have you or who, for Romeo and Juliet, reasons isn't available... and yes, of course I sympathize with him. Don't you, Peter?

His naivete may be a bit irritating but on my Readers Forum on www.thaigirl2004.com you'll find any number of messages from men who've got ensnared by their Asian dream and who tell me their traumatic experiences were exactly the same as Ben's.

As for me, I'm hopelessly romantic, eternally naive and incorrigibly immature just like him. Dare I say, if there's some emotional fizz in the story, that's maybe how it got there!

Tell us a little bit about yourself. You were a lawyer? And you've worked in various countries around the world?

Yes, I started out as a corporate lawyer with a firm in Lincoln's Inn Fields in London... the senior partner had Gainsborough portraits in his office and there was a knighthood at the end of it for him as the very best of all aristocratic families were our clients. But after a few years chained to a desk, I sloughed off my pinstripes and landed up in Northern Nigeria where I became a university lecturer for the first time, living in a traditional mud house with a staff of three and a couple of horses in the compound.

After that I lectured at the University of Hong Kong for seven years... my two children were made in Hong Kong. Next stop was The National University of Singapore and when the kids were reaching secondary school age we returned to the UK, where I was at the University of Exeter for 10 years. Finally, having a low boredom threshold, early retirement was, like a log floating on the ocean, an opportunity eagerly to be grasped.

And now you live in Thailand with your very own Thai girl? Tell us about Cat, and about the area in which you live.

Yes, Cat's my wife of four very full and enjoyable years. She's quite a bit younger than me, though the age gap isn't as wide as between me and Ben. Somehow people here don't seem to notice it very much... mature foreign men are really quite sought after, especially if the bulge in their trousers is a well-stocked wallet. And why not, say I! After all, a good marriage is an age old way to escape being poor... Jane Austen even wrote novels about it.

Cat's just amazing, a dark skinned little dynamo who springs out of bed every morning and spends the day burning off energy on one project or another... building, farming, cooking, organizing people and being generally bossy, despite her diminutive size. It's so stimulating always to be with her and sharing the life force she exudes. It won't come across in a photo... you'd have to meet her to understand what I mean.

We've built a house in her village which is in the traditional rice growing lands in the North East about eight hours from Bangkok. Now it's the monsoon season and everything's a lush emerald green, but towards the end of the year the rain stops for six or seven months and we gasp in the pitiless heat and dust.

Agriculture no longer sustains life here and so the middle generation leaves home to find work elsewhere. It's terribly sad that there's so little opportunity for people to better themselves in the countryside. One of the few ways out for a young woman is to sell herself in the bars of Bangkok and that terrible truth is at the heart of my novel. It's a reality that Ben confronts through his friendship with Fon when he visits her home village and sees foe himself the harsh realities of a declining rural way of life.

What do you like best about life in Thailand? And what frustrates you the most?

It's a cliche to say it, but it's the Thai people I like best. Thailand's not the most beautiful country in this region by any means but the softness of the people, their gentleness, does give it something special.

But therein lie some of the frustrations too. Thai culture and its version of Buddhism means it's unacceptable to question or to confront anyone, especially those in authority, which produces a low standard of accountability and competence in just about everything they do. The police stop your car for speeding and with great charm take some money off you and put it in their pocket. When, as often, things don't work... like my satellite internet which was down for months, they're quite miffed when you complain. You just have to pay up and shut up.

And for me, the problem's compounded by the fact that I'm an illiterate, totally unable to read or write Thai. If I want to do any pushing I have to do it through Cat and she's hugely reluctant to phone and complain, which of course can cause big tensions between the two of us. Whenever there's a cock up, as there often is, it can be truly, madly, mega frustrating!

Do you get annoyed with Western men who see your adopted land as a mere sexual pleasure palace?

Of course I do, but it's much more than that. At one point in "Thai Girl" Ben comments that the Thais are so nice, it's all too easy to exploit them... and of course I agree with him. I'm uncomfortable in general about tourists trampling over Thailand and treating it as a cheap adventure playground without ever seeing what's going on beneath the surface. If 'Thai Girl' has any broad themes, perhaps this is the broadest one.

Then I have to ask myself, who's worse, the foreign men or the Thais who run the massage parlors and who sell their daughters? Thailand's a pretty harsh and pitiless place if you're poor, but yes, it does turn my stomach when I see a grotesque sex tourist entwined shamelessly around a slim little Thai girl.

Though as an old bloke with a young Thai wife myself, where does that leave me? Fortunately I didn't meet Cat in a bar or any such place and we do have a very real friendship. Although ours may seem to be an unequal relationship, in many ways we offer each other exactly the same thing... a totally new life. And I hope that justifies us being together.

In your entertaining blog, you present yourself as a man who has signed up for an exciting learning adventure. Is that a fair description of your new life in the East?

I hope it's more than just an adventure. The business of living from day to day, as everywhere can be a grind, and I'm not exempt from the usual personal set backs in domestic life. The blog is of course intended to be upbeat and funny and I hope I'm not really as stupid as I sometimes make myself out to be, unable to learn anything new!

But then I suppose the whole of life's an adventure and mine has certainly been so... regal legal London, then my years in Africa, 12 in the Far East, followed by a beautiful Georgian home in the English West Country... and now Thailand! And of course there's always more to be learned about life however wrinkly you are.

Can you now speak and read Thai? Is it a difficult language to learn?

I don't even aspire to read it, though I can get by chatting with the neighbors. The trouble is that they too hardly speak Thai... their first language is Lao or Suay and occasionally Khmen. As Cat and her family can always outflank me by dipping into their babel of languages, I'll always be at a strategic disadvantage!

The structure of Thai is relatively simple though. Tellingly it has no tenses and no word for "no"... and it's got remarkably few words, which makes for a big, big problem. The few words it does have are often given several meanings just by saying them differently. By changing combinations of tone and vowel length, khao, for example, can mean mountain, they, news, knee, rice, enter or white. It's hellish and you can make some really embarrassing mistakes!

"Thai Girl" has been very successful, reaching number two in the Singapore best-seller list, only beaten to the top spot by Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code." It informs Westerners about aspects of Thailand they might not otherwise discover for themselves, but are Thai people also reading it?

Few Thais seem to read novels, especially in English, but I've had several write to me to say they'd read it. Other than this, I have little to go on.

The Thailand of city and countryside are worlds apart and one middle aged Thai who'd hardly ever left Bangkok told me the book opened several new perspectives for him about rural poverty. I was quite surprised.

You have written other books in a somewhat different vein?

You must be thinking of my acclaimed, "Nigerian Law of Hire Purchase" or perhaps "The Company Law of Singapore." I haven't quite stopped writing law and a sixth edition of "Hicks and Goo" on English company law is to be published by Oxford University Press very soon. Yes, company law is of a different vein, and it's pretty bloodless!

And what of future books?

I'm now writing a book, whenever Cat and my blog permit, about our life together here in the far rice fields of Thailand. I plan to call it, "My Thai and I," and it won't be too difficult for you to guess who my Thai is! The trouble is, I've just got so much material, I don't know where to stop!

www.whatismatt.com November 2006

Quickfire questions… and some answers to a Bangkok journalist with GURU magazine.

Name: Andrew Hicks

Age: A sexagenarian in a month or two!

Birthplace: Rural England

Current residence: Our home in a small rice growing village in Surin province

Favourite book, and why: ‘The Quiet American’ by Graham Greene. He’s a great story teller with such nuance, and his depiction of the intrusion of foreign powers into the affairs of a small nation disturbs me every time I re-read it. The older man’s passion for Phuong, his lovely young Vietnamese girlfriend is also particularly meaningful for me.

Describe your writing in three words: My greatest joy!

Writer you most look up to: Bjorn Turmann. He's six foot seven tall!
More seriously, I greatly admire Paul Scott who wrote about colonial India and Malaysia a while back. Do you remember ‘The Raj Quartet’ which was so brilliantly filmed for British telly? Also ‘Staying On’, a story about an elderly colonial couple who stayed in India after independence, which won him the Booker Prize. He writes with such style, holding your attention and keeping you entranced, and he’s brilliant at depicting the predicament of Europeans living in an Eastern culture which has lessons for me writing of the farang in Thailand.


Regular questions…

Where are you at the moment, and what have you been doing recently?

I’m writing this on my laptop looking out at the mango and palm trees on our land, with the brown rice fields beyond. This Surin village of more than a thousand people is a tiny island adrift in an ocean of rice paddies and I’m the one and only resident farang. I live here with my wife, Cat and her Mama and five other family members and so our house is always full of life and noise. There are many good moments, like when the kids come up to me with shining morning face, give me a little bob and a wai and say, ‘Khun Andrew, go school!’ That sort of thing melts my heart.
Cat just loves this dusty little place where she grew up. She loves the farming life and her family community here and I really like her for that too. A traditional rural society has a lot going for it, though so few people value it now.
I’ve got an antique bullock cart in the living room, something the local kids have never seen before. I drive a thirty year old jeep, have many dogs and chickens and my life is very full and rich. People find it hard to believe when I tell them it’s difficult to find much time for writing but it’s true.



What do you have planned for the coming weeks?

I’ve got a deadline to produce a new edition of a law book for Oxford University Press. (Try Googling ‘hicks and goo company law’! Kino in Paragon told me they’d sold out all their copies!). I’m just about to have satellite internet installed in the house, a bizarre modern miracle, while next door they’re still making charcoal and yaa kah grass roof panels and selling betel nuts and mulberry leaves to just about survive. The contrasts here can be almost shocking.
We’re planning a trip to Khao Phra Viharn, the superb Khmer temple just over the Si Saket border in Cambodia and also to visit my publisher in Singapore, where ‘Thai Girl’ has been second on the bestseller list to ‘The Da Vinci Code’.



What made you decide to become a writer, and what drives you today to continue to write? Are you working on a novel at the moment?

Writing law books as a university academic, I’ve always been a writer of sorts, though ‘The Nigerian Law of Hire Purchase’ and ‘The Company Law of Malaysia’ don’t have very good story lines. I thus always wanted to write something with more soul and early retirement gave me the opportunity. I enjoyed writing ‘Thai Girl’ so much that now I’m just a pleasure seeker driven to write some more.

What I’m writing at the moment is quite novel, though in fact it’s non-fiction. I’m writing ‘My Thai Girl and I’, the story of how I met Cat and how we came to set up home together here in our village in Isaan. The narrative of life in rural Thailand also gives me the opportunity to digress on things like rice farming, the decline of agriculture and migration to the cities, all of which the characters in ‘Thai Girl’ discuss on the beach over a glass of Sang Som and a spliff. In ‘Thai Girl’ they’re just tossing ideas around, but now I have the chance to say something more considered, wrapped in what I hope is an entertaining personal memoir. Soon ‘My Thai and I’ should be looking for a publisher.

For someone who may not have any idea of the logistics involved, how do you go about writing a book? What is the process?

I suppose the process is in essence research, planning, writing and rewriting. (And then shoving it in a drawer!) Few of us live in an ideal world, so you’ll probably have to work at odd moments when time is available. This breaks up your flow but it also helps you to step back and be more objective about what you’ve already written. Re-writing may then be the biggest job of all.

In writing ‘Thai Girl’, the research phase meant chilling out in Thailand, indulging my love affair with the country, traveling widely, meeting people, soaking up as many experiences as possible and, most essentially, recording them daily in my notebooks. Every interesting character and amusing story, every funny moment, impressions and descriptions of places were all precious ore that I could later mine when I ultimately wrote the novel. I’d finally collected so many gems that I now needed a good story to set them in. Almost inevitably it was going to be something about a westerner discovering Thailand… and why not with a little romance! It had to be distinctive and different, so it could not be yet another bar girl story. To make it a literary first, I thus decided on the story of a young English lad who falls hopelessly for a sweet and smiley ‘Thai girl’, but is then resolutely turned down by her. ‘Mai ao farang’, says the lovely Fon, much to Ben’s dismay.

I then typed up chapter outlines setting out the plot, showing where each character was to be introduced, and noting which passages of my notebooks could be used as material for the story at that point. Thus, almost everything in ‘Thai Girl’, such as descriptions, characters, incidents, places, dialogues and language are derived from direct observation. Yes, it’s real, all real! Could I possibly have made up the tales told by laddish traveller Darren on the beach at Koh Chang towards the end of the book? I’m almost three times his age for heaven’s sake!

To help create a distinctive voice for each character, I had to study the variety of language they might use. For Jack Russell, the thinking man’s sex tourist from Yorkshire, I found a Yorkshire dialect dictionary on the web and for Maca, the Aussie a useful ditionary of ‘Strine’. I made lists of the words and phrases I liked and ticked them off each time the character used them, to avoid undue repetition. For Fon, the ‘Thai girl’ who’s a beach masseuse on Koh Samet I closely studied the fractured English of guess who?... beach masseuses on Koh Samet. It was arduous but there was no other way!

I then wrote the book chapter by chapter, sticking to a set word length for each chapter so that the book did not become too long. I edited each chapter as I went along and finally printed out and bound up the book when I’d finished the first draft. After a bit of time away from it, I then started re-writing, deliberately trying to cut it back by about ten percent as a useful discipline to remove the verbiage. Then I printed it out again and re-wrote it, I don’t know how many times!

I worked on ‘Thai Girl’ over a period of about three years, and though it required a lot of effort and concentration, I enjoyed every single moment of it. Much of the time I regarded it as an exercise and it was only towards the end that I began to convince myself that the story really worked and to think of getting it published.

Writing a novel’s more perspiration than inspiration and it’s a massive undertaking, but I wouldn’t have missed ‘Thai Girl’ for anything.

Where do you see your strong points, and weak points, as a writer?

If I have any strong points, first, it’s my passion for Thailand, and secondly that as I’ve lived a long and full life, I’ve a load of experience to draw upon.

It also strikes me that many of the local novelists are lawyers like me; Christopher Moore, John Burdett, Jake Needham for example. Perhaps the precision we’re supposed to have with language gives us an edge over the accountants and computer nerds?

On the negative side, my early drafts are usually awful which makes completing a book a very slow process, though writing a first novel and finding a style is always going to take time.

What advice can you give to aspiring writers?

Don’t be too ambitious. Start by writing small stuff.

Flair and inspiration isn’t enough as writing is a craft and you’ve just got to learn it, eg writing dialogue. Kinokuniya has an excellent selection of books on writing skills.

Buy a book on English usage, editing or whatever and become meticulous on spelling, style, punctuation etc. If you fail to do this, you remain an amateur.

Stop if you’re not enjoying it as that’s the main purpose. Sharing what you’ve written with others just might come later.

Write about what you know and have a strong feel for.

Avoid autobiography (as I did!), though build on your experiences, eg things that might have happened to you in a particular context but didn’t.

An artist observes and makes sketches in the field and you must do the same with your notebooks, whenever you can. Committing stuff to memory will not work as it’s amazing how much you’ll forget.

Don’t be adjectivally retentive. New writers often tend to overwrite and use too many long words. Anyone can collect clever words from a thesaurus but what’s difficult is choosing a few good ones that really count (for which a thesaurus is brilliant).

Expect to spend a huge amount of time editing and re-writing. Watching your word counts, discipline yourself to cutting it down by ten percent or more each time. It’s amazing the rubbish you’ll find.

From where do you draw inspiration for your writing?

From Thailand and the Thai people! Need I say more. Also from a deep and enduring immaturity that constantly renews my love of life and all it throws at me.

Your most well known book in these parts is Thai Girl. Tell me a bit about this book, what you set out to achieve with it, how you went about doing this, and what difficulties you have faced along the way.

An easy poolside read, ‘Thai Girl’ is essentially a travel novel about Thailand, maybe even the only one yet published. (Alex Garland’s ‘The Beach’ is about a desert island which could be anywhere.) The story is about young British backpacker, Ben, who falls for a pretty beach masseuse on Koh Samet. It doesn’t go well for him but he’s undeterred in his passion for her when she proves to be a nice girl and repeatedly refuses to go with him. The reader then travels with Ben as he explores Thailand through his friendship with Fon, confronting issues such as the huge scale of commercial sex and why small poor farmers sell their daughters to the bars of Bangkok. Will Ben now get his girl or will his passion for her come to nothing?

It’s recently struck me that Fon is almost a Juliet to Ben’s Romeo in that ‘Thai Girl’ is a tale of star-crossed love between two people divided by their very different backgrounds and cultures. I also wanted it to be about the fascination we farang have for the Thais and which they sometimes have for us; about our mutual incompatibility and incomprehension when playing the game of love. I’m grateful therefore that one writer has called ‘Thai Girl’ ‘the definitive novel about relationships between Thais and foreigners’.

Readers writing to andrew@thaigirl2004.com to put their views on my Readers Forum on www.thaigirl2004.com seem to get very involved in the story. One tough Aussie told me face to face how he was at work one day reading the bit where Ben thinks Fon’s given him the push; he then had to go out to the toilet so his secretary couldn’t see how affected he was!

I guess that’s exactly what I wanted to achieve, flesh and blood characters that readers can identify with and really care about. I also admit I wanted the reader, especially tourists who are so royally treated here, to think a bit about Thailand. Who are the kids who serve them at table and clean their rooms? Where are they from and what are their lives like, and why do the prettiest ones end up gyrating round poles in Nana? These are some of the things Ben finds himself forced to think about on his travels. ‘How would it feel, pondered Ben, to be a father who through ill-fortune had so failed his family that his favourite daughter was now a feast for any foreign sex tourist.’ (At page 198.)

I thus wanted the casual reader to confront with Ben some of the darker sides of tourism in Thailand, set within the context of a light and readable story. This was no easy task as it’s a disaster if an author pushes his views too obviously. Whether these difficulties were overcome is now for you, the reader to judge.

How I went about doing it, I’ve already explained when describing the process of writing a novel. Essentially, “Thai Girl’ is based on my detailed observations of Thailand, as lovingly recorded in my spidery handwriting in a few tatty notebooks.

What is it about Bangkok and Thailand that has inspired you to write a book about these places? What do you like, or find intriguing, about the Land of Smiles, the people, the culture?

I fell in love with the Far East in the nineteen seventies, especially with Thailand, and I’ve found it hard to keep away ever since. I guess I’ve spent about seventeen years in the region which is inspiration enough. Like everyone, I have a love-hate relationship with Bangkok. While the contrasts between Klong Toey and Siam Paragon are stark and ugly, the city does have an extraordinary vibrancy and the spirit and resilience of ordinary people here is remarkable.

Cat and I have a room up the arse end of Sukhumvit 71, a dirt cheap, grey cube of hot concrete, hardly bigger than our bed, though the soi itself is magic and teems with life. It’s Isaan in the city, an ant hill of migrant workers, where every Lao food can be found, where motorbikes scream dangerously through dogs and push-carts and where busy markets spring up every evening on vacant sites strewn with rubbish. I love it too because these are all country people who have that special rural dignity and who’ll always give you the time of day with such charm and warmth. Recently I had to tell Cat there’d be no more of her favourite chickens’ feet as the chicken foot lady was going home the next day for the rice harvest. Everyone dreams of home, of saving up and going back permanently. It’s tough but they all bear it and keep grinning.

Needless to say it’s rural Thailand that’s my true love and Isaan is still perhaps the most undefiled of all the regions. I wouldn’t call it beautiful but again it’s the quality of the people that is special. Beautifully mannered, gentle and considerate, they are nature’s aristocrats and I love them, especially my own Thai family with whom I live here in the village. What amazes me is that even in the holiday resorts, these personal qualities have endured through several generations of tourism and coca-colonisation. While some of the neighbouring countries are more beautiful, there is often beneath the surface a hidden resentment of the foreigner and the smiles can quickly turn to aggression. In Thailand bad experiences are a rarity. As my character, Maca says, ‘I’m here for the Thai people and their gentleness.’

Two weeks ago, one of the kids had nicked the bamboo stick I poke in the fuel tank of my jeep and so I hadn’t checked the diesel. It was pitch dark and getting quite late when the engine shuddered to a halt and I came to a stop beside the road. A motorbike pulled up and asked me my problem. I thought I might be out of fuel but it was too dark to see. In no time at all he’d headed off several kilometers down the road and eventually came back with a plastic bag full of fuel on his handle bars. He then refused to take any sort of a tip. ‘Kon Thai jai dee,’ he said with a laugh, and I agree wholeheartedly with him. A few miles down the road I stopped and called Cat to tell her I was okay and suddenly there he was beside me again. He’d followed me several miles in the wrong direction just to make sure it really was only a fuel problem. Sometimes Thailand is truly amazing.

Any final message to your readers?

I’ve mentioned the Readers Forum on my website, www.thaigirl2004.com and, I kid thee not, it’s been one of the great joys of my life in the last year or two. Writing is a creative but sometimes solitary obsession, and even if you do get published, there’s generally very little critical feedback. I know what the ‘Thai Girl’ story means to me but it’s immensely gratifying to receive so many messages to the Forum which tell me how people respond to the book. Perhaps it says something nice about human nature, but their comments have invariably been complimentary and I’ve only just received the first one to find Ben’s passion for Fon unconvincing. (She said no man could possibly be as romantic as he was, perish the thought!)

I don’t care too much about selling books at my stage of life but I very much want to be read, so my final message is to say I hope you enjoy “Thai Girl” and do please email me at andrew@thaigirl2004.com to tell me what you think of the book. I can put your message on the Readers Forum or keep it private if you prefer.

The Bangkok Post

An edited version of this interview conducted by Yvonne Bohwongprasert was published in Horizons, the travel section of the Bangkok Post.

1)You have always been a traveler and have lived in
many parts of the world. What have you learned from
your travels around the world?

Yes, Yvonne, I’ve visited about a hundred countries in all. I’ve lived for three years among Muslims in West Africa, worked in Hong Kong and Singapore in the seventies and eighties and am now living in Thailand.
While I’m always fascinated by the enormous gulf that sometimes exists between peoples in terms of their beliefs and culture, I am more and more convinced that what we all have in common far outweighs these differences. We have a shared humanity that makes our experience of life, our needs and our longings almost identical. This is the one great truth that a lifetime’s traveling has taught me.

(2)You are now retired in Thailand living in a small
village in Surin. Tell us about your daily activities
and what was the most challenging aspect of the
adjustment period?

At first, when staying with my wife, Cat in her family home, many small things were difficult, like sitting on a concrete floor to eat fiery hot food, sleeping on the floor in the room upstairs and as the first resident farang, having nowhere to escape the stares and to be alone. Now we have built our own house, life’s much easier and I can have a little privacy. Some of the family now live with us though and the house is always humming with people. The daily business of living is totally absorbing and there’s always a project on hand whether it’s raising pigs or building a new cow shed. And of course I’m always writing stuff, mainly about our life together in the village, some of which is on my blog at www.thaigirl2004.blogspot.com.

(3)It has been said that your first novel, 'Thai Girl'
has developed 'a cult following among travellers'.
How did you first come to write it and what was your
inspiration for it?

When I took early retirement from my university career, it was only natural to come back to the Far East where I’d spent many years. I became a backpacker again, visiting old haunts, meeting and mixing with both locals and travelers. As I was alone, my only companion a set of notebooks, I collected my thoughts and impressions of people and places and soon I had so much material, I just had to write a novel.
Most of all I am inspired by Thailand and its people which of course was what my story had to be about. After decades of traveling, I was also deeply immersed in backpacker culture, so portraying the country from their viewpoint was a possible winner. If I’ve now hit the spot and found a cult following for my story among travelers, then I’m more than thrilled.

(4)'Thai Girl' is essentially a love story between
Ben, a young Englishman and Fon, a beach masseuse on
Koh Samet. Is there a cultural message behind this
well exhausted theme?

Ever since “Romeo and Juliet”, stories of love and longing and loss across unbridgeable cultural divides have had their fair share of attention, with many such stories set in Thailand. “Thai Girl” is, I think, a literary first though, as Fon, the eponymous ‘Thai girl’, is not to be easily won and steadfastly refuses the advances of Ben, a young British backpacker. The story follows him on his roller coaster ride through Thailand as he courts the serious-minded but flirtatious Fon, at first with very little success.
As to any cultural messages, the book must speak for itself, though I’ll say two things. First, I hoped it would provoke thought about social conditions in Thailand and about what harsh realities might lie behind the smiles. Secondly, I wanted Fon as a decent, hard working but modern woman to break the dreary stereotype of the Thai hooker that appears in so many local novels. Not all stories set in Thailand have to be about bar girls!

(5)You claim that "Thai Girl' is the only true travel
novel about Thailand. Can you substantiate this?

By a ‘travel novel’, I mean one that makes the unique idiosyncracies of it’s setting the essential focus of the story. It is about that place and that place only.
To answer your question, one thinks immediately of the novel, “The Beach”, written by Alex Garland when he was living in the Philippines, but it concerns a community of travelers on an island that could be anywhere in the world and is not about Thailand at all.
Yes, there are a few travel novels that do touch on Thailand in passing and there are lots of novels set here about the seedy underworld of crime and commercial sex, but is there another broadly based travel novel solely about Thailand other than “Thai Girl”? If so, I haven’t seen it.

(6)Your story is set mainly on Koh Samet and Koh
Chang. Why these places and what do they mean to you?

Ben meets Fon on Koh Samet and when she tells him to push off and get out of her life, he follows his friends to Koh Chang. Why there? Well, it’s because I’d spent so much time on both islands and had happily filled so many notebooks there.

I particularly like these islands because they’re less developed than say Samui or Phuket. I’d infinitely rather look out on a beach from a three hundred baht beach hut than from a three thousand baht room in a tower block. I suppose I’m an incurable backpacker and I love islands such as these for whatever remains of their naïve innocence.

(7)In the story, Ben stayed on Koh Chang over five
years ago, and he and his friends predict an
environmental disaster for the island. Were they
correct in fearing this?

Yes, they were absolutely right. Five years ago when the road down the west of the island was being constructed, each village and settlement was separate and identifiable. Now it’s all one continuous semi-urban sprawl with some decent buildings here and there, but in between the usual chaotic mess. The interior of the island is scheduled as a National Park which is actively protected, but the old settled areas and plantations are up for grabs, and money as always talks very loudly indeed. It’s all changing too fast for my liking and while the policy of developing the island for higher-end tourism has some merit, this only works if informal development can be controlled. We all know it can’t be and if there’s a fast tourist buck to be made, they’ll throw up shops and shacks and shanties like there’s no tomorrow. Thus, there’s the makings of an environmental disaster.

(8)The book has been described as 'the definitive
novel about relations between Thais and foreigners'.
(www.phuket-info.com.) Would you make this claim for
your book?

Absolutely not, but if some guy I’ve never met makes the claim for me, who am I to argue! Interestingly many of the messages on the Readers Forum on my website, www.thaigirl2004.com are from love-lorn foreign males who tell me the book taught them something about their own romantic experiences in Thailand. I admit to being a bit surprised about this as I’d never thought of the book in that way before.

(9)You first came to Thailand as a visitor thirty
years ago. How has this country changed in that time
in terms of tourism?

Surprisingly I feel it’s changed very little as there’s still masses of small businesses offering travel agencies, transport and accommodation for much the same attractions as I saw thirty years ago. This local scale can be part of the charm but there’s a risk of amateurism and poor development of new products.

I think Thailand’s lucky its tourism hasn’t suffered any political shocks as in Indonesia and has remained fashionable despite becoming a volume market. There will be increasing competition from its neighbours and when political change eventually comes, Burma for example will not be the least of them.

(10)Where have you been in Thailand and what are your
favourite places?

Over the last thirty years I’ve seen much of Thailand, though there’s always more to discover. I especially love Koh Lipe in Satun, the spectacular limestone pinnacles of Railay beach in Krabi, the mountains accessible from Chiang Mai, the towns on the River Mekong and the rivers and scenery of Kanchanaburi province… but then I could go on forever with so many more special loves.

(11)You live in the least visited part of Thailand.
How do you see the future of tourism generally and
what new opportunities are there for developing
tourism in Isaan?

I truly believe that visitors come back to Thailand because of the special charm of the Thai people. There will be challenges ahead but if that rare quality can be preserved, then the future is promising.

With only about three percent of foreign visitors visiting Isaan, the lack of tourist development here bothers me. With agriculture in crisis and the drift of people to the cities, economic activity is desperately needed. There are so many opportunities and so much here for discerning tourists, including the archeological treasures at Ban Chiang and the rich heritage of Khmer temples. Seed capital is also needed to create a permanent elephant centre at Surin for example, but perhaps most neglected is the living museum that is traditional rice culture. For the westerner this is truly fascinating and there is almost no way a visitor can get to see it adequately at present. Homestays, museums of farming and country life and harvest festivals could be big winners.

Finally, the opening up of more border crossings to Laos and Cambodia offers huge opportunities in terms of overland routes for tourists, ‘doing’ Isaan on the way.

(12)Going back to your book, Ben and his friends talk
a lot about the 'adult entertainment industry' in
Bangkok and Ben visits 'Naga Plaza' with his
girlfriend Emma. Do you see a vibrant nightlife as a
valid part of Thailand's tourist industry?

Tourism has always been a sacred cow and it’s long been the policy to attract foreign visitors at all costs, including large numbers of single males. Thailand shouldn’t be that desperate any more and the downsides of a massive sex industry should be recognized, both in terms of the social problems caused and the damage to Thailand’s international reputation. I have a vested interest in this, having a Thai wife, and it’s sad when Thailand and especially Bangkok are known around the world for one thing and one thing only.

(13)At the end of the book, Ben says, 'the commercial
sex scene [in Bangkok] really turns me off. Selling
the Thai girl to promote tourism makes me puke'. Is
this the message you want your book to put across?

“Thai Girl” is an engaging popular novel and any intrusive ‘messages’ from the author would spoil the story. One of its themes though is Ben’s journey through Thailand, at first unthinkingly ogling the girls in the Bangkok go-go bars and then, through his friendship with Fon, reaching a maturer understanding of the harsh realities behind the superficial glitter of the Bangkok nightlife. If the reader travels the same road with Ben and perhaps learns a little, then I hope this makes the book thought-provoking as well as an enjoyable romance.

(14)Finally, after a lifetime as an academic lawyer
lecturing in top universities around the world, how is
it now to live out in the rice fields of Isaan. Has it
made you more Isaan?

My wife’s family and the people in the village around have great personal charm and dignity. They are nature’s aristocrats. The elders have a huge store of experience and wisdom and with their unhurried philosophy that puts family first and rejects the ephemeral, I have much to learn from them. If living here has taught me something and has enabled me to find that balance in life which our urban society has so spectacularly lost, then I’m truly grateful.

If that sounds a bit pious though, I’d better get on home and take the buffaloes out to graze! Liang kwai dee gwa aan nangseu!

www.thaigirl2004.com June 2004

An interview with the author...
his secrets revealed

Bill Andrew Hicks, you've just had "Thai Girl", your first novel published. They asked me to interview you because as an old friend I've a better chance of getting you to drop your defences and tell me like it is. So, Andrew, did you enjoy writing "Thai Girl"?

Andrew Yes, every minute, mainly because I love Thailand. So I very much hope it comes across as an affectionate portrayal of the country. Of course you can't paint a complete picture unless you're critical at times, but I hope Thais won't be offended by the book. Many of the things the characters talk about over a beer are quite controversial and could ruffle local feathers.

Bill You mean the government may not like it?

Andrew No, I didn't mean that. They tolerate free expression, and anyway the action takes place at the time the Thaksin government was just coming to power... remember that Ben, the central character, has a massage in Bangkok on election day. And anyway the present government is in fact responding to the problems raised in the book.. It has an active social order policy... cutting bar opening times and so on. Overall I think it's a positive picture of the country that must be good for Thailand. Bangkok sounds exciting and vibrant and Koh Samet and Koh Chang come across as tropical paradises, so most people reading the book would want to come here... and I don't just mean men! Though I'd have some sympathy if a Thai complained about yet another foreigner writing superficially about things he couldn't really understand and banging on about the go-go bars and prostitution yet again.

Bill So why another Thai sex story then?

Andrew Always a journalist, Bill, with awkward questions like that! No, it's not that genre at all. It's about fresh-faced young kids having new experiences and learning about a new culture. They're not sex tourists. Of course they're intrigued by the Bangkok bar scene... who isn't. But they do develop a responsible attitude to it, especially the main character Ben. So you can't call it a sex novel, Bill. There are no sex scenes... and after all Fon, the "Thai Girl" keeps Ben at arms length, doesn't she?

Bill Does she? Maybe that's the big question.

Andrew Well, if it is, I'm not going to answer it. I'm only the author. It's the reader's interpretation that matters.

Bill So, Andrew, what's "Thai Girl" all about then?

Andrew There's hundreds of ways to answer that one. Studying English lit at school, I always used to think a novel had a subjective core created by the writer as God that the reader somehow had to analyse and understand. Having had a shot at writing a novel myself, I now don't think that's so. I knew what I wanted to achieve, but I've little idea if I've succeeded. So it's me who's keen to ask readers what they think the book's about; to tell me what it says to them. Objectively, the book may mean different things to different people, and what matters most is their view, not mine. I knew what I wanted the book to be about, but I'm not sure what comes across to the reader.

Bill Andrew, you're a lawyer through and through... why not answer the question! What's the book about?

Andrew Sorry Bill! Let's kill all the journalists! No, I hope "Thai Girl"'s a good story that readers will enjoy... that's always number one. I wanted it to be an easy read, so I went for a simple time progression with no fancy flashbacks, for a manageable number of distinctive characters, not like in The Beach, and an accessible style. I never understand why authors like to keep readers guessing... being obscure isn't clever. And the main themes of "Thai Girl" are pretty obvious, aren't they?

Bill So you're still not going to answer my question.

Andrew Ask me another, Bill.

Bill Okay then... is the book autobiographical?

Andrew Thanks, I'm glad you asked me that one! Well, I can answer it at different levels. (Laughter.) But no, really Bill, what do you think? Whatever anybody writes has to have been experienced or observed to some extent and even intuitive guesswork is based on experience, isn't it.

Bill You're hedging again.

Andrew No, really, I'm not. Which character could be based on me anyway? Ben, the young undergrad, Maca the Aussie, Odin the ladyboy? Come on! Anyway you said the interview was to be about the book and not about me. But no, the book's not my own story if that's what you mean.

Bill Okay then, tell me where you got your characters from.

Andrew Ben and Emma are invented, with a bit of inspiration from a young couple I met who were obviously having problems. Travelling puts huge strains on relationships and there are lots out there finding the stresses really difficult. I wanted to put that in the story because it's a story about backpackers.

Bill And what about the others.

Andrew Maca and Chuck are inspired by several delightful characters I've met. Clarissa and Stig you couldn't exactly invent, could you. And who else is there? Odin, who runs the Pleasure Dome restaurant on Koh Chang... well he's just about every ladyboy restaurant owner you've ever met anywhere in Thailand. I love him... especially the bit where he writes Ben's postcard in Thai to Fon and does everything he can to sabotage their affair.

Bill And what about the "Thai Girl", Fon? You haven't mentioned the masseuses.

Andrew I was just coming to them. So what can I say? I don't like Thai massage in a bleak little room in the city, but lying on a beach with the waves coming in, it's wonderful. And because I was travelling alone, a massage on the beach was always sociable. I echo my characters' comments that it's hard to get to talk to Thais... or do they echo me! But an hour's massage is a wonderful opportunity to talk and I've heard many life stories on many beaches, including of course Koh Samet and Koh Chang. You can learn so much from them and they do open up if you show interest. They're usually tight-knit little communities of farmers wives who keep a close eye on each other so it's very relaxed and they aren't offering any extras... anyway the ones who usually do the best massage are the big hefty ones! So in answer to your question, particular characters aren't based on a single real person... each one is an jig saw puzzle of impressions gained over a long time from many people in many different places.

Bill So you kept notebooks about them all as you travelled?

Andrew Yes, recording quirky people, snatches of conversation... that sort of thing. And also little cameos like the woman who comes up to Ben on Koh Samet desperate to escape the isolation, the death's head taxi driver, the American orchid buyer. You couldn't write about a tarot lady or a Thai fortune-teller without having seen them perform. Once when I was sitting in the lobby of a Bangkok hotel, I saw a girl come in and ask something at reception, then look distressed by the answer she got. The moment stuck in my mind and became the idea for Ben and Emma missing each other at the Regal in Bangkok. Emma standing at the top of the hotel steps, the wind ruffling her clothes, unsure what to do... that's real life.

Bill So what about the bar scenes? How did you do your research on that?

Andrew Research? (Laughter.) No, I don't really like sitting about in bars... never have. Not in England nor anywhere else. Some men use bars as a way of meeting people but I'm not a night owl. I'm not being squeamish about the girlie bars but it's not my thing. Partly because I don't like alcohol in the tropics... too dehydrating. But no, you don't have to do research really... it's all there in front of you staring you in the face. That's perhaps why bar scenes are inevitable in a book about travellers discovering Thailand... it's a big part of the place. Of course I've chatted to men here who've been around a bit and I've read books. And I've got friends who do academic research into the sex industry, one on public health aspects, the other a sociologist. So a writer can easily extrapolate and invent from there on.

Bill He can, can he? You were pretty cagey about my autobiography question.

Andrew No I wasn't. I issued an outright denial. (Laughter) Though to be honest the one bit that could be called autobiographical was the bar crawl with Jack Russell. Remember Jack took Ben round the bars and showed him his favourite places? When I was writing in Bangkok, an old friend took me on a trip like that for the sake of my education. But we both stayed sober and went home to bed quite early... and I don't mean together!

Bill So where did you get Jack Russell from?

Andrew Flying from London to Hong Kong via Bangkok in 1994 to give a series of lectures at Hong Kong University I sat next to a man who, every winter kisses his wife goodbye and goes out to Thailand for a few weeks to warm his cockles. Utterly bizarre! He stuck in my mind because he was gloating so much about all the money he was making from his old peoples' home. Hope he's gone bust by now!

Bill But you made Jack Russell quite a sympathetic character.

Andrew Yes, I felt I'd painted the sex tourists as a bunch of grotesques... in danger of caricature. Though let's face it that's what most of them are, sad characters who don't stand a chance at home so have to come over here and pay for it. But they're human too... it's tragic to be that ugly, no woman'll go near you. So I wanted a more sympathetic sex tourist to balance it a bit... and also to present the sex workers in a more positive light. Prostitutes are despised but I suspect they perform a valuable function if they make lonely men happy for a while. There's merit in that. Jack Russell says they set him up to cope for another year's work with his old people, and he allows them their dignity and values what they do for him, even though he pays.

Bill So did the guy on the Bangkok flight tell you all this?

Andrew No, I made it all up. Jack sort of talked to me as I wrote and he came up with this novel idea of sex workers being in a caring profession, same as his own work with old people. It wasn't that difficult to get Jack to talk about it.

Bill Jack and Ben do an awful lot of talking. And so do all the others on Koh Samet and Koh Chang. Is that realistic?

Andrew Well Bill, I set out to portray travellers in Thailand and I've spent many moons with them all over South East Asia, and that's exactly what they do. What else is there in an evening at the beach but to get into a huddle and talk. Alcohol helps and away you go. It's such a privilege... to have time to talk with all sorts of people you'd never otherwise meet or find anything in common with. In fact the differences are the best thing. Nobody ever seems to notice I'm a generation older and they take everyone as they find them. I've enjoyed some amazing brief friendships, partly because of travelling alone and partly because you know you'll never see the person again and can say exactly what you like. That's what I've tried to put across in the novel. Those long dialogues are just how it happens. At least, I hope they are.

Bill And what about the September Eleven debate on Koh Chang. They come up with some pretty elaborate and witty wisecracks about the 'war on terrorism'. Like Stewart's line talking about the US that 'The hamburger's mightier than the sword.' Is this all realistic?

Andrew Well, I hope the readers'll tell me what they think about that. But the travellers I seem to meet are highly intelligent and well-rounded people, the outward-looking types who manage to escape their own societies. And the range of opinions on the 'war on terrorism' expressed by my characters pretty well mirrors the travellers' views I've heard in Thailand. So in a way, I'm only reporting... just like a journalist.

Bill But you could be accused of being rabidly anti-American.

Andrew Me? What did I do? First point, Bill, as I said, the characters roughly reflect the views of the people I've met around Thailand. I don't think a single American I've talked to here has ever supported Bush's policies post September Eleven. So my American character, Chuck doesn't support Bush either, though he loves his country and he's very distressed by what's happening. Ben and Darren do support the Bush/Blair axis though, so there's a balance of views expressed. You asked about my attitude to America. That's not important is it? It's the book we're discussing. And please don't identify me with my characters' opinions... it's like when actors who play obnoxious people get attacked in the streets. But no, in fact I'd say I'm pro-America and the Atlantic alliance. It's a part of my culture... the English speaking world and all that... they're Rome to our Greece and so on. And the pacification of Europe in 1945 and the post-war settlement was an alliance which shouldn't be too easily forgotten. But that doesn't mean I support Bush or the current trends in America. I like Americans personally, so I hope I created a sympathetic character in Chuck... he's a nice guy; sensitive and complex. So it's not necessarily me criticising America in the book even if some of my characters do... and even if it is me, a sincere friend's the best of critics. Anyway a book's boring if it doesn't challenge the reader with some provocative ideas, isn't it.

Bill So in writing these long dialogues, you're showing travellers as they are then. The book also portrays Thailand and describes its problems in much the same way, doesn't it.

Andrew Yes. As I said, a travel novel should both be about travellers and the country they're travelling in, and about the interaction of the two. In Thailand, agricultural decline, the drift of migrant workers to the cities, women working in the bars and being used by the tourists... these are some of the big issues. I hope travellers in Thailand is the basis for a good story and provides food for thought. No book's morally neutral, I think... unless it's a poor book.. I particularly enjoyed writing the bit where Ben travels with Fon to her home in Isaan and learns about the problems of rice farming.

Bill You've criticised other travel novels for saying nothing about the country they're set in and having silly, melodramatic plots. But at the end of "Thai Girl", Ben and Emma just overlook their differences and get on the plane and fly away. As a conclusion to the plot, isn't that the other extreme?

Andrew I hope readers aren't disappointed with the ending. I suppose some may be. I thought of writing alternative final chapters that readers could choose between... Ben has a row with Emma at the airport, tears up his ticket and goes back to find Fon. Or at the departure lounge, Fon's waiting there for Ben and declares her love and they fall into each others' arms etc, etc. Guess that's how the film'll probably have to end! But for me, that'd be a cop out. For a story that tries to say something as opposed to being an escapist fantasy, I think my ending's the probable one. It's like it actually is. What do people do after a holiday romance? They get on the plane and fly home. And what do nice middle class lads do with the rest of their lives? They become solicitors and accountants! I should know that!

Bill Bit depressing isn't it. You weren't after writing a feel-good novel then?

Andrew That wasn't the priority, no. Though as I keep saying, you tell me... How did you feel as you read it? There's quite a lot for anyone to feel good about in it isn't there?. Most people feel good reading about being in Thailand. But no, you're right, I didn't want to write a load of romantic mush.

Bill So if it's not got a blood-curdling plot and it's not a mushy romance, what is it?

Andrew If it's not plot-based, maybe you could call it character-based. I hope the characters are strong enough for the reader to identify with and care enough about to read to the end. And I suppose, even more, it's issue-based, if there is such a thing. But we've talked about that already.

Bill Do you think your readers will identify with Ben?

Andrew I can only hope so. From friends who read early drafts for me, there seems to be an interesting split between the sexes. Women may think him a complete arsehole while the men like him for being a bit of a lad but think Emma's a bit of a pain. He isn't that nice to Emma is he, but he isn't vicious either. Maybe just immature, unable to deal with her emotional side. I was pleased when I heard friends arguing about Ben and Emma quite heatedly, as if they were talking about real people they knew. And I wanted Ben to be normal, fairly ordinary if you know what I mean... so that male readers could see themselves in his shoes. He's a nice sort of lad from a good background, quite conventional really... not like Maca or Chuck who are odd-balls. But he's a lively sort of guy and definitely not boring. I hope that once the reader gets inside his head, they can identify with him and his passion for Fon.. Surely his romantic obsession for her makes him a sympathetic character even to female readers. And he's an attractive guy, so given the availability of women around him, his devotion to Fon is quite appealing, isn't it?

Bill Well, I'm not a woman, but, yes I found myself rooting for Ben. Though does he behave responsibly towards Fon?

Andrew Maybe your question suggests the earlier one you said I ducked. What's the book about? In a nutshell, could it be the vulnerability of poor Thai people in their contact with tourists? I'd love to know what my readers think.

Bill So tell me something about the writing process. We've heard about your notebooks.

Andrew It was a matter of constructing a plot, chapter by chapter, and piecing together the scenes such as the cameo moments I've mentioned, writing the book through to the end, and then writing it again... and again and again. Every time I went back to it, I tweaked a lot of stylistic things to get the language flowing better, avoiding repetitions and so on. I found the popular style, big on dialogue, extraordinarily difficult and didn't take to it easily. My critics'll have to tell me if I took to it at all.

Bill So what about the ending, the Epilogue? What happens... or is going to happen to the triangle of characters, Emma, Ben and Fon?

Andrew It's over to you, the reader, the interpreter of the book to decide what'll become of them. Is Ben's letter to Fon the cold shoulder? Now he's accepted a training contract to be a solicitor, is his middle class life on rails with no room in it for her? Or is he just biding his time? Could he get himself posted to his firm's office in Bangkok? Nothing in life or literature is certain... except that personally I feel sorry for Fon.

Bill So is that what the book's about?

Andrew Like I've said, that's for you the reader to decide, Bill. But thanks for asking the questions. I hope I answered them okay.