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motorbike. I had no driver’s license, the tag on the bike was reported as stolen and I had a pocket full of ganja. The presentation of my rental agreement papers and five dollars had me cruising away on the stolen bike with my bag of reefer duly returned and in my pocket. That evening when I brought the Honda back to the rental shop, the policeman from the roadblock was there waiting to take the shop owner into custody. A clever Thai cop had gotten his arrest, avoided the hassle of dealing with a farang kid, and made five dollars to boot.
    The supervision of the kids who attended ISB was very lax and seemed quite permissive. On campus, there was a separate outdoor, roofed, open-air lounge provided for seniors where smoking was allowed. At the end of the year, an outing called Senior Skip Day was sponsored by the school. On that day, all final-year students whose parents had given them permission, boarded buses bound for Pattaya Beach. I am sure that there must have been some adult chaperones, but if there were, they were so unobtrusive that I cannot now recall seeing them. Aboard the bus there was a lot of reefer smoking and beer drinking.
    Upon arrival at the idyllic beach town of Pattaya, we boarded multiple wooden fishing boats and were carried to an island about a dozen kilometers offshore in the Gulf of Siam where the leeside shore was lined with unoccupied bamboo huts. A short hike to the hilltop center of the island rewarded the trekkers with a fantastic view of the southern coast from the mouth of a huge cave and an uncanny tale to tell of walking through tall stands of marijuana growing on the hillside while largely unseen eyes watched us from the depths of the undergrowth. These careful observers were the Thai sea gypsies who actually grew the illicit crop we were enjoying during our stay in the Kingdom.
    Senior prom night was soon upon us. Only weeks before that event, Mike had managed to talk his dad into letting him borrow the family car for a double date. This was an extremely rare privilege for any of the American dependents, since few of us had a Thai driver’s license. On that evening, I caught a cab to Mike’s house and we were soon headed off down the Bangkok thoroughfares in his father’s Chevy Corvair, totally convinced that we were really hot stuff.
    He eventually brought the car to a sliding halt in front of Pee Lek’s. After a few rounds on the bong and a few sips of Lek’s opium whiskey, I was ready to go, but Mike was preoccupied in a conversation with an extremely stoned GI who was talking about Vietnam. I used the opportunity granted by the soldier’s slip into silence to suggest to Mike that we should go pick up our dates. As we left, I noticed the thousand-yard stare on that young soldier’s face.
    Mike said, “Hey, did you see that guys face?”
    Lek called after us, saying in Thai, “Don’t think too much.”
    Not too much off schedule, we gathered our dates: Mike’s Meredith and my Bobbie. We headed for a much too fancy restaurant located atop a tall, newly built hotel which afforded an even better view than that from the roof of the Grace Hotel. The girls were as excited to be on an actual “car date” in Bangkok as we were. However, throughout the dinner, I could not get the image of the lost look on the face of the young GI back at Lek’s out of my mind. After dinner, we drove to a pre-graduation party some few blocks away at another ISB student’s home.
    Shortly after we arrived, Mike decided that we did not have enough beer and invited me to join him on his quest to purchase some more. Maybe it was his excuse to drive the car without the obligation of being responsible for the females, but I think he was headed back to Lek’s to continue his conversation with that GI on R&R from Nam. I’m still not sure, because the next thing I knew we were crashing into the pole of a street light. I flew into the windshield.
    Earlier that evening it had rained. When I awoke, I found