“Amsterdam and Holland will lead the citizens of the planet from old laws and prisons to freedom and legalization. Help us!” Dutch Bob pleaded, adding “Nepalese diplomats have had a long, successful hash smuggling history. Nepal, like my beloved Holland, is a small, desperate country, thus entrepreneurial.”
Dutch Bob eventually convinced me that it was necessary for me to help him with hashish deliveries to his homeland via diplomatic courier. Although I was opposed to the idea of dealing with diplomats because of the potential betrayal from that kind of intrigue, I went along. I needed money. He insisted that if the hash clubs in Amsterdam were not supplied with the product, they would not be able to stay in business. And from the first two clubs, there were now nearly ten … strength in numbers was the idea.
Rebecca stayed with our friends and I headed off to Amsterdam in my white linen suit; my image of choice as an international business man. I had noticed that a white suit drew respect from immigration officers, customs agents and airline personnel.
My role in this deal was to ship the trunk and pick up the money. Dutch Bob monitored the actual transporting of the soft Nepalese ‘tolas’ as the fingers of hash were known. The sheer high quality of this non-export, specialty hash – so very, very rare, was part of the reason I acquiesced.
Bob had instructed me to go to the National Olympic Stadium when I arrived in Amsterdam and take a sauna on Tuesday afternoon, the day that the stadium was free and open to the public. Someone would give me a red tie to wear and then the money. I made my way there and found, however, that the facilities had been taken over by the Dutch police who maintained control of “open day” by giving the evil-eye and the cold-shoulder treatment to any and all. I enjoyed the sauna, took the cold plunge and ignored the vacant stares of the police. No one contacted me, no red tie – nothing but an unsettling experience.
I went back to the hotel and telegraphed Bob that I had a wonderful bath and nothing more. He telegraphed back to me that I should return on Thursday. There would be a pass at the door. The pass was waiting for me and I went into the locker room and undressed. My first thought was that the man approaching me was a locker room attendant. He tossed me a gym bag and said “On your way, druggie, don’t use this place! What are you doing here, are you some kind of American hippie?” Then he left. Inside the bag was a red tie.
I got dressed, put on the red tie and headed out of the Olympic Stadium. As soon as I got outside the door, I noticed that the same fake locker room attendant was waiting. He said, “May I offer you a ride back into town?” When I got into the back seat of the car, there sat the Nepalese diplomat. We rode into Amsterdam and other than “very nice tie,” little was said. I was given an ornate box that was filled with Dutch guilders, “for local expenses.” I telegraphed Bob that the first part of the arrangement had been completed and he directed me, by return wire, to a travel agent where there would be a plane ticket waiting for me that led to my share of the profits.
The destination on the plane ticket was Saigon, Vietnam. One would imagine that Saigon, in the middle of the Vietnam War, would not be the first choice for a business meeting, but in fact, anybody could come and go, at their own risk. Except for the tension one felt in human interactions, most of the sprawling city showed no signs of war.
I met Dutch Bob and two other Hollanders at The Continental, an old French-colonial hotel. I was somewhat stunned at the way my share of the profits was remitted. Proudly the Hollanders showed me that they had managed to obtain some “ice cold” Heineken beers and proceeded to pay me in gold which, they said, was “better than money.”
At the time of this transaction, the Vietnamese had been at war for about 30 years, first against the colonial French occupation and now the United States. This period of conflux had long established an economy based on gold. Not only were the pieces of gold precise in weight, but they were molded into a curved shape so that they would fit the contours of the human body and slide into thin leather belts for transport.
Bob elicited a toast and agreement from his Dutch buddies and me that “we are well on our way to saving world travelers, pilgrims and freedom lovers from tyranny!”
Then he weighed the profits.
I flew out of Saigon with gold strapped all over my body. When I got to Hong Kong, I quickly detached myself from the situation and sold the gold for about 80 cents on the dollar. I missed my sweetheart and always worried about her waiting in a wild corner of the world. Giving up a few points of profit was stacked against each priceless hour in her arms back in Kathmandu.
Chapter Seven
“Hanoi Hannah – averaged about a man a day – when she wasn’t working – she kept the coffee perkin’ for a guy that didn’t have to pay.”
“HANOI HANNAH,” R. MCGUINN AND J. LEVY
Due to international airspace restrictions during the “ceasefire,” as it was called, between India and Pakistan, there were no flights out of Asia into Afghanistan from anywhere except Bangkok. So, from Kathmandu, Rebecca and I flew to Thailand.
Downtown Bangkok, in 1971, consisted of small, one-man noodle stands scattered at random and mixed among a dozen buildings that had full-on Western style boutiques, escalators and air conditioning. Gucci was the most popular boutique. The American Express office, where all nationalities received mail, was located high up in one of those skyscrapers. The panoramic view it presented revealed a modern, suburban, American-like development surrounding Bangok, that was being furiously constructed from money fueled by the Vietnam War. South Africans, Italians and the French were making nice profits off that war, as were Americans from every state. All were cashing checks, buying traveler’s checks or wiring funds back home. News and gossip flowed as fast as the indexing of international currencies.
Bangkok was mainly a pass-through plane hub on the way to somewhere else. There were two or three hotels that accommodated the pilots and airline personnel as well as most of the passengers who were just transiting through on their way to other destinations. One notorious hotel was The Malaysia. It was infamous for its junkie clientele and Thai hangers on. Another hotel featured great ganja connections.
We chose to stay for a couple of nights at the hotel known for its weed connection to get our hands on some herb. Once that was accomplished we moved to the classy Oriental Hotel, which was an inexpensive four-star wonder. The Oriental had four bungalows built as high-end suites in the early 1900s. Rattan ceiling fans, bamboo shutters, a king-sized bed, mosquito nets and night ginger wafting in on a Chao Phraya River breeze are undeniably aphrodisiacs.
The opposite of loving sex was a constant presence, however. Rebecca had her first encounter with the infamous Asian escort girls. Almost every male we met had on his arm a lovely bar girl. At this time, most of these girls were from the starving tribal highlands where their families were forced to sell their daughters to Cholon Chinese agents. The “agents” encouraged the girls into the local sex profession if they were pretty. The less fortunate were shuffled off to Arab seaport brothels. In Thailand, the girls were given a few days of training and then sent out to work under controlled circumstances in the bars. They could speak little, if any, English. Rebecca interacted with them politely. They were very well mannered.
One girl would generally stay with the man who paid her “bar fee” for as long as he was in the country. It wasn’t unusual to see two or three such escort girls at dinner or any social situation.
All of the nightlife took place in the infamous Patpong Road area. This two-block wide and six-block long strip had clubs with names such as “Mississippi Queen,” “Chicago Gangsters” and “Super Star.” The strip was an electronic-neon excess gone wild. Video screens and computer light shows were found here and recorded rock and roll blared out of the clubs. American soldiers on R&R mixed it up with Danish engineers, Middle Eastern merchants, Japanese electronic experts, and international travelers like us. The males sported sweet young things on their arms. Anyone could get a small bag of second-rate ganja from the circling cab drivers. Barkers hawked clubs with weird sex shows … “see a pussy smoke a cigarette” … or promising