The Dying Beach by Angela Savage Page A

her the mobile expressly so they could keep in touch. She’d let it run down at first, but he’d since shown her how to keep the battery charged. It was too late for her to be out, and in the tiny room she shared with Suthita there was no pretending not to hear the phone ring. Was Pla in trouble? Or was she ignoring him as punishment for cancelling his visit? It was so hard to tell with Thai women. They could turn passive aggression into an art form. Paul didn’t blame Pla if she was giving him the silent treatment; it was part of her culture. But he had choices. He didn’t have to put up with it.
    Paul had arrived in Bangkok from Hobart nine months earlier to work as a volunteer with a Thai environmental organisation. While he was too young to be part of the successful campaign to save the Franklin River from being dammed, he’d studied it as part of his environmental science degree. He knew that as the market for their product shrunk at home, Tasmanian hydro-electric companies were moving their interests offshore, to countries like Thailand, where corruption was rife and environmental protection laws were not worth the paper they were written on. Paul wanted to bring Tasmanian-style activism to Thailand, to live and work alongside local people, sharing his skills and knowledge, training them in the techniques of non-violent resistance.
    But his colleagues at the Thai Environmental Defenders Office—TEDO for short—seemed indifferent to his experience. Despite running simultaneous campaigns against the damming of rivers, deforestation and forced evictions—the details of which were inaccessible to Paul because he couldn’t speak Thai—they neither asked for his advice nor seemed interested when he offered it. He was given often tedious jobs like summarising English language reports, representing TEDO at international stakeholder meetings, and writing material for donors. Paul did as he was asked—he was no quitter—hiding his disappointment in carefully worded briefings he suspected no one ever read.
    As for living among the locals, while his colleagues were friendly enough, they were less welcoming than he’d expected, given Thailand’s reputation as the Land of Smiles. His Thai colleagues took him out to dinner a few times when he first arrived and showed him around the neighbourhood. But no one ever invited him home, and his suggestions that they socialise in the evenings or on weekends were politely rebuffed.
    Paul tried hanging out in pubs—in Australia that’s what you did to meet people in a new town—but Bangkok’s pubs were full of beer-sodden backpackers and alcoholic expats. The only locals who hung out in pubs were selling something—drinks, drugs, themselves—all of which Paul resisted, afraid of getting AIDS or fleeced, or both.
    He grew lonely. His short-haired, stern-faced female colleagues at TEDO seemed to find it an imposition to speak with him in English. Paul didn’t dare ask any of them out. He tried dating a Thai woman he met at a seminar and another who worked in a local coffee shop. But he couldn’t sustain his interest beyond the first date, not when every question he put to them was met with the same response.
    â€˜Are you hungry? Would you like to eat now?’
    â€˜Up to you.’
    â€˜Where would you like to eat?’
    â€˜Up to you.’
    â€˜How about a movie?’
    â€˜Up to you.’
    Up to you. It grated like fingernails on a blackboard. He felt like yelling, If it was up to me, you’d express a bloody opinion .
    He was close to despair, hitting the cheap local whisky after work and doubting whether he could make it through a whole year, when his boss sent him to Krabi. There he met Pla, and within hours Paul had invited her to join him at a consultation meeting in Huay Sok Village. Not the most romantic of first dates, but she accepted the invitation with enthusiasm.
    The company