This is an edited correspondence to the site master of RAAF UBON before it was mothballed by Yahoo/geocities. It includes the edited email to my daughter that was the germ that began this blog, Ubon Tales.
We so often only find out the why of our actions after the fact. It is as though it is kept hidden from us so our actions will lead us to its discovery and thereby awareness of something unexplainable by any other means. What began as a series of tales of my youthful adventures while stationed a RTAFB Ubon has become, I hope, something more.
'Had been on your site when daughter IMd me. After replying and mentioning finding your site I started an e-mail to her re: my time there and some of the revelations your site had given me about the events of 1969. Mainly that 'Charlie' got quite interested in us by blowing up our fuel dump for starters. I'd been dragooned into the Augmentee Guards to assist the Air Police with base security when we were attacked. Spent many nights out there in the dark!
Your club photos gave me the opportunity to share/show her where I misspent my youth!'
--text of e-mail--
Was bounding through this site (RAAF UBON)when your reply came in.
This is a site put up by Aussies that were the first at Ubon air base, they left ''68. Their area was on the other side of the runway from us and their gate opened up onto or near to 'Club Alley' as it were. A few of the clubs were some ways away from this boulevard of iniquity, so there was this constant roaming by many from club to club, afoot, a-stagger as the night aged, howling from the back of pedicabs like so much demented freight while the samlow driver man pumped at the pedals propelling them to the destination of their desire; another club where a buddy was due to meet you or a favorite whore worked, or just to see what was happening at another club, making the rounds to the brothels, bars and bath houses rather than our former lost haunts of drive-ins, hamburgers stands, and lovers lanes. A moving orgy of liquor, weed, hash and flesh, each and every night without end; financed by the seemingly endless supply of baht flowing from our pockets. I never knew then how gone,that past and that present, would be. Tom Wolff was right. I'd lost my ruby slippers. I was 19
Few of us photograph what is common place to us. These are the places I misspent my youth and may have lost it; but on that hangs another tale. The Jaguar Club is where one afternoon I listened to a Thai band learn to play..." Jo Jo was a man who ..." by mimicry since they couldn't speak English. I think most of the music in the clubs was learned and played this way. At night the streets were seething with pedicabs, taxis, smoke, noise, buses, shouts of drunken GIs, mingled with the din of music escaping from the doors of the clubs, the melodic sing song of Thai being spoken and shouted by the local hustlers, pimps and prostitutes who fed off our raging lust for excitement and life..
What a time it was!!
We so often only find out the why of our actions after the fact. It is as though it is kept hidden from us so our actions will lead us to its discovery and thereby awareness of something unexplainable by any other means. What began as a series of tales of my youthful adventures while stationed a RTAFB Ubon has become, I hope, something more.
'Had been on your site when daughter IMd me. After replying and mentioning finding your site I started an e-mail to her re: my time there and some of the revelations your site had given me about the events of 1969. Mainly that 'Charlie' got quite interested in us by blowing up our fuel dump for starters. I'd been dragooned into the Augmentee Guards to assist the Air Police with base security when we were attacked. Spent many nights out there in the dark!
Your club photos gave me the opportunity to share/show her where I misspent my youth!'
--text of e-mail--
Was bounding through this site (RAAF UBON)when your reply came in.
This is a site put up by Aussies that were the first at Ubon air base, they left ''68. Their area was on the other side of the runway from us and their gate opened up onto or near to 'Club Alley' as it were. A few of the clubs were some ways away from this boulevard of iniquity, so there was this constant roaming by many from club to club, afoot, a-stagger as the night aged, howling from the back of pedicabs like so much demented freight while the samlow driver man pumped at the pedals propelling them to the destination of their desire; another club where a buddy was due to meet you or a favorite whore worked, or just to see what was happening at another club, making the rounds to the brothels, bars and bath houses rather than our former lost haunts of drive-ins, hamburgers stands, and lovers lanes. A moving orgy of liquor, weed, hash and flesh, each and every night without end; financed by the seemingly endless supply of baht flowing from our pockets. I never knew then how gone,that past and that present, would be. Tom Wolff was right. I'd lost my ruby slippers. I was 19
Few of us photograph what is common place to us. These are the places I misspent my youth and may have lost it; but on that hangs another tale. The Jaguar Club is where one afternoon I listened to a Thai band learn to play..." Jo Jo was a man who ..." by mimicry since they couldn't speak English. I think most of the music in the clubs was learned and played this way. At night the streets were seething with pedicabs, taxis, smoke, noise, buses, shouts of drunken GIs, mingled with the din of music escaping from the doors of the clubs, the melodic sing song of Thai being spoken and shouted by the local hustlers, pimps and prostitutes who fed off our raging lust for excitement and life..
What a time it was!!
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