Did I meet Thailand’s James Bond?
I used to live in Southampton he said. Oh yeah? Doing what? I replied. I was training for MI6 he responded.
My ears pricked up at this point.
MI6? came my query. Yes he confirmed. So you’re a secret agent? was my probing response.
He actually said he was a secret agent. I frowned for a moment and asked the other people in our small circle of media folk sipping wine, and they confirmed that he wasn’t lying.
Hold up a minute, I thought to myself. A secret agent? Isn’t that classified information? Was I walking to the Thai James Bond? To my surprise, he coolly confirmed he was the Thai James Bond.
I was at the opening of a furniture store (Casa Pagoda – they have a branch in Bangkok at Paragon) and was steadily getting drunk on white wine. I’d gone with work colleagues and was enjoying the casual mingling atmosphere. Thailand’s James Bond had joined our group and I thought nothing of him until he dropped his casual bombshells one by one.
He told me If you see any Al-Qaeda or Taliban then let me know and I can take care of them because I haven’t found any yet.
I laughed; he didn’t.
The party fizzled out and four of us jumped in James Bond’s car to go to a restaurant. He told me that he’d been working in the Deep South looking for “bad guys”, but hadn’t found any.
When we were at the restaurant we were speaking about Patong when James Bond said They know me in Patong; I’m famous in that place and nobody thinks that I’m gay there.
He asked me a few more times to keep an eye out for Al-Qaeda members, and when the bill came he stepped up to the challenge, citing that he was paying with the Thai government’s money. He also promised to give me a motorbike.
Can you bullshit a bullshitter? I felt outdone.
I wrote this post while tipsy and deliberately didn’t use quote marks.
June 29th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
I’d rate it as highly unlikely. There’s no MI6 training centre in Southampton. I’ve blogged many times about how there are many people out here who fantasise so much they actually start to believe their own nonsense. Thailand sees to be a magnet for maladjusted folk.
I’ve met hot shot lawyers, Black Panther activists, ex pro football stars (with not a whisper of their career on the net), big time bank robbers, Microsoft and UN reps, and now your James Bond friend.
It’s amazing what the attractions of a pretty young Asian woman can do to make a guy lie to himself.
June 30th, 2007 at 2:00 am
He might have said he did it in Portsmouth. Is there one there? I’m very suspicious. He was Thai though, not farang.
June 30th, 2007 at 10:18 am
Dear Matt,
Spies will tell you they are ice cream truck drivers, florists, flautists, ‘business’ people but their identity will never be truly revealed. That is unless they know that you know the ice cream truck driver routine *wink, wink* in which case they may tell you they are a spy in order for you to disbelieve. Confusing, no? Well this is the life of a spy, lies and subterfuge!
Beware if the motorcycle does turn up that you may be involved in something far greater than the sum of its cogs and boysenberry swirl in a double wafer.
Contact Miss GK if confused, but for now, just relax in a bath with herbal aromatics.
Sincerely
Double oh fou.. I mean… Grasshopper.
June 30th, 2007 at 11:54 am
Possibly, your mention of him being Thai puts a twist on it. There’s a lot of navy activity in Portsmouth, and a lot of people who support a scummy football team but I’m not aware of any MI6, though. Can I plug this story in an article on my ajarn.com column? I’ll run it by you before I post it, so you can give it the “OK”.
July 1st, 2007 at 7:04 am
Greg, go ahead and use it. No worries.