Last week’s Naklua bar girl suicide hit me hard.   I used to drink with her, and it took so long for her to die.

Last night the Naklua bar owner asked for donations to burn the girl’s body.  Her family has no money.  The cremation will cost 30,000 baht which is just under $1000 U.S.   And then the bar owner told me the full story which gave me all the gory details, except for one thing.  Why did this pretty girl kill herself?

It was more than a Naklua bar girl suicide.  I knew the girl pretty well

The girl was pretty and she was nice.  The bar owner and I  agreed on both counts.  I used to buy her drinks, but she had always been polite enough to back off, if another girl  got to me first.  I know this sounds pretty bad when I’m writing “if another girl got to me first”.  The bar owner has trained all her bar girls very well.  It is very rare that one of her bar girls asks me for a drink.  What normally happens is when I enter the bar alone, one of the girls will sit next to me after bringing me a drink.  That’s when I really want to buy a bar girl a drink.  When she doesn’t ask me for anything.

I must truthfully say that if I were to ever bar fine a girl here she would have been the one I would have chosen first.  She was the most attractive of all the girls, and she used to laugh at all my jokes. Even if she never understood them.

She used to tell me, “I understand not too much English.  Only a little bit.”  But being my own greatest fan, I would often laugh at the things I used to say here.   So when I’d start to laugh at all the off the wall things I used to say, she’d start to laugh with me.  Which would get me laughing even more.  Our laughter would soon become so contagious that both of us would almost be falling out of our bar stools.

Then I heard the horrible news

She cut her own throat.    The story, when I first heard it, was pretty sketchy.  The story was  this Naklua bar girl suicide was caused by “broken heart”.  One of the girls informed her that her Western boyfriend  was being unfaithful to her.  And that’s why she cut her throat.  But she hadn’t cut it deeply enough which caused her to linger in the hospital for many days.  Which turned into many weeks.

After more than a month, she finally died.   But it wouldn’t be until last night that I got the full story.  Well, not quite.  And that was because the bar owner had never gotten the entire story either.

She died because she drank a lot of Duck before she cut her own throat

Duck is a very potent cleaning fluid that is used to clean toilets and other bathroom fixtures.  I use it to clean the grouting in my tiled floors.  If is strong enough to burn your hands if you don’t  use gloves.  I didn’t find out that she had poisoned herself until two weeks ago.  So it wouldn’t be a question of if she would die, but when.

The rest of the story

Last night I sat at the bar until 2:30 a.m.  Neither Pen  nor I understood exactly why she did it.   But Pen kept telling me she did it because of a broken heart.

The girl’s room was half a kilometer from the bar.  The day she cut her throat she went to the bar.  Then she went back to her room.  She didn’t walk.  She ran while being in a very agitated state. Then she came back to the bar a second, perhaps a third time and each time she ran back to her room.  The bar owner had never seen her acting so crazy.  When she went back to her room the last time she swallowed a lot of Duck.  Then she cut her  own throat.  After this she ran outside her room bleeding profusely as she kept crying out for help.

They took her to Banglamung Hospital.

The bar owner immediately went there as soon as she found out the girl had slit her throat.

At some point, Pen asked a nurse why the hospital did not drain the girl’s stomach.

The nurse replied:  “Because this would have made things a lot worse.”

They then took her  to a highly regarded hospital in Bangkok, which would have drained her stomach had she been taken there first.  At least that’s what the  bar owner told me.  Later they took her home to her family.   But as far as Pen could find out the girl was slowly recovering and would soon resume working at the bar.  The girl returned home to her family and whenever Pen  called to find out how she was, the girl would tell her, “I’m fine.  I will be back at your bar soon”.

She wasn’t doing fine.  She was dying

Neither she nor her family had any money.  But she was too proud to tell the bar owner this.  So she couldn’t stay at the Bangkok Hospital for very long.  Last night Pen told me that she would have paid the girl’s full medical expense if only she had known.   I completely believe Pen.  Always have and always will.  She has a lot more behind her than most of her customers would ever suspect,  and she has a huge heart.  As for the local hospital where the girl’s family lived, the place simply did’t have the equipment or skilled personnel to handle complicated medical cases such as hers.

The Duck had slowly eroded a lot of her insides.  The Bangkok Hospital would have operated.  And possibly saved her life.  Who knows?

Last remarks from her bar owner

• “She left behind children and her parents.  Now  who’s going to take care of them”?
• “She was very pretty.  She could have easily found another man to take care of her”.
• “I think about her every day.  This breaks my heart.”
• “I don’t know exactly why she kill herself.  But it was because of broken heart.”

My last remarks

I have no further remarks  to make about this Naklua bar girl suicide. Other than to link here to one of my You Tube Videos.   This is much more than just another Naklua bar girl suicide.  We will all miss this girl.

If you wish to read more about the bar.  its History and what makes this bar owner so very special continue here.