A Bit about Me – The Man Behind the Legend

Greetings, fellow time-waster. This bit will be a personalized piece about the man at the helm of Tales from the Tuk Tuk, as well as one of the world’s foremost pundits on the study of tukology, or tuk-tuk studies. And, yes, you guessed right. That person’s me, or Teacher Forrest, as I’m known in Songkhla university circles. The man, the legend, the noticeably overweight guy standing in front of the class with chili stains on his tie. Hell, I’m so famous, I can’t even leave my house or office without receiving a barrage of stares, accented “Herro’s”, and offers of cheap sales and taxi rides. The small-minded merely scoff at this remark and ignorantly exclaim, “This happens to all whiteys in South East Asia.” Upon which I immediately reply, “Jealous, huh?”

After a brief, stint as a salt encrusted commercial fisherman carousing the jagged Pacific coastline of North America for the occasional rock grouper, I said farewell to the sea, and hello to Japan. Riding upon the wave of the JET Programme, or as the Japanese call it, the JETO Purogramo. (See! I can write Japanese, too.) After 2 years of being stranded in the most barren land of the most barren island in the nation, Hokkaido, I decided that being able to talk to people again might serve as a pleasant change, so I said goodbye to the frigid north and hello to the sweltering south of Thailand. And now, here I am.

The adept reader will have also gathered from the above movie poster, that I also futzed around with low-grade 60’s era Thai film at one time. Starring in the little known Siam number, “Nakrawng Nikleng,” which loosely translates as, “White, not so good looking pimpin’ guy from the West sings cheesy Thai lounge numbers for chicks, then gets killed by greasy Mafia dood for sleeping with said dood’s lady.” Like I said, merely a loose translation.