“…you will get a hundred Baht per hour.”
“Really? Nice. I’ll do anything for three hundred Baht. Do they want me to get nude?”
“No! No, no, no. It is a portrait class. They will only be painting your face.”
“Oh. OK… I don’t mind getting nude…”
“Everywhere I go in Thailand people stare at me anyway, ’cause I’m so freakishly tall. If Thai people are gonna stare at me I might as well get paid for it.”
Anna laughs. “You have to sit very still. Do you think you can manage that?”
“Well… how long is the class?”
“Three hours.”
“Holy shit. I better take a sedative.”
“Just have a glass or two of Sang Som and Coke.”
“You make a good point. So three hours? Do I get a break?”
“Of course you do! And you will get a hundred Baht per hour.”
“Really? Nice. I’ll do anything for three hundred Baht. Do they want me to get nude?”
“No! No, no, no. It is a portrait class. They will only be painting your face.”
“Oh. OK… I don’t mind getting nude.”
“I know you love to get nude, babe. But this is a Thailand university. You must behave yourself.”
“OK. If you insist. Clothes stay on.”
“Thank you. I will give you a lift so you don’t get lost.”
“It’s OK, I’ll walk. No problem. I was a boy scout, you know?”
(Top pic: sleep deprived detainee.)
Anna’s sister works in the Chiang Mai University Faculty of Fine Arts. She needs two farang sitters for the first year portrait class to practice on. She asked Anna if she knew a couple of farangs with the ability to sit around for hours and do nothing. Anna knew just who to ask.
I recruit my neighbour, Valerie, to be the second sitter.
(Above: my dream job: sitting on my arse and getting paid!)
Friday morning, we set out from the guesthouse to walk to the college. Lookmo, the guesthouse dog, decides to go with us.
Lookmo is a very cool customer. I have known this dog for more than a month now, and I have never seen him bark at a human. He is a beautiful looking animal, with thick, short hair, and a jaunty twist to his tail.
Valerie is a bit concerned about Lookmo wandering off and getting lost, but he has amazing street smarts. He stops at corners, surveys the traffic flow, and then weaves his way through the tuk-tuks and scooters like a kid playing Wii.
Late at night, when I’m out on the town, I often see Lookmo trotting along the street on some dog mission. A few times he has shown up at bars where I have been listening to music. He hangs around for a while, sniffs around for snacks, bobs his head to the beats for a bit, then moseys on. Lookmo is a dog-about-town.
Anna assures me that the University Campus is only half an hour’s walk from the guesthouse, but after Valerie and I have been walking forty minutes we are still only half way there. I think we are going to be late. I try to move faster but Valerie and Lookmo keep stopping at street food barrows. I don’t want to be rude, so when we stop, I feel obligated to buy sweet pork sausages, dumplings, roti and sticky rice as well. You can never walk anywhere quickly in Chiang Mai. Too many snacks.
It’s already after twelve. We get to the place where I thought the art school was at, but it turns out to be a 7/11. We panic, and jump in a taxi. I tell the driver to take us to the university art school. The driver has no idea what I am talking about unfortunately, so instead of taking us to the University, he takes us to the city gallery. It takes a while to work out what has happened, and when I finally sort it out with the gallery attendant, I realise that we were two hundred metres from the college gates when we got in the taxi. We are now two kilometres in the other direction.
Anna calls me.
“Hi cutey” I say, as brightly as possible.
“Where are you? You are late. My sister is waiting for you at the gate of the university.”
“Er, we are… close by.”
“You are lost, aren’t you?”
“A tiny bit.”
“I thought you said you were a boy scout?”
“That was when I was a kid.”
“So, where are you now?”
“The city gallery?”
“What the fuck? That’s miles away. What are you doing there?”
“We took a taxi.”
“Oh! I told you they are useless.”
“We were running so late… Lookmo was hungry.”
“Lookmo?”
“The dog. He decided to come with us. I think he wants to be a model.”
There is a pause. Anna sighs, then laughs.
“Alright. Stay there. My sister will go and pick you up with her scooter. Don’t go anywhere, boy scout.”
Am, Anna’s sister, arrives a few minutes later on her scooter. Valerie and I introduce ourselves and Am politely invites us to climb on the back of her bike. We attempt this, but Valerie and I are just not built for tripling on a scooter.
We hail another cab. Am gives the driver curt instructions in Thai, and we peel out into the traffic. Am, on her scooter, quickly loses us. Our taxi driver, through an effort of willpower and concentration manages to navigate the five blocks to the campus on his own, with just one stop to ask directions. He drops us off and we jog across the lawn, and burst into the studio thirty minutes late. We are sweaty and scruffy, but radiant with pink cheeked vitality.
We settle into our chairs and the students commence staring.
Valerie gets comfortable and has a nap.
(Above: Valerie preparing to nap.)
(Below: Lookmo and me being posers… I mean, sitters.)
Lookmo turns out to be more interested in fighting with the campus dogs, than sitting for his portrait.
The Art Faculty has eight resident canines that the students adopted from the street. Every chance he gets, Lookmo sneaks out of the studio and trots off to make trouble with the locals. Valerie and I get plenty of chances to stretch our legs, because we have to keep running out the door to break up scuffles on the quadrangle. Lookmo may be placid with humans, but when he is around other dogs, he turns into Joe Pesci.
It’s really weird to see the way different students paint us. Many of the pictures bear little or no resemblance, but they are all very interesting. In my favourite one of me (see top of page), I look like a psychotic detainee enduring sleep deprivation. I might make it my FB profile pic. Discourage spammers.
(Above: now this is the sort of work that gets portrait artists hired. I look kind of like an action hero… with a gimpy arm…)
(Below: the moral; don’t snooze in your sitting, Valerie.)
Valerie, while admiring of the students skills, is unhappy with the results of their labour.
“They make me look so old.”
“You just look sleepy. You shouldn’t have been napping while they painted you, Val.”
“It is your fault. I was exhausted. You say it is a half hour walk.”
“It would have been if you and Lookmo hadn’t stopped for snacks on every corner. It’s Lookmo’s fault.”
“You cannot blame Lookmo. At least he know’s his way around the city!”
I grin sheepishly.
Lookmo gives me a haughty look.
“Sorry Lookmo.”
Anna shows up at the end of the class to give us a lift home.
“I don’t want you two hapless tourists disappearing again.”
“I’m sure we could have just followed Lookmo.”
“Maybe, but you might have ended up at the abattoir instead of the guesthouse.”
(Above: Anna and her sister Am. Thx girls! Without these two, I would still be wandering around Chiang Mai following Lookmo. Thank you, both, for taking such great photos for me, too.)
Anna is very generous about the paintings, even the ones that make me look like one of the dud Ripley clones in ‘Alien: Resurrection’.
“You look so good. No-one would ever know you are forty. You don’t look older than thirty-eight.”
Am thanks me and Valerie for our time, and we thank the girls for setting up the day. Am gives us our pay – a cool three hundred Baht each.
Valerie is stoked. “We are professional models in Thailand!”
Lookmo has one last suicidal scrap with the campus dogs, and we all pile into Anna’s car to ride back to the guesthouse.
Most of the class didn’t get completely done on the day, so I asked the students if they would send me pics of their finished paintings on Facebook.
Here’s a couple of them already! Nice work people. ขอบคุณ[มาก – khop khun mâak.
>> More photos and stories about Chiang Mai, Thailand.
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