Part 2. The Greed of Money. Isaan Thailand.

The other day I wrote part 1 on my story The Greed of Money, here is part 2.

So after waiting for nearly two years the day to collect the insurance money for her deceased grand father was two weeks away. Noot started to receive phone calls from her auntie. Her auntie told Noot “Your dad didn’t pay the insurance money; it was paid by your great aunt, so we want 2/3rds of the money.”

She also told Noot that they had a receipt for this payment from around 15 years ago. The phone calls went on for about a week. Noot’s sister Joom is a fiery girl and she doesn’t mix her words, she was adamant that this was all a lie and an attempt to get some of the money. They called Noot because she is much more polite and can talk and not scream stupidly.

So after a week of all this, I gave Noot some advice. First I told her what to do. I said “Tell your auntie and great aunt you want a copy of the receipt; tell them you are consulting a lawyer that Jason knows. He is going to enquire about the legitimacy of this receipt. He will instruct Noot what she should do and there will be a meeting scheduled for all parties involved, mediation as such.”

So after going over this a few times so she understood she called her auntie. She told her everything I had said. Within 5 minutes of getting off the phone from her aunt, Noot’s cousin rang. She is her great aunt’s grand daughter. She speaks English well as she has travelled abroad to Australia and England. I have always got on well with her, before.

She was asking Noot, why I had got involved? Why a lawyer was involved and so forth. She again went over the story of her grand mother paying for the insurance and the receipt they had to prove this. She also said that they wanted 70,000 Baht out of the 100,000.

After 10 minutes of listening I had had enough. I told Noot to tell her she needs to bring the receipt, also tell her not to contact you anymore but go through the solicitor. Tell her to write the number down and everything now goes through him. This went down sideways.

So 5 days before the insurance money was due, Miss Noot went to the government office where these policies are taken out and also paid out. She went there on my advice and I had told her to tell them exactly what was happening, don’t enlarge the story, and just tell the truth.

The people there were great; they pulled out all the paperwork. They told Noot when the premium was taken out and how much it cost. How it was paid and so forth.

Now Noot’s aunt and so forth could only tell Noot that they paid 40,000 Baht for the premium. They couldn’t say the exact date even though the apparently had a receipt.

The big thing was it had cost Noot’s father 15,000 Baht. It was nowhere near 40,000 Baht.

So it all went quiet for a little while, that was until to days before the money was due to be paid. There were phone calls through the day; I didn’t know this as I was a work. Noot was in tears when she called me once and I simply told her to not answer her phone.

That afternoon I arrived home from work, went to the park as I usually do and then returned home at around 6pm. Noot wasn’t home she had gone to her sister’s house. I was cooking dinner when I heard Ben say “hello” to someone. I poked my head out and seen; Noot’s auntie, great aunt and cousin walking through the door.

The auntie and great aunt came out and I was very polite and said “hello” to them and made sure Ben got them water. There was a little small talk and then the great aunt asked “where is Joom’s house?” I said “I have no idea where it was. I have never been there.”

I called Noot to tell her they were here at our house. They eventually left me to cook and went and sat on the lounge. The cousin had rung Noot and a loud conversation was going on, this was because Joom had answered the phone. This conversation went on and on. After listening and cooking for a good 20 minutes I called Noot on her sister’s phone.

The conversation went like this;
“What is going on?” Noot then explained that they were still going on about the money being paid by the great aunt and blah, blah… I told Noot to hang on for a minute.

I walked out into the lounge, I told Noot to tell her cousin exactly this. ‘Give me the receipt I will copy and we will give it to the solicitor and we will go from there’

I gave the phone to her cousin, a short conversation went on and then I talked to Noot again. I walked back out into the kitchen to check on the dinner and again I asked “What’s happening?”

Noot explained that the cousin had said that “if you don’t give the 70,000 Baht to them they will not consider the girls family anymore.” They will be disowned if you like to say. She also threatened Joom with withdrawing from being a guarantor on their car.

I think I said “what the fuck?” I said goodbye to Noot and went out into the lounge room and said “get out of my house,” in a very stern voice. The cousin was still talking on the phone to Joom. I again said “get out of my house,” this time very loudly so the cousin stopped talking.

I moved to our screen door and opened it, with 3 ladies looking at me mouths agape I yelled “get the fuck out of my house.”

I then launched a tirade at the cousin, she probably understood 5% but I was pissed. “How dare you come to my fucking house and threaten my family, don’t you ever set foot in my house again, don’t you ever ring Noot. They don’t need you as you have done nothing for them before, so take your threats and jam them up for fucking ass.”

The cousin said to the others to go, they stopped talking to Ben who had sat very quietly through all this. I had to again tell them to fuck off, or I would throw them off. I walked them out to or large and heavy gate and slammed it behind them.

My parting words were “Don’t come back and don’t ever call.” When Noot arrived home she sat as Ben told her what I had done. Noot was gob-smacked as she listened. I eventually told Noot to ring her cousin and tell her that if she ever threatens anyone, be it Ben, Noot or Joom she will see how pissed off I can get.

So the two days passed and the day came for collecting the insurance money. There had been no phone calls that I had been told about. Noot collected the money and Noot and Ben’s money was invested straight into a term deposit. The girls of course kept a little of their money for some spending money.

To date there hasn’t been any trouble that I know of. I even purposely made a trip out to the village for no good reason just to try and get a bite out of one of her relatives while we stopped at Noot’s mum’s house. No one came though.

So that is the story of greed, over only 100,000 Baht, this is a lot of money to a Thai person, as Noot said. Ben’s money is for her education at university but again that won’t be necessary as I will cover her schooling fees.

I cannot believe the lies and deceit they tried to use to get money from the girls. Maybe they weren’t counting on me getting involved or Noot telling me. For now it is over and the time will come when we all meet at a village ceremony or some other occasion. This will be interesting indeed. I am actually looking forward to it.

Brunty