Luk Kruengs Lucky?

It’s a question difficult to answer, it always depends on the equation. A story of that I will tell, of that which happened in the condo I live. Bart (lets call him Bart for he was more of a brat as the residence knew him) is a “luk-krueng” (mixed blood), father a Japanese mother is a Thai. It is in the Thai’s eye that “luk-kruengs” are the luckiest people alive, with one money loaded parent of overseas origin, they are presumed to mature into someone smart, rich or a beautiful/handsome movie star. Well not all share the same fate as this tale I will tell.

Bart hung with the security guards 24 by 7. He hardly went home. He slept in the gym, in the ping pong room and ate with the security guards or staffs of the office. At an early teenage transition he was, rude and harassment associated remarks he would pass on the girls in our condo. Lately, he had disappeared. No longer do we see the dark bespectacled boy lingering all day around our condo. As inquisitive as I have always been, I asked the Thais.

Bart was a problem child, his mother had huge issues with him. Unable to control him, she let him be and so he decided to choose his own way, drop out of school and move out of the apartment. Where his father was no one knew. And so without his parents support and with no money for meals, residents started to help him out. Some would ask of him to go buy food and deliver to their rooms, giving him a large tip in return for his daily necessities. Why this treatment his mother did, no one knew either and could only speculate.

A life desperate, a life would lapse into the unethical route, as always the easiest avenue in Thailand. Near his last few days around, he kept the money advanced by the residents and disappeared for periods using the doe for his own affairs. The residents started to complain and it was decided to bar him from the condo altogether. His mother was notified and in fear that Bart would return, she simply sold the apartment and moved out as fast as she could. That’s it, simple, just run, run away from it all. Thailand is so big and one could hide so well. Bart never returned to the condo, or maybe he did but to find his only parent had gone. There, he faded into just another statistical part of the population.

The stereotyping that all “luk-kreungs” are lucky, get good education and grow up to be someone great and live a comfortable life is not so correct an assumption anymore. I had even seen “luk-kruengs” boys or girls selling garlands at traffic junctions. It all depends on the equation.