When I came back from my first session of surgery in Bangkok, I thought the surgeon, Dr Chettawut, had done a wonderful job of re-contouring my chin. Most important for me was a chin implant as all my life up until then I had always felt that I’d been held back as regards my looks by a very weak chin. The chin contouring (shaving the sides of the jaw bone) had been added to the procedures that I had requested on Dr Chettawut’s recommendation as this, in conjunction with the implant, would give my jaw a narrower, less square shape. This is apparently a more feminine characteristic. All this work was done when I went to Bangkok in March along with a full face and neck lift, forehead lift, upper eyelids (remove some bagginess), trachea shave (Adam’s apple) and, of course, my magnificent breast implants.

Overall I was very pleased with the result, especially my beautiful D-cup breasts. People told me I looked great, but I had some reservations about the face lift. What I initially attributed to swelling from the surgery did not go down as I’d hoped and I felt the beautiful jaw that Dr. C. had given me was being partially obscured by sagging jowls. However, I surprised myself at how good I looked when I took some self-portrait photos for Repartee 55. I was surprised because when I looked at myself in the mirror, what I saw did not look nearly as good. It was those sagging jowls. I realised that when I smiled, as in the photos, the jowls lifted and this revealed my beautiful new jaw line but when I relaxed, those sagging jowls made me look miserable again. Pulling back and lifting the sides of my face with my fingers I could see how much better I would look if I had further surgery.

So I contacted Dr. C. and though initially he thought I was merely being over-critical of his work, I did manage to convince him that I had full confidence in him but merely needed a bit more doing to make a good job even better. After the surgery in March he had also suggested an upper lip lift would make me look a bit more feminine, so I booked the surgery for this, along with a re-do of the face lift, for July.

However, when I attended the Sparkle event in Manchester in June, my only appearance at a tranny event between my two sessions of surgery, I received a lot of very positive comment about my new look. When I mentioned I’d be returning to Bangkok for more surgery many people wondered why, and I must admit I was beginning to wonder myself. Maybe I was being too critical and expecting too much.

So it was with some trepidation that I went to see Dr. C. when I arrived back in Bangkok on July 9th. My flight got into Bangkok an hour late at 8.30 a.m., 22 hours and two sunrises after leaving home, and the officer at passport control seemed to spend ages eyeing me up. I had dressed as male, with a baggy jacket to hide my breasts, but my face was somewhat different from my old male passport. But the officer eventually waved me through without a word. I was met by Tair, Dr. Chettawut’s wife and Nuch, his nurse, who whisked me in their car straight to the clinic for an immediate consultation with the man himself. He said he would do what he could as regards re-doing the face lift but warned me the result may not be quite the same as the effect I got by pulling the flesh back with my fingers. After examining my upper lip he said he would only take out about 5mm (5-10 mm is normal) with an incision immediately below my nose.

He also said he would do the surgery next day, a day sooner than the scheduled date! After many photos by Dr. C., the car took me to the hotel to check in, have a much-needed shower, and finally get into lighter, cooler female clothes more appropriate for the great heat of Bangkok.
The Baan Siri hotel is used by most of Dr. C’s transgender patients and at any one time there will be maybe half a dozen or more staying at the hotel (the top two of the hotel’s nine floors seem to be permanently reserved for his patients).

Dr. Chettawut specialises in transgender surgery and his patients come from all over the world but principally from the USA and UK. There is a Yahoo support group for his patients called the Dr.Chettawut’s Girls Club which has been set up by Tina, a TS from Nottingham. I found this an invaluable resource not only for information about all the surgery he does but very practical tips and advice about every aspect of your stay in Bangkok. For example, I had learned in advance from the group that the hotel rooms had a mini-fridge but no kettle (hot water being available from an urn on a floor below). Many guests apparently buy a kettle from a Tesco at a nearby shopping mall and stock up with food to keep them going whilst confined to their rooms. There is room service and meals at the hotel are pretty cheap but it is handy to have your own supplies which you can top up from a 7-11 store only a block away from the hotel. I did the kettle-buying trip and stocking up of food on that first afternoon.

Next morning Dr. C’s driver collected me at the appointed time and took me to the Piyavate Hospital which is a modern skyscraper hospital of the highest standard. I was checked in and the ever-attentive nurses settled me into my private room where I rested until being taken down to the operating theatre early in the afternoon. I briefly saw Dr. C. before falling asleep and I knew nothing further until I awoke in my room sometime next morning. It was all over. I had bandages around my head but I felt nothing at all. No pain but I did feel sick, especially after having the horrible broth I was fed. I was taken back to the hotel late that afternoon after just one night in hospital.

I felt sick on and off for the next several days but I was otherwise recovering from the surgery remarkably quickly. The wonderful nurse, Nuch, and sometimes with another nurse called Sri, would visit me every day in my hotel room to see how I was getting on and take out the stitches at the appropriate times. Initially the soft flesh around my eyes was very swollen and a bright orange/yellow colour but that became much less dramatic after a few days. I had to wear a compression bandage which passed under my chin, around my neck and over the top of my head. After a couple of days I felt well enough to go out but when I did so I wore a wide-brimmed floppy hat to partially hide the bandage. I did get some people looking at me (I would not say staring – the Thais are much too polite for that).

Even if it were not for the head covering, I must have been quite a curiosity to the locals as a tall farang (foreigner), looking vaguely like a female, passing through their midst in non-tourist areas with a much shorter and younger Thai lady often hand-in-hand at my side.

That Thai lady was Tui. In the preceding months I had been using a Thai dating website to look for a nice Thai lady who would at least be a companion for me in Bangkok and take care of me whilst recovering from the surgery, but with the added possibility of the relationship becoming much more! Although I was very open about what I was and wanted, I was actually inundated with possible candidates. In fact it was a real problem deciding whom I should meet from the many I had chatted with on-line (I’ll write about Thai dating to find an understanding partner in the next issue). The lady I chose was Tui and on the day after my surgery she travelled from her home in the North East of Thailand to be with me in Bangkok.

Apart from the companionship, it was extremely useful to have a Thai lady with me to act as an interpreter and guide. We would go everywhere by taxi as they are so cheap and plentiful (as likely as not, a taxi driver will have seen you and sensed you might want a taxi before you had even started looking for one and will already be waiting for you at the roadside!). But without a Thai with me it would have been difficult to tell them where we wanted to go. Tui knew the best places to go especially as regards shopping for clothes. She took me to the markets where clothes are incredibly cheap even by Thai standards.

On Sunday (5 days after my surgery) we took the Sky Train (bit like the Docklands light railway) that threaded its way perched high above the crowded streets of Bangkok to the famous Chatuchak weekend market. This is huge with over 15000 tiny stalls and shops selling everything imaginable. It is a great place for clothes and even Tui was amazed at how cheap everything was. She bought several really pretty bras (couldn’t find any big enough for me) that were often 2 or sometimes even 3 for 100 baht, which is about £1.60. They were the sort of bras I later saw in a UK store for £18 each! I had already bought several items of clothing from another market we had been to a couple of days earlier but I could not resist buying more. My only constraint was the thought of how on earth was I going to get everything into my case when it was time to go home. Next time I go to Bangkok I’ll take a near empty case and no spare clothes!

This is the biggest market in Bangkok but there are many others. In fact there are individual traders and small stalls, many of them selling food, packed into every conceivable space in alleys and the pavements of all but the poshest streets all over Bangkok.

There are high-class shops and big department stores in Bangkok, indeed the Sky-train we took passed through what looked like a very smart shopping area, but we did not go there. We did however go to a couple of other large shopping malls. The hub of both these malls is a big department store and a major supermarket (e.g. Tesco), many food outlets, including well-known names such as the inevitable McDonald’s, much like any western shopping mall, but what made the Thai ones different is the myriad of smaller shops down to individual kiosks and stalls also within the mall.

One off these malls, Seacon Square, is well-known to Dr. Chettawut’s girls being just a short taxi ride from the hotel. It has a large IT area but I found electronics and photo equipment around similar prices to UK so it is not worth buying such items here (particularly bearing in mind possible problems importing them into the UK). Some computers seemed a little cheaper than in the UK but that was partly because VAT is less in Thailand but probably mainly because often they do not come with Windows installed (Linux instead). However, the shop assistant would point you to a small stall elsewhere in the mall where a guy would install Windows XP plus a host of other software on your new computer for 500 baht (about £8)!

Also in Seacon Square there is a ‘mobile zone’ where you can buy cheap second-hand mobile phones. It is a good idea to do this if you want to use your phone much within Thailand as a cheaper option than trying to use your UK mobile phone. You can also buy internet access cards so that you can connect your laptop to the phone line in the hotel room. There are all sorts of packages available: the one I got gave unlimited access for 14 days for about £3. The hotel did not charge for the use of the line. It is just dial-up, not broadband, but it is so much cheaper and more convenient to be able to go on-line all day in your room if you want without having to use the internet station down in the hotel lobby (£1.60 an hour) or go out to a nearby internet café (55p an hour).

We went to Seacon Square quite often and one day I decided to have some really fancily decorated nail extensions. The price looked good but I was mostly attracted by the really sexy lady showing lots of cleavage who was doing the nails. She turned out to be a ladyboy! She was very curious about me too and could not understand why I did not have, nor wanted, a boyfriend.

I also wanted to have permanent eye make-up but had to go to another mall for that. Permanent make-up involves tattooing and I had my eyebrows done and eyes lined. This hurt, really hurt, especially the eye-lining! It hurt so much I found myself a quivering wreck and had to get the girl to stop part way through. It took a cup of Thai tea and quite a bit of massage of my limbs before my body was calmed enough for her to continue. I had to carry on because only one eye had been completed so I needed to have the other one done. As it was she did not do as much to the eye-lining as was intended and suggested I come back for a top-up in a couple of weeks. But, of course, I would have left Thailand by then.

On the twelfth day after surgery which was the Saturday of my last weekend in Bangkok, the nurse on her daily visit to the hotel, took out the last of my stitches and told me I could stop wearing the compression bandage. This was remarkably soon, as after the March surgery I had to wear the bandage for about 6 weeks. Also that time I had felt quite ill for a few weeks after getting back home but now I was feeling good only days after the surgery. I suppose the much quicker recovery was because I had much less done this time and the second face lift only involved detaching facial flesh that had probably not fully re-established itself from being detached before. So there was much less trauma for my body to deal with.

To celebrate my freedom from that horrible head bandage, we decided to get dressed up and have a night out as now I was able to get myself made up properly and wear my wig. Tui invited a few friends to join us, one of whom had a car and drove us to a nightclub in downtown Bangkok. A night out with four lovely Thai ladies – what a great night that was!

The nightclub was huge and packed. There was a large stage where a boy rock band, a few very sexy female singers and a host of very attractive girl dancers performed. There was no dance area but people would just jig about where they stood or sat, really getting into the music which I can only describe as a mixture of pop, rock and dance (but no western songs). It was very catchy and infectious and I really enjoyed dancing along with my delightful companions.
We left the club in the early hours but the girls announced they wanted to do some karaoke singing for me. However, I was surprised when they took me to a small chalet-like building behind a nearby semi-open-air bar. It would only take about half a dozen persons but it had all the equipment and I was beautifully serenaded by the lovely ladies.

Monday morning I had a final consultation with Dr. Chettawut. He was just as pleased with the results as I was and asked my permission to use before and after photos of me as examples of his work on his web site.

The next day was the only time we did anything during my stay in Bangkok that could be regarded as touristy: we went up the tallest building in Thailand. Even that was only because we happened to be by it when we went to one of the markets for yet more shopping. The Baiyoke Sky Hotel is the tallest in Thailand with 88 floors and a revolving observation deck near the top. The views from the top are well worth the £3.50 it cost to go up on the high speed lifts, especially as it included a ‘free’ drink at the bar on the top floor.

That night, my last in Bangkok, Tui and I went to a sort of Thai Country and Western Club. A long-haired boy rock band with an occasional female singer performed the whole of the time we were there (which was a few hours). Again, singing and dancing along with the music where we sat, and drinking a lot of wine, we had a really good time.

So finally I had to say goodbye to Tui and fly home. I had intended flying back in male mode the way I’d come but now, perhaps recklessly, I had added fancy false nails and quite dramatic-looking permanent eye make-up which, unlike my boobs, I could not hide. I just wore fairly androgynous clothes and left it to the public at large to make of me whatever they wanted. I think a few people were unsure whether I was male or female but check-in weren’t fazed at all even though my passport and tickets were in my male name. The persons who really mattered though were the customs officials and I was expecting to do some explaining but, even entering the UK, surprisingly they did not even bat an eyelid.

The flight home was long and boring and included a six hour stop-over in Doha. Funnily enough, whilst whiling away the hours at Doha, I met up with a Thai lady who just happened to be from the same district as Tui. She was on her way to join her English husband whom she married only two weeks after first meeting him in Pattaya.

Will anything come of my relationship with Tui? I don’t know. There are problems that could prevent us getting together on a more permanent basis but just a few weeks after I returned to the UK she has come to Amsterdam where she will be studying for the next few years. My time with Tui is a whole other story as there were several twists and side-tracks along the way. It is all rather personal so I doubt I’ll relate it in Repartee – unless there is a huge demand from readers ...

Martine Rose