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Lek went to the bar 'Daddy's Hobby', in Pattaya, as a waitress-cum-cashier, until she realised that she was pregnant by her estranged husband, and everything changed. After having the baby, a girl, whom she left with her mother on the farm, she needed real money to provide a better life for her child and drifted into the tourist sex industry.The adventures, dreams and sometimes nightmares, this is Lek's point of view of what it's really like to be a Thai bar girl... the exhilarating hopes that cover up the frustrations, let-downs, lies and deceit of daily life, give way to the dream of a normal life when she meets a new man, yet again.When this new man returns for a real life relationship, Lek finds it's not so easy going through the good and bad of couplehood. Will they stay together, and for how long? Will she ever be able to trust a man enough again either? Or will she go back to the bar girl life?
The Behind The Smile Series is the story of Lek, a bar girl in Pattaya, Thailand. Lek was born the eldest child of four in a typical rice farming family in the northern rice belt of Thailand. A catastrophe occurred out of the blue one day – her father died young with huge debts that the family knew nothing about. Lek was just twenty years of age, and the only one who could prevent the foreclosure of the family farm, and allow her younger sister and two brothers to continue their education. However, the only way she knew how was to go to work in her cousin's bar in Pattaya.Can a Pattaya bar girl ever go back to being a regular girlfriend or wife?'Behind The Smile' is a look into one part of Thailand, a country known around the world as 'The Land of Smiles'.
Lek went to the bar 'Daddy's Hobby', in Pattaya, as a waitress-cum-cashier, until she realised that she was pregnant by her estranged husband, and everything changed. After having the baby, a girl, whom she left with her mother on the farm, she needed real money to provide a better life for her child and drifted into the tourist sex industry.The adventures, dreams and sometimes nightmares, this is Lek's point of view of what it's really like to be a Thai bar girl... the exhilarating hopes that cover up the frustrations, let-downs, lies and deceit of daily life, give way to the dream of a normal life when she meets a new man, yet again.When this new man returns for a real life relationship, Lek finds it's not so easy going through the good and bad of couplehood. Will they stay together, and for how long? Will she ever be able to trust a man enough again either? Or will she go back to the bar girl life?
Owen Jones, Amazon Best-Selling Author from Barry, Wales, has lived in several countries and travelled in many more. While studying Russian in the USSR in the `70`s, he hobnobbed with spies on a regular basis; in Suriname, he got caught up in the 1982 coup; and while a company director, he joined the crew of four as the galley slave to sail, from Barry to Gibraltar, a home-made concrete yacht, which was almost rammed by a Russian oil tanker and an American aircraft carrier.
"I am a Celt, and we are romantic", he said when asked about his writing style, "and I firmly believe in reincarnation, Karma and Fate, so, sayings like `Do unto another...`, and `What goes round comes around` are central to my life and reflected in my work. I write about what I see, or think I see, or dream... and, in the end it is all the same really". He speaks seven languages and is learning Thai, since he lives in Thailand with his Thai wife of seventeen years.
His first novel, Daddy`s Hobby is from the seven-part series `Behind The Smile: The Story of Lek, a Bar Girl in Pattaya`, but his largest collection is `The Megan Series`, twenty-three novelettes on the psychic development of a teenage girl, the subtitle of which, `A Spirit Guide, A Ghost Tiger and One Scary Mother!` sums them up nicely. He has written fifty novels and novelettes, including: Dead Centre; Andropov`s Cuckoo; Fate Twister; The Disallowed (a philosophical comedy); Tiger Lily of Bangkok; and A Night in Annwn (Annwn being the ancient Welsh word for Heaven). Many have been translated into foreign languages and narrated into audio books.
Owen Jones writes stories set in Wales, Spain and Thailand, where he now lives. He is a life-long Spiritualist, and this belief is interwoven, in a very realistic way, into many of his books and storylines. If you like a touch of the `supernatural`, try his books
He sums his life up thus: "Born in the Land of Song, Living in the Land of Smiles".
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