True French Story Number 2
I used to live and work in Borneo. Actually it was called Kalimantan because it was the southern half of the Island. I was working in the oilfield and was months in the jungle on very remote rigs.
The big town on Kalimantan was in the south and was called Balikpapan. It was the oil terminal and was on the coast with a natural harbour. It had seen some intense fighting in WW2 when the Japanese took it over.
When I lived there it was pretty rough and only had one nice hotel. Now I hear it has been built up more but it is hardly a tourist town. The only people there were oil workers, lumber people, mining guys etc.
When I got to town after a job on the rigs I used to head to the company house and get showered and shaved and put the oily coveralls in the bin to get washed and pull out the jeans and cotton shirt to go out and have a night on the town.
There were a few bars in town and we usually had a routine starting out at the nicest and working our way down to the skuzziest as the night wore on.
The place we ended up in was a dark loud bar that was kind of like a disco, loud music and lots of girls. Probably half of the girls were professionals, the rest were girlfriends of guys who brought them along.
So this one night we are sitting in this bar and a group of French navy guys come in. They were all dressed in white and had red berets on. The thing about this bar is that you could not sit down without 2 or 3 girls immediately joining you. It was all fun you would buy them drinks, joke with them, dance with them and if you felt like it you could take them home afterwards. It was really no effort at all.
So these french guys sit down 4 or 6 to a table, there must have been a dozen of them there. It turns out their ship was making a port call. They looked like deer caught in the headlights. Not one of them said anything to any of the other expats in the bar. The were terrorfied it appeared. The all ordered drinks and then just sat there drinking stupidly.
The funny thing is not one girl went to sit with them. I don't know why as it was the first time they were there and no one knew anything about them. But all night long they just sat by themselves and looked around the place. Not one had the courage to ask a girl for a dance even.
I could not believe it. It was so sad and pathetic. Picking up a girl at that bar was as easy as making eye contact but not for the gallant men of the french navy. After a few beers they all left empty handed.
