Scope and Content
Nicky’s life, based on her own words
Nicky’s greatest legacy, to us all, was her sense of fun … her cheerfulness … her radiant smile. I’m sure that that’s how we all remember her, and how we want to remember her. I could never look at her without a smile coming to MY face. She made me happy … she spread happiness.
Ploenphit Phalasuk, ‘Nicky’, was born in Sawangdandin in northeast Thailand on 7th January 1969, the year of the first Moon landing. She was brought up by her grandfather and grandmother, Lua & Tooey Phalasuk, who she thought were her mother and father, and by her great-aunt, Tip Soopot. None of them spoke English and I speak only a few words of Thai, but, when I visited them, I had instant rapport with her grandfather, who was a real gentleman. He was the local mayor, and Nicky’s family home was – at that time – the only one in the village with a television set, and Lua was held in very high regard by everyone. This was a rice-farming community, and life can hardly have changed there for hundreds of years.
Nicky never met her father (Jamloen Boochapun), and she did not know whether her father and mother ever married. When she was 8 years old, Nicky discovered that her mother was Thongnoi Phalasuk, known as Doi. Until then, she had not gone to school, but had accompanied her great-aunt, Tip, and Tip’s husband (Sow), when they went drinking and engaged in illegal gambling. Nicky told me that those days - when she was treated by Tip as if she was her daughter - were among the happiest days of her life.
Nicky then went to school for just six years, leaving when she was 13 to go to live with her mother, her step-father (No), and her half-sister (Sai). Her mother sold vegetables and it was Nicky’s job to get up at 2.30 a.m. to bargain for and buy the vegetables that her mother would sell for a profit later in the day.
Ploenphit got her family nickname “Nicky” from the Thai phrase ‘nick noi’, meaning ‘a little bit.’ She was always the smallest person of her age and she told me that she was very innocent, having no boyfriend, unlike all the other girls of her age. Her best friend was another girl, Ning, who was not so academically inclined, so Nicky used to correct her homework for her.
When she was 17, Nicky’s grandfather arranged for her to go to Bangkok and enter into training to be a beautician. Nicky did very well, being awarded a Diploma of Merit at the end of her training. By now, she was living in Bangkok with Salan & Mantana Noppawong, a bank executive and his wife, who owned a small beauty salon. Nicky travelled to and from work each day on a motorbike ‘taxi’, often being given a free ride by a man named To. Whenever she went home to Sawangdandin, she was very white compared to the other girls who worked in the fields, and Nicky told me that she was a real snob, her whiteness giving her higher status.
When back in Bangkok, Nicky took on the role of mother to Jeffery, the son of Mantana’s brother, whose wife had left him. Just as Nicky had thought that her grandmother was her mother, so Jeffery thought that Nicky was his mother. Nicky was constantly in financial difficulties, since she did not earn enough from manicures and hairdressing and tips from customers to pay for her small apartment, to feed herself and Jeffery, and also send money back to the rest of the family in Sawangdandin.
It was at this time, when I was leading tours to Thailand for European and American birdwatchers, that I met Nicky and we had a beach holiday together. After I returned to England, Nicky had what she described as ‘a one-night stand’ with the motorbike taxi friend, To. When her son, Jojo, was born, Salan Noppawong took Jeffery away from Nicky. Even 17 years later, Nicky told me that this still made her sad and she still loved Jeffery dearly.
From this time onwards, my life and Nicky’s became one. With help from our friends (Tharnathep Pintusan, Kamol & Patcharee Komolphalin and Phil Round), Nicky got the necessary visas to come to Britain, received permission to stay indefinitely, and came here to join me in April 1996.
Nicky’s life was not an easy one. When problems occurred, she sometimes turned to alcohol. Being so small, this affected her far more than it would you or me. It never made her happy; it just temporarily blotted out her problems. It NEVER made her unpleasant, and, in the 25 or so years that I knew her, Nicky never said or did anything unkind to me. I tried to make her happy, and I often succeeded. We toured Scotland, had holidays not only in Thailand, but also in Paris and in Switzerland, and stayed for two to five weeks every summer in north Devon. I never saw her happier than when she was riding in on her surfboard on a large wave. She learned to play bridge, and, in just eight years, came top 51 times at 13 different clubs. I was so proud of her. She accompanied me and friends on many birdwatching, botanical or butterflying trips. Whatever Nicky did, she was full of enthusiasm and FUN. That is how we must remember her. A lovely, gorgeous, kind, generous, wonderful person, who thought of other people, not of herself. She did not deserve to die so young.
[Adapted and expanded from her own words by Tim Sharrock]
