This picture is from www.clothdollnet.com

My girl was similar to the those in the picture. But mine was smiling and wearing round eyeglasses.

Heavy Dolls

Boosters were illegal here!!  That meant they were most wanted.  Sure the 100 watts FM booster was in my shopping list with serious warning – you must hide it nicely.

What could you expect from 2 young ladies who had no experience of traveling abroad?

To bring in a radio to Thailand, we still need import license.  Our leader had arrange them.  He would take care of the custom process, got the radio to the Post and Telegraph Office to get the ‘Have and Use’ radio license together with an operator license that would show our call sign.  The process is still the same even the PTD had changed to be the NTC – National Telecommunication Commission.  But the radio shops are allowed to stock the radios until they were sold.

It was about mid December 1985.  I remember the nice Christmas lighting on the road in Singapore.  We went to Sim Lim Tower, our leader brought us directly to a radio shop.  We all looking for ICOM-02N which was the newest handheld radio at that time, after the ICOM–2N.  One of our group went around and found that other shops offered much better price so we all move to that shop, left our leader a long face.. hi

The rest of the time was just a touring and shopping.  There were only 2 single and innocent young ladies in the trip, Anchalee and me.  We shared the room, and all the same problems.  We bought 2 big boxes of chocolate, intended to hind the boosters in its metal case.  This plan was canceled because we were not able to eat all the chocolate.. and they were too good to throw away..

 I also bought 2 big dolls, as big as a 2 year old child, a boy and a girl. We decided to hide the boosters in the dolls.  We put the boosters at the dolls’ tummy and wrapped them to the dolls with scarves.  We thought it was very good idea..

We reached Bangkok very late at night and needed to leave the radios for the clearing on the next day.  The custom pulled the doll from Anchalee’s bag and asked,

“Why is this doll so heavy?  Did you hind anything in it?”

“Yes, we did.” Anchalee answered modestly.

“Unwrap it and let me see” He said, almost laughed and turn to my doll,
 “How is this one?” What could I say?

“Yes, the same.” The laughing was fully in his eyes.  “You unwrap it too.”

“Oh please, it was so difficult to wrap it, took us a long time.. May I not….” I pleaded.

The guy said no, and rushed off the room, rolled out laughing and did not come back again. 
We waited for a while.. and then two young ladies unconfidently left the room with our wrapped dolls..