Sean Bunzick
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John Harwich, a Special Forces vet with multiple tours in Indochina, is now happily living life as an expatriate in Chiang Mai, Thailand. While taking a brief holiday trip to Mae Hong Son, he finds himself being captured and abducted by Shan hilltribe guerillas across the border into the Burmese side of the Golden Triangle. He is brought to meet up with one of the region’s notorious opium warlords, Khun Yim. Khun Yim’s obsession is his lust for jade which is why he’s had Harwich brought into Burma. After tracking Harwich down since his journey into Laos, Khun Yim takes advantage of Harwich being in Mae Hong Son to take the expat hostage. At one of his “temporary” camps in Burma, the warlord explains to Harwich that the reason he wants Harwich is because his people have found evidence of a priceless jade elephant with a mounted Khmer apsara--a warrior goddess--atop the elephant’s back. The statue has been found in an old Buddhist temple deep in the wilds of Cambodia and Khun Yim wants to become its owner immediately. Harwich must take his friend Rickshaw, a former Air America pilot now living in Chiang Mai, to Phnom Penh to fly a C-123 Khun Yim is seeking to buy out to the temple where the statue can be loaded and flown to Mae Hong Son Province in Thailand. Harwich, his life and that his expat friends being threatened, reluctantly agrees to take on this assignment, going back to Chiang Mai before hitting Bangkok to link up with all his buddies who can help him in Cambodia. From Mae Hong Son to Bangkok, Phnom Penh and finally the long-forgotten temple, it is one hair-raising adventure after the other as Harwich and his friends deal with an opium army, Russian gangsters, a sleazy English expat, a Khmer crime boss, firefights, tornadoes and Aom, Khun Yim’s minor wife, who may be the most dangerous element of them all.
Sean Bunzick, 40, is from Cape Cod, Massachusetts just like John Harwich.
He has been traveling to Southeast Asia for nearly 18 years now and considers it as much his home as he does the US. The Kingdom of Thailand is his favorite place with Chiang Mai being his base while he''''s in the country. Besides seeing many of the beautiful, unique sights of Thailand, he has made numerous visa runs to Tachilek, Burma along with visiting Phnom Penh and Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Vientiane in Laos and Zamboanga in the Philippines.
He loves to explore the Orient, never passing up a chance to do so if he can.
He has been writing since he was a boy and is quite happy to have published
Missing In Asia, the first John Harwich novel, in 2003. Few days are complete without him doing
some kind of writing.
Like John Harwich, he has had his own share of adventures and surprises in the Far East which have been great inspirations for some of his tales.
He has been at the Thai/Burmese border when it''''s been closed down by Burmese authorities, he''''s dealt with Muslims in the Philippines and in 1999, he nearly died after his motorcycle was struck by a car in Chiang Mai which left him with a split-open skull. It took him three weeks to come out of a coma.
Recently, he was terrified to wake up to his hotel room in Chiang Mai rumbling with a tremor which was a result of the massive earthquake/tsunamis which brought such epic death and pitiful destruction to a great deal of Southeast Asia, very much including Thailand, on Dec. 26, 2004.
Despite all these events of both physical
and emotional natures, Sean Bunzick''''s love for Asia not only hasn''''t died but because of all he''''s been through and survived, that love continues to grow.
For those interested, he can be reached at
seanb6@hotmail.com
“Dear John,
Hello from the Cape! How are you doing these days, my friend? I’m basically sitting on my old man’s ass enjoying the life I can now have because of what happened to us last month in Laos. Even as I sit here scribbling this postcard off to you, I can’t believe what we did and got away with doing over there.
Matter of fact, The Cape Cod Times barely made any mention of the attack on Gen. Xiang’s camp; most Americans can’t even find Laos on the damn map, anyways! Of course, I’ve kept real quiet about it and nobody here knows much about my part in it--the only giveaway I show is the brand new Jaguar convertible I bought last week! Well, John, I’m running out of room so I’ll sign off but I hope everything is going well for you now in Thailand. Cheers! Glenn”
John Harwich smiled as he put the postcard down on his bureau that also worked as a desk for him in his apartment at Viraporn Court. The front of the postcard had given him a good laugh to start the day off with: a color picture of a dog romping through a cranberry bog on Cape Cod. Cape Cod, the arm-shaped peninsula surrounded by the Atlantic, was part of Massachusetts, southeast of Boston. It was also where Harwich had been born, raised and lived most of his life until his friend Glenn Lucas had been instrumental in getting him to return to Southeast Asia.
Glenn’s message on the other side had made Harwich even happier. It stated why Harwich was where he was now without saying a damned thing at all; Asian-style at its best.
Harwich smiled at himself in the mirror attached to the bureau. He was bordering fifty but did not one bit look it in the mirror--a little over 5’ 7”, brown hair that continued to resist going gray, teeth that were original and in good shape, no wrinkles, blue eyes that the Thai bargirls enjoyed and no fat on him whatsoever. His body was in excellent shape in spite of his age and his recent misadventures in Laos had proved that all the way.
In his youth, in the early ‘70s, Harwich had first been in this part of the world doing a tour of duty in Vietnam with the US Army’s Special Forces, 5th Group.
It had been shaky and dangerous in the beginning but he’d survived and taken to the area so well that he’d ended up working for the CIA in Special Operations Group doing tours in Laos and Cambodia as the United States pulled out of Indochina. “Vietnamization”, as Nixon called it, was underway at the same time as Harwich’s tours.
He’d been attached to the 46th Group based out of Camp Narai in Lopburi, Thailand and had done enough time there teaching Royal Thai Army Special Forces and other military/police outfits how to perform covert ops. More than one mission took him back into Laos and Cambodia. While in Thailand, he got over all the insanity he’d seen and participated in on duty in Indochina.
He learned to speak Thai even better than his Lao, Khmer, Vietnamese and H’mong. He spent time off-duty studying Buddhism at local wats. He learned to love Singha beer and Mekhong whiskey. The spicy tastes of Thai food pleased his stomach. Like most single, young servicemen in the kingdom, he had great sex and fell in love with more than one Thai girl.
After the fall of Saigon in ‘75, Harwich was finished with combat work in Southeast Asia and despite the pleas from his fellow Americans and the locals to become an expat, he’d returned to the States.
Once there, his life was a so-so, everyday world until last month, May. In just one day, his dog was put to sleep, he got fired from his job as a restaurant day manager and broke up with his girlfriend. And then he’d gotten the odd, long-distance phone call from Glenn all the way over in Bangkok, Thailand. His old home…
Glenn Lucas was a WW II vet Harwich had met ten years earlier at the local VFW. Like Harwich, Glenn had done his time in Asia. He’d been a Flying Tiger during the war and a pilot for CAT afterwards until Mao took over China in 1949. The two of them had gotten along well after comparing war stories in the Far East.
Now Glenn had wanted Harwich to return to Bangkok. He said he really wasn’t in a position to tell Harwich why he wanted him back but told him a ticket on Thai Airways International and a room at the Oriental Hotel were both available to him if he’d be good enough to help Glenn out.
The mixture was enough for Harwich--his dog was dead, his job was history and he was single again plus, here was Glenn offering him a flight to Bangkok to stay at the world’s greatest hotel. Yeah, that was enough.
He’d flown over, was met by Glenn at Don Muang International and taken to the Oriental. Once there, Glenn told him why he was needed back in Southeast Asia.
Glenn had been making his last flight--ever--out of China. He was flying a C-47 “Gooney Bird” from Kunming to Vientiane and then on to Bangkok for a Chinese Nationalist officer named Yen Ching Kung. He hadn’t liked Yen nor did he trust him but he’d decided to make the run. Unfortunately, the C-47 never made Vientiane. It had crashed into a gorge in Laos, killing the two Nationalist foot soldiers Yen had brought along and leaving Yen himself looking to Glenn like he would also be dead soon so Glenn had loaded up supplies and bailed out of the C-47.
He’d gotten out of the gorge where he was met by a wandering H’mong on an elephant who helped Glenn get to his nearby village and across the Mekong to Siam. Glenn had left Siam and returned safely to the US.
End of story, right?
Wrong.
