Where the Yaum in Gerry Came From

When I was in Thailand in 1999 there was a very popular song that I would hear all the time. The song was called Yaum, sung by the Thai group Labanoon. The story was about a man who worked as a security guard and who from a distance watched and protected a girl who did not know who he was, he sort of hid in the shadows making sure no harm came to her, never receiving any credit but doing the right thing none the less.

At that time I was hanging out in a all night bar/restaurant/club called "The Thermae Coffee Shop" that catered to Westerners looking for sex in Bangkok. The normal bars, gogos and such would close at 2am and the Thermae back then was open until 5 or 6 am., so after the bars closed all the sex workers would flood the Thermae looking for customers. I would hang out nightly meeting people to photograph and working on my Thai language skills, I used to sit in this loud smoke filled room with my little notebook asking how to say different words, slowly but surely learning the language. Every night the girls in the Thermae would walk over to the jute box put in some baht coins and listen to music, the song Yaum came up often, usually 2 or 3 times a night. When I decided to use a pseudonym I thought Yaum would do nicely.

Check out the song here.

http://www.ijigg.com/songs/V2G4FE4PB0