* * * * * The Thai Bird Man. Patong Beach, Island of Phuket, Thailand Tuesday, 15th May 1993 After the Vietnamese Pacific Airlines fiasco, I returned to “beachcombing” at Patong, while waiting for the next flying job. In so doing, I literally stumbled across two very interesting pilots. The first was a Canadian by the name of Bill Stainethorpe, whom I accidentally sat down next to at Dooley’s Diner below the Rock Hard go-go bar at the corner of Bangla Road and Rat-U-Thit Road. Bill was a blond-blue-eyed stocky kid of medium height, in his late twenties, with a pleasant, soft spoken manner. He was also what I call a “bullet-magnet,” for bad luck seemed to follow him everywhere. ...