by Alex Gunn
He eventually finished. Handed me the paper, put my International Driving License Interpretation Certificate Identity Card in his pocket and said that I had to report to the central police station or give him 400 Baht. What a bloody cheek. Here am I, a law abiding citizen, riding along, minding my own law abiding business and being treated like a criminal, like I’d broken the law, and besides I’d have to fork out another £18 to buy another fake ID. Where is the justice in the world!
I had no idea that not wearing a crash helmet in Thailand was actually an offence. After all, the nice lady in the hire shop said I didn’t need one so it must be true.
I felt uncharacteristically irritated. “No, I’m not leaving until you give me my driving license back” and I held out my hand, like parents do to small children who are hiding something naughty behind their backs. He stared at me, looked rather worried and walked off, back towards the gold braid brigade who were finishing off their Pringles.
One of the lesser gold braid brigade wiped his mouth on his sleeve and came over to me. He spoke perfect English, he wasn’t particularly rude but not over friendly. “Where are you from” he said, looking suspiciously at my dodgy identity card. “England” I replied. “What are you doing in Chiang Mai”, I still hadn’t found an answer that sounds plausible or even sensible. “I’m a teacher,” I said, which of course isn’t entirely untrue, I just wasn’t teaching at that moment. “What do you do in England?” he asked, “I teach in a college” I proudly announced as though repeating lines in a Victorian melodrama.
He turned and walked back towards the other officers in the little marquee. There was some brief discussion. He walked back to me, handed me the dodgy identity card and in a very theatrical flourish, that would have certainly gone down extremely well in both pantomime and a Victorian melodrama, snatched the paper out of my hand that the junior officer had taken so long to write out and tore it up into very small pieces, dramatically throwing them into the gutter. “You can go” he said with authority. “Thank you” I said, sounding exasperated, as though it was all their fault that I had broken the law.
I drove off, my heart beating fast, but feeling rather proud of my lone stand in the face of authority. I still didn’t understand what had gone on and why I’d been stopped and more mysteriously why they let me off. Perhaps they realised they were in the wrong, and in the face of good old fashioned defiance had backed down. All that stuff they say about bullies really must be true.
It was not until a few days later when I was talking to some Thai friends Khun Att and Khun Koy, that it dawned on me what had actually happened. Khun Att explained that not wearing a crash helmet, is indeed a traffic offence, but that many people don’t bother. He also explained how respectful people (including the police) are towards teachers, especially at college and university, and it was certainly my mention of this that let me off the hook. I felt terribly embarrassed.
On returning the little motor-scooter to the hire shop I asked the nice friendly lady why she had told me that I didn’t need to wear a crash helmet and explained that I had been stopped by the police. She seemed genuinely put out, “yes” she said, “I think are good idea but many people no like them – I think you no like them”. I smiled, and she smiled too. She bowed and saluted in the traditional Thai way and so did I.
Chapter 10
Buying A Car From An Angel
We did pretty well with a little hired motor-scooter for about 4 months until we got fed up with getting wet, police road blocks, getting hot, and paying a very friendly young lady in a motorbike hire shop 3000 Baht each month for the privilege of these novelties. I began half heartedly looking at local ads and wandering around used car show rooms with a sinking feeling.
I don’t really know a lot about cars, which may come as a massive surprise to you. Back in England, Tony “the mechanic” did all of that. The car would go wrong I’d phone up Tony and he would fix it; simple. When we bought a new car, I’d phone up Tony he would look at it, drive it impressively fast and tell me whether it was okay.
Out here there is no Tony, no easy phone calls, just me and the cars and smiling sales people who are trained to spot people like me from day one in the Chiang Mai College of Car Sales.
Son said that he’d keep a lookout for a cheap car, but I didn’t want to just leave it all to Son. I wanted to prove that we could be half way independent and not get taken to the laundry.
So, one morning in December, I decided to go and buy a car. Two small boys looked up from their computer games and my wife looked up from her lap top, “well, don’t forget to eat something, you know how funny you get” she said. I slopped off already feeling a bit funny.
Part of the problem was that we didn’t really have a great deal of money to spend, and cars in Thailand are comparatively expensive. Son had mentioned to me that pick-up trucks are the best deal and you could buy a good used one for 300,000 Baht. I had about 120,000 Baht. Obviously I would have to lower my sights somewhat and do some hard bargaining, or just end up buying a broken down old wreck.
Walking around used car places felt a bit hopeless. Nothing had prices on and everything looked expensive or just completely knackered. I tried to look like I knew what I was doing, which I have a nasty feeling makes things worse to people who really do know what they’re doing. I tried to remember what Tony my mechanic used to do. All I could remember was the impressively fast driving, and looking at most of the old trucks that might well be in my price range, that didn’t seem at all appropriate. I realized rather quickly that it’s important not to show too much interest in anything otherwise about 6 sales people would magically appear talking a heady mix of English and Thai and either try and sell me a car or even more unnervingly try to build a relationship with me in order to sell me a car.
The most unnerving question that a salesman has said to me in Chiang Mai so far, borders on the surreal. It came from a man who was standing outside a tailors shop in the Night Bazaar. He approached me and said, “Sir, I hope you’ve had a good day....How do you feel.” How do I feel? I suppose he’s hoping that I will say “I feel like buying a silk suit”. Instead, I tried to think seriously about how I felt, I didn’t really know... a bit tired, hot. Is ambivalent a feeling?
So I staggered through several uncomfortable conversations in various used car places, whilst trying to secretly eye up any likely looking wreck of a car or pick up truck. Thankfully I had made an appointment on Facebook with a guy selling an old truck in the north of the city. It all sounded okay. It sounded like just the thing we were looking for; an old truck, in perfect working order that he was selling to get a “family car”. He was probably a “family man” just like me. All this for the bargain price of 65,000 Baht. It did seem remarkably cheap as the smallest, most smashed up wreck of a truck in the car lots generally seemed to hover around 80,000 Baht.
At the allotted time I set off for this guy’s house. It was of course far more remote and out of town than I thought. It was in fact way beyond the second ring road which marks the outer boundary of Chiang Mai civilisation. With growing alarm I realised that I was actually going off the map and had to follow some instructions that I’d printed off from his e-mail. Past a “lumber” yard (he must be American), past a building site, past nothing, past waste ground, past a disused depot and then more nothing, turn left, an immediate right, last house on the right. I had that terrible, “this can’t possibly be it” feeling again. It was really quite remote, the middle of nowhere. Who in their right mind would move to Chiang Mai from America and live out here, miles from town and miles from anywhere? As I asked myself this question I unfortunately thought of some answers; gangsters, people on the run, madmen and people who generally need to disappear for sinister reasons. The man I was about to meet could have easily qualified for all four.
I stood outside a run down small single story house enclosed by a high wire fence with a yard absolutely over run wi
th aggressive looking barking dogs. Give me a gaggle of furious geese any day, dogs I don’t really know about. Did barking uncontrollably signal danger, or an intent to eat you or just doggy high spirits? I have no idea.
A man came out smoking; he was big, American (as I’d thought), heavily built and covered in old faded tattoos (of course), he must have been in his mid fifties, and was dressed in only a pair of old frayed pyjama bottoms. He eyed me cautiously. “Come in they won’t hurt you” he said as though I was a bit of a nancy. I opened the gate and edged myself in surrounded by barking, hysterical, jumping dogs. He didn’t attempt to calm the dogs or reassure me that I wouldn’t be eaten alive but just turned and started walking around the back of the house. I followed him surrounded by barking, hysterical jumping dogs. He lit another cigarette from the butt of his old one, “D’you know anything about trucks?” “No” I replied honesty. He looked away quickly, either, I guessed, in disgust or to disguise an evil smile.
We both looked towards “the truck” at the back of his yard which was covered in dogs, rubbish and dog’s rubbish (if you know what I mean). Even to my untrained eye I could tell I was looking at a wreck of a truck, the gold medal winner of the most wrecked truck in the Wrecked Truck of the Year Awards. I really am not exaggerating when I say it looked like it had just driven through a war. It was clearly a total write off, eaten away with rust and covered with the dents, bangs and bruises from years of real hard work on hundreds of building sites throughout northern Thailand. It looked like it had also been used to salvage the odd spare part from, with a missing headlight, a missing side window and no tail gate.
“Get in the driver’s seat” he ordered. At least I’d be away from the barking jumping dogs that still surrounded me. I got in and sat there for a bit, he got in the passenger side and smoked in silence and watched me as I fiddled with what was left of the dash board. I wondered whether I was in one of those hidden camera TV shows that set up hapless members of the public in terrible situations. Deep down though, I knew it was just a terrible situation. A friendly TV crew would of course be nice company...unless of course, he’d just killed them.
I can’t tell you how unnerving it is to be sitting in a broken down truck, concealed in the back yard of a small tumbledown house, in the middle of nowhere, with a bare chested, and heavily tattooed chain smoking American man who you don’t know. I turned the ignition key. The engine wouldn’t start and very quickly the battery started to die. He leant across and switched off the ignition and just sat there smoking, watching me. He didn’t seem embarrassed, angry, surprised or anything. I was trying to work out whether he was really trying to sell me this truck or whether it was an elaborate cover for some other scam. Perhaps the truck was just the bait, perhaps he was going to feed me to the dogs or dry me out and smoke me.
It was a very weird few minutes with him chain smoking and starring into the distance, and me hoping that in a minute I’d wake up in my own bed and the frantic hysterical dogs would evaporate back to dream land. I didn’t wake up.
We eventually got out of the truck and he lit another cigarette from the butt of his old one. I have never seen anybody chain smoking with such relaxed confidence, as though the cares that normal mortals experience didn’t apply to him. The dogs were still barking and jumping about like mad. I began saying something along the lines of I would need to think about it and give him a ring. From watching far too many films as a teenager I knew this would be the point where he might attack me, where he would be unable to reconcile his evil conscience and let loose his captive. Would he try to get me inside the house? Bang me on the head and throw me in a pit? Set the dogs on me? Starve me and make a dress out of my skin? What was coming next?
I began to edge back, around to the front of the house still surrounded by the dogs. I knew I had to keep him hopeful and not make a sudden dash for it, as tempting as it was. I continued to make my excuses in an up beat positive way and eased myself through the wire fence gate. He stood by the front door of his run down filthy house and watched me while his dogs ran up and down the fence. I got on my bike, waved half heartedly, and left the silent smoking man with the broken truck and his huge pack of barking dogs. I could feel him watching me disappear and lighting another cigarette from the butt of his old one as I drove off.
It felt great to be out in the open air again, on the road, back on the map, and free and not turned into dog food or buried in a secret pit. It didn’t feel so great when I remembered that I was as close to being a car owner as I was when I set off.
I drove towards the other end of town where there were more second hand car lots. I drove up and down, occasionally stopping and looking around the cars, being pursued by keen eyed and desperate salespeople all attempting to be my friend and asking crazy questions. It was like playing cat and mouse in a car park. When they did catch me they asked questions like, “You like volleyball?” and “you like Thai lady?” . I did my best to mumble truthful answers feeling mildly fraudulent.
By now it was way past lunch time and hunger and tiredness were setting in. I slumped down outside a remote 7 Eleven at the far end of the Hang Dong Road out by Sanpatong and drank a can of coke and ate a packet of crisps and worked out my next move.
There was a bit of waste land on the middle ring road where occasionally I’d seen some old trucks with for sale notices and telephone numbers in the window. With this as my last optimistic move I headed back towards it, at least I wouldn’t be hounded by sales assistants or mad dogs and could peruse vehicles with the casual air of a real professional.
Sure enough there were two trucks on waste land in the middle of the middle ring road. Both looked old, which was good as it equaled cheap, and not too bashed about. Unfortunately they both only had a standard cab that would seat just 2 people rather than the extended 4 seater cabs I was looking for. Feeling depressed, out of ideas and staring at the end of the day without success I mechanically wrote down the phone numbers, when an angel appeared.
The angel wasn’t like the ones that you would recognize from films and religious frescos but a small bright faced young Thai guy in old jeans and T shirt riding an old motorbike with a side car. I could tell he was an angel as he didn’t ask if I liked volleyball or what I was doing in Chiang Mai or whether I had a Thai wife. Instead, he simply said “I will take you to buy pick up truck, good one with 4 seats, big cab. I know you will like”.
He smiled warmly at me. He knew. He knew that I was defeated and was going to take me to truck heaven. He motioned to me to get in the side car of his bike, I pointed towards my hired bike and he shook his head in disapproval so I got in the side car. It would be okay. It was not so much a side car as a wooden platform that was bolted to the motorbike, on which stood a white plastic garden chair.
We sped off up a tiny road away from the ring road. We came to a little village where children came out to see me. I waved, feeling very self conscious and a bit like the Queen of Great Britain, or at least how the Queen of Great Britain would have felt if she were sitting on a broken plastic chair zooming along at break neck speed in a home made side car. We zig zagged through the tiny village streets, round the back of houses, through yards full of chickens and out through a bright green patchwork of rice fields. I did begin to wonder where we were going as we were now quite far from the main road and I’d never be able to find my own way back. But it all felt okay. He was after all an angel.
We suddenly turned into a yard of a small house on the edge of the next village. There was an old lady stirring a pot over an open fire, loads of chickens (always a good sign for me) two children stared at me in disbelief and a young woman came out and brushed off some dust from a stool and indicated that I should sit down and bought me an ice cold drink of water which I was genuinely grateful for. The young angel bought out an old man who bowed to me and in silence slowly pulled off a plastic green sheet from an old style sky blue Toyota diesel pick up truck. He was like an
ancient magician revealing the unharmed beautiful assistant. It was a great moment.
Although nobody could speak much English and my Thai, rubbish. There was much hand waving, pointing and showing. It really was a beautiful truck at least a hundred times better than anything I’d seen today, I could have wept with relief and hugged them all. I knew I had found our new car.
I kept it all together, I didn’t cry, or feint and did my best to look like I knew what I was looking at. They drew figures in the dirt yard with a stick. From what I could gather it was at least 20 years old, had 1 owner from new and they wanted 130,000 Baht for it. I took their phone number and did my best to indicate that I was seriously interested, we all bowed gracefully and my angel zoomed me back to my motorbike and the real world.
I returned home triumphant. We had our truck. We phoned Son who arranged to come over the next day and pick me up with his mechanic Khun Piyac to look the truck over for me.
It was all good, Son liked it, Khun Piyac liked it, the owners liked us and my wife said she liked the colour. It drove beautifully; like a graceful tank. It had air con, and even a CD player that worked. A deal was struck and everybody was really happy. There was much joking and passing around cigarettes and iced tea. I parted with piles of money and drove home in our new car. It was the beginning of a special relationship.
Chapter 11
Learning To Drive
Having bought my new truck I now had to learn to drive all over again. Driving in Thailand is unusual, to say the least, and like most things here is not at all what it first appears.