Tuktuks, Tailors & Total Strangers

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Life continues to take strange twists and turns in this city and no matter where i turn i find that it is full of extremes. The people here are either overly subservient or extremely hostile, exceptionally polite or unbelievably rude, the whether is either blazingly hot sunshine or pouring with tropical rain and the cops are being militant in their pursuit of drugs and their blatant racist approach towards foreigners and then they are turning a blind eye to the blatant prostitution, weapons selling, fake i.d. and fake goods being sold. There seems to be very little middle ground for anything but it does make this place very interesting and always means you have to be on your toes.

Like the other day when i got really drunk on those bloody buckets and ended up losing 2000 Baht. Yes i'm an idiot, I know, but what was done was done and it meant i had to try and earn some money. So a few days later Mike (my friend who i am staying with) introduces me to a tuktuk driver called Tiger. He has this name because he has ridiculously long finger nails, I mean they are a good 2 inches long at least. Anyway he asks this guy if he can take me to a load of travel agents, tailors and jewelers and for every place I go to and spend some time shopping, he'll give me 100 Baht. Tiger says ok and tells me to meet him at 8.30am the next day. Can i just state that the reason he can give me 100 Baht for each stop is that if i spend enough time in each place then the tuktuk driver gets a coupon that he can use to buy fuel, which is worth more than the 100 Baht he gives me.

So Wednesday morning rolls around and I get to Rambultree Road at about 8.50am and look around for Tiger. After about 20 mins of looking one of the other tuktuk drivers tells me that Tiger died the night before from drinking to much (I think he was joking and meant Tiger was asleep with a hangover). Anyway, i tell them why i was looking for him and they give me another tuktuk driver to take me round. This dude was jokes, driving around getting all annoyed at other drivers and trying run motorbikes out the way and forcing his way through intersections, it was slightly scary but loads of fun. So he first starts taking me to a load of travel agents who in general wouldn't want to talk to me unless i was promising to buy a ticket to somewhere there and then. One travel agents didn't even ask me to sit down but was like 'where you want to go',
'ok it 800 Baht' and then walked me out the place and told me not to come back unless i was buying something.

Not all of these travel agents worked so the tuktuk driver says 'no more agent', 'we do tailor now' he said. So off we go and the first place i go to the guy serving me basically begs me to buy something because he will lose his jobs if he doesn't make a sale. I tell him that i'm not going to buy a suit from the first place i go to and he says why not. This attitude of having to buy something if you walk into a place happened in almost every shop I went to. Only the jewelery stores helped me look at what they had without trying to pressure me into a sale. Anyway, after the second tailors i went to I realized I had lost my mobile, (guess the universe takes with one hand and give with the other at times, all i new was i was earning money so losing a £15 mobile was the least of my worries).

We carried on driving round and going to shops, I carried on getting very hostile receptions and then I got to one tailor who on realizing that I wasn't going to buy there, tells me that he is going to smack me if I leave. I turned to him and said 'did you just threaten me?' he immediately backed down and said 'no, no i did not' and told him he did, picked up my bag called him a dickhead and walked out swearing, being stunned that this jumped up little wanker had the audacity to threaten me.

All in all i made 700 Baht from going to about 10 places and would have carried on if the driver had wanted to but unfortunately he was done taking me round and so he drove me to a couple of the travel agent we had been to, to try and find my mobile but that proved to be futile. We got back to Rambultree Road around 1pm and i went off down the street for a wonder. Thinking about how I was treated by most of the shops I went to made me see just how money orientated this city is and as much as I realize that I was running a bit of a scam, I still think that the overly hostile attitude and pressure that these places put on people is way over the top. They seem to think that shopping around for a good deal is something you don't do. One tailor said to me that it's not worth his time showing me what he has and what he can do for me unless i am going to buy something. I said to him I don't know if i am going to buy something unless you show me what you got. Once again the extremes of either having amazing service or no service at all was clear to see.

After a morning of madness I decided to get some food and as I was walking down the street I saw this exceptionally beautiful woman walking the other way, I didn't manage to catch her eye and so carried on walking. I carried on around the corner and went to this great little place that does rice, egg and veg for 25 Baht. As I was about to finish the same woman rocks up and orders the same thing I had and then looks over at me. I said she was welcome to sit at my table if she liked, which lead us into a 2 hour conversation about both of our travels. I sometimes forget how important it is to try and strike up conversations with total strangers because I think that is something many of us lose when living at home or when traveling and those random encounters, even if they don't lead to future friendships or relationships, can at least remind us of how many beautiful people there are out there. Take this woman for instance, Pia was her name and she was from Denmark. She turned out to be one of the most chilled out people I have met since being here and reminded me so much of what I am always looking for. That is an ability to take life as it comes and not take thing too seriously because the world we live in is one that we should experience and enjoy to it's fullest but also that it is a world which we should respect and look after. I know so many amazing people but it's just great to know that there are so many more to find out there and someday I really do believe that enough of these people will come together to make a true difference in this world.

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Comments

[Aina]

FUcking Hippy!