Karma Police

Asia » Thailand » Central Thailand » Bangkok
April 5th 2009

Published: April 5th 2009

For various reasons, I am now in Bangkok.

I was forced to raise the white flag at the Buddhist retreat after only a couple of days. The experience was an interesting one though, and not one I will soon forget.

I spent the entire time in silence and slept on a concrete slab with a wooden pillow. The area is surrounded by jungle and various streams so the mosquito's were large and numerous - they ate me alive! It would have been okay if the monks had not insisted that I refrain from killing anything whilst on the monastery grounds... but they did, so I was entirely defenseless. I understand that it's better not to go around killing things for the fun of it, but come on! At one point I looked on my arm and there were four huge mosquito's just casually feeding off me. I waved my arm suggestively to try and get them to go away, but they were having too much of a good time of it - so they stayed awhile longer. I carefully noted down the characteristic markings of each of these creatures.

When I broke the retreat I hunted each and every one of them down and drank my blood back through a tiny straw. It was probably a bad way to go. My murderous campaign against mosquito's has doubled...or maybe tripled since the time I wasn't allowed to kill them. By the time I'm through with that species my name will be a regular curse-word in the whining buzz of the mosquito language.

The grounds of the retreat were quite wild and is set in a fairly remote jungle location. There were natural hot-springs that were about the temperature of the core of the sun and then a man-made spring a little further down the hill which connected to this. This wasn't too bad as the water cooled in along the pipes a little. During one of my many walks I saw a lizard that could have easily consumed me. It was an incredible sight but it lost much of it's grandeur when it noticed me, was startled, and then scuttled like a man who had just soiled himself and was in need of a desperate change.

My days here were spent meditating in many different ways. This isn't something I've attempted before (which is why I was curious enough to see what was going on) so it was very new and alien to me. I quickly found myself feeling very isolated and quite lonely in the small community. Men and women were roomed separately and kept apart. I found the silence incredibly difficult to endure and having absolutely zero ability in meditation I often spent my time fidgeting and awkwardly shuffling into different positions during meditation times. This also made me incredibly vulnerable to stalking mosquito's. Anyone who can find any kind of focus whilst having a mosquito buzzing in their ear doesn't need any further help with that kind of thing. I can't count the amount of bites on my feet - I've actually tried. I got bored when I reached 50 on my right foot.

The food was all vegetarian and fresh. There two meals a day - one at 8.30 and another at 12.30, but these turned out to be fairly substantial and I didn't miss the third meal at all. 4am yoga was also pretty good... but the silence crippled me after awhile and I ran away like a little girl.

Rich didn't fancy the retreat so he was in Patong, Phuket - one of the main tourist beaches in Thailand. I managed to escape the not very happy monks and made my way to Surat Thani, where I managed to get a bus to the central bus station a little out of town... THIS IS WHERE THE KARMA POLICE CAUGHT ME.

Lesson learned - Don't piss off monks.

I was feeling very out of it, strange, lonely and full of thought when traveling from the monastery...the place really didn't do me any favors and put me into an odd frame of mind. I was rushed from the bus onto the station platform and somehow left my wallet on the seat. I was too late to stop it. The rest of my afternoon was spent sitting with the family of a very nice Thai woman who worked in the office. She eventually managed to get the wallet back to me, but naturally it had been cleaned out of all it's contents except for my bank card and some Vietnamese Dong. I have no idea why, but the Thai's hate Vietnamese Dong and you can't exchange it anywhere here...maybe at the airport but that's literally it.

There were two ATM's at the bus station - neither worked and after having my wallet cleaned out I was left completely stranded. I quickly asked the woman if I could walk back into town but she ruefully shook her head and said "too far." I spent some time sitting and thinking, but failed to come up with any viable solution. I eventually tried to use my Vietnamese currency (could have gone for a Dong joke there, but thought better of it,) and the women actually hissed when she saw the face of Ho Chi Minh starring back at her from the crisp note. I swiftly returned this to the wallet.

I ended up approaching several taxi drivers and explained to them as best as I could that I needed to get back to town to find an ATM to withdraw money, with which I would pay the fare with. My driver said the word "yes" so many times that I knew he couldn't have possibly understood...but I had no choice. We stopped at traffic lights on the way back to town and I noticed a shopping centre on the left which had a Tesco's and various other familiar titles. I quickly signaled to the driver that this was the place and jumped out the back - he began saying "no" a fair bit, but I was in a pretty awkward situation so I tried to explain I was coming back whilst walking away.

When I returned from the first ATM unsuccessful he was still there. I gestured to another one a little further down the road. When I returned from that one (again unsuccessful) he was gone. I'm not that sure of the law over this way, but I'm pretty sure ripping off taxi drivers is not though too highly of, so I ducked back inside the shopping center and tried to blend in with the crowd (yeah right.)

9 ATM's later, and the absolute last option for money, I heard the rattle of notes being counted in the machine. I pretty much shouted in relief and then realized that everyone on the planet was watching me, so I piped down. I took out enough money to get to Phuket and a little more for good luck.

Outside the shopping center I was keen to get away and asked a taxi driver to take me to the bus station. He quickly nodded his head and barked out 50 baht as the price. This is about twice as much as the trip is worth but I wanted to get back to the station pretty quickly to avoid messing around. The taxi took me in the opposite direction into town and dropped me off at a tour operator, run by a man in a flowery shirt smoking a cigar. I hated this man immediately. I hated him more when he touched my shoulder with his greasy hand and then I hated him slightly less when his voice turned out to be about 4 octaves higher then I had imagined it would be. He squeaked some terrible bus deal to me and I realised I'd literally been taken for a ride. The taxi driver had a hideous mustache and some impressive jowls. He was frowning at me because he wanted paying... I gave him 20 baht only because I was back in town and could navigate from this point. I shouldn't have given him anything - we were miles away from the bus station. There was no miscommunication here - it was just another scam set-up to trap lost tourists and they were starting to get on my nerves. The was furious, his face wobbling with every barked syllable - he started to get out of the cab to confront me but I stopped the door with my hand and let him know how angry I was that I wasn't at the bus station. He was quickly shooed off by the cigar smoking tour operator.

I was quoted some ridiculous price for a bus down to Phuket and was looking around for other options when I was saved by an elderly woman. She confronted the tour operator on my behalf and told him to lower the price - he made a token gesture, still smiling his salesman smile. Then she shrugged and told me to follow her - after making some inquiries she led me to the official transport office for the city where I paid 200baht for a ticket (instead of the quoted 380 baht) and sat in a nice air conditioned room. She vanished before I could say thanks. There was also a guy from New Zealand in the office who I spoke to briefly on a bus a few weeks before, as it turns out he had a masters degree in creative writing so we had a fair amount to talk about and the time waiting for the bus went quickly.

I caught up with Rich later that night. He'd spent a couple of days by the beach relaxing and being hassled by ladyboys. Phuket is a town frequented by dirty sex-tourists, middle-aged travelers and couples. Unable to pass himself off as middle-aged and being on his own, this put Rich into the "dirty sex-tourist" category and was therefore pursued by every downstairs mix up the streets had going. My arrival placed us into the couples category again so we did alright. We had a couple of nights drinking and working out funds when I realised that I'd lost my bank card.

I'm fairly sure that I saw an orange robe flash across my vision moments before checking my pocket. I suddenly found myself in another desperate situation - since leaving the monastery my life has been like this. The monks want my blood...

Rich is heading to Malaysia, and checking my funds I was only just going to struggle through on the money I have... I've now had to bail on that plan completely and we've separated for awhile. Rich if you're reading this I have your YMCA vest, torch and a few other things you left at the hotel.

I'm not that sure what I'm going to do with myself for the next week or so. I'm staying at a fairly expensive place tonight - about 800 baht, which is about 16 English clams. The cheaper places I saw were pretty gross and I don't have the money to get drunk enough to ignore them, so I'll stay at this place tonight and check my options tomorrow.

It's crazy to think I might actually have to travel from Thailand to Cambodia in order to save money! That's an option though. Time will tell where I eventually end up.

Any suggestions?

I'll keep you posted...

Chris

Copyright Notice: All Rights Reserved