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Getting F'ed - Bangkok Style

There's nothing like waking up at 6am, and being screwed three times by 9am. Thats what happened today. Don't worry, I won't spare any details. Our plan today was to go to Kanchanaburi, just outside of Bangkok to see the River Kwai, the Death Railway, and other sights that seemed interesting. We spoke with a travel agent in our hostel in Bangkok who informed us that we could take the train to get there for 100 Baht ($3.10Cdn.) That sounded perfect since the commute was around 3 hours and the other option was to rent a seat in a van for over $10Cdn.


I woke before the alarm went off at 6am in a nice pool of my own sweat which accumulated over the nights sleep. I took a few minutes to decide what to wear and then rested my decision on my white button up shirt with a pocket on the left breast. It was the lightest shirt that I had brought with me, and perfect I thought for a hot 3-hour train ride in 3rd class. Quickly after, we were out the door.


We got to the main street, and flagged down a taxi in no time at all. We told him where we were going and he took off. He asked for 100 Baht for the drive upfront, which they will try to do, so we asked him to turn the meter on. He did so, although we could tell from his demeanor that he wasn't pleased about it. On the way to the train station, the cabbie prodded in his broken english about where we were heading, and out of the goodness of his giving heart, offered to take us there for only 1500Baht. Very cheap for you two, he said. We thought abouit it for a fraction of a second, if only to humour him, but for some unexplicable reason we declined. After a couple more attempts he gave up on that idea, and instead offered us some marijuana for sale. What a great guy! You can't say enough about someone like that who just wants to help you out. After declining his very warm offer for drugs, we soon arrived at the train station. Dave asked the cabbie if this was the Thonburi station, since there are two train stations in Bangkok. He replied yes, and we got out. The fare turned out to be 57 Baht, not 100, and after a brief talk with the information officer we soon realized that the asshole did in fact drop us off at the wrong station. Strike 1. At this point it was 7:15am, and there was no way we could make it to the other station in time. The information officer did say, however, there was a bus departing at 9am. We went to the tour centre and found that he was right, and the price would only be three times the amount we were originally going to pay.Strike 2 We thought we may as well seeing as how it left pretty shortly and the next train to Kanchanaburi didn't leave until mid-afternoon.


At this point we had a little time to kill, and we wandered through some vendors in the train station in search for some headphones. I had lost mine back in the Philippines and was dying to get a new pair. I luckily found a pair for 100Baht, tried them, and found that they worked perfectly. I rolled them up around my iPhone and tucked it into my shirt in my left breast pocket.


We decided to go outside for some air and sit down for a few minutes on some steps to wait until our bus was ready to leave. During this brief moment in time, a couple of what seemed to be, transvestite hookers walked by. We didnt take too much notice at first since seeing hooker's and tranny's for that matter is all too common in SE Asia. One of them took a quick glance and then a double take, and at that moment we knew that "it" was going to approach us. IT came close to us, asking for money or cigarettes, or whatever. Obviously we told IT to get lost and to f*** off. IT was persistant and another "he/she" joined IT's flank in an attempt to harass/distract Dave. At IT's last effort, it got in REALLY close to me, grabbed my testicles with IT's left hand (which unfortunately I had to let it do because I was holding my hands over my short pockets), I gave IT a shove and IT finally backed offf and the both of them retreated to the sidewalk then quickly jumped in a taxi. I thought it odd at first that someone in IT's position could even afford a taxi, but shrugged that off since I still had to overcome the trauma of being molested by "whothehellsknow'swhat." We quickly patted our pockets down, and after after 40 or 50 seconds I quickly realized what was missing. The motherf**ker took my iPhone right out of my left breast pocket. Strike 3


We took off running around the corner, in hopes that the "would be - pool of blood on the ground" was stuck in traffic, but we were too late.


All of the forces were working against us that morning. Had the cab driver not intentionally screwed us, we would have gotten to our train in time. If for another reason, I couldn't find headphones at the train station, my phone would have remained in my backpack. If we decided to go outside even a couple of minutes after we did, we would have missed that creature that calls itself human. And when I was changing in the morning, it was a coin flip of what shirt I was going to wear, and of course, I decided on the shirt with the front, left breast pocket.

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