An Incident in Bangkok

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The only seats available back to Bangkok were on the economy bus, so Tiny and I decided to head back so that we could do some of the tourist bits and the others would follow later on the VIP bus. They had probably managed to find a snooker hall in Chiang Mai.

The first day back in Bangkok started early as we arrived at 6.30am, and it turned into one of the most 'eventful' of the whole year away, potentially bringing the year to a premature end.

Naive is a word that comes to mind regarding this story. Gullible, is another, along with reckless, foolish and stupid. Any second hand car salesmen or confidence tricksters who are reading this and think that they'll be able to pop around here for some easy money, please note that I have wised up since then and once bitten, twice shy!

It is not unusual in Thailand for people to come up to you and start talking to you, usually to tryout their English. This happened to us all several times and, despite some reservations at first, you soon got to think nothing of it. Anyway, after Tiny and I had just arrived back in Bangkok, a guy came along and starting talking to us. Nothing unusual in that until he showed us a photo of a young woman who he said was his sister. Again, this was not unusual as, sadly, a girl's family in Thailand will want to sell them to Westerners as potential wives. He went on, however, to explain that his sister was going to work as a nurse in London. He specifically mentioned St George's Hospital in Tooting, which is one I know of as I used to know a nurse that worked there and which hence made the story pretty convincing. The problem was that his mother was worried about it and needed reassurance, so he offered to go and get her and meet us for lunch so that we could speak to her. That sounded perfectly reasonable to us - not being ones to turn down a free lunch - so we arranged to meet again in an hour.

An hour later he turned up, minus his mother, flagging us into a taxi. Now this is the point where we should have stopped and considered the situation but, like lemmings, we followed him into the taxi. Off we went to a house in some obscure corner of Bangkok. On the way there, under his tuition, we practised a ritual that should be performed as a mark of respect when you enter a Thai's house for the first time. Upon arrival, we did the ritual to the bloke who came to the door and he did a similar gesture in reply. There was however no sign of the mother and daughter.

The reason, or so they wanted us to believe, for their absence was the fact the other daughter (the wife of the second bloke) was in hospital having a baby. Our first thought was "well why the hell aren't you at the hospital", but then we were in a foreign country and we didn't know the local traditions on that sort of thing. To kill some time while we were waiting - like she was planning on leaving her daughter in hospital to come and speak to us - they suggested that we play a game of cards; as you do; a perfectly normal way to pass the time. However they were not proposing any normal game of cards like Black Jack or Poker. All right, they still had the potential to be very expensive, but at least they were what you could call a game of cards. The second bloke - the one in the house - was allegedly a dealer in a casino and what they were proposing was to show us how an accomplice and he could cheat the casino.

With some trepidation, we were ushered into a side room that contained a table with a pack of cards accurately placed in the middle. We were then given a tutorial on choosing cards, placing bets, interpreting hand-signals and flashing cards. It was actually quite good fun, but it gradually got more and more intense and had completely taken over from any pretence of meeting their mother.

After quite a while, the dealer said that he was going to go and ring the hospital to check if there was any news. His brother took over with the dealing, but only after apologising for the fact that his dealing was not particularly good on account of a motorbike accident. It was only then that we noticed that several of the fingers on both of his hands were missing. A motorbike accident, I don't think! Punishment for naughty behaviour in a casino was considerably more likely. It didn't however stop him dealing like a pro. Tiny mumbled a couple of words, one of which I think began with 'f' and the other described a substance that was rapidly starting to flow from our backsides.

The dealer came back with the announcement that he was the father of a little baby boy. We of course congratulated him and then he sat down to carry on with the dealing. It was at this point that they made us a proposition. A Mr Sabutra was coming round later for a card game. He had collaborated with the dealer at his casino, taking the casino for a considerable amount of money, however he had not paid the dealer his percentage. They were prepared to make it worth our while if we were to use their money and the skills we had been practising to get revenge on Mr Sabutra.

A strange smell started to emanate from our side of the room. They were proposing that two dumb-ass backpackers were going to screw a professional who has ripped-off casinos at cards. Come on, there's something not quite right here. As we continued with the cards, Tiny remained reasonably composed but I started dribbling and forgot how to string a sentence together.

In a sudden spark of inspiration I stood up and announced that I needed to go to the toilet in my best "I'll piss all over your floor if you don't let me out of this room" tone of voice and I marched for the door. Outside, a shady looking character in dark glasses and carrying a briefcase darted out of sight as I entered the room. We then tried the old "Oh shit is that the time, we really must get going routine" and after a while 'fingers' said that he would go and get us a taxi. He disappeared and we went out into the garden and went through the pretence of giving them some phone numbers and addresses of places and people (fictional people) in London who the daughter could contact when she got there.

Whilst we were making small talk about the pet rabbit, the taxi arrived and 'fingers' got out and went into the house, not knowing that we were in the garden, closely followed by a huge monster of a bloke resembling a Sumu Wrestler. Without giving them the chance to come back out again, we jumped in the taxi and yelled at him to drive, "we don't care where, just drive!"

Once we were a reasonable distance from the house, our suspicions then turned to the so-called taxi driver - Taxis in Thailand do not exactly have a tell-tale meter in the front - so, much to his surprise, we decided to open the back doors, jump out and start running. After several minutes of running, turning corners at random and hiding every time we heard the engine of a car, we stopped and considered our situation. There we were in some 'god-only-knows-where' back street in Bangkok without a clue where to go. To make matters worse, Westerners were not exactly common in those parts and people were coming out of houses to stare at us. Some children were even waving and appeared really honoured when we waved back. The only response to our requests for "Taxi?", "Hotel?" and "Main road?" was a line of blank faces.

After we had walked for a while we heard the sound of traffic coming from the other side of a wall. Assuming it to be a main-road, the sort that taxi's might drive along, we scaled the wall, much to the surprise of the on-lookers who probably now think that all Westerners have a serious screw-lose.

It was in fact a main road and it was only a matter of minutes before a taxi came along.

We could only guess what they had planned for us and of course we were not going to hang around to find out. It was most probably just a scam to try and get some money out of us, but who knows, it could have been much more sinister than that. They could have been planning to try and force us to carry drugs out of the country or something.

The following day, the others arrived and the first thing they said was "You'll never guess what happened to us!" We listened before we told them our piece.

We then set-off on an organised tour to the Floating Market, via some salt making fields and a factory that makes sugar from coconuts. It would never occur to us to visit a sugar factory in England, but here coach loads roll in for a gorp-round.

The best way to do some shopping at the Floating Market is by boat, so like true tourists we hired a boat and set-off round the market, participating in the obligatory bartering. After arguing for 15 minutes to save 10p, we bought a selection of obscure tropical fruits most of which we had no idea what they were.

Back in Bangkok, after having made a couple of diversions to various temples, we met the others (in the snooker hall) and set about organising the next leg of our journey. The mini-bus that arrived to take us to the bus depot was, unfortunately, full. In England this would have been a problem, but not in Thailand. Under the driver's insistence, three of us got on the roof rack with the luggage, whilst the other two (which included me) stood on the back bumper and then held on for dear life as he swerved through the streets of Bangkok. As I have already said, road safety is not something they give a damn about here.

Bangkok was the hub of our travels around Thailand and consequently we came back here again for one last time (see A Last Night in Bangkok).

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Photos

Wat Arun View
View from the top of Wat Arun

Wat Arun
Wat Arun - The Temple of the Sun

Wat Saket Bhudas
Bhudas in the enterance to Wat Saket

Wat Saket View
The view from the top of Wat Saket