Category: Thailand 2019

---

A couple of seconds of lapse, or stupidity, and everything comes undone.

One second yer cruising along, overloaded like the Beverley Hillbillies, on your way to a new abode. The next,  bits of your ensemble and pride are spread out all over the road. Half a dozen Thais are leaning over you, eager to help, and something hurts.

It’s yer foot, dumbass. It’s stuck under the bike, and it hurts.

It got there when you lost concentration, and forgot the heavy ( 25kg ? ) suitcase loaded on the back of the bike. You were cruising along at maybe 35 – 40 km, forgetting an upcoming corner. When it came, you leaned into it to get around, which is when the bike went down.You persuade the smal crowd of beseechers to help me re-load the suitcase onto the bike, and complete the move. You send the school dramatic post-accident photos, as proof of legitimate skiving from work. You look like an escapee from a hospital ward, and you are in no condition to be in front of teenagers.

The H.O.D English at the school persuades you to go to hospital. That eventually tells you you have fractured four metatarsals ( toe-bones ) in your foot. The thing looks like a swollen aubergine.

But the visit is costly. Not too bad financially ( 1600 b ). But they keep stretching the time before agreeing to discharge me, taking an ultra-conservative approach. First, they scare you into staying overnight. Then the spectre of surgery is raised. Then they demand I show them I can use crutches. Then I need to tell them who is picking me up ( they want to ensure payment ). All of which add up to a lot of stress – sleep is hard to come by, it’s stifling hot, they won’t always give you fresh water top-ups, the food is really bad, and you’re a curiosity to the other patients.

It’s not fun, and I almost blew a gasket once or twice at this …. [ splutter ] … incarceration.

Home now, and I think I’m expected at work tomorrow. But right now, I can’t see how they can realistically expect to put me in front of a bunch of teenagers. And be taken seriously.

Which may mean – if I have no income –  my adventure is nearing its end.

Watch this space.

 

More madness on the roads today as I swapped scooters for the 4th time in a month.

Today’s swap happened early after the owner of the old model went sour on me very fast.

It unravelled after I messaged her saying my scooter contract time was almost up. And did she want to drop her prices considering what a fine customer I’d been, and that someone else was offering a rental at about half her prices.

I’ve been paying 4000 baht / month. Compared with 500 baht / DAY when I got to Rayong. And to the new offer of 2300 baht / month from an operator up the road in big bad Pattaya.

I took a taxi van ( 80 baht ! Rayong to Pattaya ) and songthaew ( 15 baht Rayong south to bus station ) to Pattaya this morning to pick the scooter up.

The attitude here in Rayong is ‘those are Pattaya prices’, and they won’t bother trying to compete. What I think they’ll find is that probably sooner rather than later they’ll be facing extinction as newer nimbler creatures move in with their better-adapted habits.

So during texting about returning the current bike , the owner blew a fuse somewhere.  She started complaining that she’d made a mistake renting the bike to me! I’m not kidding. A mistake. One which netted her 4500 baht,including deposit.

She called in a boyfriend, apparently, to translate, but still headway was not being made. Then I suggested she refund me the bond plus days for early return, and she’s suddenly all cream and blueberries. It’s beyond me.

I turned up with a fellow teacher at the school, a level-headed science type, and a fine chap to boot.

She was all smiles.

So am I now. I have a cheaper AND better bike, and no longer have to deal with FrankenRenter.

I rode my fellow teacher back into town to pick his bike back up, and since I was in the ‘hood, had to help myself to a second dinner at the

All’s well that ends well.

Good Morning, Savannakhet

First order of business – get a coffee.  First attempt, I stopped at a tiny little cafe maybe 100m away from the hotel. They served up a tepid syrup, like a coffee liqueur. Fail.

Then a long wander down the road, getting semi-lost, until I found a larger cafe with maybe a dozen guys sitting around. Under cover, with the fans going. That’s me. After a false start ( iced black coffee ), got a little pottle of coffee about the size of a small sauce jug. Medium strength, black, no milk or sugar.

Pass. Two of these, and I’m on my way.

Yes, I’m prone to hyperbole. No, this Old Dog won’t learn new tricks.

OK, it’s hardly a Biblical epic, I admit, but the last 24 hours have been among the most exhausting of my entire life.

I’m writing from Savannakhet, Laos ( see below ) where I’ve gone to get my ‘Non-B’ Thai immigrant Visa.

I got here after an epic sleepless 15-hour bus trip from Rayong, leaving at 4.15 pm Monday, and arriving at Mukdahan, Thailand, at around 7.15 a.m. The long journey into the Night involved a very slow steady climb in altitude, surprisingly cold temperatures in the bus ( compulsory air-conditioning partly to blame ), and a bad-tempered bus conductor. Meanwhile, the road just kept splitting the seams of the night…

But that was only the start of the fun. Then we had to get a bus from Mukdahan to Savannakhet, jumping through all the temporary Laos Visa hoops, and arriving at the Thai Consulate in Savannakhet before it closed at 11 a.m.

During the bus journey, I met a Ukranian bloke ( I’ll call him ‘Vladimir’ ), and Alessandro ( ‘Alex’ ), an Italian, who both claimed to have done this multiple times. We pooled resources at the Mukdahan border to get a taxi to the Embassy. We arrived on good enough time at 10.30 am to find Bad News – a huge snake of a queue several hundred metres long, and apparently very ill. You could tell, because it was moving so slowly.

The Embassy officially closes at 11 a.m., but such were the throngs that at closing time, they just herded everyone inside, and had them wait there.

There were about 300 people queued to apply for their Visa. There was ONE counter operating. We were there through the middle of the day, around 10.30 a.m. to 2 p.m., just queuing. The heat is just brutal. Luckily I had water and nuts on hand, but my ankles swelled in protest anyway.

It’s hard to escape the notion that convenience and efficiency are low on officials’ priorities, while digging into foreigners’ pockets isn’t;

• 2000 Baht for the Non-B application
• 690 baht for the ( one-way ) bus trip
• 1500 baht for the temporary Laos visa
• 100 baht each for the taxi
• 650 baht for the hotel room

From Vladimir’s and Alex’s wide experience, Thailand is one of the few countries which requires this nonsense ( leaving to apply for a Visa, then returning with one ). It’s one of the major downsides of working here as an ex-pat, and is apparently causing many people to turn their back on Thailand in favour of other South-Easy Asian countries.