Thailand: What Backpackers Do (cont.)

As I turned back to the street I noticed a van dropping off its passengers – a dozen scantily clad, exotic-looking women.

“Lady-boys,” John said, “a very profitable profession ‘ere—they get surgery to look l’ke real women, bo’t they still got their Adam’s apples.” Sure enough, each ‘lady-boy’ prostitute still had a prominent Adam’s apple.  I wondered if they had deep voices, but we didn’t stick around long enough to find out.

“We’re gonna ‘ave to take a tuk-tuk,” John told me. 

Tuk-tuks are moped taxis that adhere to the dangerous equation of two passenger seats plus zero seatbelts and zero doors.  Factor into the equation an often crazed (or better still, intoxicated) driver, and you are ready for a ride that could make an atheist rethink his priorities.  Our driver did not disappoint, as he sped down the streets taking sharp, white knuckle turns around each corner.  We didn’t appear to be going towards any destination; our driver just seemed to be trying to scare us. 

I watched as John tried to communicate with our driver.  Apparently we didn’t have enough money for the ride; so John tried to use his self-proclaimed celebrity status to arrange a deal. In spite of John’s broken Thai and boxing hand-gestures, the tuk-tuk driver didn’t seem to know what or where our “Chinese market” was and when it became clear to him that we were lacking sufficient baht anyway, he stopped the bike and deposited us in the middle of a busy intersection.

We decided to walk. As John assured me, the Chinese market was just a couple blocks from where we stood. Curiously, this was the same distance it had been before we had gambled with our lives on the tuk-tuk.

“Doon’t worry,” he said, “they got all s’rrrts of neat s’uff – clothes, jewelry, toys.”  At this point his assurances weren’t exactly inspiring confidence. 

Eventually we got to the alley where the market was held, but there we encountered a small problem – it was closed, which wasn’t entirely surprising considering it was 3 AM.

“Ayye—sorry, but methinks the market’s closed!” John said. 

To recap:  I was in a dark alley at 3 AM in the middle of Bangkok with an odd Scottish guy I had met only two hours prior—but I was doing what backpackers do. 

John seemed disappointed that he was unable to show me the market, but I assured him I still had a good time.  After all, I had seen things I never would have and had almost been killed in several potentially horrific moped accidents.  So we continued to do what backpackers do and headed back to the bar to add a few more beers to our tabs, trading stories until the bar closed. And while I never saw the infamous ‘white boxer’ after that day, his backpacking credo lives on in me.

Page 2 of 2  Previous Page

All contents copyright ©2006 Pology Magazine. Unauthorized use of any content is strictly prohibited.