taxi cab adventures.

throughout the time here in thailand, there have been numerous encounters with public transportation that could only happen here, and only happen to farangs. more specifically, they would only happen to us: me, steph and tash together in a cab just meant a deadly combination. of course, there is the typical happenings of drivers trying to charge us exorbitant fees rather than turning on their meters or telling us simply "no can," but sometimes things that are just slightly more out of the ordinary. here are some of the best stories we have accumulated.

also, i just want to say that these are probably a lot more hilarious to me than anyone else will find them. just take them as those "you-had-to-be-there" kind of things.

uh-oh....accident!

i cant even remember where we were going. i want to say it was china town for the chinese new year, but that could be completely made up. it was sometime around that time though, and of course, as always in thailand, it was more than quite hot. we searched for a while for a taxi that would take us where we wanted to go and with the meter on (because neither of those things is particularly easy to find here), and finally we did. we sat in traffic, of course, for about 10 minutes, and then pulled onto a different street, where we gracefully collided with a motorbike. i dont think anyone was hurt, but the taxi driver jumped out and started arguing with the motorbike driver, who then drove off. but the bumper of the cab was sitting in the street, and the meter was still running. rather than sit around and let the fare get higher, the three of us decided to just get out and find another cab.

caught red handed...maybe?

while heading from one excursion to another, we were in a taxi and passed by a police stop. these are rather routine in thailand, and usually they just peer in to see if everyone in the front is wearing a seatbelt. that said, if theres a farang in the car, there is usually even less of an issue, and they just smile and wave the cabby through. not this time. we were not only stopped, but the cop asked the driver to get out of the vehicle. at this point, we thought it was funny, if slightly inconvenient, but obviously we are used to that in this country. then the cop sent the driver over to another group of police officers and made him open the trunk, and thats when we got a little freaked out, not to mention that the meter was still running (see a theme here?).

eventually, he got back in the car with only a ticket, i think, but we never actually found out what was in the trunk or why he got stopped.

how many farangs can we get into one taxi cab?

soi cowboy in the area of nana plaza is known as (one of) the sleezier districts in bangkok. it also happens to be one of the places frequented by farangs at night. a few months into living here, steph and i had not yet explored that area, so one night the boys (of course!) convinced us we should give it a try. after a bit, although by no means sleezier than some other places we have seen, we were not impressed, and thought we would rather go somewhere else. everyone had split up by that point, so trying to get people together to leave was a task. im pretty sure we had two in the front, and four in the back, when we started pulling away and someone shouted that they saw andrew up the street. the taxi driver didnt understand that we wanted him to pull over to get our friend (or maybe he did and just didnt want to, never can tell with these tricksters!) and so we threw open the door as we passed and andrew basically did a dive onto the laps of everyone in the back seat. this made 7 farangs and an unhappy driver in the car. well done.

bad-luck american.

frequently when they have a little knowledge of english, the drivers will try to start conversations with us. they ask us the standard questions each time...why are we here, how long have we been here, where do we come from, etc. steph was in the front and tash and i in the back, and the driver had just asked us where we each came from. we told him the three countries (canada, england, usa), and he started to say something else when at that moment i sneezed. the look he gave me, according to steph, was one of absolute horror and disgust. then he looked in the rearview mirror and pointed at me while saying "suay." now this word is ridiculously close to the word "suai," which means beautiful. but thats not what he meant. i had to ask someone the next day, but the tonage he used with the word means bad luck. simply for sneezing. mai khao jai.

round-a-bout.

ive referenced our coyotes nights in a few different posts....the place we go to on wednesdays or saturdays and drink free margaritas for two hours. when going from stephs house, it is only a 10 minute taxi drive without traffic. usually there is traffic, but thats still not a problem. the point is, we know the distance and how to get there. we were on our way to meet people and left with about 20 minutes to spare before the drinks started flowing. 50 minutes later, we were outraged. there was a slight amount of traffic, but the driver was going in the wrong direction. we were traveling around the entire city to get to the restaurant which is just a few kilometers north. when we started seeing signs for where lauren lives, just north outside of the city, we tried saying something to him. he just laughed at us, paying no mind to what we were saying. when we finally got there, we tried to offer less money because he took us the wrong way, but he threatened with the police. so we ended up having to pay for an unwanted bangkok tour AND he had cut our free drinking time down by nearly 50 minutes!

taxi ting tong!

without a doubt, probably the funniest taxi story we have. this was just me and steph, on our way back to her place after one of our sunday night splurges. we tried to explore a new area, surasak, because we had heard that there were good places to party and eat there. unfortunately, we chose to go there during the peak of the red shirts disruption, and so we didnt find much...some overpriced decent curry and thats about it. so we headed back. as we were walking back to the main street a cab passed, saw us heading up that direction, and backed up. we got in and because we knew a little thai (we thought) he was impressed and giggly. most of the ride we spent chatting on our own, but occasionally he would throw a comment and a giggle (and i do mean giggle) back at us and that made us laugh as well. but when we got close to her house, all of a sudden he says "hehehe, taxi ting tong! hehehe." in thai, ting tong means crazy, or rather....crazy drunk. wasted. at that point we were on her back street and so we just looked at each other and laughed, but then he sees another white person outside and rolls down the window yelling "farang! teacha! taxi ting tong! hehehe!" and the guy actually was another teacher at stephs school, but one who was not too impressed with the exchange that happened.