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.

a-town and margaritas...am i back at home?

im having trouble writing my posts from laos and new years. only part of the reason there is because most of it was a blur and im not sure how much should be left in or taken out for family back home....but also because it was such a once in a lifetime experience and i dont know where to begin. but rather than not posting until the writers block lets up from those adventures, ill continue with other posts and return to the island of koh phangan when the writers block has ceased.

i had a treat last week because i got to see someone from home. mr anthony kapanowske made an appearance in bangkok. his 'uncle,' who has lived here for nearly 30 years, got married on saturday and so a-town is here for a few weeks with his dad in honor of the ceremony. on wednesday night we decided to meet up on good ol khaosan for dinner and a drink, which unexpectedly turned into many many margaritas courtesy of anthonys dollars and not my bahts.

even though d we dont see each other much now that we dont work together, seeing someone from home was indescribable. its different seeing everyone from the group on the weekends because even though they are great friends, they are still from my life here in thailand. having someone from my life back in the states was just amazing.

so we met wednesday and went out, which was fine, because as it turned out, thursday and friday were the thai testing days, which meant that even though we had to be at school, we didnt have any classes. really, us being here was pointless, but its fine because i got to sit on the computer all day. (you would think i would have been more productive with writing and such, but alas, no.)

friday night i headed over to stephs place to camp out for the weekend. we went to dinner on good ole khaosan again and got to meet bierles girlfriend who was visiting for three weeks during her winter break from school. it was an early night though and after splitting a bucket, we headed back to stephs.

the plan for saturday was to head over to the ancient city, which is why we stopped early friday night. however, we underestimated how long the bus across the city would take, and by the time we were finished the first leg of our journey, with still an hour or so more to go, we realized we would only have a 1/2 hour t

o see the thing, so we decided to meet tasha and opted for another relaxing day at the massage place instead :)

that night we planned on heading back to the mexican place, called coyote, because from 10-12 its ladies night and we get free margaritas! we met for dinner first, and after my first drink anthony came down from the wedding reception, which was only a km away. he told me that i had been invited back, so i left the group and went down the street to meet people. everyone was super nice and offered to show me around or help me find places to visit while i was here.

sunday steph and i had planned on hitting some of the 10+ malls in the siam area so that we could hopefully find some new work shoes, as ours have been destroyed by the conditions here in thailand. some of the malls were just like back home, and some...were not. that means different things depending on each mall, but for example, one was only high end stores which, even over here, are still way too expensive for me, and others were like outdoor markets moved indoors. those were the most interesting because they were just so overwhelming, and we didnt even know where to begin to look for anything.

in the end, i did find work shoes for cheap and also found a nice little treat for myself. :)

steven madden wedges for only $30.....even though i have absolutely NO use for them here.

my new favorite form of transportation.

the rumors about bangkok traffic are true: its some of the worst i have encountered. the lights in the directions i always want to be going last about 20 seconds while we wait at the intersection for 200+ seconds (i know because the lights have counters on them) for the traffic going down the cross streets. and the whole thing about lanes is kind of pointless, since it seems that those are used by the drivers own discretion.

one solution to this problem is motorbikes, which are used as taxis very frequently. they can zip through the bigger cars and on some of the smaller roads they can go faster. the problems here are 1. they do not have meters, so you must bargain the prices with them 2. they do not go to places that are very far and 3. you cannot travel in groups.

so theres another solution: river boats. and they happen to be my new favorite form of transportation. previously, i had tried out the watertaxi system in bangkok down the chao phraya. for 13 baht you can go all the way down the river, and you get a nice breeze and view while youre at it. definitely beats sitting in a cab in traffic when the minimum is 35 baht.

then this weekend while in kanchanaburi, we were about to go see the bridge over the river kwai when the man who owns the place we were staying at suggested a boat tour instead. for 100 baht per person, we were taken from our hotel to the bridge, from the bridge to a cave, the cave to a museum, and then back to our hotel. it was such a nice day and being on the water gave us a completely new perspective, while at the same time, it was the perspective best suited for this town, as life here does revolve around the river.

now, if only a system of canals and rivers could be dug for me by the time i get back to the east coast, that would be fab.