Just another crazy night in Bangkok

We decided on Friday to head to one of our favorite spots in Bangkok - a really laid back, beautiful community dinner theater where you can eat great food alongside the river, drink nice wine and watch some really interesting performances, including a Thai acrobat who has trained in Canada with Cirque Du Soleil.

So off we go into the crazy traffic that is Bangkok on a Friday night. We expected to get stuck so we left a full hour in advance of our reservation. Luckily, the first taxi we hailed agreed to take us to this slightly out of the way spot. But not quite so luckily, the driver was actually a policeman...yes, a policeman in full uniform driving a taxi...we thought this was a little strange...

But stranger things were about to happen. First he tells us he really needs to go to the bathroom and pulls off into this tiny, dark gas station on the side of the road. As he's getting out of the car I nervously check his hip to see if there is a gun holstered there...luckily he'd put it away somewhere when he switched from law-enforcement duty to driving duty ;) (Bangkok cops are known to wear their guns always - even at the end of a shift when having a few beers with friends - it's always a shock to us to see cops drinking in full uniform with guns at the ready...).

Although I was thinking he was gone to get his buddies from the back of the building to come out and hold us up or something, he returned to the car without incident and kept driving. But it wasn't long before the next strange thing happened. The Cop/Cabbie started a lively conversation about money and salaries. It wasn't long before he was insisting that we tell him how much money Sean makes...he wanted to know if he got paid in Dollars or Baht - how much he made - which company paid him, etc. etc. We were avoiding answering and sort of acting like we couldn't understand his questions and so to help us along the guy pulled out his cell phone so we could TYPE IN THE AMOUNT! Clearly he didn't want there to be any confusion. With our limited knowledge of average Thai salaries (which, sadly are MUCH lower than any North American salary) we made up a number and passed it back. Turns out we didn't do a very good job - it was still about 3 times higher than what the cop said he made.

Now, in general it's not uncommon for Thais to ask questions about salary and how much things cost, etc. It's not taboo here like it is in many other parts of the world. But the fact that this was already a strange encounter paired with this guy's insistence and our knowledge that foreigners are often seen as rich, easy targets got me really nervous. We were getting closer to our destination and I just wanted to hurry up and get out of this car!

But since nothing is ever easy in Bangkok things kept getting worse. Instead of taking us straight to the restaurant the guy took us on the "tourist route" (this means that the taxi driver takes you on the longest most complex route possible in order to drive the meter up and make you pay more). Normally we would have argued and directed the guy to go the proper way - but with a policeman at the wheel we were a little hesitant to start giving orders (you have to understand that cops in Thailand are not like cops in Canada. They do not provide any sense of safety or reassurance. Instead they're quite scary given the amount of corruption that exists in the system).

Finally the driver admitted that he really didn't know where he was going and pulled over to ask for directions. And then a few blocks later he did the same. As he got back in to the car he exclaimed that now he knew! and quickly started to back up....RIGHT INTO A MOTORCYCLE with a man and a little girl on it! YES, the cop ran over a motorcycle. Of course the poor victim looked furious, until he saw who was getting out of the car...as far as we could see the cop didn't really do anything about it. Just jumped out to make sure they were ok and quickly got back in and started off again.

Thankfully we were just about at our destination. One short drive down a small road and the restaurant came into view. We couldn't get out of the car quickly enough! The rest of the night I was sort of in shock about what had happened. Truthfully, it's the only time since we've been living here that I actually felt scared. Sure, people sometimes try to scam you out of a few bucks, take you the long way, or try to trick you into their cousins tailor/gem shop - but none of that is really harmful. This time I really did think that we were going to be brought to a dark alley and held up at gun point! Maybe i was over-reacting. Things that are normal here just seem So foreign to us sometimes! It's hard not to be shocked by it and even a little scared when you don't really know what's going on or if it's acceptable or not. The whole time in the car we really wanted to call one of our Thai friends to see what we should do - but the cop spoke enough English that he would have known what we were talking about.

So just another story to add to our growing list of "crazy things that have happened in Thailand". It's times like this that we're really happy we've kept up with this blog - a few years from now we'll be able to look back and laugh at all the insane things that we've experienced this year...