The Bangkok Amulet Market

I was picking the remains of the helmet plastic from my teeth when an email came in regarding my last blog post. It was suggested that I should spend more time riding in tuktuks and taxis and less time on motorbike taxis. Of course, this is sound advice but it also got me thinking. How is it that I survived my last experience?  The only answer that I have been able to come up with is, luck. It was this thought that led me to recall the medallion handing from my driver’s neck -- a giant plastic Buddha encased in more clear plastic. All the taxi drivers in Bangkok wear some kind of medallion but until this moment I had never really considered what I was seeing. Since I am heading to India tomorrow where the traffic can be even crazier I set out with the utmost haste to find a good luck charm of my own.

Fortunately the Bangkok Amulet Market is just a short taxi ride from my hotel and in deference to my friends’ advice I took a taxi with four wheals and air conditioning. When I stepped into the taxi I did so with a rather smug sense of self-satisfaction. This was a brilliant idea. When I stepped out of the taxi and confronted the bewildering array of options I was reminded yet again of my personal shortcomings. Stall after stall of this covered market sat jammed together in an endless mound of trinkets, medallions and amulets. Buyers poured over individual items examining them with a magnifying glasses and an unquestionable sense of purpose. I was at a complete loss. Clearly not just any old amulet would do but at the same time, how to find the right one? Totally overwhelmed, I did the only sensible thing I could think of and had an ice cream and Coke float.

In times of great stress I occasionally fall back on this relic of my childhood. Root beer floats were something that my father used to buy me as a special treat and though my memories of that time are blurred the visceral sensation of being with my father is still completely intact. As the ice cream and bit of frozen cola went down my throat I landed on a strategy for picking my good luck charm.

First I would find a vender who believed in his wares. This vender proved easy to spot as he sat bedazzled in amulets. I reasoned that if he was using the amulets to drum up business and if I bought my amulet from him then his amulets would have been proven to work. His amulets made me purchase from him. As the saying goes, “The nice thing about being rational is that one can rationalize anything.”  I now have an amulet bought from a man with a proven track record of selling working amulets. It is perfect.

…Except for the lingering doubt in the back of my mind. Both my kamikaze taxi driver and my merchant of good fortune sported massive pendants. Mine on the other hand is rather small. Does size matter?

Bangkok Taxi

A friend once told me that all good stories should begin with the phrase: No shit, there I was.

No shit, there I was clinging with a death grip to the back of a pink polka-dotted motorcycle taxi as we flew down the sidewalk, dodging pedestrians, and saving untold seconds of travel time by not pausing in the Bangkok traffic. The bike then launched into the air as we jumped the curb and traded the sidewalk for the precious twelve inches of space taken up by the gutter and now bordered by a Samsung advertising sign and an accelerating bus. My motorcycle taxi driver slammed on the brakes as the bus began to casually compact our remaining space in the gutter. Fright crushed the air from my lungs and left my jaw gaping open. Unprepared for the rapid deceleration, my now open mandibles sank into the driver's helmeted head. Unlike the rest of the motorcycle, which was covered in circular pink stickers, my driver’s helmet sported pink triangles. Bits of which, fused with smog and high density plastic, became lodged in my teeth.

Moments after the bus accelerated past us we swerved right and into the flow of traffic. Now trailing the bus I momentarily wondered if I might be able to use the exhaust pipe to pick the bits of plastic from my teeth. We seemed close enough but no sooner had this whimsical thought occurred than we again swung to the right, crossed the yellow line separating us from on coming traffic and sped past the bus. With the exhaust pipe now ruled out as a tooth pick and bits of helmet still lodged in my teeth I considered using my tongue to extract the debris. Swerving left to avoid oncoming traffic and cutting off the bus that once threatened to crush us we banged across two steel plates in the road. My teeth slammed together with an audible clack and the idea of using my tongue to clean the plastic from my teeth died in a bid to minimize future pain and bloody saliva.

When I was teaching one of my nieces to drive I told her that being a good driver had everything to do with good judgment and very little to do with physical skill. By this logic I was a terrible passenger. Good judgment would have found me another way across town, preferably one that did not cause me to question my life expectancy from one moment to the next. My physical skill, on the other hand, furnished me with little more than an iron grip on the bike.

Ahead I saw the traffic light turn red and foolishly sighed with relief. Surely red meant stop and this crazed roller coaster ride would at least pause. As brake lights cascaded toward us the driver again swerved to the left and sought a path between the rows of idling cars. As we accelerated forward I fought to suck my knees in to avoid the sideview mirrors that sliced at us like knives coming simultaneously at us from both the left and right.

Again my ignorance led to me to think a pause would be in order as we burst through the front of the parked cars and were instead confronted with a moving chain of cars traveling perpendicular to us. Perhaps if this new wall of cars had been moving faster, perhaps much faster, then I would have had my pause but my driver saw an opening. Not waiting for the light to turn green, not waiting for an obvious and sane way forward, the pink polka-dotted engine gunned to life and we forced our way through the oncoming traffic.

It could be reasonably asked ‘Why did I feel the need to cross Bangkok on this particular day?’ Unlike so many ‘why’ questions on which I have given up hope this particular question has an answer. I needed my visa extended by a few days and the immigration office and my hotel had little geographically in common. A motorcycle taxi seemed an inexpensive and reasonable way to bridge this problem. It might also be asked ‘why didn’t I get off the rolling death machine after the first thirty seconds when my immediate fate seemed obvious?’ Again this ‘why’ question has an answer: Poor judgment.

Instead of getting off the bike in a fit of common sense I clung to the back thinking that at any moment we would arrive at the government office. However, it was only after half an hour of terror that the massive structure pierced the smog and I allowed myself to relax. I relaxed too soon.

Six lanes of oncoming traffic separated us from the entrance. I saw nothing but a moving wall of angry cars, steel bumpers, and Toyota logos.  I don’t know what my driver saw but I am certain that he did not see an obvious and suitable way around this problem. Instead we went through it. Lurching forward, slamming the breaks and then lurching again we progressed. When we broke free we found ourselves on a wide deserted section of driveway approaching the massive government building.  My sense of disorientation was profound. Stranger still, we slowed to the pace of a baby’s crawl to navigate a small speed bump in the road.

Inside the air-conditioned building the door to the immigration office swung closed and locked. We were one minute too late. It was lunchtime and no amount of sad and sorry looks was going to change that fact. It was now time to wait.

Once hour later lunch ended, two hours after that I had my visa extension, however, still lacking good judgment I caught the same motorcycle taxi back.

Life is a Beach

On Bottle Beach in Thailand the days travel in cycles. There can be no clear start nor end to a description of time here but, like a circle, if you are to try and describe the thing then one must just pick a point and go until you have returned to that same point. 8:00 a.m. It still seems that no matter how hard I exert myself and no matter what forms of mental discipline I practice I still open my eyes between seven and eight in the morning. Fortunately, the fan in my room is still on at this time and will not shut off with the rest of the electricity for another two or three hours. I do the only rational thing a man can do in this situation and I go back to sleep. 10:00 When the electricity goes off this my default alarm clock on Bottle Beach. Any dawn mosquitos that might have over exerted themselves into the late morning have given up and it is safe to pull aside the mosquito net and stumble to the shower. The water in the shower is neither hot or cold but manages to be just invigorating enough to move my feet out the door of my beach hut and down the few sand-covered stairs and into the communal beach house for breakfast. 11:00 It is, of course, important to maintain proper nutrition when living on the beach and breakfast is among the three most important meals of the day. Because the heat has started to exert itself at this hour an iced coconut shake is the wisest introduction to the day. Coffee is an option at this point but I find it unadvisable given the coming heat. A bowl of fresh fruit with yogurt rounds out breakfast, which should always be eaten slowly while watching the beach and the surf. At this particular beach, watching the waves is not really on option as the ocean is about as still as a bathtub before small children get in it to play. 12:30 With breakfast complete the real work of the day is at hand. At this point many people find it advisable to lie on the beach and brown in the sun. I however, find that the sand gets in my toes so instead I pull up several traditional Thai cushions and recline on the floor on the communal hut. The hut has been designed to accommodate this with low tables, and a shaded and view to the horizon. Reading and playing backgammon with some of the more permanent residents of Smile Guest house is the next order of business though, like everything here, it should not be pursued with excessive vigor. 4:00 As with breakfast, lunch is also among the day’s most important meals. I find that westernized Thai food is the best lunch option and depending on the various levels of inertia it is occasionally feasible to wonder down the beach to sample the food and culture of the other guesthouses. It could be argued that true (instead of westernized) Thai food would be more appropriate. There are two faults with this reasoning. First, the beach has many more western beach bums than Thai beach bums and thus westernized and mildly spice Thai food is easier to find. Second, true Thai food is likely turn the inside of your skull into an inferno and twelve hours later your butt is likely to suffer the same fate. 5:30 Now is an excellent time to take a swim or walk on the beach. The human body needs exercise to stay health and too much sitting around is not conducive to a long life. Also the evening mosquitos are likely to put in an appearance but since they cannot swim and have difficulty flying in the ocean breezes the line between sand and sea is the best place to be at this particular time of day. 7:00 Dinnertime is now at hand. Not unlike breakfast and lunch this is an excellent time to have a cold beer. It is also an excellent time to take a seat under an electric light where geckos and insects engage in a blood sport to rival anything the Romans ever considered. These nightly battles are fought to the death, the geckos invariably win and the entertainment value surpasses anything on western television. 8:00 Reading, talking and playing board games should dominate the rest of the evening provided that the each of these activities is accompanied by a cold beer and that any perceived victory of the geckos is duly noted and acknowledged. 10:00 As the saying goes, “early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” The electricity is back on in the bungalow and given my strenuous schedule an early evening is generally a good idea.