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.