A taxi

I sit here, tired after a day of teaching, enjoying peanut butter, a delicacy I did not fully appreciate it until, having convinced myself that I would have to go a year sans consumption, only to stumble across it in the Big C supermarket near a talking cereal box (it had a motion detecting sound chip in it, I think; it may have been possessed, though) while looking for items both non-peanut butter and non-talking cereal box related.  Regardless, I found time to sit and relax and rather than having my idle hands be the devil's workshop in some other facet, decided to type away like a little secretary (in action only; certainly not in mannerisms or disposition).  That being squared away and not at all further muddled, I thought I should share the story of a taxi ride I took to my apartment from the Sizzler (yes, they have Sizzler in Thailand; I too was surprised).

Have you ever been in traffic, where no one is moving, yet you hear a persistent, arbitrary honking of a horn?  If you answered yes to that question (and I am assuming you did), then you have experienced only a little bit of what it is like to be in Bangkok.  In the "Venice of the East," (Bangkok, in case that was not clear by my location or the super-exact sobriquet; other cities enjoying the title of "Venice of the East," either officially or not?  Barisal City, Bangladesh; Lijiang City, China; Nan Madol, FSM; Osaka, Japan; Basra, Iraq; at least fourteen other cities.  The nickname is so popular that Bangkok is not even the only city in Thailand to have earned the tag.  I have digressed severely.) traffic is nearly a national pastime, and nearly every moment of the day is a lousy time to have to go anywhere by car.  That being said, I always found myself wondering, as I sat in the back of the bus or walked along the street, who exactly is honking?  The honking certainly accomplishes nothing and really a testament to Bangkok's ability to extend pollution beyond its normal three-pronged application (air, water and land) to the coveted area of noise pollution.  However, on this ride I gained valuable insight into who was doing all the honking in traffic.  It was this guy:  our taxi driver.

As I entered the taxi, sitting in the front seat, as seems to be my inherent right, given the landscape of other people in the city tends to be between two and six inches shorter than I.  Usually the front seat is a treat:  I get leg room, a more direct flow of air conditioning, an airbag (if I'm lucky) and often the only seatbelt not used by the driver.  On this occasion, however, I discovered the leg room to be, shall we say, less than ample.  It was in fact squalid.  The fact that the mechanism which is supposed to allow for the adjustment of the seat was in pieces (or had at one point been; I'm not sure the term applies when there are clearly elements missing) resulted in my sitting side saddle like a Georgia Duffy (look her up, if you want; I know nothing about her save that she was a cowgirl who rode side saddle; again I compare myself to her in this action only) in a hot-pink toyota.  To an outsider, it would be possible to mistakenly say this is not so bad, as I was in fact closer to the air conditioning, a seeming benefit when the weather in Bangkok ranges from about 75 to 95 degrees year round.  However, one thing quickly learned about taxis in Bangkok is that drivers like to keep their whips frosty.  Having learned this, one generally tries to avoid being too close to the vents for the concerns of catching a chill or possible frostbite.

So, as I found my face no more than ten inches away from the dashboard, the surface of which was already beginning to bruise my knees, shins and, strangely enough, the tops of my feet, I decided I should look around.  I made special note of the driver's identification card, posted in the front left (passenger side) of every taxi.  Well, I thought, I'm out of luck if I have to report this dude to the authorities, as all his information is in Thai.  However, he looked like a nice guy in the picture.  He looked to be in his early forties, kind of a rotund Thai with a light goatee and the hint of a twinkle in his eye.  Aaah, I thought.  There shall be nothing to report to authorities following this exchange of services for money.  Smiling, I looked over to my right, at the man driving the cab.

Shock and horror, but there was literally no way the gentleman driving the taxi was the individual in the photo.  A double-take confirmed my suspicions; the driver, though probably about the same age, was a good 70 pounds underweight and had a face in no way resembling the registered operator of the vehicle.  His face was something of interest, in fact, as he bore three distinct areas on his face which had clearly been stitched back together just hours before.  I wasn't altogether unsure a bookie's goons hadn't worked this dude's face over in a back alley.  Also, he kept honking.  When somebody was there, when nobody was there, he indiscriminately pressed the horn.  Several minutes into the ride, something imperceivable to all of us riding in the car set him about a mile over the edge.  It made no sense; we were on a straight, empty road (a rarity in Bangkok, but also something that caused a sincere amount of discomfort for me; at this point, I hadn't ruled out the chance that our driver was planning on robbing us while still having the fresh wounds given to him by either someone he had robbed or someone for whom had hadn't robbed enough; it reminded me of a conversation I had with friends at school last spring, when we discussed what we would do in a confined space [e.g., an automobile] with someone trying to kill us; I had my hand on the door release), when all of a sudden our friend began to curse violently under his breath much in the way an insane person does before he takes lives (I had seen such behavior once before, entering a subway station in Glasgow, Scotland, where an inebriated, deranged gent was shuffling along with a knife muttering curses and threats below his breath in a thick Glasgow accent), an act that caused me to be somewhat afraid, but more perplexed than anything else.  What exactly had set this dude off?

Now he was cursing in Thai, and quietly, yet forcefully, in a way that is universally understood to mean, "I'm angry about something, and somebody will without question pay for my anger."  As we finally pulled up to the apartment complex, I opened the door as quickly, yet as gently as possible while my friend lobbed him an approximate amount of money, slightly over the metered price, yet neither expecting nor hoping for change, exact or otherwise.  I breathed a sigh of relief that, whatever had made him so angry, he had simply gone on his way in his misappropriated taxi with his frigid air conditioning, his gaunt, freshly sutured face and his inarticulate, bizarrely leveled threats.  As he pulled away from the street and out of view, he gave us what seemed like a strangely humored parting gift.  He honked.  I couldn't help but smile . . . and then regret that he had seen where I live.