Bangkok Old Hand Page 6

  We watched as he rolled out in front of a passing tourist lady and tried the greeting again, just for practice: "Where you come from? You want go snake farm? Buy sapphires? Rubies?"

  "Oh, I'm from Kansas City!" she responded. "That's not in Kansas, you know, though everybody always thinks it is. Oh, no; it's in Missouri. But that's a long way from here. Are you Thai? Oh, no; you can't be. Of course not. No, you look different. And you speak such good English. Do you have sapphires?"

  We felt we were running short of time, and we hadn't really got anywhere with our questions, as yet. We gently eased ourselves between Melrose, who was confused, and the lady from Kansas City, Missouri, and pointed the latter individual in the direction of a government-authorised jewellery shop.

  Just then it started to rain, and Melrose began coughing and displaying pink and yellow stripes — obvious signs of distress. The atmosphere was rapidly becoming too thin for his metabolism, and he had to slip into his personal force-field bubble with the built-in smog generator. In no time the water was up to our ankles, as we stood there in the bus shelter. (We would have gone in somewhere off the street, but Melrose didn't want to get too far away from the buses.)

  "You could certainly use a dome over this city," said Melrose, his voice sounding tinny and plaintive from inside the bubble. He was bobbing on the rising waters like a misshapen beach ball. "Is this what you call a flood?" he asked us.

  "No," we answered. "This is not a flood. It is very wet, but cannot describe the situation as a flood. The government announced some time ago that they have beaten the floods. There are to be no more floods."

  "I see," said the alien, who was by now floating up around our knees. "Admirable, I'm sure," he added, bobbing violently in the wake from a passing bus. "But what about the longer term? What about these new buildings? They have windows right down to street level. And the doors are at street level! Where is all the construction of raised travel ways one would expect to see?"

  Melrose had us quite confused, by this time. What, we asked in slightly more diplomatic terms, was he wittering on about?

  Carbon dioxide, he informed us. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the warming of the polar ice-caps. Apparently he was referring to what our scientists have called the "greenhouse effect".

  "Surely you realise what's happening?" he went on. "Our planetary sensors and computers had it figured out before we touched down. You've got about 35 years at the outside, before the city of Bangkok, together with its flood-control measures, will be totally under water."

  Melrose punctuated this rather alarming pronouncement by spinning on his axis with a flourish of breathing trumpets. "The proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing, and your climate is getting correspondingly hotter. We assume you Earthlings are engineering this planetary modification by means of hydrocarbon emissions together with the systematic extermination of the forests. In fact, we have admired how effective the programme has been, given your primitive technology. However, the ice-caps are melting, and in just a few decades sea levels worldwide will rise by several feet. Not much, really, but enough to completely submerge your charming city.

  "I am surprised you haven't noticed the danger. Of course you can confidently expect lovely hot weather and gorgeous billowing clouds of hydrocarbons, the way things are going; but you people must be alert to the secondary consequences and take appropriate measures now."

  To say that we were taken aback would have been an understatement. This was indeed bad news — bad news (the submersion of Bangkok) unleavened by what Melrose felt was the good news (hotter weather and more hydrocarbons).

  As we are sure the reader already knows, however, we are saved. The arrival of our Andromedan friends has proven providential in the extreme. Discussions between ranking members of the Andromedan delegation and our government have produced agreements of untold potential benefit to both our species. The key to the trade agreement is a force-field generating station the Andromedans have promised to set up within the decade.

  For their part, the aliens will receive regular shipments of Bangkok air. Initially, there will be three premium vintages: "Phya Thai Monday Morning", "Rama I Friday Evening" and, for the real connoisseur, "End-of- March Payday". Given what they feel will be the extraordinarily rare quality of the atmosphere in Bangkok after establishment of the force-field dome, the Andromedans reckon they're getting the best of the deal.

  Our government, meanwhile, is also more than satisfied. The dome will keep the rains off Bangkok, simplifying the question of flood control. At the same time, there is to be a public information campaign revealing how our leaders plan to tackle the problem of air pollution. This scheme, as you have seen, is brilliant in its simplicity, and self-financing besides: We will bottle the pollution and export it to the Andromeda Galaxy. What could be more elegant a solution?

  And, finally, Bangkok will be protected from the rising seas. Eventually, it appears, the whole city will be encapsulated in a submarine force-field. The Tourism Authority sees this as a heaven-sent opportunity, and is already preparing to advertise Bangkok as the biggest marine aquarium in the world, if not the entire solar system.

  There on the street with us, Melrose received a radio message from a colleague. He'd left his universal translation device switched on. "Melrose! Melrose!" came the excited voice. "Get yourself on over here to the corner of Phya Thai and Rama I. You're not going to believe it. An atmosphere fit for kings. For emperors!"

  "On my way," was the terse reply.

  "Oh, man; it's incredible," the intercom squawked. 'You've gotta see it to believe it — all these weird Earthlings sitting motionless in their cars breathing this elixir through filters and refrigeration units! It's like sucking a wringbinder through a snodgap. Whackos, the lot of them. And Melrose..?"

  'Yeah?"

  "They've agreed to trade their air away for one — are you ready for this? — for one force-field generating station."

  "Ha!" said Melrose. "There's one born every minute."

  Too late, he saw that his translator had been on during the whole exchange. He turned blue with what we'd like to think was embarrassment, made his excuses, and rolled off at a rate of knots.

  10 FLEEING THE SCENE

  Ham Fiske sheds new light on one of Bangkok's oldest mysteries.

  Having been involved in a collision or other mishap entailing injury or significant property damage, those parties to the incident employed to drive commercial vehicles shall immediately and without reflection flee the scene.

  Or so it must be written. I have just read another report of a bus accident where the driver fled the scene. It occurs to me that I have never read a story of an accident in Thailand involving a bus or a truck where all drivers concerned didn't flee the scene. That is one part of the story reporters can write before they get there: "Drivers flee scene. "Is it some kind of rule? On a holiday weekend where there have been a lot of road accidents, it's dangerous to walk in the woods for fear of being trampled by drivers fleeing scenes.

  I have asked friends here in Thailand what it all means. Apparently there is no law prescribing summary execution for erring commercial drivers. Nowhere have I seen evidence that police are especially brutal in their treatment of such people. So what is it? Some kind of folk tradition?

  A few of us were sitting outside a noodle shop, the other evening, when we witnessed the coincidence of two city buses in the same bit of roadway. We waited expectantly for the drivers to flee the scene. It was quite a minor bang-up, however — no injuries and very little, if any, damage. In the end, both drivers simply climbed back on their respective buses and drove off.

  One driver had actually looked poised for flight for a moment or two; he'd stood looking first at his bus and then at the gathering onlookers, eyes vague and uncertain, as if seeking to read in their faces what he should do. As I watched, a theory for the flee-the-scene syndrome began to take shape in my mind. I found myself telling my friends the story of the time I was
a Mafioso, and the time I inadvertently fled the scene of my own court hearing. (Let me hasten to add that I was a callow youth of 17, at the time, and I no longer accept responsibility for those actions as my own.)

  It had been a Monday morning amongst Monday mornings. Imagine the scene: a long, latrine-green corridor, featureless but for a blank door bracketed by two uniformed policemen. The transvestites sitting on the floor across from me looked as though they could've used a trip to the little girls' room. No amount of powdering the nose, however, was going to make them appear less than wilted after a whole weekend in the Montreal City Jail. Sitting next to them was Jean-Paul, who had been arrested on Saturday night for indecent exposure. He'd been walking backwards with one foot on the sidewalk and the other in the gutter, he told us, with his fly open. When the policemen asked what he thought he was up to, he said he was trolling. They laughed, and then took him downtown and threw him in the slammer.

  Various other desperadoes were parked along the walls on both sides of the corridor — the flotsam and jetsam of the city: petty thieves, drunk-and-disorderlies, thugs. Beside me on the floor, asleep, was my friend Flynn. I wished I were asleep.

  It was really Flynn's fault we were there in the first place. We were both employed by a company that handled small moving jobs and other light deliveries. The Friday night past we had been rammed by another van as we were making a left turn through an intersection. The chaps in the other vehicle had been a rowdy pair, ready — even hungry — for an altercation. I would have opted for reason and diplomacy, but Flynn was red-haired and hot-tempered and had been having trouble with his girlfriend besides.

  The next thing we knew, Flynn and I were being bundled into a Black Maria and taken to jail. The police and the parties of the other part had all been native French-speakers and had seemed to reach agreement on the ins and outs of the case in no time. Flynn and I, on the other hand, had failed to score any points at all in the debate, what with our pitiful store of fractured French.

  At the jail, we were a little taken aback to find that we wouldn't see a judge till Monday, but we settled in to learn whatever could be culled from this latest lesson in life.

  I enjoyed a certain cachet amongst my criminal associates by reason of being covered in blood — shirt-front and jacket looked as though they'd been lifted from an accident victim. Most of the blood was my own, in fact; it came from my finger, which I'd cut somewhere along the line, and from my lip, which was split back to somewhere around my tonsils. I looked great, I was pretty sure, in my filthy jacket and my mashed mouth, well deserving of my cellmates' respect.

  I'd also lost my glasses. I am rather myopic, and without my glasses the whole world is a bit of a puzzle, needing considerable guessing at. I can tell a house from a bus, for example, but only if I wait for one of them to move.

  And there I was in that corridor, hungry, sleepy and a bit tired of that particular portion of life's rich pageant.

  Periodically a name was called, and another of our rogues' gallery would disappear through the door. What lay on the other side? The imagination quailed. I was hoping it was a courtroom — in preference, at least, to other things that came to mind. But I was the Man with the Mashed Mouth, and I never let those doubts cross my battered countenance.

  A name was called: "Fiscetti!" It was called again. And again. No one came forward.

  "Aha,'' I surmised, "the notorious Fiscetti. Once again he has eluded the law, and even now he is chuckling to himself as he climbs out of the back of the laundry van, some 30 blocks from here, ready to embark on a new caper."

  "Fiscetti!"

  Abruptly, tumblers clicked somewhere in the benumbed recesses of my brain. They had it wrong: it was "Fiske"... That was me! I got to my feet, shielded from the sour looks of the guards who'd been paging me by the fact that, without my glasses, their faces were rather indistinct. Trying to appear nonchalant, I went through the door.

  The first thing I noticed was a blurry sea of faces. So it was to be a public hanging. I was quite shy, beneath that rugged, devil-may-care exterior, and it was just as well I couldn't see the spectators very clearly (the old ostrich effect — if I couldn't see them, maybe they couldn't see me).

  Out there, to my left, I saw a dais with some sort of figure garbed in black. I assumed that was the judge. I was trying to figure out what it was I was supposed to be doing. I had to be cool — after all, there was the honour and dignity of Ham "Mashed Mouth" Fiscetti to uphold. I was remembering all the Perry Mason TV shows I'd ever seen, but I still couldn't orient myself successfully. I was standing in a raised dock with steps going down to my right. I was dimly aware of a droning voice, but it seemed rather remote and irrelevant. All I knew for sure was that I felt like a dummy standing where I was, exposed to the public eye; and those steps seemed to beckon.

  So down the steps I went. As I walked past the benches full of people, I had the feeling all heads were turning to look at me. Probably paranoia, I told myself; I hadn't had a lot of sleep that weekend, and fatigue can do funny things to your mind. I kept walking.

  Now I heard other, louder voices behind me. It turned out to be a couple of fairly agitated policemen, who grabbed me just as I reached the exit at the back of the courtroom. I was unceremoniously led back up into the dock in time to hear the judge say, "Guilty or not guilty?"

  I felt pretty guilty, so I said so, and was forthwith pronounced to be indeed guilty, sentenced to something or other, and then granted a suspended sentence. The judge very kindly chose to ignore my attempted jailbreak, probably in light of my tender years and obvious inexperience.

  I'd had enough of being Mr Fiscetti, by that time, and I went outside to wait for Flynn; we would best go back to work and face the boss together.

  So, if it had not been for my myopia and my missing glasses, I would never have been able to add "Jailbreak Artist (failed)" to my resume. And it was this recollection that led to my hypothesis concerning local drivers fleeing

  scenes of accidents.

  This theory, I believe, deserves serious investigation by the authorities. What we are in fact looking at is a problem of short-sightedness on an epidemic scale, exacerbated by a lack of public education and/or funds for corrective lenses.

  This would first of all explain the frequency with which these fellows have accidents. Secondly, it would suggest that they are not really fleeing the scene. Not at all — they are merely running off in a myopic haze in search of public telephone boxes from which to summon aid, and then getting lost.

  11 BANGKOK OLD HAND TRAFFIC QUIZ

  What the weather is to your average Englishman, the traffic is to your Bangkokian.

  A score of 10-12 on the following quiz qualifies you as a Bangkok Old Hand, and suggests you have spent a good part of your life in local traffic. If you answer fewer than seven questions correctly, you've led an enviably sheltered life and don't know what you're talking about, at least when it comes to Bangkok's favourite topic of conversation. (Answers on page 185.)

  1. Which has most value for a young Bangkokian on the way up?

  a) A comfortable home.

  b) A car.

  c) Life itself.

  2. Rank these in terms of social desirability:

  a) Having a Mercedes-Benz.

  b) Having a Toyota.

  c) Having leprosy.

  d) Having a city bus ticket fall out of your pocket in front of people.

  3. When is "rush hour"?

  a) 6:00 a.m. till 8:00 a.m.

  b) 5:30 a.m. till 9:30 a.m.

  c) 6:00 a.m. till 8:00 p.m.

  4. How long does it take to drive from Sukhumvit Soi 49 to Charoen Krung Road?

  a) 40 minutes.

  b) Three days.

  c) If you have to ask "how long?" then you don't really need to go.

  5. What do policemen and street dogs in Bangkok have in common?

  a) Neither can hear a dog whistle.

  b) Neither is fully appreciated by the average Bangko
kian.

  c) Nothing.

  6. Why did the authorities declare a two-day holiday plus organise a bunch of festivals and other events upcountry in mid-October, 1991?

  a) This was intended to allow the citizens of the City of Angels to join in the joyful welcome for the delegates to the International Monetary Fund /World Bank Conference and their families.

  b) It was merely a whim.

  c) To ease the traffic sufficiently that the delegates to the International Monetary Fund/World Bank Conference and their families would see the advantage in coming to stay in Bangkok while attending the conference rather than commuting daily from their home countries.

  7. What is the average rate of Bangkok traffic?

  a) 5 kph.

  b) 15 kph.

  c) The movement of Bangkok traffic is often imperceptible to modern science.

  8. What is the average rate at which a pedestrian walks?

  a) 5.5 kph.

  b) 15 kph.

  c) 3.5 kph.

  9. The average Bangkok driver spends the equivalent of how many days a year in traffic?

  a) 18.5 days per year.

  b) 44 days per year.

  c) 32 days per year.

  10. Which solution to Bangkok's traffic woes was once proposed by a candidate for city governor?

  a) Leave all the traffic lights green.

  b) Promote the whole phenomenon as a tourist attraction — "Come to Bangkok and see the world's most intractable traffic jams! Watch time stand still! Maybe you'll be lucky enough to be there when total gridlock sets in!"

  c) Summary smashing of headlights and/ or windscreens of traffic offenders with official billy-sticks.

  11. How many new vehicles are coming onto Bangkok's roads every day?

  a) A few.

  b) About 400.

  c) About 1100.

  12. What has the national government done to address the problem of traffic congestion in Bangkok?