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As I said, quite taxing and exhausting a schedule for a little girl. The kids also are a bit afraid of the crazy driver's driving. I guess he drives like most of the other Thai guys, like a frigging nut. Their trepidation in asking me to do this driving gig derives from the fact that everyone who knows me, especially those who sleep with me, or at least in the same house, knows that I am NOT a morning person. To say the least. The only time I've seen a sunrise in the past twenty years is usually because I'm just getting home! (From work or from partying) I'm a night shift worker. A farmer's life is not for me. Early to bed and early to rise my ass! I'm a city boy. Green Acres ain't the life for me.
BUT, seeing our daughter looking up expectantly at me with those big brown Bambi doe-like eyes, and after my lady had explained the details, along with my being a soft touch when it comes to little girls, especially my own, I relented and said, "Sure darling. No problem. What time do I have to wake up?"
"I wake you 6:30, darling." says the wife to be.
"Eeeeeeeeekkkkkkk!!!!!!!" I screamed, clutching my heart as though I was having a massive coronary and falling to the floor. Laughing at my antics my look sow grabs me in a huge hug and plants a big kiss on me. The broad smile splitting her face made this new adventure into the caustic morning sunlight almost bearable.
Women! Ah, crap, they'll be the death of me yet. Little did I know how great an adventure these early morning drives would turn out to be.
So I made plans for an early bedtime that evening. What's that saying about the best laid plans of mice and men being for naught? Well, it's true. This especially is true for some reason in Thailand. Everyone in the village I know, knew slightly, and others I had never met in my life stopped by to say hello. Needless to say Chang beers were quaffed; rounds of Johnnie Walker Black were thrown back to cries of "Chok dee" (good luck) with abandon, and sticky rice and fried chicken went down the gullets of the starving, drunken village wastrels in enormous quantities. Boy do these little suckers love to party and eat!
Next thing you know it's after midnight. Damn! Okay, everybody out! I gotta get some shut-eye you crazy bastards! Out, out, OUT! Jeez.
I grab my lady and it's off to bed to test the durability of the mattress for an hour while the oscillating fan at the bottom of the bed blows around the hairs on my ass with its cooling breeze, a rather disconcerting feeling this can be.
Six thirty came very quickly that next morning. My lady was up at five to prepare breakfast, lunch, and clothing for school for our look sow. I felt too guilty at sleeping until six thirty to even be able to bitch and moan too much.
"Aaaarrrrgh! What the hell is wrong with my head? It's killing me!" I mumble thickly, with woeful voice, upon being awakened. Must have something to do with the early morning air or something. Christ!
I stumble out of the bedroom, walk into a wall, stub my toe, hop around on one foot swearing softly as a grizzly bear, bounce off the bathroom door twice before getting it to open, I think my eyes were still closed, and fell into the bathroom, almost slipping and splitting my head open on the already wet floor. Now I just had to take an ice cold shower, puke a few times, piss, shit, brush my furry teeth and dress and I'd be ready to face my first hour long drive to Surin and catch the early morning Isaan sunrise. God help me. I think I'm gonna puke again.
My screams of utter joy as the ice cold water hit my hot flesh woke the village 2 klics down the road. Sputtering like a walrus coming out of the Arctic Ocean, and shivering in the chilly seventyish degree frigid Isaan morning temperatures, I bounded out of the hong nam filled with a new sense of vigor. I dash for my clothing in the bedroom, bouncing off the opposite wall like a pin ball that has just been whacked a good one by the flipper. Shit! I'm actually shivering! Dammit, I think I broke my friggin' toe! Man, does that hurt.
After quickly dressing I grab a bottle of Nom Yen (cold milk) and chug it down to soothe my rebelling tummy. It ain't used to having to work this early in the day, and doth tend to protest a bit too much when not coddled with a sufficient amount of rest and recuperation. I grab my sunglasses, knowing full well the lethal effects of early morning sunlight on us vampires, and shout out a few Bah's (Lao for "let's go"), sounding like a demented Isaan sheep, or a Lao version of Scrooge, minus the "humbug's", and the family heads out to the infamous red shitbox pick-up truck. The lady who owns this piece of crap swears she just recently replaced the gear box. Freaking thing still grinds gears in third though. She must've picked up the new gear box in a junkyard.
As I head towards the truck I'm amazed to see a shitload of ducks waddling toward me down the street in a Teutonic-like parade formation. Jesus! What a sight. They all do an eyes right as they pass me by and the head duck (a Sergeant I think by his stripes) seems to salute me with his wing as he passes me. I snap back a smart salute in return, cut a nice fart as I jump in the driver's seat of the truck, (must be the milk I drank) and turning to my lady, say, "Wow! There really ARE too many ducks in Thailand! We're being invaded!"
As we head out the village, there on my right is the strangest sight I've seen in many a year. There was this orange glow in the sky to the east, and an orange red ball was hanging in the air just over the trees. What the hell is this? Somewhere in my brain a phrase for this strange phenomenon pops into my consciousness. Sunrise. Wow! Creepy!
Over the rice paddy fields lies a ghostly fog, misting the landscape within its dewy grasp. Smoky fires of rice chaff burn in small piles along the dew slicked tarmac, adding an aroma not unlike a New England autumn's burning leaf piles. Huge piles of mushroom-like water buffalo dung droppings dot the highway, along with mangy soi mutts still asleep in the middle of the road.
The sun rises slowly, pink and cool over the tree dotted fields. Occasionally seen water buffalos, awake since God knows when, munch grass in a slow moving catatonic-like state, hidden in patches of ground fog cover. The air is conditioned and cool as it flows in the windows of the truck. Roosters can be heard crowing from their woven bamboo-strip cage covers, and small birds hop on the back of a buffalo looking for their breakfast, as I drive by. Clusters of sleepy eyed, uniformed, school children shuffle on the sides of the road toward their bus stops, chattering quietly to each other in the chilly air. It was perfect, and beautiful. A perfect Isaan morning, and I drew it all into me, like a tonic it soothed my soul. I fell in love with Thailand all over again. The beauty of the countryside overwhelmed me. It was like driving through a water color painting. It reinforced my longing to live here on a more permanent basis.
I dodged another stupid soi dog lying in the middle of the road and down shifted while cursing the stupid canine, and the mother who bore him.
As I sped through the next village down the road along its thin tarmac strip I accidentally ran over a mountainous pile of buffalo shit. I could hear it splatter off the wheel wells, like slush on a winter's road back home. A passing cry rang out in the cool air. Looking in the rear view mirror I spied a man standing on the side of the road just passed, shaking his fist at the receding truck.
"What the hell is his problem darling?" I mumble to my lass.
She is smiling, and laughs, saying, "I think you splash him big-time with buffalo kii. (shit)"
"Oh shit. Boy, he must be pissed!" I say, and start laughing. "He'll probably be waiting for me on my return trip with his rat hunting rifle." I say to her grinning face, still laughing myself.
"Watch out where the buffalo go and don't you eat that yellow snow" flashed quickly through my demented brain, as I pondered the significance of short person behavior and other highly ambient domains. "Arf" I said. God I loved Frank
I laughed all the way to Surin. I couldn't help it really. Where else but in Thailand can you get splashed with water buffalo shit by a deranged, hungover falang, who has strains of Frank Zappa tunes running through his twisted noggin? "You're shittin' me" takes on a whole new meaning over here. I try to drive more responsibly thereafter.
For some reason this trip the parties that be, who run the city of Surin, had decided to tear up every road into and out of the city, and replace all the sewer pipes at the same time. This, from what I heard from the little lady, has now been going on for months. Huge ditches have been dug in the red dirt on both sides of the roads. Huge potholes have also been created to make your trip into Surin an amusing little challenge. It's sorta like a new theme park ... construction derby ... entrance is free.
Trucks and backhoes, and graders and water trucks, and all sorts of construction equipment block your path at random intervals along the roads. Monstrous holes dot the road just waiting to tear off your undercarriage and exhaust pipes. Insert into this amazing mass of public works stupidity and ineptitude an overwhelming number of retarded moto-cyke drivers of both sexes, and of seemingly all ages, what seems like thousands of the 3-wheeled samlor bicycle taxis who are moving in slow motion in the middle of the road most times, and pay no attention to traffic that I can discern, shitloads of school kids trying to cross the road, anywhere, not at a crosswalk, cops and apprentice cops directing traffic, who don't know what the hell they are doing and don't really seem to care, and whose hand directions make them seem to be on crystal methedrine and have some sort of palsy, soi dogs galore darting here and there and everywhere, red dust plumes swirling about in the air, and into your vehicle, and you, sir or madam, are now in the Thailand driving twilight zone.
Don't think, don't look, don't brake, don't give way, and don't pay attention to anyone or anything, especially your lady's garbled and insane instructions. JUST STEP ON THE GAS PEDAL AND DRIVE! As though your life depends on it, because it does.
Don't worry about the mafia, or bad food and food poisoning, or disease, or rabid dogs and killer chickens with the flu, or insane druggies on ya baa (speed), or knife wielding katoeys on dark sois at 4 a.m. looking for a shit faced, vulnerable, and stupid falang carrying 8,000 baht cash in his pocket and wearing a 2 baht gold chain openly, or nasty thug-ish Russian pimps, or natural disasters, or enraged elephants at the tourist park who will gore you because the stupid Chinese asshole tourists next to you decide to tease him with their bananas, or the corrupt cops, or the inept doctor at the hospital, or the falling coconuts on Jomtien Beach, or consuming massive quantities of Viagra even though you are seventy years old and have a major heart condition, or flying on Korean Airlines, or mad Thai men with axes and machetes on ya baa (Crazy drug this ya baa means in Thai) and cheap Lao Kao whiskey. JUST DRIVE! Because driving in Thailand (or worse, riding in a conveyance driven by a ya baa fueled Thai man) is the surest damned way to die during your stay in the Land of Smiles!
Jing jing! (It's true!)
Remember this saying when driving in Thailand, it is my own, and I own the copyright on it ... "Somchai WANTS to die!" It has become a standard running joke of my lady's and mine while driving the soi's and lonely backwater "highways" of rural Thailand.
Yes, you see, Somchai is a Buddhist. He is NOT afraid of death. He KNOWS he is coming back again, reincarnation and all that you know, hopefully as a rich man next time around. Hell, he ain't got much to live for anyway. No money to speak of and no real job or career, a rented dirt floor wood and corrugated steel roofed shack on some dirt and mud soi, outhouse included, and shared with two other families, a pair of 10 baht rubber flip flops, two pairs of tattered t-shirts, one with the Chicago Bulls logo on the front, (his favorite) and two pairs of tan shorts made sometime in the late 1970's, three sons, all of them as poor as he is, and as dumb, without chance of a university education and without a job, and not likely to be able to care for him in his dotage, if the Lao Kao whiskey he consumes daily and nightly in massive quantities doesn't take him to see Buddha early on, and an ugly ass daughter with bad teeth and a severe overbite who will never be able to make much money herself to help Papa and Mama live in style in their old age nor make big merit for them before they die. He has a wife who nags him all the time and is a rotten cook, and beats the crap out of him when he's drunk, and has a really bad violent temper when she herself gets a hold of some whiskey, and a sharp kitchen utensil.
So dying doesn't seem to faze him too much. It would be a pleasure.
These guys have no fear, and drive their rusted, un-oiled bicycles, 1968 junkyard makeshift scooter, rattle trap moto-cyke, 1945 era samlor, rented brakeless taxi or baht bus, and brand new Honda and Yamaha 125cc rice rockets accordingly. They laugh at death. Ha ha ha!! (While you scream in terror and piss your pants at nearly every 100 yards.)
You, as a Christian, who knows we supposedly only get one shot at this screwed up merry-go-round we call life, must remember this. If you care, that is, to make the carousel ride last as long as you possibly can. Your chances at surviving go up if you remember Somchai's mindset while you are driving here, and use the VIP busses whenever possible, not the cheapo monster busses where the drivers seem to sleep only whenever the methamphetamine wears off.
The early morning drive to my daughter's school in Surin continues. My little hangover headache has now reached migraine proportions. I still feel like I'm gonna puke, my palms are sweaty, the ac is broken by the way, fuckin' A, and my lady seems to continue to insist on playing some Lao cowboy/buffalo-boy music at head splitting levels, even after I asked her to, "Please, turn it down!" She may very well become the first casualty on the road to Surin this fine morning, nice ass or not!
At this moment in time I feel I'd trade places with the buffalo shit splattered guy back in the village in a heartbeat.
What the hell did I get myself into?
Cent
(The Central Scrutinizer)
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