With corruption you know where you stand. Much vilified I am a Big Fan. Take last Thursday for example. This time in Bangkok I have taken to driving around one of the family cars rather than using taxis or the Dreaded Driver. This has opened up the city to me but also made me more vulnerable as I am now outside the protective bubble that has served me well since I first started coming here. Driving in Thailand is dangerous, chaotic and unpredictable. The sheer variety of vehicle types using the highways of Bangkok makes driving here a challenge on its own – tuk tuks, old busses, taxis,sports cars driven by rich morons, families jammed inside those hideous Mitsubishi trailer things and gazillions of motorbikes all packed on the narrow streets and being driven in a hugely erratic fashion. Against this backdrop and in the stifling heat police are stationed at all the major intersections ready to pounce and fine/pull over (for no real reason) anyone that takes their fancy. It is regrettably a fact of life here and one that seldom affects the rich or those driving expensive or foreign cars who happily float above this facet of city life and instead the poor get pulled over and they have two choices; ‘pay a fine’ aka a bribe or a long drive to the appropriate police station that handles these matters and, seeing as these particular police stations are in another part of Thailand there is really no option but to hand over the hard-earned and be on your way. If you are able to drive a nice, big car then this will seldom ever happen to you and even if it does, and you are a big man, then you can wave the annoying copper away and threaten to have him fired when you play golf with his boss next week.
Last Thursday I was driving down Sukhumvit road and saw the traffic light was about to change from green to red but I thought I could make it but those suckers changed quicker than I anticipated and I think I just crept through on the first second of red. That’s the other pain in the arse element of Bangkok – the traffic lights. They stay on red for over three minutes. Then green for three minutes. No big deal but it feels like eternity when you are trying to get home or when you are a few seconds away from the next signal change and know you will have to wait the full 3 minutes. So as thought I just crept through on green the lights changed and I was waved down by one of Bangkok’s finest. I gingerly wound down the window as he looked in all the time behind his face mask. He then told me in Thai that I jumped a light and I was a bad man. I pleaded ignorance and held my hands up. Its a fair cop. He asked me for my licence and I told him it was at home. He then got on the radio and I sat there for a few seconds before interjecting with ‘can I pay a fine?’ He then carried on speaking into his radio and I thought that he may construe this as a bribe and be outraged. I sat there nervously for a few seconds but then he lent back into the car ‘no licence you will have to pay more’. OK. ’500′. OK. I went to hand him the money but he waved it away glaring at the car seat. Getting the hint I placed the note on the seat and put my hands on the wheel whilst our good friend quickly took the money and hid it in his uniform. He then asked me where I was heading and I told him and, bizarrely, seemed to be wanting to help me get back by directing me. I drove off, nervously and slowly and got home OK although during NYE the streets were awash with police looking for their holiday bonuses.
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