The Lonely Shepherd — Bangkok, Thailand | July 2005
“. . . The insult is too big! ”
As I’m waiting for my bus, I stare at a peculiar man on the road in front of me who resembles an overly flamboyant admiral. He’s wearing a large brown cap with gold braids on the peak and he’s got extravagant golden epaulettes decorating his frail shoulders. On his wilted chest, there are multiple rows of colourful ribbons representing anonymous medals. I’m not sure what role he really plays, but, as he stands there shouting aggressively into a flimsy megaphone, it looks like he’s telling the bus drivers to stop at the bus stop (?) Not quite a useful position during the Bangkok rush hour when dozens of buses come to a screeching halt at every stop no matter what, desperately searching for more passengers. The admiral’s ‘job’ does, however, explain why Thailand has such a low unemployment rate.
A red non air-conditioned number 84 bus stops right in front of me and I get on, ready for my daily ordeal. I work at the St Mary of Lourdes International School which is only about five kilometres from here, but Bangkok’s traffic situation is so horrific that the bus journey takes at least two hours. If it wasn’t so incredibly hot, I’d walk. It is just too hot though, so I’ve accepted that for four hours every weekday, I’ll sit — or far too often stand! — on a bus, watching city life slide by. I find that listening to movie soundtracks on my mp3 player makes the trip bearable.
Clank-clank, a conductor interrupts me, clinking her tube-shaped metal ticket holder and gesturing I have to buy a ticket. I hand over a couple of coins in return for a small purple ticket, carefully torn at the top by the conductor using her ticket-tube, and return to my traffic trance, today induced by the soundtrack of Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol. 1.
I notice we’re almost at my destination. It’s funny how relative time is. Once I accepted my four-hour daily travel fate, the journey doesn’t seem to take as long as it used to. I press a stop button and shuffle towards the centre exit door. The driver kind of stops in the middle of the road so it’s a bit tricky to get off as cars are whizzing by. When I’ve got one foot on the ground, the bus suddenly accelerates. There’s a car approaching fast, I can’t let go… I’m hanging outside of a speeding bus in Bangkok’s rush hour. I can see the driver’s oblivious gaze via the front mirror.
With significant effort, I manage to swing myself back into the bus and, as soon as I’ve caught my breath, march to the front of the bus, demanding to know what the hell he’s doing. The driver ignores me, which infuriates me more and I smack him on the head. Not a good idea!
He slams on the breaks, nearly causing a pile-on collision behind us, and stops the bus in the middle of the busy road. When I see him reaching for a crowbar, I jump off the bus and run towards the sidewalk which is lined with small food stalls. The driver is coming after me, swinging his crowbar and screaming, what I assume to be, Thai profanities. Suddenly someone pulls me down.
“Stay down and keep quiet,” a voice says, “He’ll kill you if he gets the chance, we’ll hide you.”
As I don’t have much choice, I comply. A group of motorcycle taxi drivers quickly surrounds me, hiding me from sight. Lying absolutely still, I hear the screaming bus driver run past. After what feels like an hour but probably were just minutes, I get up and thank the taxi drivers for their help.
“What did you do to make that driver so angry?” one of them asks and I tell them what happened.
“Ai, you can’t do that! Never hit a Thai man on the head, the insult is too big. You’d better stay away from this bus route for some time,” the man who pulled me down says.
I agree, I’m done with this place! I’ve been dealing with this kind of nonsense for a year now, it’s enough. Bangkok may be fun for a couple of days if you are a tourist, it’s definitely not a place to live and work full-time.
Gheorghe Zamfir. The Lonely Shepherd on Kill Bill Vol. 1 OST [CD]. Burbank, California USA: Warner Bros. (2003)
This autobiographical sketch comes from my bundle In the Moment: A Disjointed Audiobiography which is available at Amazon.com. (USD 9.50 for a paperback or USD 4.50 for the Kindle version)
