I gave Chalerm a mobile phone. My farang friends joked that I had already reached the famous mobile phone stage with a Thai boy. Now we were getting serious! Chalerm had not asked for a phone, and tried to pretend he didn’t want it. I bought it for my own sake, since waiting for him to call from the pay phone in the village shop was frustrating.
I booked a rental car at Avis. I wanted to visit Chalerm again in the village and now I knew I needed my own transport if I wanted to get around. I had dreaded driving in Thailand. For a start they drove on the other side of the road. All my reflexes had to be reprogrammed. Traffic was chaotic and the rules, if they had any, were ignored.
I had tried to talk friends into giving me driving-in-Thailand lessons but nobody did. I wanted the freedom of driving my own car and the only way was to get on the road and hope for the best.
The Avis office was on Wireless road near the British embassy. I had studied the map. To avoid getting lost in Bangkok I would to go back Wireless and up Rama 4 to the entrance to the elevated pay road. Then I would stick to the pay road past the airport and to Rangsit. From Rangsit it was easy to follow the signs for Saraburi.
I must have been visibly nervous as the staff at Avis were suspicious and repeatedly asked me where I was going and what I was planning to do. Maybe they thought I wanted to steal their car and sell it in Cambodia.
They gave me a Honda Civic and the station manager followed me out to show me the car. He politely disagreed when I told him I was going back to Rama 4. That, he said, was against one-way traffic. So much for my don’t-get-lost plan.
All I could do now was to stick to the car in front of me while trying not to knock over motorbikes, hit food charts or run over dogs. Where was this? Sukhumvit, Siam Square, Payayothin road… When I saw a sign for the highway I turned and paid to enter it. I was still lost, but at least I was lost on a higher level. I was relieved when I saw signs for the airport. This was the direction I needed to go.
Outside the city traffic was less dense but the speed increased and I had to watch for suicidal truck drivers. Trying to maintain a 3-second distance to the car in front of me only resulted in cars behind met thinking I was slow and overtaking me to fill the gap. In Thailand they have a half-second rule.
After Saraburi I left the main north-south route and could enjoy less traffic and a twistier road. I looked at the hills and diagnosed them as sediments. I was driving along an ancient lake or seabed. These beautiful hills must be full of fossils, I thought.
When I had been in Chalerm’s village I had been smart and taken a picture of the road sign with the village name written in Thai. I brought this picture to show the locals and ask directions. Except that it wasn’t the name of his village, it was a sign saying the distance to somewhere else. Confusion ensued. Chalerm was on the mobile phone and spoke to locals who pointed me in one direction (mainly random, I suspect). Others would look at the road sign picture and send me in another direction (also more or less random). I could not remember how to find Chalerm’s village and spent two hours driving around in the Anyburi area.
When I finally saw the yellow water tower it was getting dark but I found Chalerm waiting for me at the bus stop. He thought I was incredibly stupid to get lost like this and said so on the phone to his friends, calling me “farang kwai”. I didn’t like that.
Tags: gay boy, gay Thailand