by Guy Lilburne
“You no pass. You no pass,” he said and then returned to his box to supervise the rest of us. A few people tended to the woman and called an ambulance for her. The rest of us carried on with the test. So you can fail after all!
In the afternoon you go back into the test centre for the written exam. Well, actually, it’s on a computer in a class room and the exam consists of about 30 multiple choice questions about the Thai Highway Code. You have to get 25 out of 30 to pass. So that’s why all the Thai people were reading the Highway Code. You can have the questions in Thai or English. I decided to try my luck in English, but I have to say that the English translation of the Thai questions wasn’t very good and some of the questions just didn’t make sense at all. There were photos with some of the questions and I just guessed what they were trying to ask me. I must have guessed correctly because I passed with 27/30. Quite a few people failed. As I understood it, if you failed the written test you could come back the next day and have another go at that part of the test. But when I went, all the people who failed the test just sat there and kept trying until they got enough answers correct. It wasn’t so hard, because the computer told them which answers were incorrect each time they tried!
I’d passed all the tests. I had to then queue up again to have my photograph taken and then wait while they produced my laminated Thai driving licence. I had one for a motorbike and one for a car. I was sort of proud of myself and now I was legal to drive in Thailand. Many people who come here on holiday hire bikes and cars and think that they can drive on their own domestic driving licences. But they can’t. You can only drive in Thailand with either a Thai driving licence or an International driving licence. That is why the police love stopping all the farangs on motorbikes, because even if they are wearing a helmet, they still have to pay money to the police if they don’t have the proper licence to drive. So there you go!
Thais consider traffic lights, road signs, road markings, speed limits and the Highway Code, not so much as warnings or compulsory instructions. They consider them more as a suggestion - a suggestion that they choose to ignore!
Now I have never read the Thai Highway Code book, but I would imagine that it must read something like the following. It would certainly explain why Thai people drive the way that they do. Really, really badly!
You are required to pass a driving test and hold a driving licence & insurance to drive any motor vehicle in Thailand, unless you can’t be bothered to get any of these things.
Always stick to the speed limit, unless you are in a hurry, or talking on your mobile phone, just not concentrating or are drunk. It is also Ok to drive really slowly in the fast lane and make all other drivers overtake on the inside!
You are allowed to ignore all road signs. The advertising boards are far more interesting to read.
Don’t drink and drive unless you want to!
You can park wherever you like. Don’t worry about causing an obstruction, or even an accident!
If all four lanes on the motorway are busy and clogged up with traffic, then you can drive on the hard shoulder and clog that up too!
On ‘A’ roads and minor roads you can drive on the pavement if the roads are busy!
It is perfectly acceptable to drive the wrong way along a one way street!
You can also drive the wrong way along any dual carriageway, if it is a short cut for you and you can’t be bothered to drive the extra two miles along the duel carriageway to make the correct U-turn! This rule only applies to motorbikes, cars, taxis, lorries and buses!
Ignore all lane markings, unless you want to drive along the markings themselves and block up two lanes.
At traffic lights you must stop when the light shows red, unless you don’t want to!
On the approach to traffic lights on major roads always get into the correct lane for your journey. The centre lane is to continue straight on. The left hand lane is to make a left turn and the right hand lane is to make a right turn. If there are a few cars in front of you in the centre lane and you can’t be bothered to wait behind them, it is Ok to block up the left and right turn lanes. It is also Ok to use the centre lane to make either a right or left turn and hold up all the traffic behind you. We suggest that you don’t indicate either. That should keep everyone on their toes!
If you do put your indicator on for any reason, then it is Ok to leave it on until you complete your journey and have reached your destination!
You do not need to use your indicators before making any turn or manoeuvre, even at speed. If you do use the indicators you do not have to turn in the same direction in which you are indicating!
It is up to you if you want to put your headlights on during the hours of darkness!
If you see a sign on any dual carriageway prohibiting a U-turn, just ignore it. We’re just having a laugh!
You are allowed to carry any amount of people you like on motorbikes and pick-up trucks, especially if this restricts your view or control of the vehicle and makes it a hazard for you or any other road users!
It doesn’t matter if the lights on your vehicle don’t work if your vehicle is not in a road worthy condition!
You should never stop at any accident that you have caused, no matter how badly injured you have left someone!
If you do stop at an accident that you caused, always blame the farang. They have insurance and the police will always take your side!
I could go on and on, and anyone who has ever driven in Thailand will know exactly what I am talking about. Driving in Thailand is not for the faint hearted!
The New Year came and I had a quiet one. I sat on the end of the pier and watched the fireworks lighting up the sky over Pattaya across the bay from me. I enjoyed the night sitting all alone on New Year’s Eve and looking out across the Gulf of Thailand. I was reflecting on my life and my move to come and live in Thailand. I had dreamed about it for so long and now I was there in that beautiful place, on that beautiful warm night. My dream had come true. I felt happy and settled in my new life. I felt as if I had achieved something that most people only dream about. I suddenly realised that it was the first time that I had actually sat and thought about it all. I had made it. I had realised my dream. I had a happy warm glow inside me. I sat on the end of the pier and drank some Sangsom & coke. Actually, that might explains the happy warm glow that I was feeling! I kept thinking that I would start fishing in a minute, but, in the end, I couldn’t be bothered. I was just happy and content sitting on the pier and watching the New Year come in. Wow! 2013 already.
I had first noticed that Sarai was getting fatter around September time. At first I just thought that I had been feeding her too much, but then I realised she was pregnant. Okay. So I’m not a qualified vet! Sarai had a litter of pups at 3:30am one morning in February. There was a knocking on my front door. I wrapped a towel around myself and went to see who on earth would be knocking at my door at that time in the morning. It was Malee. She was excited to tell me that Sarai was having her pups. I followed Malee to go and have a look. She had already given birth to three pups and very quickly afterwards there were another four. She had seven lovely little pups. Three were golden colour the same as Sarai. Two were pure black and two were the colour of a tortoise shell and sort of striped. Malee thought that they looked like tigers. I sat drinking coffee with Malee and looking at the dogs. Sarai looked exhausted and who could blame her. Malee’s house was built on the land, but the pier extended from the back of her house. The pier at the back of her house was a wooden one with rickety old boards. She had a table and chairs and a kitchen on the pier. A tin roof covered it all. There was also an outdoor Thai style bathroom. My pier was new, like my house, and it was made of concrete and steel. Sitting there drinking coffee on a rickety old wooden pier, with the waves washing around just below us, made me happy that I lived on a concrete pier! I s
tayed for a couple of hours and then went home to have a shower. Seeing that I was already up and awake I decided to go to the morning market and feed the monks. Over the weeks the puppies flourished and started to develop their own little personalities. I didn’t even mind their constant yapping. Sarai came to see me a few times, just to get a rest from the seven hungry pups I think. I’d feed her and give her a chewy dog treat, maybe pat her and give her a stroke and remind her how much I hated dogs! It was around 2:00am one morning in March when there came another loud knocking on my front door and I could hear Malee shouting my name. It sounded urgent. I wrapped a towel around myself and opened the door.
“Come quick. Dog in water,” she said and trotted off along the pier onto her own rickety wooden one. She had a long piece of bamboo with a huge hook tied on the end of it. She often used it to fish out anything that looked interesting that had been washed up by the tide. She had been using it now to try and fish out one of the puppies that had fallen through one of the gaps between the boards. Sarai was sniffing between the boards but I couldn’t see or hear anything. It was pitch black down in the water. I looked at her puppies huddled together and asleep. One of the golden pups was missing.
“Puppy down here?” I asked.
“Yes. Go quick.”
“How long has it been down there?”
“One or two or ten minutes.”
I didn’t really know what that meant. I had dived into the water many times from the pier during the hours of daylight but never in the dark and I didn’t fancy diving in head first at night, so I jumped into the water instead. As soon as I hit the water my towel came off. I wasn’t worried. I could retrieve it after I found the missing pup. I swam under the pier and it was dark. There was only half a moon and under the piers I couldn’t see anything. After a few moments my eyes got used to the darkness and at least I could make out the pier supports, both concrete and wooden. I didn’t know the puppy’s name. Maybe she didn’t have a name yet, so I just called out ‘Doggy’ and hoped that she would yelp, bark or something. I saw Malee using her bamboo pole to fish out my towel. I could have done with the towel to wrap around myself before getting out of the water, but that was the least of my concerns at that moment. The tide was going out so I swam out with the tide to the end of the pier, but there was no sign of the puppy. I then swam back in towards the beach, but again there was no sign anywhere. I swam under a couple of the other neighbouring piers, but again there was no sign of the little dog. Maybe a big fish had got her or maybe she had just drowned and would be eaten up by the crabs. But she was gone and that was for sure. I swam back to my own pier and started to climb up the wooden ladder. Malee appeared at the top before I was half way up. I thought about dropping back into the water, but that seemed a bit childish and I had bad news to give her. She had a clean dry towel over her arm. She had both hands up to her mouth and was giggling like a school girl. I stood up on the pier and Malee handed me the clean towel.
“I wash other towel for you,” she said.
“Malee, there is no sign of the dog. I think she has drowned. I’m sorry.”
Malee didn’t say anything, but she looked very sad. She shrugged her shoulders and leaned down to stroke Sarai. I wondered if Sarai knew! I patted her too, just in case she did know and was feeling as sad as Malee looked.
I had started to notice the nature around me without even realising it. There were the fish of course and every day I could see shoals of them swimming around under the pier. But there were the birds too. I’ve never been a bird watcher in any way, shape or form, but I noticed the ones around my pier. There were big waders, both white and black birds that stalked around catching fish. There was some kind of big brown eagle that lived in the mountains across the bay from me. I would watch him patrolling the vast blue sky looking for his dinner and my favourite bird was a blue and red kingfisher type bird. He spent a lot of time sitting on what was left of Boon’s pier and boat house! Boon is one of my Thai neighbours and he is a fisherman. He had a real old rickety pier that made Malee’s look solid. He tied his fishing boat up to the little wooden pier that extends from the back of his house. He had built a small bamboo boat house on the end of the pier in which he kept his nets and tools for the boat. Boon liked his drink and one morning I watched him stagger along the little wooden jetty and toss some fishing nets onto his boat. Then he jumped onto the boat himself and started the engine. He pulled the anchor up and the boat chugged off into the Gulf of Thailand, taking half his pier and his boathouse with him. He had forgotten to untie the boat before setting off. His wife came running down the pier with a frying pan in her hand. She was waving it around and screaming something at Boon. Rather than stop and face his wife he carried on out into the gulf. Maybe she would calm down before he got back! Anyway, after that the kingfisher started to come and perch on what was left of the boathouse and sit there for ages. Then he would dive into the water and come up with a little fish in its long beak and fly off home to wherever it was he was nesting. If I were him, I would have just come and lived in the boathouse. It is no use to anyone anymore and the views are fantastic!
Snakes are part of the wildlife in Thailand and since I had been here I had come across three. (Since writing this I have lost count of the amount of snakes I have seen. One encounter was with a snake in my own garden. Guy Lilburne, August 2014). The first one I didn’t actually see, but it caused a lot of commotion at the countryside restaurant that I was sitting in at the time. A couple of Thai ladies started screaming something in Thai and then two men, who worked in the restaurant, came out with brushes and started beating it to death and brushing it into the road. I didn’t bother to go and look, but other people told me that it was a black snake. The second one that I saw was crossing a country road up ahead of me. The car travelling towards me swerved. He swerved not to miss the snake but to run over its head! The man then got out and picked it up and put it in his boot. No doubt it was going to be dinner for his family that night. The third snake was a snake encounter of the close kind and I actually ran over it on my motorbike - not to eat it. I just couldn’t stop in time. It was on one of my many visits to Koh Samet - not the time I was shipwrecked.
I had hired a scrambler motorbike to explore the island and, as I was going along over the bumps and rocks that they jokingly called a road, the snake slithered out in front of me with a big rat in its mouth. I couldn’t stop and I couldn’t miss him. I went straight over it. It was rolling around all over the place and I really don’t know if I killed it or not, but I wasn’t going to hang around to try and give it the kiss of life!
Chapter 16 - Into the New Year
Time is just sort of different over here in Thailand and it really doesn’t matter what day it is. They were all the same. There were market days of course and Saturday nights, when the English Premier League games were all shown live on TV. But the days were all the same and they go into weeks and months and they all felt the same! In England we had four distinct seasons. Winter, spring, summer and autumn and you always knew the time of the year. Here it didn’t change. You usually got 12 hours of sunshine and 12 hours of darkness in each 24 hour period. There was the rainy season of course, but that just meant that you will get a lot of rain and flooded roads. It was still extremely hot and there was still a lot of sunshine. The sun still comes up and goes down at the same time each day. So time sort of takes longer over here, or at least it feels longer. I am not complaining. I loved it here. My time was my own and I had lots of it. I could go into Pattaya and have a wild ‘Saturday night’ on any night of the week, because every night in Pattaya feels like a wild Saturday night!
I had been hiring a car every time that I wanted to travel anywhere and, as I seemed to be doing more and more travelling around Thailand, I decided that it was time to buy myself a car. I knew that I needed a big one that would be able to handle the terrible roads that you have to drive on anytime you leave
the major cities. I visited all the local showrooms in Pattaya and decided that the Toyota Fortuner was the car for me. I was delighted with my new car. The contract on my house on the pier was soon coming to an end and I had to decide if I was going to extend it or look for somewhere else. If I was going to buy, then I would certainly save myself the monthly rent, which wasn’t so cheap. I started looking around at houses, but I still had a very open mind about whether or not I was going to stay on the pier. If Malee would have sold me the house on the pier then I would most certainly have bought it. But she didn’t want to sell!
I soon had a distraction! My friend Gerry Davis had been getting very excited for weeks and telling everyone who would listen that his son, Tim, was coming to visit for a month in January. Gerry was about 68 years old and retarded - sorry, I mean retired! He was a lovely man. He used to be a chauffeur in London before he retired. He had so many great stories about all the rich and famous people he had driven around. He was very much a cockney, a proud West Ham Utd. supporter, except when he is supporting Arsenal. He had a cockney accent, which became even more cockney when he was talking to other people from London. He actually develops a ‘cockney’ twitch and ‘cockney’ walk as well, in the company of other Londoners. Brilliant! Why do Londoners always try to out cockney each other? His nickname, which he was happy to tell us about, was ‘Gerry the swell’. He acquired the nickname because he had always been such a snappy dresser. He still was. Very often he was colour coordinated and he took great pride in his appearance. The other thing I liked very much about Gerry was his catch phrases. He had quite a few and used them all the time. He would often start a sentence with one of the following;
