Everybody’s crying peace on earth / just as soon as we win this war

I’ve been to the bor­ders of hell and back: I’ve been dri­ven (many times) in rural Java. I’ve gone around a cor­ner and seen a bus — count­less peo­ple hang­ing off the doors and hug­ging the roof — being over­taken by a grossly over­loaded — and I mean grossly, with the load twice the height of the vehi­cle — truck sway­ing from side to side on a two lane road which is bet­ter described as one step up from a quarry — on my side of the road.

With­out a moment’s pause, Ali (the dri­ver) careered into the grass verge, which I could see some­where had a ditch begin­ning in it, and we missed the truck — which seemed to be doing a sim­i­lar 120km/h to us — by centimetres.

Peer­ing up from the space I was now cow­er­ing in near the floor (none of the seat-belts worked), I noted that Ali was calmly tug­ging on his kretek and txting whilst pro­ject­ing the clat­ter­ing, shak­ing early 90s vin­tage Toy­ota van — which in most lands would’ve been long assigned to the junk­yard but in Indone­sia is seen as a state of the art SUV, com­plete with welded in seat­ing, long col­lapsed but still in use — back onto one of the dusty road-behemoth bat­tered tracks that Indone­sia likes to call roads.

Another day in Jawa Ten­gah. We drove on and repeated vari­a­tions of the same sce­nario over and over again.

Those days, how­ever, hav­ing moved trans-SEA, seemed to be in the hazy past. The end­less endor­phins that dri­ving in Indone­sia pump into your body per­haps blur the long term memory.

Bangkok has heavy, heavy traf­fic — noth­ing out­side of Jakarta that I’ve seen comes close. Auck­lan­ders talk of traf­fic issues. I smile and mostly keep quiet. How­ever, mostly the dri­ving verges on the sane and almost ratio­nal in the royal city, and, aside from the odd feisty cab dri­ver — a global phe­nom­ena surely — it never sug­gests rural Indonesia.

It’s funny how com­pla­cent time and space makes one. I’d for­got­ten most of this until ear­lier this week.

We went on holiday.

It was a brief one to be sure, but last Sun­day four of us — Brigid, our friends Blake and San­dra, and myself — went to Hua Hin.

A cou­ple of hun­dred kms south of Bangkok, I’d never been before but long wanted to. We tossed up how to best get there. Rent a car (seemed like a has­sle for two days)? Fly (the trip to the air­port and the etc. bits would take longer than the flight)? Train (five hours — it may have roman­tic charm on a longer trip away, but not for two days)?

We set­tled on the bus down. The pub­lic bus sys­tem in Thai­land is, as I’ve said before, quick, cheap and very efficient.

So off we went.

Unevent­ful and easy.

Hua Hin is absolutely lovely — per­haps best described as a Thai twist on Brighton — a small (-ish: some 90,000 peo­ple) sea­side town with cute wind­ing lanes, a pier (albeit not quite Brighton’s) and truck­loads of char­ac­ter. It is, we were told, par­tially melded by the fact that it’s the town where the roy­als hol­i­day, and there a large palace — open to the pub­lic when the king or his whanau is not in residence.

It was fun. We ate lots of food, swam, ate more food, found a bar which served pints of beer in frozen mugs, and then ate more.

On the Tues­day we checked out, called the cab and dragged our­selves reluc­tantly back to the bus sta­tion. On the way there the dri­ver pointed at a big blue vehi­cle com­ing in the other direction.

‘Bus to Bangkok’, he said.

That’s cool, thought I, they go every half an hour or so.

We were dropped at the office and the woman out­side in the clean white shirt with a badge on the front and blue epaulettes said: ‘Two hours.’

We let out a uni­form groan.

She offered a mini-bus. We went inside. ‘Two hours’ said the small man in the clean white shirt with a badge on the front and blue epaulettes. He offered us a mini-bus. A choice of two mini buses: 1 to Mo Chit, or 1 to Vic­tory Monument.

We nod­ded and sup­pressed more groans. The big blue buses are comfy and relax­ing. The mini-buses on offer looked too small and cramped.

Two hours is two hours though, so we paid our 180B each and clam­bered in.

Aside from the huge crack across the left side of the front wind­screen it seemed fine — newish and clean. I grabbed the seat at the very back — a lit­tle higher than the rest of the seats and next to the bags. It seemed roomy and suited to a large farang.

That was my first mistake.

I noted the sign on the win­dow that warned against assault rifles, sex or goats in the van.

As we headed out onto the high­way — Thai­land has good road­ing — unlike Indone­sia — with four lane divided high­ways trans­vers­ing the nation, I began to think that the road was rather uneven. I was being bumped into the air every few sec­onds and couldn’t see a bloody thing.

I realised I was sit­ting over the wheels. And our dri­ver had no under­stand of var­i­ous con­cepts. These seemed to include pas­sen­ger com­fort, eas­ing into cor­ners, and slow­ing for bumps or road works. As he accel­er­ated I found myself divid­ing my time between the roof and the seat. I was being flung ver­ti­cally every few sec­onds and my head was more famil­iar with the roof than my head­phones which sim­ply refused to stay on.

The dri­ver was a bloody maniac.

One word came back to me.

Ali.

Fuck­ing Ali and his fuck­ing kretek flashed before my eyes — as I bashed my crown on the roof yet again. I clenched the handrail to steady myself but it was pointless.

We passed the bus. The 12pm bus to Bangkok — about twenty min­utes after we’d left. Between blows to my head I worked out we were trav­el­ling at an aver­age speed of three times the bus.

Drive safely the big cream road sign said, in both Thai and English.

The van swerved, at some speed and with­out the usual touch on the brakes to smooth the manoeu­vre, off one high­way onto another, inches behind the car in front, and we swung into a big gas sta­tion and stopped.

I twisted my back into a rough approx­i­ma­tion of what I thought it was sup­posed to look like and crawled for­ward to a spare seat ahead. My head throbbed from the blows. I sat. I hope­fully mused, ‘this seat must be better’.

Blake stepped out for some air. When he returned he was pale. ‘They’re fill­ing the CNG tank — it’s in the front of the van, behind the radiator.’

I felt con­fused by it all — the blows to the head, my twisted back, and now the cheer­less infor­ma­tion that we had an IED posi­tioned at the front of a van being dri­ven by a lunatic.

‘At least it will be quick,’ he finished.

The dri­ver, his fag hang­ing from his lips, pumped the last of the CNG, and then we were off — back to the main highway.

The break and the now-full tank seemed to have added zest and vigour to our dri­ver, who was now snort­ing out of one of those small plas­tic bot­tles that, I’m told by Thai folk, con­tain some­thing that ‘make you go faster’. Joy.

He did.

We were soon hurtling along the motor­way at speeds of 140km/h. My under­stand­ing has always been that mini-buses like the one we were in would top out at about 100. I was wrong. I’m loathe to use the words: dead wrong.

Our speed­ing — per­haps speed induced — dri­ver was now repeat­edly accel­er­at­ing up to the vehi­cles block­ing his way ahead. When he reached a point a few cen­time­tres from the back of the car or truck in front, he would hit the brakes hard. Our radi­a­tor — with the poten­tially lethal  CNG tank just behind it, would be so close to the next car that we could some­times see what the pas­sen­gers in the rear seat were read­ing.


The dri­ver would then drop back and repeat the process over and over again, until either the guy ahead pulled aside, or a nar­row gap appeared some­where — some­times between two lum­ber­ing trucks, where­upon he’d grit his teeth, lean for­ward, pump the pedal, and — push­ing the groan­ing people-mover far beyond it’s intended max­i­mum veloc­ity — roar through.

Every­one in the van — aside from the Thai girl behind Blake, who was wisely sound asleep for the whole trip — would audi­bly take a relieved breath and release their white knuck­led grips on the seat in front.

Until the dri­ver, a few moments later, repeated the same pro­ce­dure, and we all sucked in air and held our breath, grasp­ing quickly again at what­ever attached han­dle or seat edge our hands reached first.


As we hit the out­skirts of Bangkok, we passed another bus from Hua Hin. ‘The ten o’clock’, Blake opined. I guess it must have been.

The high­way into the city offered no respite — it got worse. We stormed, after a crawl­ing up its back trunk for a kilo­me­tre or two, past a grey Toy­ota sedan. The speedome­ter said 145. The car took it as a chal­lenge and blat­ted past us at what must have been at least 150. We then over­took the car and the two of us went back and forth as we bul­leted pre­car­i­ously along the multi-lane ele­vated high­way into the cen­tral city, swerv­ing from lane to lane, paus­ing only to stop — from 140 to nought in a flash (we all tum­bled for­ward and my head reac­quainted itself with the car body) at the toll gate.



Even­tu­ally we pulled into the garage off Vic­tory Mon­u­ment, and crawled out. The dri­ver stood, smil­ing, with a thumb raised high.

Last night — in one of those awful throw­away rags that cel­e­brate the hor­ri­ble world where fat ugly old white men hang out with young wee Thai girls and call it true love — I saw a story about the vans. The writer called these vehi­cles ‘god­sends’. I con­cur — meet­ing our var­i­ous mak­ers — be they Thor, Ik Onka, Allah, Yah­weh or the vagaries of Bud­dhist nir­vana seemed like a very real pos­si­bil­ity in those two hours.

Ali, you are forgiven.

Tagged with: hua hin • Thailand • travel