So I'm desperately off to scratch every last half pence piece out of my Bangkok bank account and nonchalantly discarding onto the lower Sukhum side of Asoke pavement my cigarette end when I am stopped by a nice policeman...
In a strategic move I immediately whip out my bank card. You might think I've lost before I begin but I beg to differ. I know damn well what I've just done and what might be about to happen and in the current circumstances it's the last thing I need. Thus the flash of the bank card is not the turkey voting for Christmas but - with a little luck - a metamorphosis into the 'get out of jail free' card.
Before he can open his mouth I am hugely relieved to see a helpful policeman and ask him if he knows exactly where this place is that's written on the bank card. His intended thrust is momentarily off balance now as he cannot help himself but give me directions. Given he is approaching me with reason and a smile and I am recieving him with reason and a smile and yet that intended thrust has not yet been made obvious this was the perfect moment to set the fates in motion for a potential escape.
Ok, so pleasantries and directions out of the way, I of course thank him and am about to obliviously head onwards when he is finally back on his feet for the move: he requests I come with him to this sign over here, the white one with big red writing in Thai and some other red writing in English, the important bits at least. He refers to my having discarded a cigarette end beneath those bushes so I am immediately awash with realisation and remorse, in fact I even attempt to find it and pick it back up after kor tort and an apologetic wai of some kind.
Picking it back up doesn't seem important though, because it's more necessary to give me a mini-lecture about how we must keep Bangkok tidy and therefore the cigarette end can stay where it is. Then we go to a little cubicle that him and his buddy have set up where he sits me down and asks me what I'm doing in Thailand. I tell him bpen khun kru of course, honest as this the hottest day in Bangkok since 1983 or something is long, at which point he repeats it into his radio for the information of his buddy who is standing only 10 yards away anyway.
Being the nice and helpful sort he offers me a tissue. It's hot, he's a Thai and I'm a farang, after all.
He asks me if I can speak Thai, the language I've been speaking to him in, and then shows me a form that seems already filled in, completely in Thai and shows me the sum of 10,000 thb for littering. Thankfully though he is the bearer of good news, informing me that a first offence is worth only 2000 thb.
At this I seem a little pained and tell him I will have to go to the bank. It is the crucial moment where the equation must now be resolved in his mind: I already perfectly innocently established I was on the way to the bank, thus I must clearly be without ready cash; I am also an English teacher; yet he and his buddy are obviously busy on this street corner and the walk to the ATM is some ten minutes long; finally, this farang is most definately not a fly-by-night piss-taker but is polite and respectful...
Without having asked for my name or address he then tells me to go off to the bank and come back with the 2000 thb.
"Ok, thank you," I say and I'm off.
-
Usually I will discard a cig as I walk behind a bus shelter and not if I see any police. This day taught me to keep on my toes and I thank my lucky stars for the nudge in the right direction. It's not necessarily about cigarette ends either.
Still, I actually turned a profit out of this and that tissue was just what the policeman ordered as I sweated off down to lower Sukhum (to find the bank closed and the ATM wouldn't release any money so I had to visit two other branches before I could get my hands on the dosh. Imagine if he'd decided to accompany me!)
I took the BTS over Asoke on the way back and enjoyed a cool one in my fave bar on 22.
Ya live and learn, hopefully for another day...
Did you go back and pay the fine?
When I was in America a guy told me to 'have a nice day' but I didn't, so I sued him
And the dance begins. Slice of life ... delicious stuff ...Originally Posted by Fleabag
you did a dj pat!
And the moral uv the story is?....
^ Hope like hell he doesn't meet the cop again?
Frederick Douglass: Find out just what any people will quietly submit to
and you have found out the exact measure of injustice
and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these
will continue till they are resisted with either
words or blows, or with both.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn;
“Don’t believe them, don’t fear them, don’t ask
anything of them.”
All this essay to say that you saved 70 bucks?
Fleabag, nice story, but we should change the title. Let's not call these uniformed jobsworths 'police'.
The worst job in Thailand must be the man who has to sit down with a blue marker pen and mark a number two on the two-baht coins to stop people thinking they are one-baht coins.
...it should have taught you that smoking is more trouble than it's worth...
...see above...
...majestically enthroned amid the vulgar herd...
because they aren't police. they are poleet.
Excellent story well told.
Cheers. I'd green you if this dodgy forum had that facility.
You should pop over to teakdoor and share it.
Having a quote from someone on the Forum as your signature. Legal?
Maybe I should inflict myself on some of the other websites, after all, it's what all you dirty slags do.
It's only done at Asoke as far as I've experienced/heard/read about.
Happened to me as a backpacker.
I too picked my butt...up out of a puddle...no love.
He eyed me and my half-done cig from his police helmet hut in front of the emporium park.
He then hopped on his bicycle and followed me down towards the Volvo (?) dealership, were I flicked it.
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