Monkeying around Northern Thailand
Pai, Northern Thailand
It was on the return journey from Mae Hong Song in Northern Thailand to the small village of Pai that the incident occurred. I’d hired a small moped to make the twisting, mountainous journey and was feeling slightly the worse for wear following a 4 a.m. finish with a group of friendly ex-pats in one of the local bars.
Turning out of a bend and climbing a steep hill, I noticed a monk standing on the other side of the road waving his hands at me. Deciding that it could never be a good thing, karmically speaking, to ignore a monk in distress, I pulled over to a stop. At this, the monk gave a bright smile, leapt onto the back of my bike and said something which sounded like “Chom”.
“Not too sure where that is mate,” I guessed.
“Yes,” smiled the monk, “hot.”
“No, I’m going to Pai.”
“Yes yes, Chom, Chom.”
Well, there’s only so long you can sit around and argue with a monosyllabic monk, so I decided that the best option was just to carry on going the way I had been until the monk thought of something else to say. The only problem was that in addition to Buddha and the enlightened-oneness-of-everything, there was a fair chance that this monk also loved pies. Charging up the hill on one wheel due to the extra weight, I realised that the journey might be more difficult than I’d originally thought. Even when contact had been re-established between tyres and tarmac, steering was almost impossible as my knees now kept hitting my wrists. The balance of the bike had dramatically changed for the worse, and the brakes had turned into fudge cake.
It was as we headed down the hill towards a straight bit of road that the fun started. A mischievous plan began to form as the revs increased. It was too tempting. He was a monk after all, so surely we’d be ok? Kicking the bike into 3rd we got up to about 80kph. No noise from Monsieur Monk, so slammed it into 4th and watched the needle rise. 90, 95, 100. Amazing! 105! Fantastic!
It’s not often I’d want to swap places with a farmer up to his knees in mud, but on this one occasion I wish I’d been able to. It must have made an interesting break in the day to look up from yet another bunch of rice plants just in time to see a portly white lad on a screaming Honda 125 come hurtling down the road with an even portlier monk on the back, his orange robes flying out behind like flames.
But I wasn’t to have the last laugh. Curiously indifferent to his new status of “World’s Fastest Land Monk”, my well-padded passenger decided at that it might be better if he get off and walk from here. Obliging, I pulled over, gifted my water bottle and wished him well on his travels to the mystic land of Chom. Revving the engine I was about to head off when he held out his hand and asked for 100 bhat. “Hang on a minute,” I thought, “I give your ample arse a lift, hand over my water and then have to pay for it too?”
My flabber was truly gasted and I was about to tell him so, when a little voice inside my head began to whisper warning words. Was it really worth my risking being reincarnated as a poo or something worse for the sake of a few dollars? I decided not and so paid the fellow and drove off a happy man. It’s certainly not every day that you give a backy to a monk, much less get robbed by one. More importantly, judging by the fingernail marks etched deeply into the back of the seat, I suspect he’d earned it.
