Crime in the Land of Smiles
Bangkok, Thailand
Even now, I’m embarrassed we were robbed at all. The heist was so simple, so obvious that even a New Zealander wouldn’t have fallen for it. I couldn’t even plead ignorance; cops, concierges and cabbies alike had cautioned us. We’d even been warned by the robber himself. “Be careful here,” he said cheerfully as he relieved us of our possessions, “Huamphalong is the most dangerous place in Bangkok.”
To rub salt into the wound, my wife of three days was actually reading aloud from our guidebook as the robbing was being done. “Carry your day pack on your chest while walking down crowded platforms,” she said helpfully, as we were about to be robbed.
“Don’t fall asleep in the compartment; take turns in keeping watch.” she offered, as we were being robbed.
“Be wary of tricksters and people claiming to be railway employees,” she said authoritatively, as the trickster claiming to be a railway employee left the carriage carrying a brand-new bag stuffed with cameras, binoculars, greenbacks and everything else of value that we had.
Like most Thais, our robber had a lovely smile. It wasn’t a smirk or a grin, but a full welcome-to-the-parish, look-ma-no-cavities job. Two rows of perfect polished ivories that spilt out of his lined brown face like sweets from a piñata. Thais smile a lot, more than Australians do. They still give out brochures that sell the place as “Thailand. Land of Smiles.” What the brochures never tell you is what those smiles mean.
When our robber flashed his pearly whites, we thought it said: “Welcome to my country, esteemed travellers. I am your friend”. What it actually meant was “Hello, cash cows! Allow me to demonstrate my hustling routine before relieving you schmucks of everything of value that you have.”
In keeping with national trends, our robber was fastidious about his appearance, and gave the impression that that he’d just showered, changed and come to work. His shoes were polished to a parade-ground shine, his polyester blue slacks clean and neatly pressed, his stolen railway porter’s shirt ironed to the epaulets. And though hairspray must have been pricey in that part of the world, his hair had that side-parted, helmeted neatness so beloved by presenters of national current affairs programs. Indeed, with the smile, the shoes and the side-part, the whole experience was a bit like being robbed by an Asian Ray Martin.
We were sitting in our second-class compartment on the Bangkok-Surat Thani Express (‘Express’ here being a relative term, relative to perhaps an ageing snail, or the drifting of a continent), waiting to leave Huamphalong station and giving off the strong, unmistakable aroma of helpless prey. A traveller in a Third World country is a walking ATM at the best of times, but the warnings and our own third-day traveling greenness meant that we felt all the security of Osama bin-Laden tied naked to a telegraph pole outside the White House. We were convinced that everybody was out to get us.
There was nothing particularly classy about the second-class carriage. A long, continuous aisle swept from one end to the other, with seating on either side along the windows. The ‘compartments’ themselves were identically indistinguishable; two facing, dark-green bench seats each big enough for two Caucasian bums; a window to one side, the corridor to the other and a navy curtain that could be drawn across to seal you off from the rest of the carriage and give the illusion of personal space. The walls may have been cream but for some reason I remember them as a light slime, and stretched from behind the seats up to the ceiling.
Overhead, folded into the wall, were two half-beds that came down and met in the middle like a drawbridge when it was time to sleep. Below the window was a collapsible table that could be raised up and propped between us. Our fellow passengers were mostly Thai (as the majority of overfed, First-World backpackers had preferred to save themselves the price of a Coke and travel in third) and liked to fill the time to departure by arguing amongst themselves as to who was sitting where.
On the surface, the task of finding your seat on a Thai second-class carriage is not a difficult one; every ticket has a seat number on it, which corresponds to a number printed on the seat itself. Match the two up and, hey, you got yourself a seat. However, this apparently easy task seemed beyond most of our fellow commuters, who argued vigorously that seat 15 was actually seat 24 and no amount of smooth-talking common sense was going to convince them otherwise. Of the sixteen compartments in our carriage, only ours was undisputed territory. The corridor was a battleground, the combat ranging from the Stalingrad Siege (dig in and hope the enemy surrenders) to caustic skirmishes more like Pearl Harbour in nature.
All this arguing and conflict fed our paranoia till it couldn’t eat another thing and had to have a lie-down on the floor holding its stomach and occasionally belching. Perverse adrenaline began to pump through my veins as I waited anxiously for something to happen; to be mugged, for the train to leave, Elvis to appear, anything.
“When putting your bag on the ground, keep a strap looped around a leg or arm,” dictated my wife. Check. I lashed the straps of our enormous backpacks around my legs in manner of an old sea captain, who’d tie his hands to the wheel in the face of an oncoming storm.
My eyes were peeled for shady men with eye-patches and scars down one cheek, or gypsy women who’d toss their babies at you, then steal your bag as you try to catch it. I looked out for slick confidence men and unruly gangs of disaffected youth. I was ready for anyone, except a nice, mild mannered porter with a quiet voice and a lovely smile.
The robbery itself was quite dull. After congratulating us on finding the correct seats, the ‘porter’ told us that our packs, which were on the floor between us, would have to be put up on the luggage racks. When we politely declined he persisted, saying that dinner would be served soon after departure, and our bags were currently sitting where our table would be set up. We could take them down again afterwards, if we liked.
It was at about this point that the left and right hemispheres of my brain began to drift apart. Though I knew we were in danger, and that everybody on this train was a potential thief, I was momentarily overwhelmed by a desire not to offend the locals. In a country overrun with boorish, insensitive tourists, I suddenly wanted to become Understanding Man.
This man was not a thief, I reasoned, and to think of him as one was Lonely Planet stereotyping of the most ignorant kind. He wasn’t merely a porter, he was a Proud and Noble porter, the son of the ancient and powerful Siamese Empire. His ancestors were the only southeast Asian people strong enough to resist the Western colonists. I was fortunate to be intelligent and sensitive enough to understand this, and in my revelation I left my daypack on my seat to put the bigger bags up on the rack.
The Noble Porter smiled and wagged a scolding finger.
“Never leave your bag here,” he pointed at the offending daypack. “There are many thieves.” He picked up the daypack and helpfully stowed it under my bench seat. “Safe now,” he smiled, a smile that I thought said “It makes me happy to help valued foreigners” but actually said, “Easiest take I’ve had in years.”
I smiled in turn, a smile that was meant to say “Thank you, friend.” but which he probably read as: “My white arse is so dumb I don’t realize I’ve just been robbed.”
It took my dumb white arse about ten seconds. A cold, colourless wave of nausea swept up from the pit of my stomach, surged through my oesophagus before camping threateningly at the edges of my jaw line, flooding my mouth with its acrid taste.
“F**k,” I thought, “F**k, f**k, f**k, f**k, F**K!!!!!”
“Soft drinks and juices may be spiked with drugs,” read my wife of three days. “Bring your own sandwiches and refreshments.” I bent forward and looked under the seat: the wall that stretched up from the seat to the ceiling, and gave the impression of stretching all the way down to the floor, didn’t. Instead, there was a clear stretch of dusty rubber all the way to the end of the carriage. I could see sneaker-shod feet, a half-eaten sandwich and a strip of unused condoms. I could not see my bag.
Jai yen literally means ‘cool heart’. In a country that’s 95% Theravada Buddhist, jai yen is the preferred approach to any situation. If a cop pulls you over and sticks you for a bribe, jai yen dictates that you pay it to avoid an unpleasant scene. If someone cuts you off in traffic, you shrug your shoulders and suppress your natural urge to run the guy into a ditch. Jai yen. For Buddhists, an emotionally moderate, non-confrontational approach to life will bring its reward when you are reborn. Practice jai yen, and you may come back as a demi-god; get a little hot under the collar and you may find your new, single-celled self bobbing on the surface of a sewage treatment plant in Bang Saphan.
It’s a nice thought, to be able to shrug off any sling, arrow or atomic warhead of outrageous fortune with serenity, certain that any injustice suffered will be avenged tenfold when the Omniscient One starts handing out the Next Lives. Had I been Thai, I’d have kept my jai yen, knowing that while I would be temporarily without my earthly chattels, the thief would be spending his next life as a roll of Sorbent Extra Soft on the back of a curry house toilet door. However, I am not Thai, and my uncultured jai was positively boiling and loudly demanding swift retribution of the most un-Buddhist kind.
But my vengeance, as primal and murderous as it was, was not strong enough to breach the roadblock of my embarrassment. I had been robbed, but I didn’t want to admit it. As a male of the species, an experienced traveler, a new husband with a bride to protect, the whole debacle was reflecting very badly on me.
There were no threats at gunpoint, no theatrical flourishing of a very large knife, no violent hijacking by the side of a lonely highway. A friend of mine had once had a machete held to her throat on a public bus in Rio de Janeiro; another was chased by a mob of club-wielding thugs through the dark Carnival streets of New Orleans. They had surrendered their possessions with honour; I’d surrendered ours with a whimper. The only danger in the entire episode came from my wife of three days, who by now was strongly intimating that there wouldn’t be a fourth.
Partly in an attempt to stop the thief, but mostly in an effort to get out of her firing range, I left the compartment to look for a policeman. This is harder than it sounds, as Thais love a uniform. It seemed everyone was wearing one. There were city police, tourist police, railway police, national police, admirals, wing commanders, corporals, first-class inspectors, third-class inspectors, porters of luggage, porters of freight in uniforms of black, brown, beige, grey, blue (navy), blue (sky), blue (navy and sky), blue (sky and navy) and white. I didn’t know who was which so I plucked as many uniforms as I could find and gathered them in a half-moon on the platform.
“Er…um…I’ve…been…robbed,” I choked, drawing patterns on the platform with my sandal.
“Pardon?” they said.
“I’ve been…(ahem)…ah…robbed.”
“You’ve been robbed?” they shouted. Behind them, I could see locals and backpackers sniggering.
“This is a dangerous place. You must be careful,” a black uniform offered, shutting the gate to the sound of distant, bolting hooves.
“What did he look like?” asked another uniform, a sort of light beige colour with fetching chocolate slacks.
“Short, with black hair, a brown face and dark eyes,” I explained to the group of short, black haired, brown-faced, dark-eyed men, who then proceeded to stand on their tiptoes and scanned the platform sardine-packed with short, black-haired, brown-faced, dark-eyed men. After ten seconds or so of this exhaustive search they came back down, shrugged and shook their heads.
“Sorry,” said Beige, with a lovely smile.
A whistle blew. The train began to pull out.
Twenty hours later…
From the outside, the police station in Ko Samui looked perfectly respectable. Square, low, made of brick and with an appropriate number of flags waving on poles above it. A couple of police 4WDs parked in front completed the picture of an efficient and effective force.
Inside, it looked like they hadn’t moved in yet. There was a water cooler to the right as you enter, while a giant notice board sprawled along the wall to the left, covered in Christmas cards from local businessmen (it was May and they were all Buddhist) and photographs of uniformed police drinking at parties. At the far end of the notice board there was a reception desk. After a few minutes, we realized that there was no, nor had there ever been a, receptionist, and so we wandered into an open room which we might have expected to be filled with desks and chairs and typing and the general sounds of law being enforced.
Instead there was an enormous state-of-the-art TV, three giant black vinyl lounges and the local constabulary lounging all over them, watching cable. Their postures were relaxed and lazy, in contrast to their uniforms, which were clean and neatly pressed. There were four or five of them, two of whom wore hats as they watched, ready to not attend some crime should the need arise. They were watching some straight-to-video cop flick in which Michael Madsen played a grizzled Montana sheriff continually putting his life on the line to solve the crime. The irony didn’t seem to translate.
It was some minutes and at least a dozen on-screen deaths before the captain noticed us there. He was a portly man whom we recognized from many of the party photos, and who clearly regarded the more routine aspects of police work such as finding clues and catching criminals to be a poor use of his time. He smiled (a “you’ve disturbed my TV time” smile) and grunted an order to one of the juniors, who reluctantly peeled himself off the vinyl and ambled over to where we were standing. He was thin and grew an Errol Flynn moustache to hide the fact that he was about twelve years old. He smiled, perhaps to say “I’m really twelve and three-quarters.”
We were told to write our report out in English, which Constable Twelve-And-Three-Quarters then translated back into Thai with the help of a very thin dictionary. Occasionally he had to ask us what some of the trickier words meant, like ‘the’ and ‘and’.
He also had a habit of watching the TV as he wrote which, together with the slimness of the dictionary and his tenuous grasp of English, left me with grave doubts as to the accuracy of the report. I can’t read Thai, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it read something like;
Tourists catch train and are robbed by man claiming to be a Montana State Trooper. After car chase that ends in many car pile-up, there is big shoot-out in empty mountain lodge, in which tourists lose bag and following items…
I just hope our travel insurance company understands.
