License to Kill

December 7, 2011

There I was bowling along at a hundred kilometres an hour on a clear freeway. The sun was shining in Thailand’s blue sky; I hadn’t a care in the world. Then came the black cloud. ‘Police,’ my beautiful co-driver murmured. I smiled indulgently and patted her thigh. ‘There, there,’ I said, ‘and perhaps there too. I am doing nothing wrong. I am twenty kilometres short of a fine.’

The thing to do in this situation is to imitate Mercedes Benz drivers; press down hard on the accelerator and roar past, nodding genteelly at the police salutes. Unfortunately I was in a Honda Jazz and could not reach the mandatory hundred and fifty mark. With a smile I allowed myself to be ushered to the hard shoulder. The nice policeman, complete with shiny shades, a fat face and a gun, held out his hand. At this point, if I had crossed his palm with silver, I would have had no story. Dammit, I even keep a hundred baht note on my sun visor for just this purpose.

‘Licence driving.’ He uttered, visibly salivating. He accepted that I had not been ‘over limit’ which was his first attempt. The trick is to avoid handing over your licence as then he has no hold over you. You can then filibuster until he keels over with sunstroke and dehydration. I gave him my licence. ‘Happy Bir’day,’ he said. I thanked him for his sentiments but pointed out that my birthday had been over a month ago. He had merely to look at my licence to confirm this. He had and noted that on this date five years had elapsed since I first received it. I made a contribution to The Secret Policeman’s Ball and drove off.

This meant a trip to that hellhole in Banglamung known as the Licencing Centre. Why would town planners put such a busy place so far out of town? Is it part of the Advanced Driving Test – if you’ve made it so far, you can drive? Why would you make such a small carpark for such a busy place? Why don’t they demolish the Regents School next door and make another centre, this one for motor bikes. Such thoughts flitted through my mind as I drove the thirty kilometres to complete the formality of renewing my licence.

Knowing the Thais propensity for cutting down small forests to make sufficient paper for each application, I had brought everything they could possibly need. Except a Medical Certificate. Thirty kilometres back and a day’s wait for a clinic to open. The ‘doctor’ asked me if I was having trouble with my bowels or maybe he said vowels, as I had attempted to greet him in Thai. Anyway he placed a stethoscope near my heart and asked me to say ‘I owe you a hundred baht.’ I passed with flying colours.

I was back at the hellhole early next morning. My papers were duplicated and I was given a blue ticket and told to wait upstairs. They’d had air-con installed! Everywhere was shiny with colour coded notices in two languages: Thai and Gibberish. (There was a room marked Partrical Tests?) I found to my horror I was expected to re-sit my driving test. The first time I’d done it was farcical. There was a machine I sat at and because I could not understand the instructions I kept getting it wrong until the examiner lost patience and passed me, so I wasn’t too worried.

When I go shopping in a big store in Pattaya, I am surrounded by eager assistants anxious to break the boredom of a job where fifty servers try to please five customers. You are followed about by adoring crowds as if you were a latter-day Messiah or a famous shop-lifter. So why in this country of over-manning was there only one Examiner attempting to instruct and test twenty hopefuls at a time?

She was obviously an ex Prison Camp wardress and as our eyes met, it was hate at first sight. I tried to get her on-side during the Colour Blindness test by answering in Thai: daeng, keeow, yellow, daeng, daeng, yellow. (I was fine on red and green but didn’t know yellow in Thai.) I stumbled a bit on the depth of vision test. I’d lost concentration whilst she had been gabbling instructions because there was a Thai man behind me who’d obviously been paralytic drunk the night before, who’d eaten three plates of rancid Som Tam before vomiting copiously on his clothes then coming directly here to stand behind the farang with the ultra-sensitive nostrils.

The final test, before we went for our photos, was the braking test. She explained that we could only use our right foot – there was something about automatic and manual cars but in both you use only the right so I didn’t follow. If you got a red light, you had one more go: two strikes and you were out. She looked meaningfully at me. I was not worried. In England, I could go months without needing either brakes or horn; my reflexes there were lazy. Since driving in Thailand my need for an emergency stop had risen to fifty times an hour; playful randy dogs; playful randy motor bike riders seemed determined to throw themselves under my wheels. I figured I was sharper now than when I was thirty.

My first attempt knocked the whole contraption over; I never had a chance on the second go; the accelerator was stuck in the full wide-open Mercedes-Benz position. ‘You fail,’ cried Brunhilde Macka-tang-tang, with, I thought, a touch of satisfaction. My papers were ceremoniously handed back to me. I watched through tear-blurred eyes as the others moved off: the reeking Thai guy, still drunk from the night before; the geriatric farang who had to be supported for the Peripheral vision test: the old lady whose sole driving experience looked to have been on a Zimmer frame.

As I turned toward the door, I glanced over my shoulder. Brunhilde was watching me with a mixture of triumph and pity. Our eyes met. Silently I mouthed my parting words, ‘I’ll be back.’

©Mike Bell

author: Amusing Thailand - A Survivor's Guide to Pattaya | http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064OO1Y2