Tale of the Unexpected.........

Right let me tell you this story from the other night, cos it's a cracker.

This is a true Urban Myth that happened to us........

Gav:'We planned to leave Bangkok on the mainland and head to Koh Chang, via Poipet which is the border town for Cambodia and where you go to renew your visas for Thailand.We figured would take us one or two days. So we got a coach fromBangkok for four hours with other backpackers to Poipet, got transferred into a crammed minibus and then to the border. The dodgy TAT (travel company) that we went with were trying to flog us the trip to Koh Chang, but we decided to go it alone and do 'the proper travelllers thing' and make our own way there on public transport (which is loads better, you see the people and you can stretch your legs etc) so we got a dodgy Tuk Tuk to a dodgy Bus station, met a dodgy bloke, who pointed us to a dodgy market which we dodged. We sat down on a concrete seat, had a drink and tried to look like we knew exactly what we were doing (Traveller code is apparently, look confident and smiling). Anyway dodgy bloke came back, waving his arms and pointing to the road where the 1960's bus was pulling away, we took off towards it as fast as you can with 300 weight of packs on you, shouting at the bus to stop as the people on the bus shouted for us to get on. So it stopped and we threw our big bags in the dodgy 70's hold and I took my guitar and ruck sack on board, all the Thai people found it funny so we're smiling as we passed them to get a good seat whilst unbeknown to me I was taking small children and old people out with my big daft guitar case. So we settled for the 4 hour trip to Kanchaburi, where we were to change for Trat (A town near the port). Halfway through the trip the drivers assistant thought, for no good reason,it would be a good idea to take our big bags out of the hold underneath, and place them onboard near the door at the back of the bus , where all the lunatics sit, so we spent the rest of the journey looking back everytime we stopped and keeping our eyes on the bags. Luckily enough their was a monk sat on the back row in all his orange robes for the whole journey so I felt no one would nick them with him there. So I was catching his eye and smiling and trying to convey in the language of nodding-'Can you keep your eyes on our bags and don't let any scrote whip 'em while we're not looking'-Anyway I think it worked. When we got into Kanchanburi the monk disembarked the dodgy 70's bus a couple of stops before us and we gave him a nod and smile and off he went. I thought Top Man- I reckon he was watching out for us! So we drove into the main bus station through 6 inches of water (much of Thailand has been hit with flooding) at about 10pm , tired and weary, hungry and grumpy and again tried to look less confused than we were whilst humping our packs around the kind of people that hang around bus stations at 10pm at night, many of them coming up to us asking, where we were going and looking at our bags and guitar like it was Christmas. So, as is our plan in these situations, we smiled, ignored them and tried to walk to somewhere else,pointing at something in the distance and looking like we knew all along where we were supposed to be going! We found a little cafe which wasn't submerged, sat there got some noodles and water and dug out 'The Lonely Planet' to find out how to get to Trat which was a couple of hours further south. A friendly kind of Thai bloke walked up and in my pigeon Thai and his pigeon English we tried to get the 'knowledge' from him. He told us that the next bus to Trat was 1am and so we had a chat and weighed it up and he said he was a taxi driver and he could take us there, but because of the flooding we'd have to go a different route as to what was on our map and we would have to pay 550 baht (about 7 quid)- no negotation- I asked him what his taxi was and he pointed to the car park where there were loads of swanky looking pick-ups and he was a smiley sort of bloke so me and three-bie-two decided to take it and he said he'd go and get his car. He walked around the corner and two minutes later his taxi came round the corner. It was battered old small pick-up, the paint that was left on it looked red. It had a dodgy canvas roof on the back and a dodgy little orange bulb swinging from a smashed light. For those of you who have seen the film 'Deliverance'-you'll get the idea. We also saw that he'd picked up a male passenger , but it was dark so we couldn't make him out, all we could see was that he had a baseball cap on. So we threw the backpacks, rucksacks and guitar on to the back and the room that was left, we parked our backsides on and gripped on for a long ride. Our map was pretty useless cos we were using the back roads to Trat. Anyway, me and Sue were having a laugh in the back and making the best of it as we made our way, in the dark, through the flooded back streets, with no street lights, in the back of a noisy truck in the rain. All of a sudden we heard a massive bang on the front of the pick-up and a cry, then another couple of massive bangs under our feet on the bottom of the trailer, we'd hit something. It was a dog.The poor thing then got run over by the following cars and was pretty much dead in seconds. We were both pretty shaken up by it, but the driver and the passenger seemed unaffected by it and just carried on regardless, we couldn't shout anything cos they wouldn't be able to hear us. So we were a bit more wary at this point. We passed a roadblock and joined a dark dual carriageway and after a couple of minutes the little orange lamp in the trailer went off so it was pretty difficult to see anything unless you looked through the small window into the cabin, so we did that for a bit, wondering if he'd deliberately turned off our light, then why? Sue managed to stretch out and shut her eyes and I kept my eyes on the road and in the cabin. The next thing I noticed was the passenger had taken his baseball cap off and was looking out the window to his left. He had a shaved head and looked to be about 60 or so, I was looking at him and then realised 'It must be the monk from the bus!' and felt much more relaxed cos we weren't getting a lift from a couple of Pyschopaths and that the monk must be a friend of the driver. I thought I'd try and catch his eye in the mirror and give him a nod and smile.I don't think he saw me but he turned his head forward to look at the road again and the top right part of his head was missing..............................that my friends is true,and yes I nearly did drop my dinner and yes the dodgy street lights of the sleepy port town of Kanchburi were like Las Vegas to me when we arrived I'll tell you. I am now going to get 3X2 to read this and verify.

Sue: Yes folks it is all true....what we do now to save a few quid! Is it worth it! We are going to get a tourist bus back to Bangkok just in case! We have limited underwear and limited budget for laundry!'

Gav:..........and I'm desperately trying to learn 'Dualling Banjos' to save us from this kind of episode in the future..........................................I, under no circumstances, would like to 'Squeal like a pig.'