The Bangkok Bus Story
April, 1987. I had quit my job in a nasty industrial city in Japan, and had two weeks to kill before I started my new job, way out in the Japanese Alps.
So I did what anybody else would do in that situation: I bought a plane ticket for Thailand.
It was about midnight when the flight came down, and I paid 150 baht for a ride into town. The driver was a college kid with a red Camaro, and we went in, past all those palm trees that lined the highway, his stereo blasting the Eagles, "Tequilla Sunrise."
A couple days later, satiated on root beer (they don't have that in Japan, and I'd really been missing it), I got on a bus that I thought was headed downtown. Do the Royal Palace, I thought, maybe take a boat across to Wat Arun.
Wrong bus.
To this day, I don't know why I didn't just get off. It was clearly the wrong bus, going the wrong direction. Maybe I thought it would make a turn somewhere, get me where I wanted to be. Maybe I didn't see a good bus stop.
An hour or so later, we hit the end of the line, an alligator farm surrounded by the kind of faceless industrial park that lurks behind shopping malls.
I got out, looked around for a while. Not that there was much to see. Alligator snouts poking out from muddy water. Buildings shaped like shoe boxes.
And then I got back on a bus, headed into town.
And I thought, well, that was interesting. Never would have seen any of that otherwise.
Amy Hempel wrote a brilliant short story once about a man who was kidnapped. Took a long time for his family to raise the ransom money, and meanwhile, the kidnappers had to keep him alive, so they made him eat right, they made him exercise. When he was finally released, the doctors said being kidnapped probably added ten years to his life.
Amy's question, and mine with the Bangkok Bus Story are the same: How do you know the things that happen to you aren't good?
So I did what anybody else would do in that situation: I bought a plane ticket for Thailand.
It was about midnight when the flight came down, and I paid 150 baht for a ride into town. The driver was a college kid with a red Camaro, and we went in, past all those palm trees that lined the highway, his stereo blasting the Eagles, "Tequilla Sunrise."
A couple days later, satiated on root beer (they don't have that in Japan, and I'd really been missing it), I got on a bus that I thought was headed downtown. Do the Royal Palace, I thought, maybe take a boat across to Wat Arun.
Wrong bus.
To this day, I don't know why I didn't just get off. It was clearly the wrong bus, going the wrong direction. Maybe I thought it would make a turn somewhere, get me where I wanted to be. Maybe I didn't see a good bus stop.
An hour or so later, we hit the end of the line, an alligator farm surrounded by the kind of faceless industrial park that lurks behind shopping malls.
I got out, looked around for a while. Not that there was much to see. Alligator snouts poking out from muddy water. Buildings shaped like shoe boxes.
And then I got back on a bus, headed into town.
And I thought, well, that was interesting. Never would have seen any of that otherwise.
Amy Hempel wrote a brilliant short story once about a man who was kidnapped. Took a long time for his family to raise the ransom money, and meanwhile, the kidnappers had to keep him alive, so they made him eat right, they made him exercise. When he was finally released, the doctors said being kidnapped probably added ten years to his life.
Amy's question, and mine with the Bangkok Bus Story are the same: How do you know the things that happen to you aren't good?
posted by e. Readicker-Henderson at 12:49 PM
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