I left Chiang Mai and visited a friend yesterday for lunch with my girlfriend. He lives out in Sanpatong at the end of the canal road to the right up towards the mountains. We had lunch at around 1pm and I had 2 cans of beer. He is building a small house on his property so I helped him around the site for a bit until about 2:45pm when I decided to take off. This is when it got interesting….
On this trip to his house I was also planning on looking for some new running trails for the Chiang Mai Hash House Harriers to run on. So I headed out of his driveway and to the right out towards the hills. I kept driving for a while and the road dead ended so I turned and headed back. As you probably know the roads in Chiang Mai have a habit of getting smaller and smaller the further from the city you drive. And here was a perfect example; only one car could fit on this country road at a time. No problem as I have driven like this before and the key is to drive slow.
So I am driving along at around 15-20 km/hr and all of a sudden the girlfriend yells ahhhh!! HOY!!! Which in itself is a funny reaction but she does that every time something really surprises her. So BANG!! BOOM!!! KRSHH!! That is what a motorbike sounds like hitting the front of your bumper at low speed. I though ohh SH_T! Here we go! About 15 minutes earlier my friend and I were just talking about how tough it is to drive in areas like this with all the idiots having their afternoon shots of lao kao then pulling out from god knows where on the motorbikes.
So I get out and sure enough the guy is down. I had no idea if I ran him over or what happened. He flew out of a small soi to the left so fast all I saw was him hitting the truck and then going down. So here comes his drinking buddy running over quicker than the rush to Big C when they put the cooking oil on sale. First thing he does is check his friend, then starts to subtly kick out the motorbike tracks to hide the direction he came in; yeah, like that will work. The guy seems to be ok and is up and walking after a few minutes. I quickly get on the phone to my friend to have him come down with his wife. During this time the rest of the village of 50 shows up and out of the corner of my eye I see his drinking buddy pick up a small plastic bag that fell off the bike and toss it in the bushes. First thing that comes to mind is “whiskey”. And sure enough it was lao kao. So while the village idiots are scrambling to see if the guy has any serious injuries I go to grab the bag and put it near the truck, after taking a picture of its location first. We confront him about this and he says “he is not drunk because it is the afternoon; he only drinks in the evening!”
So here comes the Thai soap opera drama corp. Thank god my girlfriend was with me. They start blaming me for everything of course. My girlfriend starts to point out everything he was at fault for; trying to drive on the wrong side of the road for one, being drunk with whiskey on board, no license, no rego, the list went on. They blame me for driving to fast and for being a falang and they blame my girlfriend for siding with me. While she is keeping them busy I am taking loads of pictures of everything.
My friend arrives about 10 minutes after the accident. Not much he could do but it was comforting not being alone in this. Well, with everything going against this guy he decides he wants to call the cops. So I said “let’s dance”. Come to find out he is an ex-cop. Oops. The local police arrive and were very friendly, they checked out the scene and I guess because he was an ex-cop they decided to bring on a traffic cop to settle this. He must have been a friend of the “big policeman”. After waiting for 2 hours the guy shows up looks at m and says “falang gin beer”. Do you believe that! Shows up and says I am the one that is drunk, while the slur talking, squinty eyed, professional lao kao drinker throws his 10 baht bag of whiskey in the bushes!
Here we go: falang+accident=$$$
So it’s all my fault. He says I am drunk I say test me. He says it is my fault so we point out the guy was pulling out onto the wrong side of the road. Still my fault. The “big policeman” talks to his friend a bit more and they decide to hose me. I have first class insurance so they tell me to admit I was at fault and call my insurance company OR they will take me to the “bigger policeman” and I can deal with him. At this point my girlfriend wants me to just admit it, but “why would I do that? It’s not my fault”. I tell him “good, then take me”. I start to take a bunch more photos of everything; the truck, tires, tire tracks. The bike, driver, people around, everything! The “big policeman” starts to ask my girlfriend all kinds of questions about me and about her. Why am I here, what do I do, where do I come from. They ask her where is she from, why she is in Chiang Mai when her ID say Mae Sariang, where she goes to school; basically trying to intimidate her because it wasn’t working with me. I stand my ground and don’t budge.
The cops that first showed up go over to the motorbike driver to talk to him. I guess they tell him “when falangs think they are right they don’t change their mind. Falangs have money and you will lose”. I wasn’t going to change my mind and he was going to lose and the cops will lose face for trying to extort money from me with all the evidence on my side. The “big policeman” gets fed up and almost throws our ID’s at us and tells us to go. 6pm now and we jump in the truck and take off.
So in the end it turned out to be a pissing match and I guess after being so “drunk”, I ended up peeing more than him.
I wouldn’t recommended this in every situation but more often than not if you have an accident and it is clearly not your fault, you may be able to stand your ground and get off without having to pay. So much for the village that won the lottery!!! And I guess for you runners out there, I won’t be setting a run in that part of Chiang Mai anytime soon….
I recently posted this on a forum that "shall not be named" and you know the response I got? This Thai guy told me it was my fault and I should have paid! This is one of the most idiotic aspects of Thai drivers and one that makes it so dangerous for us falangs to drive anywhere. And you know what? If the guy on the bike, his drinking buddy and the rest of the village would have been friendly to us I would have been more than willing to help him out. They got greedy and got nothing.
I have pics but as I am a new member I can't upload them. If you want to see them go to "photobucket" website and search for username "mobs00"