I had to be downtown on Friday at 10:50. I was pretty confident that I knew how to get there and get back, but I wasn't 100% sure. The night before I was asking Tim for directions to confirm the way, and she suggested that we use Top's driver. Top is visiting Germany for some other business venture that he is in, so he wasn't using the driver.
Tim called Tham and confirmed the driver was indeed available. The driver confirmed that he would be at the house by 10:00. That would give us plenty of time to get to my appointment on time.
Now those of you who have read my about my previous experiences with Thai drivers will probably not fall off your seats when you read that things hardly went smoothly. When 10:00 rolled around, the driver was not to be found. At 10:15, still no driver, so I had Tim confirm that he was still coming. He was almost there he professed to her. Finally, at 10:30, when I was about to just go on my own, he arrived. At this point, I am doing a fairly good job hiding my anger. I really don't like to be late for an appointment, and at this point there is no way that I'm going to make it on time.
So off we go on our trip downtown. We go on to the expressway via the back entrance of Nichada. The advantage to going out the back entrance is that you can get on the expressway in less than five minutes as opposed to fifteen to thirty minutes exiting out the front gate. The down side is that you have to join the club to use the back entrance. Fortunately, I joined in order to work out.
A few interesting features about the expressways here. First, they are built on large cement support structures, and are actually above the regular roads. Secondly, they are toll roads. The toll from here to the city is a little less than $2 each way. Thirdly, as I was soon to discover, Thailand's finest like to hang around the toll booths to engage in personal revenue enhancement.
As we exited the toll booth, one of the brown clad officers motioned for us to pull over to the side of the road. I just started laughing. Not only had the driver been thirty minutes late, but now we were pulled over. The officer and the driver talked for a few minutes, and the policeman let him go. The driver dropped the name of an officer with whom he was friends (and a higher rank than the officer who pulled us over), so he was released without a ticket.
Once again we were on our way. I was reading a bit when I saw that we exiting the expressway. My appointment was only a hundred yards from the exit, and it was only 10:52. For a moment I was elated, as I thought that I would only be a few minutes late. As I looked around, the buildings didn't look familiar. As luck would have it, the driver got off on the wrong exit. So we spent the next 45 minutes driving, and sometimes just sitting, through Bangkok city traffic.
When we finally arrived, I pointed to the building that I wanted to go and said there in Thai. Usually drivers will then stop and let you out in front of the building and go park. Apparently when I said "there", it sounded to him like I said "don't stop here and drop me off, instead keep moving and drive through four levels of the parking garage and then exit said garage." He certainly followed those directions. Finally, after we exited the garage, I opened my door while we were moving very slowly. The driver was at that point gracious enough to stop and let me out. I looked at the time and saw it was 11:45. By the time I got to where I was going, I was an hour late.
This was just a reminder of how frustrating it is to deal with Thai drivers. There are probably some very good ones out there, but the majority are not. I really don't miss having one in our employ. Sure, its nice to have someone park the car for you in some places, or to take a nap en route. The frustration of waiting just isn't worth it. Next time I need to go somewhere that I don't know how to get to, I'll probably try taking a cab. Or maybe I'll buy a GPS system. I've actually heard good things about some here.
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