I rolled out of my room in the guesthouse as quickly as possible: the sooner I got to the train station, the sooner I could figure out the minivan system and hop a van to Penang, Malaysia.
I've been told to go and ask the stands of minivans parked along the road, and I'd find out where they serviced. I've also only seen students climbing off the minivans, and elementary school at that. So take your pick.
I went to the stand on the southbound road just south of the train station, which I'd been told was the proper departure point, and saw a lineup of minivans. Good sign, right?
No drivers, but there was a noodle stand—breakfast is a pho noodle soup—with some guys sitting around, so I said, “Minivan to Hat Yai?” Which is pronounced “Hadjai” and spelled half a dozen ways, which makes it fun to spot on the piss-poor versions of roadmaps available in Thailand.
The lady pointed across the street at a line of plastic chairs with an androgynous sort with long hair and camo clothing hiked up over tattoos presiding. I started slowly working my way over, and was waved frantically faster: the minivan was making a U turn and departing to the north. Right. Fare was 120B, reflected on a yellow carbon receipt The driver wore a paramilitary getup and was the sort who would've been forced to relinquish a cattle prod for a riot batonThe only other passenger was the largest, softest woman I've seen in Thailand. Whom I was directed to sit behind while she reclined with both her arms behind her head. AT least it was mostly cloudy, right? At least while we drove in circles through town. By the time we were roaring south out of town, there were eight people: notables included an old, toothless lady cackling on a cell phone; an old, fantastically grimy lady sitting in the lotus position and praying; another paramilitary guy with a huge bowie knife hanging from a lanyard around his neck; two soldiers the driver picked up and ended up swapping out for a mother and daughter; a couple of Thais, and me. I felt very small.
I'd boarded around half-past seven, and we stopped for a break at ten-something. There was another minivan, this one full of farang, the first I'd seen outside of the school. It was bizarre, because while they guzzled energy drinks and moonshine, the Thais from my bus walked behind the counter, loaded plates with rice, and heaped on food from fly-covered steamtrays. I elected to wait—surely there would be more stops and I could get something that looked less likely to induce gastrointestinal uprisings.
Heh.
No.
Not only that, but when we got back in the van, the head in my lap was in full sunshine, sweating profusely, and belching contentedly. I ate the banana I'd meant to throw out after it'd been blackening for a couple of days. It was one of the concentrated little jobbies with as much flavor in its two-bite girth as a bushel of Chiquitas, and I regretted the smell before I was done with the second bite. It did not compliment the yellow fish curry with salted egg wafting from the face in my lap.
Somewhere after eleven, the driver pulled over, asked something of everyone, and I said, “Penang? Train station?”
A torrent of babbel. At me, smiling encouragingly.
The driver hopped out, opened the door, pointed me out, and pointed at an old, toothless motorcycle taxi driver. I tried to say, “minivan” while pointing, “Penang.” I tried to say, “train station, woo-wooo, WOO-WOOO!!!” Nothing.
I went into the pharmacy next door and stood there awkwardly while the staff was taking inventory. By the time someone looked up. I was a spooky apparition in the shop: nobody noticed me come in, I didn't shuffle loud enough, and I was afraid to say anything once I felt awkward.
So of course, it was even more awkward.
First a torrent of Thai. Then, stereotypically assumed based on the facial characteristics, Chinese, then, ”can help?”
“Train station? Minivan to Penang?”
I was pointed at the head-looking pharmacist. He appeared to be taking a detailed inventroy with a supplier.
After long enough for it to be obvious he would not be taking time out to help the farang, the spooked girl came back to ask me to write what I wanted: train station, or Penang.
Something clicked and she waved me outside, down the block, and to the left. Great. But toothless motorcycle cabbie was standing in front of the door, wanting to take me somewhere. He would not let me sidestep.
A truly great samaritan came past and said, “What you want?”
“Train station?”
“Oh, just walk two blocks down, turn right at the red sign, walk two more blocks.”
I gave him a very deep wai and followed in the wake he cut through the cabbie.
It was extremely difficult to walk past some glorious smelling food stalls, but I wanted to find the van depot before anything else, and I'd been told it was near the train station.
But there was an ambulance, a gurney, and a major street closure before I got to the station. No pedestrian traffic, and that meant even the stupid farang who didn't know that an ambulance in the street closed both sidewalks.
I watched an uncovered, undamaged, but unconscious girl get wheeled into the ambulance. What seemed especially odd was that of the forty women standing around watching, the patient was the only one not in a head scarf. Wonder how she'd feel about that.
No minivans parked around the train station. Inside, the only passengers I saw were wheeling dollys of durians to trucks parked in the loading zone.
Across the street there was a tourist trap looking place with ads for speedboat and luxury bus tickets, but it seemed the best bet. Not a good one, just the best available.
Again, the standing around, feeling awkward while the proprietor was engaged in something that would've looked like needlepoint except he was using fine-gauge electrical wire.
I actually tried to make a significant noise, but my throat was too dry for anything between whisper and hoarse bellow. So I shuffled my feet and inadvertently tripped, which was sufficient to draw the guy's attention. Better, it made it look like I was just coming in, so there wasn't the awkwardness.
“Pen-ang mini-van?” I carefully intoned.
It's my own damn fault for not learning Sanskrit, but I'm beyond frustrated with being illiterate. Even if you don't know a language but can decipher the characters, you start identifying words with places: here's where you get groceries, here's where you buy pre-cooked food, here's where you get beverages, and this word is always on the really tasty menus; this word comes before intersections, this word is followed by speed-limit like numbers, this word happens before whallopsies in the road.
And then there's the Thai adaptation of Sanskrit, where one vowel can be six characters on all sides of a consonant, plus inflection marks above or below.
Beautiful for its individuality and artistry.
I just won't write the next sentence.
Right. Anyway. Rolling into Hat Yay, Hetyai, Heetyaai, Hadjai, Hait Yai, or wherever I was, made for a sour mood. Not worth blazing full-speed-farang ahead.
“What about it?” the man asked.
Blink, blink, no, can't win. “Is this where I catch it?”
“Yes. Two-eighty baht. It leaves in half an hour.”
I paid and he said it would be leaving in about an hour, so I started out to find a 7-11 or similar establishment where I could get a Coke Zero or Pepsi Max (gotta think one of them thought out their sugar-free soda campaign more thoroughly, but which one?), but I got yelled at.
“Hey! Wait! Stop! You can't go anywhere yet. Sit and wait for the minivan!”
“But...” I'm hungry and thirsty and things'll turn ugly without at least partial satiation.
“Sit. Sit and wait. The van will be here soon.”
And that was that.
I sat and waited. I dreamed of cold, carbonated, caffeinated goodness, which gave way to nutritive sustenance, which fell to cold, carbonated, malted goodness.
What burned me was that there was food right next door. And not like a suburban out and around the fence next door, but a Thai-style conjoined shopfront billowing great, wafting waves of deep fried meat tossed with stir fried noodles. But no, no, no straying that far. I had to sit and wait for the bus.
So here comes the minivan. It's a sleek, silver jobbie the likes of which would be pimped out inside, were it back in the states. As is, it'll hold the same nine people, but comfortably.
Blessed be.
And it's air conditioned.
We'll get there.
So we go driving about. Circles around Hat Yay. We end up with me, a number of ethnic Chinese, a couple of very Thai people, and the Indian-looking driver, who eventually parks in front of a tourist shop and collects passports before disappearing for half an hour. Comforting.
When he returns, he has two big, German-speaking farangs who pile into the back. He goes back in for a few minutes and returns with passports—no stamps, nothing significant altered, but at least it's back.
As is the custom in Thailand, the engine stayed running the entire time, and the air con was cranking full blast. Bone bag here was covered in goosebumps by the time we were rolling, this time in alternative circles heading what I hoped was out of town. I figured that we'd be stopping for fuel and food, as happened with the other minivan.
HAH!
Three frigid hours later, we stopped at Thai passport control.
After waiting to the front of the slowest line, I was found lacking: I didn't have the departure ticket I'd been given a month ago at the Bangkok airport.
The what?
It became a Big Deal with many customs agents present and passing judgment and opinions.
It was VERY SERIOUS. I had to go to the side room for visa overstay, fraud, and enforcement. Gulp.
A government employee without many ribbons on his epaulets and a look on the verge of going postal—you know this person—looked up at me.
'i don't have a departure card.'
“WHAT?”
'no departure card.' I held out my passport.
He looked at it and silently, without any show or drama, handed me a departure card.
That easy.
Stamp, stamp, through. To a throng of taxi drivers trying to pull me aside while I'm looking wide-eyed for the minivan driver. Everyone's staring at me impatiently. Nobody does this as disapprovingly as a German.
Just about the time I started to relax and get past imaginings of what would happen if... we pulled into Malaysian passport control.
The good thing is that there were a couple of vanloads of farang, so I wasn't quite as lost and alone. Even better, the van in front of us was already running back from passport control with little arrival slips to fill out, so I got to stop and fill one out before getting all the way to the front of the line.
It was a little bit odd seeing ladies in uniform headscarves, the Islamic moon and star on everything, and “Drug Traffickers Put to Death” at the bottom of the entry form.
But the glorious part was the signage: all in Western characters, or, as we loaded back into the van and started driving, in Chinese with Western phonetics below.
The diversion was wonderful, but I still fell prey to the gnawing, aching hunger, the numbness, the cramping legs, fingers and toes filling with the dull ache of no circulation. For another three hours.
More salvation, after dropping off passengers at four different spots that excited a desperate hope for a refueling/refilling stop near an ATM so I could get some Malaysian money and buy food and drink.
But no.
Salvation was getting dropped only two blocks from the hotel, and finding an English-speaking front desk. They were otherwise engaged, so I went straight for the vending chest and pulled out a can of Coke Light, a can of what I took to be black tea but turned out to be black tea with floating tapioca pearls, and a bag of boiled peanuts that lasted almost two handfuls.
Salvation was an accurate reservation despite my, “I need to change money, so please add this to my room charge.”
“You must change money directly. They will be closing in an hour. Here is the map. Here is where we are, here is the money changer, and here is where you will find good food.”
I cannot overemphasize how glorious it is to have a map and confidence that both parties agree on the destination and route.
It took about five minutes on the bed, seriously debating a hot bath, before I could animate. And it was a fuzzy start to things—I know I went to the 7-11 ATM, and I wanted to get a bowl of soup enroute, but I never did find a changer before making it to the restaurant complex: a food court with a dozen different offerings, no plate more than about 12 or 14 RM, unless you go for the American stand, where they have grilled beef steak or tendon with kimchee potatoes.
No comments:
Post a Comment