Taxi drivers
I take taxi almost everyday. There are hundred thousands of taxis in this city, boorish, colorful, old, new and available. You can’t avoid them. For me it’s the only way to get around in Bangkok, although most of the time, you don’t seem to get anywhere. You stuck in the traffic, surrounded by cars, tuk tuks and motorbikes, and the air is thick with pollution. I have learned to live with it, and to make friend with drivers, most of those I might never meet again.
The gay driver“You Singapore? Hong Kong? Japan? Malaysia?”
That’s always how the conversation starts. At first they would always think I am Thai, but after I have struggled to explain where I want to go, here come the questions.
“No, I am from Vietnam. Vietnamese,” I reply.
“Vietnam? Vietnam. Good. Vietnam friendly,” he says, and claps his hands together. I wish he would not repeat that again – the road is dangerously crowded, and I am in a rush.
“Yes, we are friendly.”
I would not bother to remind him how Thailand had helped the U.S. during the Vietnam War, or tell him how most people think his country is the uncle Tom of Southeast Asia. He probably has no clue, and after all, we are friendly countries.
“Show me your hand,” he requires, suddenly.
“What? You are a fortune teller?” I laugh.
The driver nods. He man is in his mid forty with thick salt-and-pepper hair, more salt than pepper. He processes a warm and easy grin; he can be a father. I show him my hands, as the car stop at the traffic.
“Good money. Good, good,” he announces, and want to further examine my right hand by touching it. I pull back.
“I am a lady man,” he laughs, as if to explain that he has no other intention. “I like men, don’t like women.”
Then he offers me a plastic bag full of a tropical type of fruit, those with brown skin and a mixture taste of sour and sweet.
“Forty baht, very cheap,” he says after I have said that I like the fruit. Not really.
“Madam beautiful,” he says, after observing me from his back mirror. I has got used to this kind of comment, too.
“Thank you,” I say.
“You are number two!” he laughs.
“Okay. So who is number one?”
“Me. Madam number two, I am number one,” he laughs.
“Now I believe you are a lady man,” I laughs, too. “How about Miss Thailand?”
He lets out an unapproving sound. The blazing morning sun light is now hitting my face. I want to move away from the car window, and to put my Ipod on, which is something I always do when I wish to retreat into my own shell. But for no reason I remain at the same spot. I gaze into the air through the car windows, thinking about my passport, which is waiting for me to pick it up at the U.S embassy. About the trip to New York, the Peter Pan buses, Port Authority, the crowded corner between 42nd street and 8 avenue, where I can picture myself striding through restaurants and stores, lonely but determined. I didn’t think I would end up in Bangkok, reporting on a totally strange country and talk to strangers everyday.
Now the gay taxi driver is talking about football. I ask him if he likes David Beckam.
“No, I like Owen,” he says. Owen is this cute English player who used to be with Liverpool but moved to Real Madrid.
“I used to like Raul,” I tell him.
“I like Raul too. Madam not like Raul. Raul is mine,” he protests.
This makes the middle-age man sound almost childish. “Alright, keep Raul for yourself,” I laugh.
I ask if he has a boyfriend. Yes, he says, I have a boyfriend, to sleep with. That’s nice. I tell him.
I really mean it. Most people need someone next to them. Sometimes, just to sleep with. A man once told me all he needed was someone to sleep next to, like a baby, and that’s the only way that he could sleep. He has called in the middle of a rainy Bangkok night, from his executive suite in Sukhothai Hotel, crying. “I can’t sleep,” he sobbed. “It’s still daytime in Paris, and I am used to staying up late. I just can’t sleep. It’s raining. I am sad. Why aren’t you here?”
I am sorry.
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The one who sings a song for meThis taxi driver's arms are skinny. He was eating a guave when I knocked his windows. He dutifully pushed the meter and turned the car. His skin is dark, his eyes are bright and childish. He is probably 21. There is a small screen near his wheel, which arouses my curious nature.
"I like karaoke," he explained, smiling shyly. His white teeth glowed. His speaks little english, but still, better than many of his fellow taxi drivers.
I was going back to the office after an interview just to find myself in the traffic again. It was only three in the afternoon. The boy asked me if I can sing. "No, but it would be nice if you sing a song for me," I told him.
There was no CD in the player, but the boy apparently was pondering if he should sing or not. His eyes met mine in the mirror, and I smiled encouragingly back. He said the song is in Thai and I would not understand. I said I just wanted to listen to the melody. He probably did not understan, but he was getting more comfortable now.
He comes from a small province near Isan. He has lived in Bangkok for eight year, first 4 years as a mechanic, then a taxi driver. He is the oldest son in a family with three children. He misses his family and his hometown, green without traffic. "Traffic is not good," he repeated again and again.
He is a smart and patient driver, but from the look of his eyes, I can tell he was frustrated inside and wanted to get back to his hometown, to drive his little girlfriend around on a motorbike. He asked me if I had three boyfiends. Haha. That's the funny idea these young chaps always come up with.
The car was finally getting to Khao San road. As I stopped talking, he suddenly started singing. His voice was soft and shy at first, but getting bolder and stronger. A Thai song, probably about love. It was very hot and humid outside, but inside the taxi, at least it was cool. I listened and smiled at him when our eyes met in the rear mirror, and when the song ended, the young driver laughed, clumsily.
"Bad taxi," he murmurs.
"No, very good taxi," I told him.
He probably didn't know that he made my afternoon much better than it would have been.
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A taxi driver’s dream (This one appeared in the newspaper)
Karn Prasomhong thinks there is nothing special about his life to tell, but what else to do when you are stuck with two inquisitive passengers in the traffic on a rainy afternoon? The taxi driver, looking tense like any other driver in Bangkok, turns out to be friendly as he begins talking about his troublesome past, a broad grin relaxed his sunburn face.
The 32 year-old-driver and a father of two kids used to be a gamble, a drug addict, and a drug dealer. He went to jail for one year a half for selling drug, and for that his wife and two kids had left him for while. He has tried every odd job available for an uneducated person, from a sewer, to a motorbike driver, to a messenger, to delivery boy. He has been driving a taxi for 2 years, a job that earns him a decent income of 10,000 baht a month, just enough for to make the ends meet for a family of four.
But now Karn faces a difficult choice. He heard that because of high fuel prices, the taxi association is going to raise the minimum rate from 35 baht to 40 baht. He fears that discouraged customers will find another way to get around.
“I don’t know what to do.” He says. “Taxis are fighting with each other to get passengers. I am going to try first. If it didn’t work, I will have to try something else.”
For someone who has worked all kind of jobs to survive in a big city like Bangkok, the challenge seems to be minor. But still, it’s a big struggle to feed the family and achieve his modest goals, like many other people in this country, to raise the kids and give them a proper education.
“I wanted to get to ninth-grade, but my dad was so poor we couldn’t afford it,” Karn says. “I want my kids to have the education I didn’t have.”
He moved to Bangkok from Petchabun with his brother at sixth grade, and learned to sew. “Like any other country boy, something went good, something went bad,” he says. Life didn’t treat him so nice. He wanted to drive and has a car of his own, but he ended up stumbling from this job to that.
When working as a motorbike, he fell in love with a girl who worked at a painting house, one of his customers. But marriage couldn’t save him from trouble. At the age of 29, he went to prison for selling drug. His family left him for a while.
“It was a dark time. I was so scared I almost fell to the floor when they arrested me,” he recalled. Things get better in the prison when he started working a carpenter and sewing clothes for his inmates. Getting out of prison, he knew that he needed a stable career.
Now Karn takes the two kids to school and starts driving at 5 am in the morning, making sure he will earn at least 500 baht a day --enough to pay for car rent and gas. He describes his job as “so-so.”
Bangkok’s notorious congestion doesn’t bother him. “Traffic is normal thing, if there is no traffic, that’s strange.” He said. He thinks more about getting rich. Actually, he thinks about it everyday.
“But I know there is no chance that I am going to get rich, so I just do my job,” he says.
Karn likes to read newspapers and follow the news. He heard about a government’s plan to open parking places around public centers like shopping malls or market. He wants the government keep that promise.
And he plans to sell his rice-field his father left for him to buy his own car.
“I am going to work like this as long as I can,” he said. “I want my kids to finish school, so that they don’t have to suffer.”
