I was motorbiking back from Thong Pha Phum to Kanchanaburi where I rented the motorbike and began my tour of the province when the engine suddenly cut out and I coasted to a complete stop.  It had sputtered at times before but this was the first time that it completely died.  And it wouldn’t start again.  

Within minutes, a very nice young Thai couple pulled over in their pickup truck.  Through miming and my limited Thai, I conveyed the problem to them.  After trying a few different tricks with the bike, the young man also concluded I needed a mechanic.  We loaded the bike and my stuff in the bed of the truck. I was prepared to jump in the cab with them (an unusual opportunity to make new Thai friends, I thought), but they managed to convey to me that they didn’t have any straps to tie down the bike so I had to sit on the bike in the bed and just hold the brakes down to keep it from toppling out.  Basically, I was “riding” the motorbike in the bed of a pickup truck!  THAT was a little scary!  

About five minutes into our trip, my rescuers pulled over to a Buddhist shrine/spirit house on the side of the road and asked me to wait while they prayed. I took the opportunity to say a few of my own prayers … and to put on my helmet “just in case” (although I’m not sure that it would have made much difference).  

Murphy’s Law apparently works in full force all over the world because a mechanic was no where near and within a few minutes of us hitting the road again, it started to rain … hard.  The drops were pelting me as though they were small rocks, stinging my arms and face.  I was more worried about my laptop and camera gear exposed as they were in the truck bed.  I tapped on the back of the cab and shortly my bags were stored safely away and I had donned my not-so-stylish aqua blue rain poncho.  The poncho was semi-effective in shielding me from the driving rain, but we were cruising so fast that the wind whipped the oversized plastic cloak around, choking my neck and threatening to pretend it was a kite, carrying me away.  (My rescuer was probably driving slower than normal, but it still felt fast to me, exposed as I was standing on a motorbike in the truck bed).  

What a sight we must have been  to all the people we passed who stopped what they were doing and stared at the sleek new truck zipping past with a motorbike-riding foreigner in the back donning a windblown aqua cape, like some physically and stylishly challenged superhero-wanna-be.  A glance at my reflection in the rear view window of the cab sparked the realization that the color of my poncho matched my bike perfectly.  Great.  Thwarted superhero analogy complete.  It was an odd thing to notice at the time, given my need to stay constantly focused on balance, but one doesn’t get to choose the timing for most humorous moments.  Murphy was definitely laughing at me.  I was able to join in once I was safely on the ground.  

After thirty minutes of our circus act, we finally reached a mechanic.  My rescuers would not accept any money for their trouble, even though I noticed they drove away in the direction from which we had come so this stop was obviously not en route for them.  I don’t know what village they deposited me in; only that it was about 100 km from my destination of Kanchanaburi.  At the shop, we piled my bags against a pole and I went next door to buy sodas for myself and each of the mechanics (never underestimate a well-timed bribe!).  I sat and watched for 45 minutes as they took my bike apart, trying one thing after another to get it to start.  

They finally diagnosed the problem, but no one in the shop spoke a word of English.  All I could understand was 800 Baht (about $25).  Although this doesn’t sound like much by western standards (oh how I wish ANY of my trips to the mechanic with my car or trailer back in the States were $25!), by Asian standards, it was a very expensive repair. To put it into context, repairing a punctured tire cost $3; cleaning the carburetor $0.50 (probably a serious undercharge) and diagnosing and replacing a spark plug (including the cost of the new plug) $4.  I’m no stranger to motorbike repairs.  So an 800 Baht fix is probably on par with about a $500 one back home.  To justify the expense, the mechanics imported an English-speaking friend who explained that the owner either hadn’t put oil in for a while or hadn’t changed it or whatever you do with motorbikes.  Bottom line, “Oil all gone. Piston stuck.  Won’t move. Bike no start.” 

Although the bike still needed repairing, I was a bit relieved.  If lack of oil was the problem, then the owner was at fault as I had only been driving the bike for 4 days. I had explicitly told the English-speaking owner, Gail (a young, 30-something tiny Thai woman), that I planned to drive the bike over 500 km and asked if the oil was okay for the trip.  She had assured me it was no problem.  So whatever the costs, I should be reimbursed.  

The lawyer in me reared its head and I decided to call Gail before any repairs commenced to explain the situation and confirm that she would reimburse me.  I called both numbers I had for her and kept getting non-English-speaking people who would not put Gail on the phone (maybe she wasn’t there?) and would hang up on me.  So I handed the phone to the mechanic who called.  Eventually, we got Gail on the phone who agreed to reimburse me for the repair charges.  

The mechanic’s shop got very busy all of a sudden.  About five people came in with motorbike problems and my bike just sat there, like a sad exposed skeleton with all its pieces strewn on the floor waiting for some attention.  None came.  After 30 minutes of watching everyone’s bike get serviced but mine, I finally took some action.  After all, it was already 2:30 in the afternoon. The repair looked like it would take a while (it had taken them 45 minutes just to take the bike apart) and I still had to drive about 1.5 -2 hours back to Kanchanaburi and I had planned to stop at an interesting place called “The Tiger Temple” on the way. (The monks at the Tiger Temple began adopting orphaned tiger cubs in the early 90’s, and now had quite a collection of adult tigers on the grounds).  All this, AND I was trying to get back to Kanch before dark as I try not to drive my motorbike at night except in town.  

Somehow the mechanic managed to convey to me that “the company” told them to wait until someone from “the company” called back to authorize repairs (at least this is what I think they were saying.  I’ve discovered in my travels that language barriers often create interesting understandings and misunderstandings).  I had already been at the shop about 3 hours and was starting to feel a bit of time pressure so I handed them a 1000 Baht note hoping they would understand me to be saying  “I’ll pay for it. Just fix it please.”  They refused.  I guess authorization, rather than payment, was the issue at that point.  Who knows.  

So I called Gail back and explained the situation as I understood it and asked her to explain to the mechanics that she was from “the company,” that she authorized the repairs, that I would pay (with the understanding she would reimburse me) and that we needed to get this project moving as soon as possible.  No problem, she told me.  I handed the phone to the mechanic, who after talking to Gail for a while, handed the phone back to me.  

“We have a new plan,” Gail told me.  “The repairs will take a full day so I think you should take a taxi back to Kanchanaburi.  The mechanic has said he will find a pickup truck taxi for you that can also carry the bike and I will pay for it when you get here.”  “You’ll pay for the taxi?” I confirmed.  “Yes, I’ll pay for the taxi.”  

Well, Tiger Temple was definitely out of the picture now (bummer) but I had already gotten to play with tigers in Chiang Mai.  At least now, I’ll get back to Kanchanaburi and can continue with my other plans, I thought.  So we loaded the bike which was pretty much a skeletal frame and many (many many many) pieces at that point in the back of the truck taxi and took off for Kanchanburi. 

Gail runs her motorbike rental operation in front of a massage parlor (the legit kind, not the porn kind … in Thailand you have to specify) run by an old woman.  When I rented the bike, my recollection is that the two women were working together to seal the deal.  To the extent that I thought about it, I would have said the two were mother and daughter.   

When the taxi pulled up, Mom was upset when she saw the bike in pieces.  Gail was nowhere in sight.  At first, Mom and the other ladies (More family? Girls who work in the massage shop? Or maybe it’s all the same thing?) thought I had been in an accident with the bike and I had to slowly walk them through the situation so they realized a mechanic had taken the bike apart.  I showed them my hands and knees so they could see the absence of scrapes … i.e. no accident.

Finally, Gail showed up. The taxi driver was waiting to be paid.  Gail told me that her mother didn’t want to pay for the taxi because she didn’t understand the situation.  She told me that her own money was in her room which was not close.  “Would you please pay for the taxi and I will pay you back?” she asked me.  

My instincts told me not to pay.  After all, Gail already had 2000 Baht of my money that I had given her for a deposit when I rented the bike.  If I paid for the taxi (800 Baht) then she would now owe me about $100 US.  She didn’t seem to be making any attempts to explain the situation to Mom and it all felt very wrong.  

“Let’s have the taxi driver drive us to your room and you can get both his money and my money at the same time,” I suggested.  “He already told me that he won’t take us anywhere until he gets paid for this trip,”  she replied.  Now, the driver was a sweet-seeming 20 year old boy who didn’t seem the type to take such a stand, but Gail had a trustworthy looking face.  She was the only person on sight who spoke English so I didn’t have another interpretation of what the driver had said.  Still, my instincts told me not to pay so, for a while, I refused.  “Mai dai ka,” I said repeatedly (which is a very polite form of saying “I can’t” (which is the way confrontation-avoiding Thais say “I won’t”).  

With no one paying the taxi driver, we all just stood around very awkwardly for about 20 minutes.  I had decided on the drive back to Kanch that, without a motorbike to continue  my trip, I would just take a bus to Damnoen Saduak, positioning myself perfectly to go see the floating markets early the next morning.  The last bus left Kanch at 6:00 pm and it was already 4:30.  Based on the time pressure, I was the first one to cave in. “You promise you’ll pay me back?” I asked Gail stupidly. “Yes, yes. The money is in my room.  I’ll go get it as soon as the taxi is gone.”  I cringe to admit that I didn’t say “Get on your motorbike and go get it now.”  But I didn’t.  I paid the taxi driver and then waited for Gail to return with the money.  

The clock ticked away and it was 5:15 when she returned.  “I loaned the money to my friend and he’s bringing it at 6:00,” was all she said.  I’ve learned from watching others that losing your temper gets you nowhere in Thailand.  Thais won’t yell back if you show your anger. They just slow down if you’re in a hurry or ignore you altogether.  So, although I wanted to give Gail a piece of my mind (she had to have known that she didn’t have the money), I swallowed that reaction, smiled (I was raised in the South of the US after all which was excellent training for Thailand in this regard) and said, “That doesn’t work for me Gail. I would like to take a bus to Damnoen Saduak and the last one leaves at 6:00.  I need the money now. How about if we go to an ATM and you can get the money there?”   “Sure. Let’s go,” she replied, not exactly enthusiastically. 

We hopped on her motorbike and stopped at an ATM on the way to the bus station.  Really? I thought.  Was I REALLY going to get my money back?  I had very serious doubts.  Sure enough, “Not enough money.” Gail told me.  “I could only get 500 Baht.”  Again, in hindsight, I’m not sure why I didn’t insist she give me that amount then as a start.  “I’ll call my sister and she can bring the money.  She can meet us at the bus station,” was her next ploy.  

Hoping that a bus that was about to leave would provide a little extra pressure, I agreed.  We sat and waited by the bus until 5:55 with Gail on the phone every 30 seconds and looking around frantically.  Finally, she told me “My sister misunderstood and is in her room looking for the money.  Wait here and I’ll go get it. I’ll be back in 2 minutes.”  “Whatever” was my attitude at this point.  Actually, that was my attitude on the surface.  Seething anger that this woman was such a con-artist was my attitude underneath the smiling veneer I had learned from the Thais (and my fellow Southerners).  

At 6:15, the bus pulled away … and Gail had obviously stranded me at the bus station as she never reappeared.  Nor did she answer her phone any of the 7 times I tried to call her.  I caught a taxi back to Gail’s shop.  She was very surprised to see me get out, clearly thinking I would get on the bus without my money.  While waiting for Gail earlier in the day, I had befriended some girls who worked in the travel agency next door so I stashed my bags there and recruited one of them to interpret for me.  Although Gail spoke excellent English, her mother and the other women standing around outside the shop did not.  I was not above tarnishing Gail’s reputation at this point to get my money.  

So I told my story which was translated by the sympathetic travel agent.  In addition to outlining all the ways and times Gail had lied to me, I also tallied Gail’s expense list, adding to it some small items I had previously been willing to overlook (the money I paid the mechanic for his time and diagnosis, extra days on my bike contract that I had paid for but couldn’t use because the bike was broken and the taxi fee for returning to Gail’s once she stranded me).  At this point, I was furious (but managed to suppress it) and I was determined to squeeze every baht from this deceitful woman.  All told, she owed me 3300 Baht.  Although everyone else seemed to be sympathetic and Gail didn’t deny that she owed me any of what I outlined, she was also not affected by the pressure I was applying.  Not surprisingly, her reputation was already so low that this little bit didn’t matter at all.  “My friend will come at 9:00 with the money,” she said nonchalantly.  

That was the last straw.  “Gail, I am smiling, but I am not happy. In fact, I am very angry.  You have lied to me, left me at the bus station and now you are trying to steal from me.  I am smiling, but I am also calling the tourist police.”  Finally, some action.  But not from Gail.  Everything I said had been translated by the travel agent and Mom jumped to her feet.      

It turned out, according to the travel agent, Gail’s motorbike rental business wasn’t legit (what a surprise!), but because she operates it in front of/out of Mom’s shop, Mom would get in huge trouble and have her legitimate business shut down for allowing Gail’s illegitimate activities.  They told me that Gail is basically a liar who uses the family and doesn’t care what happens to them. You know the kind.  And “Mom” is actually “Mom-in-law.”  She despises Gail, but loves her son who’s married to Gail.  So I had managed to wander into a little Thai soap opera.

At that point, Gail had just wandered off to someplace.  She didn’t seem to care whether or not I called the police. Mom, on the other hand, was scrambling hysterically. She offered me 2000 baht of her own money as a settlement payment if I would just not call the police.  When I saw how panicked the old woman was, I made up my mind that I would not involve the authorities.  She seemed to be a decent woman who was caught up in a bad, co-dependant family entanglement and I felt sorry for her.  Who of us hasn’t known something similar?  But it irked me that Gail would walk away not paying a penny (or whatever the Thai version of a penny is).  So I countered by saying I would accept Mom’s 2000 baht if I could also have the 500 baht I saw Gail get out of the ATM only an hour earlier.  It was more about Gail contributing something than about the extra money itself although I also wanted to be swindled out of as little as possible.  

“She’s already spent the money on food,” someone said.  “FOOD?!” I exclaimed!  “What in the world could she have possibly bought for 500 baht?! Five hundred baht will feed me for more than five days here!  And she only took it out of the ATM an hour ago.  Get her down here.  She should be part of this.”  Well, it just wasn’t going to happen.  Whether Gail had already spent the money (doubtful) or Mom was just protecting her or had no control over her (likely), I’ll never know.  Mom borrowed an extra 500 baht from the travel agent and I agreed to accept 2500 in lieu of 3300.  Mom was clearly very upset over the ordeal (as was I) and expressed her appreciation for my willingness to work with her and her apologies that I had had such trouble.

Now that I was stuck in town for an extra night, I went to find a hotel while the travel agency gals watched my bags.  When I came back from booking a room, I found Mom sobbing in travel agency office, lamenting to the travel agents that Gail was such trouble.  Mom was upset because she had worked so hard for all that money. (At least that’s what I gathered between what I could understand and what the travel agent told me. Mom spoke very very little English.)  I gave the old woman a hug and she squeezed my hand … and broke my heart.  At that moment I decided that the money, although important to me, meant much much more to this old woman.  

I got out one of the 1000 Baht notes she had given to me earlier and handed it back to her.  She refused it, so I folded it and pressed it into her hand. She didn’t resist this time, but cried even harder and hugged me close.  After a minute, she wiped her tears away, stood up and took my hands.  “Foot massage,” she announced. “No charge. I give,” and she lead me by the hand back to her shop.   

At first, I found it hard to relax and enjoy the foot massage which is normally my favorite kind of massage.  My mind was racing trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together.  Were Mom’s tears a scam? Would she really have been shut down or was she just protecting Gail from police involvement?  Why didn’t I think to insist that Gail give me the 500 Baht from the ATM? How could I have handled this entire situation differently so that I got all my money back but from Gail instead of Mom?  

Finally, I gave up.  I thought of my own mother who’s always so sensitive and compassionate toward others.  Although she and Dad would always insist that my brother and I take responsibility for our own actions, they have thankfully never been faced with needing to shield us from the police, although they’ve bailed us both out of sticky financial situations that we were dumb enough to get ourselves into when we were younger.  So I chose to look at the situation from that point and was glad I gave Mom the money.  I continued to think about my Mom as I relaxed into the foot massage (also her favorite kind of massage) and willed the yummy sensations to her feet in Kentucky.  So Mom, if your feet were feeling really good yesterday morning, that was a foot massage courtesy of me and “Mom” all the way from Thailand.  

As I let myself become completely relaxed, I realized that “Mom” and I had each shared with each other what we were able in order to ease our stresses caused by Gail’s bad character.  Although I wouldn’t knowingly walk into the same situation again, some good (and good lessons) came out of it.

———

If you’re traveling in Kanchanaburi and want to get a foot massage from Mom, have a taxi take you to Sugar Cane Guesthouse.  The guesthouse is tucked away down a little alley (and I would give it a 6 out of 10. Nice people. Good price. Needs some refurbishing.) and Mom’s shop (Fah Thai massage) is on the main street right on the corner at the alley entranceway.  The old woman there is … “Mom” … duh (I never got her real name, nor did she get mine).  

Avoid like the plague, however, renting one of the motorbikes out front though and spread the word.  Maybe this way Gail’s business will be adversely affected, without hurting Mom’s.  And if you see a skinny pretty looking girl named Gail, you don’t need to stick out your tongue at her for me or tell her “Shame, shame.”  Undoubtedly, given her bad character, she will have done something recently to warrant it so you can if you want to.  It’s enough for me to know that in her next life she’ll come back as a cockroach.