Since I have time here in the airport I will tell you guys the story that I breifly mentioned in an earlier posting, you know the story where I thought we were all going to be stewed in large vats of acid???
Okay so the day goes like this, the whole time in Thailand I wanted to see elephants. Here is Thailand there are about a million elephant "rescue" places where they put on "educational shows". In reality, many of these places are just exploiting these same animals that they have claimed to have rescued in exchange for a nice chunk of farang cash. Needless to say, it was extremely important to me that if we were going to go that we went to a place that truly cared for the animals and just not trying to profit from them. So I wittled the options down to what I thought was the best spot and that was in Kanchanaburi.
The public transportation system in Thailand is virtually non-exsistant outside of Bangkok and people have to rely on busses (similar to greyhounds here) to get around. So we ride this bus about 30km out of town to this elephant place. Along the way the bus, which I know was routinely tuned up and had maintence done to it, was grinding everytime the driver tried to put it into gear. It seemed to me that the damn thing didn't even have a clutch! (Nick of course informed me that big vehicles sometimes dont have them and you just gotta shift at the right time... now this seems like a completely stupid idea to me ... having a manual without a clutch, hey what do I know about machinery? Anyway thats besides the point...)
So the bus breaks down along the way but they end up getting it fixed and shortly thereafter kicking us out on the side of the freeway, on the wrong side of the road. We had to cross like 6 lanes of crazy Thai traffic but eventually we made it.
After all that the elephant show was pretty disapointing, I got some cool photos though and since it is Thailand after the show you could just walk up to the elephants and feed them bananas and sugarcane and touch them and get really close and touch them so that was pretty cool at least. It would NEVER happen in the states, some little kid would get slapped in the face by the elephant's trunk- the parents owould sue and that would be the end of that.
So after the show we decided (ok everyone else decided, I wanted to be lazy) to walk instead of ride the tram back to the entrance. Fine, I wasn't going to be left by myself waiting for the tram so I went along. Well we ended up walking probably about 2 miles in the wrong direcion during the hottest part of the day. So I was in a pretty good mood by the time we eventually got back to the side of the highway to wait for our bus to show up and pick us up off the side of the road. Nick and Jordan politley voluenteered to wait in the sun for the bus while Haley and I waited in the shade. I jumped at the chance! About 30 min of waiting for the bus resulted in one bus flying by at mach one and waving at us. That really sucked.
Okay, back to waiting. About 20 min later Nick and Jordan holler over that we have a ride. Apparenlty some guy just decided to pull over on the side of the freeway and give us a ride, in the wrong direction for him, because he was a nice guy and someone had done the same for him in Finland when he was there and he wanted to pay the favor back. I didnt know any of this because I had been off in the shade, I just knew the guys were telling us we had a ride and it must be ok if they thought it was ok. And it was hot so I got in.
Nick starts chattting it up with this guy and I start to wonder why this guy would take the time out of his day to help us, that just dosent happen without alterative motives in my world. Plus the guy had winnie the pooh shifter knob covers so I relaxed a little figuring that the guy with teddy bears in his car couldnt be too bad.
And then he turned off the highway, I instanly jumped to about the Defcon 3 level, where was this guy taking us, I suddenly had the sick feeling in my stomach that I couldnt get out of the car if I really wanted to. Thats when I started thinking that this guy was going to rob, tourture, and murder us (and probably dump our remains in a large vat of acid). I start freaking out and asking the guy where we were going. He can only kinda speak English and I get out of him that he wants to take us to a really nice Wat (temple), yeah i'm surrreee thats where we are going- this guy just wants to be our personal tour guide for the day. We kept telling him that we didn't want to go to the temple but he was very insistant that we go. I was for sure that he was taking us to his other psycho path friend house for reinforcements, I had risen to about a decon 4 level by now. Luckily psychopaths dont always have their gas tanks filled up full and he told us he had to stop for gas. This was perfect for me, I was getting the hell out of this guys car, I was not going t o be made into a lamp shade! So when he speeds past a gas station I am about crapping myself! It was all a ploy to get us to relax, we really were going to the psyco friends house! I start devising a plan in my head to take this guy out before he can get backup, I was going to pull the e-brake to get the car stopped and attack the would be offender, gouge his eyes out or something. Luckily I didnt have to put my plan into action because he pulled into the gas station. I jump out and refuse to get back into the car and march up to the attendants and tell them I need a taxi because I am not getting back into the car with that killer.
Turns out there are no taxis in this town. You've got to be kidding my there are taxis EVERYWHERE in Thailand, they are like freaking cockroaches here! Damn, I thought, hes got accomplises everywhere! Meanwhile this guy is freaking out about why we wont get back in the car, and that he is a nice guy that is just trying to help. That was all the evidence I needed, he must be so upset because I foiled his plan for adding 4 new additions to his collection!
He ended up sweet talking Jordan and Haley into thinking that he was a nice guy and they wanted to get back in the car with him. Nick decided that he could take him if need be and there were no other options about how to get where we needed to go and we had to get there because we had already bought tickets for the sleeper train to Bangkok that was leaving in a few hours. So I made sure I glared at everyone and wanted them to know that if we were skinned alive that it was there fault, and that I knew better than to trust a "nice guy".
Nick started talking again to the guy, good I thought, develop a relationship with the potential killer, maybe he will see us as more than lampshades and let us go. Eventually that is when the guy did, he drove us up right to our hostel and gave Nick his card to e-mail his if he wanted to. Kind of a un-momentous ending to a very stressful situation. Nick later informed me that the first gas station was diesl and the guy couldnt stop there. Haley and Jordan thought the guy was nice, a little weird, but nice. I on the other hand, know the ture story, that we were almost melted down in a large stew of acid by a "nice Thai guy" that picked us up on the side of the road excpet that I foiled his plan by making a scene at the gas station. Don't worry guys, you don't have to thank me, its just another day of ruining random psychopaths sick killer plans for me.
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