This was supposed to be an entry about my great and much anticipated elephant-riding adventure in Thailand today.
Yeah…
Don’t hold your breath, I said that’s what it was supposed to be about.
That’s not what it’s going to be about I’m afraid.
What was supposed to be my great and much-anticipated elephant riding adventure did not happen. So what this is actually a write-up on is my experience at the hands of the Thailand Taxi Mafia. No. That’s so not even remotely a joke. I know it sounds like it should be. But it isn’t.
The taxi “union” in Phuket is so bad and so aggressive that the ship is not even allowed to operate shuttle buses into town. If we try, they bar the port. However they normally do not bother ship arranged tours. I don’t imagine that they like them very much, but they usually allow them to operate un-accosted. Note: I said ‘usually’. Today’s crew tour was not so lucky.
I really don’t know what happened. Maybe there’s some kind of unofficial time by which all the tours have to depart before the “union” moves in, maybe they were supposed to get some cut of the tour cost, maybe they were just having a bad day. Who knows. What I do know is what happened. We loaded into the bus at just after 11, a few minutes after our scheduled departure time because we had people who were delayed by a ship drill – which they couldn’t exactly miss. The tour operators were lovely and clear-spoken, and the mini-bus was comfortable. So we all buckled up for the ride to the elephant park, only to be accosted by a very very angry local who started shaking his fists at the bus and storming about swearing at the tour operators. I think if he’d been allowed anywhere near the actual vehicle he would have tried to break the windows. At first we thought it was funny, because this guy was wearing nothing but swim trunks and was very small and scrawny. He reminded me of a cartoon, the kind of character a stronger guy would hold back with one hand. Like the Chiwawa in Oliver and Company. It quickly stopped being funny though when we realized that he wasn’t alone. About 15 much bigger guys, equally angry, were moving in with him.
They pulled a van directly alongside ours and blocked the way out, and then proceeded to scream and shout and threaten the mini-bus we were in. We couldn’t hear what they were saying, but we could tell it wasn’t complimentary. Needless to say, no one had to tell us to stay put in the bus. At least most of us. Our Captain was on the tour with us, and he’s a much braver man than the rest of us were – he got out and tried to negotiate with them, but got nothing but insults for his trouble.
For the first time in my career as a ship-girl, I suddenly realized that there was a real possibility I could get hurt, or worse, out here on the waves. Something could happen to me in some bizarre circumstance and who knows what would be told to the people back home. It’s not something I try to think about often, I mean after all you’re just as likely to get hit by a bus in your own home town as anything else…but today it suddenly felt very real.