Shots Fired!

Shit got hairy last Thursday. It was certainly a day of reflection. It's days like last Thursday when I ask myself, "What the fuck am I doing here? What the fuck am I trying to prove? Do I really want to go through with this teaching thing for a year or more, and if so, do I really want to do it in Thailand?" I've heard people say how much safer a country Thailand is than the States; how much less crime there is. And for the most part, from what I can tell so far, that statement is pretty accurate. But there's a misconception in that thinking. There are certainly more dangerous, deranged, and generally fucked-up people in America, but we have a much better system of keeping those people in check. When something illegal happens in Thailand, it usually goes unreported by any witnesses, and unnoticed by any police. And this isn't a presumptuous, half-cocked theory that I've formed after being here for less than two months; this is a wide-spread attitude that I've picked up on after talking to many people, both native and farang, who have lived here for quite some time. What incident inspired these insights, you might be asking? Well, nothing I could write or say could possibly convey how close my pants came to being soiled, but I'll try.

Thursday evening I decided to be a good roommate and take out the garbage. The only other person home at the time was Katy. Ryan and Claire were still teaching. When Katy saw me struggling with the large garbage can, she offered her assistance. I declined, thus losing my only English-speaking eyewitness to the events that were about to unfold. But she did hear the events. Feigning gentlemanliness, I hoisted the can over my back and exited the apartment.

The two street-cans that we dump our garbage into are about 50 yards up the street from our front door. As I approached the trash barrels and began to unload my load, I heard a loud report. Being used to such startling noises in Chiang Mai, be it arrant fireworks or back-firing scooters or exploding transformers, I thought nothing of it. I attributed it to being the day after Loy Kratong, a festival giving tribute to the goddess of water, and some rappscallions setting off left-over black-cats. Then I heard five or six more loud shots, and I knew something was rotten in Surat. As I began to turn around, the first thing I noticed was a little boy riding by me on his bicycle. I looked over his head and in the middle of the street, about half way between me and my apartment (about 20 yards away), was a clusterfuck of three cars and two scooters and about three men on foot. The men on foot were each holding guns, .38 specials which I figured out from the shell-casing I found later that evening, and they were firing them haphazardly into the air.

For some reason, my first instinct was to pretend like none of it was actually happening. I turned around and continued dumping my garbage. That's when I saw that the little boy on his bicycle was cowering behind me, and when our eyes met he actually grabbed me, his eyes pleading for me not to expose him. That's when I realized that this shit was really happening. I turned my head one more time for some validation, and saw one of the gunmen point in my direction. I'm quite sure, only in hindsight, that he was in no way interested in me. But that finger falling anywhere in my vicinity got my blood a boiling. The scooter, with two Thai dudes on it, hauled ass towards me and my little compadre, followed shortly by a very expensive looking car the likes of which you don't see in Surat. That's when I grabbed my tiny friend by the shirt and ran for the cover of a nearby fence. The car and scooter drove by us, without a glance in our direction no doubt, and we waited for what seemed like ten minutes (in reality 30 seconds) before emerging.

Thai people live in complete denial of anything awkward or embarrassing. "Save face" is the motto of the entire country. Soon after the incident that nearly shook my pants, the once trembling little boy was calling across the field we were in to some friends, with a huge smile on his face, regaling the now laughable events that had just transpired. He ran off with out even so-much as a, "Kopen Kup (thank you)." Returning to the street from behind my fence, I saw that all the neighbors and store-owners had come out to the street to see what all the hubbub was about. I was greeted with Thai gufaws and gibberish (one woman actually mocked me by mimicking me holding up my garbage can in front of me like a shield). I didn't mind the laughs so much, being thankful that I walked away unscathed, but I was fucking disturbed that these people seemed so un-fazed by what had happened, and I was quite sure that none of them were attempting to contact the authorities. Walking down the street in my new-found glory and celebritay, my walk soon became a fast trot when I realized that those bullets had to fall somewhere.

And that's it. Guess you had to be there. I still don't know what exactly transpired, but there's a shop-keeper on our block that speaks pretty good English, so I'll try and get the scoop soon. Christ on a waffle-cone.