After my encounter with the canine crew, I had a pretty embarrassing spill on the scooter. I had just finished having a beer at a bar that provided an amazing view of a small cove. The place was literally at the end of the only road on the island, so there were very few travellers hanging about, mostly huts and their residents, which I was happy about, for I have no qualms about embarrassing myself in front of Thais, that's what I'm here for. Anyhow, I had just mounted my scooter and pulled out my camera to show you, Merica, a pleasant ride through the Koh Tao countryside, and as I began to accelerate, I noticed a couple of Thai kids on a scooter of their own about to pull in front of an oncoming truck. What ensued was nothing short of hilarious for the handful of Thai's that got to witness a tall goofy farang eat dirt road after valiantly, however unnecessarily, trying to save two kids who it turned out were actually driving up to meet the truck that I thought hastened their doom. I have footage of this crash, but it's stuck on my laptop which has been out of commission since December, so hopefully I can rescue it once I return Stateside.
When I got back to Ban's, I hooked up Yair, Laura and Amy and we took a stroll down the tree-shaded avenue that skirted the beach for miles, taking in the sights and smells. We passed several seafood joints with everything on that day's menu lavishly displayed on tables outside each restaurant; squid and octopus, snapper and shark and the like. After eating some savory shrimp and snapper kabobs and catching some of the World Series, we headed back to Ban's but agreed to say hello to a friend of ours and grab some dessert. Our friend was a little Burmese dude named Get, and he served some of the most delicious pancakes, of all different flavors, from his little cart, one of dozens that dotted the avenue.
As we chatted with Get and watched him cook and flip his little fruity delights, a truck full of very serious Thai dudes looking very much like the canine killers I saw earlier, rolled past behind us. Get immediately stopped talking and started looking extremely nervous. I asked him what was wrong and he uttered one word, "Police." He kept craning his neck in the direction the police had driven, and became very distracted from his pancake making. I began to assume that Get was not operating his pancake stand within the confines of the law. A few more minutes went by, when all of a sudden Get dropped his spatula and disappeared behind the house we were standing in front of, Laura's pancake still bubbling on the grill. Then from behind us a fist of surly "cops" punched their way through the small group of Get's customers in pursuit of Get. We soon heard shouting and scuffling coming from behind the house, and the cacophony soon turned very unsettling and down-right stomach-turning. I looked at my companions and their faces shared the same look of disbelief that I was feeling. In the middle of this Burmese beat down, one of the cops casually strolled out from the grisly scene and headed for the pancake cart. Without so much as a glance at the onlookers, the cop grabbed all of the cash in Get's money jar, pocketed it, scraped the now burning pancake off the griddle, set it on a plate, and walked off with a smile on his face and pancake in his mouth. I could not believe what had just transpired, but fearing the Thai police more than any force of curiosity or gallantry, I wisely decided not to get involved. I mean, seriously, what could I or any of my friends do anyway? For all we knew, Get was drug-dealing rapist without a green card, but the guy seemed pretty friendly and carefree the several times we bought pancakes from him, often chatting about how much he missed his family back home. We stood there for another minute or so, still in shock, the only words spoken were along the lines of, "What the fuck?", and then, with reluctant American indifference, I walked away and finished my pancake.
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