Monsoon Money Shot

It was 12:45am on the buzzing Khao San Road in Bangkok, Thailand, when we instructed the the taxi driver to let us out – we were only a ten-minute walk from our hotel and wanted to enjoy the bustling night life.

I handed the driver a wad of Thai Bath (local currency), helped Paige out, and closed the back door. As the taxi took off, I impulsively patted my back pocket: no wallet.

Oh shit, I left it in the car.

Fifty yards ahead of us, the taxi’s brake lights came on as he slowed and then turned left.

I started running.

I ran at breakneck speed, dodging drunk partiers and rickshaws, made the turn onto a bigger street and realized that the taxi could have only gone one way: around to the left. Except, now there were more cars whizzing by and I couldn’t tell one set of brake lights rushing away from me from the next. I ran another half mile as the roadway slowly curved left and ran in front of a main bus stop area…I was trying my hardest not to get freaked, but it wasn’t working. This was the wallet I’d purchased back in Zimbabwe and loved; this was the wallet I’d stashed special stamps and weird currency notes in; this was the wallet with 5,000 Bath ($150), $60 U.S. cash, Visa and American Express cards.

I freaked out.

As I came up to the streetlight-lit bus stop about a half a mile away, I realized that if he hadn’t stopped here to pick up another passenger, I was totally screwed. He would be gone into the Bangkok night, in a city the size of Los Angeles, where I would have about as much a chance finding him as running into Charo in our hotel lobby.

I ran completely panicked past the stop and to the taxi stand directly adjacent: there were no taxis waiting. I stopped, panting and scared, and slumped my shoulders in defeat. A couple minutes later Paige came jogging up behind me. “Well..?”

“Gone. No dice. I suck.” Really, used in any combination, these three statements were extremely appropriate right then. “I feel so helpless right now…is there anything we can do?”

Paige was skeptical. “It’s gone.”

Dejected, we started walking back the way we came with cars whooshing past us. I was getting more depressed by the second. When we made it back to Khao San Road, we both suddenly remembered that just a half block up ahead was a tourist information booth…but it was now 1:30. Futilely we walked past the window…and the lights were actually on. We walked up, cupped our hands and peered in: someone was off in the corner with their back turned to us. I pounded on the glass, barely attempting to restrain my frenzied emotions. The guy jumped and came over.

“Are you open?” I asked.

“Yes, until 2:00.”

I explained what had happened without taking a breath. The info guy waited until I was done, “Do you have a taxi ID number?”

“No.”

“How about the name of the taxi company?”

“…No.”

“License plate?”

My blank stare was his answer. I halfheartedly offered, “I know it was a blue car..” but this was meaningless. Taxis in Bangkok were just like regular cars, every color of the car manufacturers’ rainbow, except they had a light-up sign on top.

The guy was apologetic, “Look, it doesn’t look good. But one thing you can do is file a police report and if they get a call that it was found they’ll at least know how to contact you.”

“Would the taxi company contact the police if they find the wallet?”

The guy looked at me like I was a naïve little child. He was right. That baby was loaded with cash. Still, my ingrained optimism was telling me that there was a, granted, very remote chance that the driver would be honest and turn the thing in. On top of that, months ago I had foreseen such an occurrence and had placed a piece of paper in the slot where an I.D. card goes explaining where to send the thing if it was found. Although the loss of money was a major hit and stung to the core, I could live with it as long as I got that wallet back. I had grown attached to that thing, and had filled it with some of the only mementos I’d kept from the road.

“Where’s the police station?” I asked. Paige looked at me out of the corner of her eye. The guy gave me directions; it was a couple miles away. We thanked him and turned around, “Do you mind if we went over there and filed the report right now?” I asked Paige. Maybe a passenger would find it and turn it over, maybe the driver would end his shift and clean the car out…or maybe someone would discover it, take the cash and credit cards and toss the rest in the garbage. Still, if there was even the smallest hint of a chance, I wanted to make sure we were prepared. The last thing I wanted was for someone to try to contact us and we were too late to contact the police.

Paige saw the look of desperation in my eyes and gave in. The station was back out the way we’d just come, then another 20-30 minute walk. I say “walk” because obviously we had no money anymore...

We trudged along in the still darkness out past the bus stop where we’d turned around before, and then onward into the quiet night.

Five minutes later, the monsoon hit.

Within a matter of milliseconds, rain was coming down so hard we couldn’t see two feet in front of us and literally had to cup our hands around our mouths to even breathe properly. We had no jackets or umbrellas and were walking down empty streets after 2am, heading towards a location that we really didn’t know how to find. The epitome of traveling.

We were sopping, and there didn’t appear to be anywhere we could temporarily shelter ourselves…until we saw a telephone booth nearby. We bolted over and locked ourselves inside – wet to the bone, water running freely from our heads, and instantly steaming up the inside glass with the humidity. This was not good. Plus, now we were all turned around. We stayed that way for a couple minutes, then realized something very important: we couldn’t get any wetter than we currently were, and the rain storm could
potentially last for hours. Plus, we could barely breathe in that small space.

We opened the door and emerged back out into the insane downpour, trying not to let our sopping clothes and bodies annoy us, although my wet and foggy glasses were throwing that strategy right down the toilet. Confused, pissed off, and scared, we took a turn and headed down another completely empty street, convinced we were going the right direction.

Then it dead-ended.

We stood there in disbelief at our bad fortune, and yet, on some weird level it was all OK because even this was part of the overall adventure that we’d signed up for when we’d left the U.S.

“Oh my god,” Paige muttered over the roar of the downpour on the street, trees and buildings around us, “what is that guy doing over there?!”

I looked across the street (a difficult notion through my impenetrable glasses and the sheer wall of rain) where, teetering on the edge of the sidewalk, a nasty looking guy was facing us with his pants down around his knees, jerking off.

Surely, this was one thing that we didn’t sign up for.

I grabbed Paige’s hand and we bolted out of there, fully expecting the guy to come chasing after us with his pulsing hard-on slapping against his rain-soaked legs.

We turned the corner in a run and moved onwards, soon finding another street and moving quickly forward, randomly just moving to feel safe. And when we thought that we were surely in the middle of nowhere, suddenly we saw the police station kitty-corner to where we were standing.

We raced across the intersection and burst through the doors looking to the lady behind the counter as if
we had just emerged, fully clothed, from a swimming pool. Dripping freely and out of breath, we explained why we were there and the lady handed over a roll of paper towels. This was a joke; it was
like trying to dry a wet sheepdog with a tissue.

Around 3am, shivering and still sopping wet, we’d filed the report, talked with everyone in the office, and realized that we’d done all we could do. Wait wait...one more thing...

"By the way," I mentioned to the lady at the desk, "I think we were also being chased by a naked guy not too far away...playing with himself..."

"Yeah, and?" she replied.

'Nuff said. It was time to head back to the hotel.

Finally we were back in our lobby, and immediately called Visa and Amex on the pay phone downstairs to cancel the cards. Next, we slip-slid upstairs where we stripped clean and hung our clothes up to at least lose enough wetness to match the amount of humidity in the air…

We sat on the edge of our bed attempting to get our minds around this turn of events: go with the flow, bask in the here and now, move on. We’d incurred a small loss; we had to find a way to make this a big gain in our resilience.

3:45am; Paige was beat and instantly fell asleep after a thorough toweling, but my mind was still racing and I didn’t feel sleepy at all. I dug into my wet shorts on the windowsill and found the Tom Petty album I'd purchased earlier that evening wrapped in its plastic bag, figuring that music would help me calm down and relax. I popped the CD into our player and lay down with my eyes closed as the first song came on and I began to lose myself in the chords. Ahh, at long last, this was definitely helping.

Ten seconds later, the player made a strange grinding noise and conked out. Broken.

Tremendous.

Obviously this all parallels the path the Survivor Villains went down in the latest episode: shortsighted decisions inevitably leading to sure destruction. A monsoon of negativity and selfishness. One guy in particular (Russell) gratifying himself openly to the wanton disregard of all others.

Good for Russell, bad for the tribe.

Of course, it's all good for us too...this is solid TV. Mano a mano between the two evil leaders, the Wicked Bitch of the Least (Parvati) on one side, and the Wicked Stick Figure of the Anorexics (Courtney) on the other.

By the way, what was Rob thinking aligning with Courtney and Sandra? Talk about picking the wrong alliance. You really have to give it to Russell for taking control of his destiny and ensuring his survival; Rob was purely reactive, and it was too little, too late.

You could be annoyed at Coach for his shrunken testicles at Tribal Council and his refusal to vote for either Rob or Russell (inevitably leading to Rob's demise), but consider this. Rob's past deception is well known: lying to whomever he can to get further in the game. Russell, on the other hand, has carte blanche with this group: nobody has had the opportunity to see his evil ways. In the end, Coach chose (insert soaring romantic theme song here) his "fair maiden," Jerry. And in the end, Coach proved  he is simply a tool, unwilling to play the game, unwilling to pick a side, afraid of his shadow and ultimately afraid to play any role whatsoever other than "passive bystander."

Rob: you deserved to go. Russell: you deserved to stay. Coach: you deserved to be called a little man...but you can take solace that it wasn't Jerry that told you that...

In the end, Russell proved what Paige and I had learned on that fateful night in Bangkok: when you encounter a derelict with no concept of societal rules jerking himself off in a monsoon, stay away...there's no stopping him.

Fear is a powerful emotion, especially when it's perpetrated by a freak solely focused on his own demented gratification.

The only question is...did Russell execute his money shot too early...?

Until next week,

PB