My Fizzless Vodka / Coke
I don’t drink much anymore, but when I do it will usually be Vodka and Coke.
Bored of being online for hours, I decided to head out for a little change of scenery and opted for Pattaya Soi 7, the little brother of Soi 8. I decided to park at Big C and take that new "free bus service" I had read about. Apparently its route varies from clock-wise to counter clock-wise around the beach areas of Pattaya, in air conditioned comfort. I figured I would hit Soi 7 and then make a go around to the different venues until I got tired or was blessed finding a diamond in the rough.
I later find out that the local Government's plan to provide a free air conditioned bus service route around the jammed Beach Road and second road areas has been shelved. I continued my conversation with this chap in the coffee shop in Big C who informs me that the mafia controlled baht mini truck organization forced the Pattaya government to stop this free service.
WTF?
Since when does the Pattaya Mafia baht bus drivers tell the Government what to do?
The government buys maybe 6 or 7 new air conditioned buses and the local mafia baht bus drivers has enough (Juice) to force the government to suspend the free bus service for tourists and locals.
Maybe if the drivers wouldn’t try and rip you off every other time one rides their stinking uncomfortable pick-ups, the government wouldn’t have considered providing an alternative transportation method for locals and tourists in the first place.
Is the local government that inept that it bows down to those dodgy baht bus drivers? I found a few past issues of the small English Pattaya newspapers, and sure enough they discuss the free bus service that was planned to run a few months and then the Government was going to have a town meeting to allow feedback from the locals and tourists. But apparently these crooks (Baht bus drivers Union) have used some type of political pressure to stop the free bus service even before the public meetings could be held.
I know I am in a foreign country and I know things are not perfect here, but when the Government leaders put together what seemed to be a decent service for tourists and locals and to have the local thugs……oops……..I mean the local baht drivers force the cancellation of the service before it even has a chance to run it’s course really annoys me.
It’s true, I don’t have a lot of love for the baht bus drivers, but knowing that there is a dark side at work that us farangs don’t even know about is kind of scary.
I know some of you die-hard expats may be thinking to yourself, if this bothers me so much why not leave Pattaya? Well dummy, the thought has crossed my mind and recently the thought is crossing my mind daily. I guess I have two choices.
1. I can quit reading the local news and cease talking to my friends about the local government issues or…
2. I can find another place to live.
But in any case, I refuse to stop thinking and put my head in the sand. I like sharing ideas and comments with other guys. I refuse to dummy up and pretend all is well in paradise. I just wish I could do something to prevent the on going corruption that tends to filter into all walks of Thailand living.
I was going to share my story about my fizz-less Vodka and Coke on Soi 7 but got distracted, a senior moment if you will. Another day perhaps, and oh, I do Love Thailand, I really do, Honest.
Stickman's thoughts:
Your reasoning is sound all right. It is a little bit like the situation down in Phuket where there is no public transport running from Patong to Karon or Kata beaches so that the local tuktuks can charge outrageous prices for carrying passengers from one beach to the other. Many years ago the local government started up a low cost public transport service linking these beaches but after just a few days, the bus stopped, the driver hauled out and the shit beaten out of him… Fxxxing outrageous.
