I Love Thai Police (3). Never As Good As the Third Time.

As says the song, it is never as good as the third time, especially if you get it three times. The fine, I mean. After months of frustrations and failure to get fined for traffic rule breaking, I have been fulfilled beyond my wildest dreams on Thursday, 19th.
I was with my wife, Noo, on the road to Sisaket, in order to investigate the assassination of a local Red shirts leader. This was a long way and because of the excitement of the mission, I was driving fast. Then somewhere after Saraburi, the famed tamruat thanon luang, with their nice brown and yellow cars and their black beret, caught me.
I had already warned my wife. I won’t speak anything to the policemen. I will play the mute, as when I said I am a journalist they released me or even when I just argue in Thai they let me go (see previous episodes). So, complete silence this time, only smiles and gestures.
I pulled off the road and smiled at a slightly overweight black beret. Things were smooth. With no verbal reaction from me, they wrote the form and said “124 km/h”. Not bad. I duly paid the 200 bahts fine, and we hit the road again. Noo immortalized the event with the digital camera.
Then, barely 40 minutes later, another squad of black berets caught me again. “128 km/h”, said a policeman. I could not really hid my joy and he noticed it. I paid again the 200 bahts due and had my picture taken with my new friend, the highway policeman.
That was not the end of it, as, having arrived in Surin and visited the market there, I was surprised to find a white paper on the front windshield. “Wrong parking”, said the paper. Actually I could not really understand as I was correctly parked, and many cars around my Peugeot 406 had escaped the wrath of Surin’s keepers of the law. But in Surin, indeed, we don’t joke with the rule of law. And that was a third 200 bahts fine. But it had now become routine. I throw the paper in the back of the car and decided not to pay, and we fled speedily toward our Sisaket destination.

Arnaud Dubus