The Driver

The driver is raising his eyebrow at me as I pile bags into the back of his tuk-tuk. “You want tuk-tuk?” he says with a quizzical expression. I nod and give the name of the hotel. It strikes me as odd that a Thai tuk-tuk driver, or any tuk-tuk driver for that matter, would baulk at a fare. Perhaps he’d prefer to laze in the sun and chat with the other drivers. “It very wet,” is his next excuse. Glancing upwards, I see nothing but blue skies and wonder what on earth he’s talking about. I repeat the name of the hotel. He points to a taxi. I’d promised the kids a ride in a tuk-tuk so I wasn’t about to back down. He shrugs his shoulders and smiles a toothless grin in resignation. After bartering over the fare, he goes off to recruit an additional driver to help transport our party of five.

We set off and the driver shouts over the noise of the engine “We go back way!” As we weave through the back lanes of Chiang Mai, I’m thinking it’s an obscure route to take - at least according to the guidebook perched on my knee. It occurs to me that I might be about to lose a kidney. I look back and see my husband’s uneasy expression from the other tuk-tuk.

Finally, we approach a main street but are blocked by a procession of vehicles. The driver curses in Thai and works hard to edge the tuk-tuk into the traffic. I glance back to check that the rest of my family is close behind.

We converge into the traffic, and I notice hundreds of people lining the streets. All of them are saturated. As we crawl along, a woman emerges from the shade of a shop awning with a bucket of water, filled to the brim. She grins like a maniac as she swings the bucket back. I’m in a state of suspended disbelief as I feel the full bucket of water smack me in the face. The initial sense of outrage morphs into helpless laughter. The woman and I smile at each other, sharing a moment of hilarity. The driver turns around, grinning, his face dripping with water. “It very wet”, he says.