As long as you smile they’ll never know..
So I was on another night train. Coming back up from Surat Thani to Bangkok after a week or so on the island of Ko Phangan. I was with two friends – John & Shirley, & a dude called Ken who’d we’d met at the bus station a few hours previously. We’d been smart this time. We’d booked far enough in advance to actually get seats together. Result. Once again it was not my intention to go to the disco/bar carriage. But once again fate intervened. And that’s saying something since I dont even believe in fate. This time fate sent along the nice man whose job it is to transform the seats into bunks. He’s very good at his job. I didn’t have a stopwatch handy but he can turn a seat into a bunk (pillowcase, curtains & all) faster than I can fart. Trouble is, he’d decided to do the whole seat-into-bunk manouevere at 7.45. Which is kinda early for bed. So off we trooped to the disco/bar so that we could carry on talking without having to swing upside down from our bunks like monkeys in order to do so.
We were greeted to the bar carriage by a waitress who wouldn’t have looked out of place on the field at Twickenham. And what a friendly lass she turned out to be. She leant over us & pointed aggressively at the menu. Once we had ordered she brought Ken the wrong meal & then insisted that he should eat it anyway. She kept trying to fill John’s glass with beer even though he doesn’t drink & didn’t want any & had told her this. She tried to stop Shirley from drinking the whiskey which she had purchased from the vendor in our carriage before circumstances had forced us to move. She threatened to tell the police on the next table that we were breaking some unkown rule. And throughout it all she kept reminding us that we should be happy (i.e. buy more booze).
Some people might have got pissed off with this. They may have even walked out of the carriage in disgust. Not us. We had a better plan. It’s silly & juvenile but its a hell of a lot of fun. Here’s how it goes:
Whenever this utter bitch of a waitress would come over to hassle us, we’d tell her just what we thought of her. Some choice comments included:
“You do shag horses don’t you?”
“You are such a nasty cow”
“Why dont you bugger off swiftly you damnable piece of crap”
And we’d say it with a smile. As long as you dont use well-known words such as fuck, shit or bitch there’s no problem.
Now behind this rather pathetic game there is a somewhat serious issue. It’s a sad fact of life that some people are twats. Obviously we all have the propensity to be twats from time to time, but some people are twats 24/7. Another fact of life is that some people work on trains. I have noticed that some people who work on trains are twats. Not all by any means, but some. Let me give you an example. A few years ago I was on a train in Belgium with some friends. It must have rush hour or something coz this train was packed. So packed that we were stuck in the bicycle/luggage compartment – standing, without a whole shedoodle of wiggle room. After getting smacked in the head by some dudes bag for the 43rd time, I decided to maybe have a little peek in the next carriage. the 1st class carriage. It was empty. So two of my friends & I sat down in it. We’d been there oooh about 30 seconds when up pop two guards.
“You cannot sit here, this is for 1st class passengers only.”
“There are no 1st class passengers!”
“You cannot sit here”
“The other carriage is full. There’s no where else to go.”
“You cannot sit here.”
And on it went. Eventually of course we had to move. So back to my point. People who work on trains can be twats. It’s a small pond & they’re a big fish in it, & crucially – there’s no where else you can go.. Now in England, or even in Belgium where they speak pretty good english, if some power-hungry bureaucratic fuck is gonna start being a twat then you can bet I’m going to argue the toss with them. No question. People like that prosper because not enough people stand up & say “Hang on. Why are you treating me like a number when I’m actually a human being?” Unfortunately though, this waitress was being a bitch in Thailand. and my Thai isn’t up to much. So we had to settle to being juvenile & calling her an “elliebird smelling hippo” and other such pleasantries. It’s not big & it’s not clever but it sure did make me feel better.
Tags: Thailand, Thailand, Trains
The Dude
This is another test comment.
Anyone remember the arrogant westerner?
Kisses
The arrogant westerner is justified in his juvenile behaviour when faced with a total bitch. The arrogant westerner is not justified when it is his arrogance that causes the bitchiness.
Kisses returned x x x