The Accident
Phuket - 7th October 1998
With a map we took the bike and went exploring the Island, visiting almost anything listed on the tourist's cartoon map.
Riding happily along on an almost deserted stretch of road somewhere in the bowels of Thailand's largest Island I stopped to wait patiently on the centre line of the road. There was one approaching on-coming vehicle which needed to pass before we could make a right-turn up a track leading to a waterfall. As the car passed I began to release the clutch on the bike only to be suddenly clipped on my offside by two young Thai lads on a smaller bike as it zoomed past to overtake me. Why they chose to pass me on the offside (outside) instead of the nearside (inside) still baffles me to this day, I'll never understand why. They drive on the same side in Thailand as in the UK,
I stalled the bike and we fell off at less than walking pace and the bike fell on it's side. As I looked-up I could see the other bike and it's two Thai passengers skidding off in 3 different directions at speed, skimming the road surface each on their way to the scene of their own individual accident in the bushes. I checked my GF for damage but she was ok, same as me. We were not hurt, just had a scuffed knee each on our right legs, the other lads came off a lot worse. Oh dear.
A few people in the only building nearby, a small shack-type restaurant, came over to see what had just happened. I was having difficulty moving our bike to the side of the road as the chain had come off and was jammed in the rear wheel cog. There was only negligible movement in the bushes from the Thais.
Someone from the restaurant must have called the police as about 15 minutes later they arrived. The boys had both been badly skinned and scuffed and shaken and someone offered to take them to the hospital, we were detained by the police. So after they precariously secured both bikes onto the back of their police pickup we were taken to Phuket Police Station.
We waited around 8 hours in Phuket Police Station in all, six now and two later, I lost track of time in the end as we had to wait for the two Thai boys to arrive from hospital as they'd been taken there first. In the meantime, some of the boy's family members had arrived and were looking daggers at me, but no doubt rubbing their hands at what they could extract from this farang's wallet. As I chatted with my GF I pondered upon what might be the final outcome here, she said that I would most likely have to pay for both bikes and both boys hospital fees, as I am the farang and if I wasn't here then it wouldn't have happenend. That's Thai justice for you.
Eventually the boys hobbled in. One had bandages over one shoulder, one arm and I could see through his ripped shorts that the side of his arse was bandaged too. The other, who turned out to be the driver, was now shirtless and had bandages wrapped around his whole upper torso from the belly up, including shoulders, and one leg bandaged with a splint, with probably more bandages under his clothing, such as his arse, judging by his worn-out and ripped clothes. I suspect a portion of the bandages were for effect and the benefit of the Chief, but I do know they got hurt. They'd both worn the usual Thai protective bike gear of t-shirts, shorts and flip-flops, but then again, we weren't dressed any better.
The 4 of us, the two Thai lads, my GF and me, were all called into the Chief's office and the whole conversation was naturally, and unfortunately, in Thai. I barely understood a single word that was said, but watched all the body language, pointing, hand-waving, tone of voice and gestures. I didn't say a word, I just waited until I was spoken to or pointed at.
After some time my GF told me to hand my driving license to the Chief. Luckily for me I had a brand new international driving license in a brand new leather holder, all in pristine condition, the Chief liked that, presentation goes a long way in Thailand. One of the lads then produced his driving license, it was a tatty, ripped, almost illegible piece of paper that looked like it had been through the wash several times. The boy was about to be fined for having essentially no license and my GF nudged me and said it would be a good gesture and good for me if I paid the fine on his behalf, B200, so I did.
After maybe 20 minutes the Chief seemed to have had enough of this little episode and began to raise his voice and gesticulate. He pointed at each of us in turn, at our injuries, and I believe the gist of what he said was along the lines of (pointing at the two Thai lads) "look at the state of you two, you were going too fast", now pointing at me and my knee "look at the farang, hardly a scratch". So, the verdict had now been passed, I didn't have to pay anything at all, that was the end of it, justice had been served and we were free to leave.
Unfortunately, again, that was not the end of it. Our rental bike was unusable and we couldn't get back to Patong so we called the bike rental outfit to come and get us and the bike. About 2 hours later, two Thai men arrived in an old pickup truck and loaded both us and the bike onto the back, it had now gone dark.
We didn't go directly to Bangla Road, but instead took a detour to some bike repair shop that they obviously knew and used, it was amongst a group of similar bike repair shops. After about 30 minutes in there one of the men produced a bill for me, B65,000, I balked. At the time that was about £1,000, this was the biggest check-bin I'd ever received.
I could not understand anything written on it as it was all written in Thai, with the exception of the numbers, they were scary. I insisted, by way of gestures, that he point to each item on the bike itself that was written in Thai on the bill and I argued a case for most of the items. In other words, I waved my hand negatively and said no. After some time haggling I managed to get the total down from B65,000 to B30,000 and thought that was about the best I could do under the circumstances. There were some big Thai guys in that workshop and a crowd had formed and it had been a long day and I wanted to get out of the situation, so I accepted the new figure as there was little else I could do. I had remained calm through the process and resisted the desire to get agitated, although inside I was obviously highly frustrated.
Next it was back to Bangla on the back of their pickup again to collect my passport from the bike rental outfit, but no. They would not return my passport until they had received payment in full for the so-called repairs. All I could get out of the ATM at the time was B10,000 per day as that was the limit set by my UK bank for withdrawals at the time, so it took me three days of maximum ATM withdrawals to get my hands on my passport again, with little fun money in-between.
At the end of the day, after it had returned to a somewhat more relative state of normality, I went out and got pissed. There was nothing more I could really do 
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