The Balmy Army

By Seymour Cumming

Holy shmoly! Got woken up at the crack of dawn the other day to the sound of automatic gunfire! That's it, I thought, the terrorists are finally attacking Chiang Mai. I jumped into my cammo gear, hooked my fake survival tools onto my belt and armed myself with the neon-pink water canon that I bought during Songkran.

Turns out that the army was only practicing. At 06:30 in the morning they were waking up the good folk of Chiang Mai with a noisy reassurance that we're all safe from communist insurgents, evil drug traffickers, marauding Burmese and rampaging Khmers. Crikey!

Well, this is one farang who likes to get his beauty sleep, heck I hadn't even had a chance to turn out the bar girl. So, I stormed down there, neon gun and all and gave 'em hell. One guy just nodded his head and gave me the 'krap, krap, krap' answer, but he had that 'aren't these farangs crazy' look in his eye.

Anyways, never mind the army, I got this idea that I'd like to join the Thai Police Force, what a lark that would be. Imagine me, with my beer belly, fitting into their skin tight ultra-cool uniforms. My mate Mick could also join and we could ride around all day on my motorbike looking cool and busy. We'd make a fortune because we're smart. Instead of wasting time with all the others, stopping minor offenders and 'fining' them for not wearing helmets, we'd go after all the 'buffalo drivers'.

Imagine how much we could solicit in bribes if we went to work on all the people driving recklessly, ignoring stop signs, parking illegally, failing to give way, riding at night without headlights, driving the wrong way up the highway and (my favourite) swerving wildly across three lanes of traffic to make an unplanned u-turn while all other traffic grinds to a halt. Man we'd be millionaires in week. We could retire and invest in a casino or dodgy property deal, which of course all our dodgy colleagues would protect and sanction.

We could also invest in a fleet of songteaws. The city has a real shortage of them, for sure. Put a songteaw on every corner I say. Double-park them on busy roads and when every corner is full then the rest can just cruise the streets all day with all the other congested traffic, pulling over at random every time they see a tourist.

When the mayor suggests introducing a proper bus service into our jolly town of 300,000 we'll just organize a 'park and protest' blockage at Tapae Gate. We can even get into turf wars with the tuk tuk drivers and, of course, my police mates will all turn a blind eye and let us be, because we keep them fed, don't we? That would be fun.

Now, let's hope that Taksin fellow in Bangkok doesn't get too serious with those threats of stamping out corruption. What a silly idea that is. If the police force can't be paid to keep the whole dodgy system in a balanced order imagine how the crime would get out of (cash in) hand.

Investigative-journalist-at-large, Seymour Cumming has previously been a used car salesman, fruit picker, 'shock jock' and newsroom war correspondent. He has written for Farmer's Weekly, Nyet!, Chessworld and Cross-stitching Magazine.

He's been to more than 50 countries, some for less than a day, and is currently working on a travel novel, but he's written the author's biog, and not progressed much beyond that. His controversial commentary on ex-pat life in Thailand appears in Chiang Mai City Life Magazine.