Bangkok - I decide to go on an adventure, and instead just get lost... a lot.

This is the story of my arrival in Bangkok - known as Krungthepmahanakhornbowornrattanakosinmahintarayutthayamahadilok- popnopparatratchathaniburiromudamratchaniwetmahasathanamornpimanavatarnsathitsakkathattiyavisnukarprasit locally (or Krungthep for short - take that, James Joyce.) The name is the longest Guiness Book certified place name in the world. It means "City of Angels, Divine Repository of the Royal Jewels, the Unconquerable City", etc,etc.  Lots of people can recite the whole thing. And in a way it's a parable for the whole Bangkok experience - nothing takes a short amount of time here.

So the whole adventure began when I rolled up to the Avis counter at the Bangkok international airport. I had decided that I wanted to drive myself around, because as I learned travelling in Latin America it is both frustrating and expensive to let someone else drive. I had the experience of driving around Panama City and Capetown and I figured that I might get lost once or twice but I'd have more fun.

So I rented a car. I was told they had only one left. It was a stick. No big deal, I thought - I learned to drive stick in Panama and refined my technique somewhat in Capetown, at a high cost to the Avis corporation. No problem. We concluded the legalities - during which the man behind the counter literally begs me to take the insurance. No, I told him, I'm covered by American Express and I don't need your insurance. Please, he said, for your own good. Finally he gives up and we go to the car. Small, but not too bad. We inspect it. I ping on the right side. Loose bumper on the right side. Scrape all the way down the left side. Dent in the hood. Scrape on the rear bumper. "Are all of these from the same guy?" He laughs "No no no - accident all the time." He explains that the cars are no problem - watch out for the motorcycles.

I note that the steering wheel is on the right side. Ok, I've done that before, I say to myself. The rental guy starts to scurry off. "Wait - which way to the Central Plaza Hotel?" I ask pointing to the map. He seems unsure. Finally, he points to a road. He points behind us to a avenue/highway. "Same one all the way?" I ask. "Yes, on your right." Great, this'll be easy, I think to myself.

There are many levels of stupidity. There's oh well, if I only knew at the time. Then there's I should've known better. Then there's I can only blame myself because I knew better and laughed maniacally as I plunged ahead, smoking a cigarette and singing along to Thai radio.

Anyway, I'm on Vibhahavit-Rangsit Road. It's 3 express lanes, 3 local lanes, 2 lanes elevated above, and that's on each side. Bangkok has the worst traffic in the world, despite (or sometimes because) of massive construction of elevated highways.. Of course not all of the lanes go everywhere, and they tend to end abruptly. But that's ok, because they warn you with construction signs. The road signs  -  with the names you'd need to figure out where you are on a map -  are also pretty big and well lit.

Newsflash : Tim does not speak Thai. Thai letters all look like @, either upside down, or on it's side, or impaled on a ~. So a typical name of a Thai street looks like @~!@~@@0!0@@. Not to be confused with @~@@~00@@@ which runs southeast into yak grazing territory. It had not occured to me up until this point that reading a map might not be possible, since I had one from Avis in English. So I'm hurtling down a road in heavy traffic, driving a stick on the wrong side of the road, trying to open a map and looking for the one sign in 10 that's in English.

So I accidentally get on a highway, going west. Now I know I'm going the wrong way, but I got on this road because I knew that was a cloverleaf and I didn't want to get on the on ramp - so I stayed left - which is right in America - which is actually how you would get on another highway. Oops. So I'll turn around, I figure. In a half a mile. Maybe a mile. Wait a second - did I just get in the highway's express lane?

Yes I did, and I was headed at a good clip towards Bangladesh. Next stop was about five miles. At this point I'm cheerfully cursing in time to the music. Which by the way is Beck's "New Pollution" - there is an ex-pat radio in  Bangkok, run by smugly hip  British bastards who are also playing Michael Jackson. I'm lost in Chongutuntip Magathep while I'm hearing about a web site that you can go to to slap around the Spice Girl of your choice. It was a thin and tenuous connection to sanity.

I wheel around the uturn - yes, major highspeed highways here have uturns in the middle of their Jersey barriers, sometimes bus stops too - while I'm narrowly being missed by trucks at 80 mph - and head back to the road that I know will take me either to my hotel or back to the airport. Going back to the airport means I return the car and take a cab like a sane person. I get back to the interchange and I see a gigantic mall couched in what looks like the 34 St Post Office building, done up as a high rise, with a little Tang Dynasty flavor thrown in for effect. And the name is in English! Ah yes, Lakhsi Plaza. My hotel is the Central Plaza. Now as the Avis guy really didn't speak English, what are the odds he thought I wanted to go here?

So I go inside and call the hotel and ask for directions. I haul out a 500 baht note and try to get change from a 14 year old girl selling flipflops. I point to some Singapore change that I have, because no one speaks English. Eventually she gets the idea. She looks at me as if I'm insane. It's worth $25, but locally it's worth about $200 in buying power. And I want change for the phone - 1 baht coins. I plead with her - but not too much because I'm thinking she might think I'm trying to proposition her. Finally her mother takes pity on me and they break it, but only after I get a pair of 20 baht flipflops. Flipflops in hand I go to the payphone.

Then I try to call, but the phone does not work like an American one, so I wait for a woman to make a call and watch her. She turns around, looking at me like "Do you mind?" I smile and wander a few feet away. Finally, I get on the phone and get the hotel. I ask for directions, but they don't really understand me - I say Lakhsi Plaza and Plaza is the only thing they hear. The operators are confused, and pass me around for a while. "You're at the mall? We're right in back." Well, I think, maybe they're part of the mall -  and it turns out they are part of a mall - a different one. So for the next half hour I'm riding around on escalators with a lot of Thais who are staring at me, going up, down, into the food court, past the video arcade, the only foreigner in sight. Eventually, I realize the only people here who want to show me hospitality are the hookers by the men's room. So I break down. I decide to call my cousin.

I found out 3 days ago that my English cousin Paul Corrigan is living in Bangkok, working for an ad agency. I thought I'd give him a call from my hotel, and offer to pick him up in the car. His dad and mine have been rivals since childhood. Everyone in my family is a rather strong willed, control freak know it all (except me, of course). Calling him out of the blue and saying "Hi, I know we've met only once before, but I'm your cousin, and by the way, I'm in Thailand, and I'm lost"  was the last thing I wanted, but at this point I'm willing to give in. I get his answering machine. Now it's about 5. And I realize it'll be dark in about an hour.

So I get in the car again and get back on the road to the airport. There I can either return the car - or, in the case that I was really masochistic, check the address of the hotel and then retrace my steps into town. This time I don't get on the highway. I keep going, and I'm led onto a different highway. This highway goes to another entirely different section of Bagkok. This time, whenever I try to get off, I get onto yet another highway! So after this happens three times I'm about 10 miles away and there is no way to figure out how to get back to the airport.

And now it's dark. I'm somewhere in a shanty town in Bangkok traffic. Three lanes (it was designed for two) of cars that move suddenly for a block and then stop for five minutes for no apparent reason and start again whenever I light a cigarette. I pass lots of highrise hotels that I can't get to - they're on the other side of the road. But now, at least, I know I'm on Ploemchit Road. That's in English on the sign, and it's on my map! I turn on the light and read the map whenever the traffic stops, and from the skyskrapers around guess where I am. And it turns out I'm right, because when I make a guess about which turn to make I find the traffic circle I expected, and the Victory Monument, and all of the sudden I'm on the road which goes to the hotel (Phaholyothin Road in scenic Chatuchak). Victory is mine. Two miles up, I avoid going onto the wrong road by staying right of a divider. No wait, this time it's a right turn lane - three lanes wide - and I'm going somewhere else.

I make an illegal uturn. I pull into a Caltex station. I realize I have Caltex business cards, so I grab one (I'm now Michael Eskin from Dallas, lubes product salesman).  I try to impersonate a Caltex manager - you know, the kind who fly in from another continent  late on a Saturday night to spot check the gas stations. I'm hoping to get someone to help me. And they do. I have ten people gathered around - an entire family - trying to make sense of my map and figure out where I am. No one can speak, much less read, English.They can't even figure out where the hell they are on a map of their own city. They motion to the station, and I smile and nod, yes sir, this is a great place you got , keep up the good work. Then this old man with a withered hand - some kind of wizened gas station elder - walks up. He tells me where I am, and even gives me some directions in English. He motions to the business card. I motion, sure, keep it, Michael's got a million of them, thinking, hey, why not give him a call? I retrace my steps to find a place to swing around again, which takes three miles of grinding traffic.

For about the last hour the friendly voice of X 95.5 on the radio has been replaced by a broadcast of the Thai news agency, in sprained English. In the news: Ministers talk about Thai leather goods. Ministers say that there has been an increase of exporting of Thai leather goods. This is a direct result of people in other countries buying more Thai leather goods. Second item:  Young people face many challenges, such as inexperience, lack of education, and unhappiness. The Thai people will change this as part of an official campaign called "Young people, a brighter tomorrow." A central part of the plan is a series of cheerful festivals. This just in:  The Thai Authority for Tourism has gotten permission from Parliament to change the "Visit Thailand" tourism campaign to "Amazing Thailand". The campaign was originally called "Visit Thailand" but after much debate it was decided that the TAT would request to change the name to "Amazing Thailand" to emphasize the many amazing qualities of Thailand. "Visit Thailand" had originally been called "Revisit Thailand" because in 1987 the TAT had a campaign called "Visit Thailand".  This goes on for about half an hour - with opinions for and against. Followed by an educational segment on 19th century Bangkok hotels. I'm still listening because it's in English and nothing else is. That tenuous connection to sanity stretches a little thinner. I consider ditching the car and getting a cab. Could I find the car again? I wonder if I can make Avis believe I got carjacked? Yeah sure, all they wanted was the car. They popped the trunk so I could get my computer and luggage... meanwhile I can't even stop the car in the wall to wall traffic. What if I just offered the car to one of these guys walking through the traffic? Would he even know how to drive?

This continues for a while until I get back to the place I made my last mistake and this time I stay left, and lo! in the distance is the glowing tower of the Central Plaza Hotel, in English. I get to the point where it's about a block away, and all I have to do is turn right - but there's no break in the divider. Like Kafka's Tower it receeds into the distance, close but unreachable. There are no uturns, and a few miles later I'm back on the road to the airport. I turn around again. Because this time, for sure, I know where I'm going. Hell, I've seen the place. I wait to turn around behind 500 or more buses. Popular place, I think, but then it is just behind the mall... I deftly maneuver around them and turn down a side road behind a bunch of cabs. For half an hour I'm waiting to get down an alleyway wedged between what looks like the high walls of two back yards. Motorcycles thread through the traffic. I fight may way up the street as it suddenly becomes two way. Finally I follow the cabs... into the Bangkok bus depot. I'm in the taxi line to pick up passengers. A woman at the gate hands me a ticket, and I wait for a passenger. I have to lock the back doors to prevent Thais from hopping into the car with me. After waving away some hopeful fares I finally escape back to the road.

Again, I get to the crucial place and make the turn into the hotel. Then it splits. I pick left. And without warning I'm back on a tour of the central Bangkok highway system. Things are beginning to look familiar. I am beginning to know how to get around - not that I'm happy about it. I'm running over the lyrics to "One Night in Bangkok", from Chess,  in my head - "One night in Bangkok makes the hard man humble..."  Then Beck comes on again. A policeman pulls me over for driving in the bus lane. It was apparently clearly marked in Thai. "You pay fine. 1000 baht." This is about $40, more than I changed at the airport. I motion to my pockets and shake my head and shrug. "You go to the police station." "Yes!" I say, a little too eagerly. The last thing he wants is to actually have to take me - and my rental - to the station, so he settles for the remainder of my 500 baht. Then I ask him directions. He points right behind me. I can't see the hotel, but I figure what the hell, if he gets me there it was worth a $20 bribe. Sure enough, after turning around I finally arrived at the hotel at 10pm - a mere 7 hours after leaving the airport. And I turn on the TV and there's Beck, doing Saturday Night Live.... too weird.