I remember renting a motorbike in Chiang Mai. It was not my first time renting a bike when traveling, in fact I’d rent a bike whenever possible because it is always convenient to go places on one. The convenience of stopping whenever I feel like stopping is unrivalled by any other mean of transportation.
And never had I bumped into a traffic police, at least not anyone that stopped me and asked for my license, which was none – until this trip to Chiang Mai.
I was making a one full round of the four-cornered Old Quarter of Chiang Mai when I bumped into a road-block – a major one. I could see a lot of the local motorists flagged aside and questioned by the traffic police. Since the whole of the Old Quarter runs strictly on a one-way traffic system, it was too late for me to split away from it.
Things went so fast and I was there going face-to-face with the policeman before I knew it. Caught off-guard without any idea of what to do apart from surrendering myself to whatever hell that might come. I stopped as the policeman flagged me down with a gesture.
Somehow right at that moment something in me just worked with its own thought, and I found myself taking out my wallet from my little sling bag, rummaging through it as if I’d find some sort of saviour in there. And somewhere among all the ATM and credit cards that I stuffed inside my lil wallet of which mostly are useless, I caught sight of my Malaysian driving license. And quiet on an impulse, I reached to it and took it out and before I knew it was already in the hand of the policeman.
There was a long long pause when the Thai policeman looked at it. He tried to find some answer in it, but it didn’t seem easy for him.
Probably feeling defeated, he took it to another policeman, probably one of his superiors, and this superior took a long look at it (my Malaysian driving license) before mumbling something and returned it back to the policeman that stopped me. This policeman then returned it back to me and gave me a go-ahead.
There was a big relief in me – alright – but also I chuckled inside, still thinking how I managed to pull a trick at the very last minute, and succeeded. It was so damn funny to me even now.
Heh. You lucky bastard.