here’s a story that happened to me, that could perhaps make a fun christmas movie. This adventure started Dec 23 2001 in Bangkok Thailand, below a photo of my travelling buddy Eric & Myself iin our hotel room, around midnight.
We should of known something was off, as when we entered the hotel lobby there was 30 women sitting in the lobby with numbers on their dresses, basically call girls as we know bangkok has a high prostitution industry. The hotel room look something out of a James Bond movie, overlooking the city with huge sliding windows you could literally fallout of as there was no railing just a flimsy screen door. We set our luggage down in the room, I notice a flyer for massages next to the phone. Heck it was like 11$ for an hour massage, so we rang up a few therapist.
Enter walks in two ladies from the lobby with number, I immediately knew what was going on now. The hour goes by normally, back & legs massage, eventually my girl starts flirting with me, I think she was trying to make a few bucks with a happy ending, I’m not interested in any of that yet I notice Erik’s girl not really doing anything. Puzzled I proclaimed to him, I dont think you girls a girl, he turns around and looks closer. Realizing I was right, he gets up a bit surprised and tells them to get out, he then says I need a drink big time, lets head down to the hotel restaurant to eat and have a drink or a few.
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Now we are sitting in a lavish bar speaking in English, two men sit next to us. One was dressed in army Fatigue, the other started speaking to me asking where we was from with our English accent. We share a few drinks, they buy a bunch of rounds, we laughs, eventually call it a night and head back upstairs to rest. This was our last night in Thailand, we had a flight in the morning to Mexico booked for 11 AM. Knock knock on our hotel door at abt 1pm, Erik opens the door to the two Men from Rwanda in the bar, now one was holding a briefcase his hand this time. They make there way in forcefully, offering to smoke us a joint. Remember drugs are punishable by death in Thailand, the spliff gets lit and the brief case opens. Inside was lots of money, in all sorts of currencies, in a complete mess, just throw in there. The biggest fella tell us we are laundering this money for them to US dollars in the morning. Shit! Free money from some scary guys I never met in army gear, I thot to myself what could go wrong lol lets do it, See ya in the morning, I say. Deep down I knew we where leaving the country anyways so I lied to them. Right when they left our room, we pack our shit and ran from the hotel at 3pm, as we wanted nothing to do with this situation.
To kill time before our plane out of here, we head to a night market open all night. These places where wild, you could eat all sorts of meat like alligator, tons of people from all places in the world and some of the coolest toys ever. So I decided to buy a model robot, you know like a model plane you can make as a kid, the photo to the right is the exact model.
The morning sun start to unveil itself, we hoop in a tuktuk taxi towards the airport. The driver seemed off, shaking and drooling I will always wonder if he had encephalitis, human rabies, a vaccine I had to take before hand. On the way I see a guy getting a blow job on a milk crate, thailand is wild. Right before entering the airport a thai women jumps on me crying asking me to take her away from there. I couldn’t help but just look her in the eyes with nothing to say. The plane leaves the air strip, to cross an ocean and land in Mexico Dec 24th, christmas eve.
On the plane I decide to start building that toy mecca robot I bought from the night market in bangkok. As the robots gets finish the plane lands in tijuana around 5 at night. We book a room in a small motel downtown tijuana, then cross the street to eat and have a drink, well a few. All full now, we head back to the motel, at the front doors two guys are smoking a joint. Erik being a super enthusiast of this plant, and I was curious abt what mexican weed vibes like. We ask them if they have any, they pass us the joint eventually one guy says if you want more we have some on our hotel room.
Erik approves, saying ya ill buy a few grams, so we head to there room in the same hotel. One of the guy opens the door for me, so I enter the room first, to my surprise another guy behind the door smashes a flower vase on my shoulder and ceramic cuts my head. A knife comes out and gets put to Eriks neck, im pushed on the ground. The asshole with the knife says, you guys are getting robed. He orders his friend to hold me hostage, as he goes to our room with Erik to take all our luggage and belongings. As I”m laying on the floor, a gun is now pointed at me, staring at a barrel being held right in my face by some gangster with a crucifix of Jesus necklace dangling from his neck, that juxtaposition of that moment will always stay we me.
random
down the barrel of a gun
Erik in the hallway gets balls of steel and pushes the knife away from his throat and runs down the hotel stairs towards the entrance, as we where on the second floor. He approaches the front doors of the motel, they had been locked like the fucking clerks where in on it we think. So Erik throws a lobby chair thru the front window, he jumps out and luckily notices a cop a block up. They guy with the knife startled, runs the other way down the street never to be seen again.
Eventually I hear bang bang on the door, Policia Policia. The gun gets thrown under the bed, the bad guys open the door. Everyone gets arrested, and we all get put into cop cars. Oddly one of the crooks was in the car with us, the one with the crucifix. The cops start driving, I immediately ask what’s going on, to learn we are going to jail for investigation. I’m like fuck that, clearly the victim having a decent amount of blood on me, I ain’t going to no Mexican jail. So I ask how much money to get out of this? He respond 150$ each, I had a bunch of money stored under the sole of my shoe, I heard in some travel book its was a good idea. So I say sure, but i only had 200$, plus Erik had some change in his pockets. The cop screeches the tire on the side of a Tijuana side street, opens the trunks and chucks our luggage on the ground, un cuffs all three of us and drives away. The bad guy decides to finally feel guilt, and offers me to go to his house to shower as i was covered in blood still. As he approaches me I swing a punch at his head, hitting his forearm, he stumbles a bit to the ground and decided to run off, I go after him but Erik stops me and says its over now.
My misfortune became your fortune!
So as we are sitting on an unknown street in the middle of the most dangerous cities in the world, the sun starts to rise, its now chistmas morning. Erik’s smoking a cigarette sitting on a curb, I decide to call my family from a payphone. For some reason I take that toy robot from Thailand with me to the phone. I wish my family a merry xmas, didn’t tell them nothing abt what had just happened, the call ends. I think to myself, why carry a breakable fragile toy with me while I’m backpacking around the world, so I leave it on the shelf where the phone books are.
I make my way back to Erik smoking another smoke, the city seems to be waking up, people and cars fill the streets. Eventually I see this little boy running around, to my surprise he ends up seeing that toy robot I had left. He picks it up and starts playing with it, then runs downs the street. Curious, I follow him from a distant, a few block pass and he turns a corner, I see a young women begging for spare change in a tattered light pink dress. This must have been his mother, because with a huge smile on his face he shows her the toy robot, like he just got a cool christmas gift from Santa. I immediately also smiled thinking how the misfortune of the last 24 hours, ended up creating this moment. All the stress and anxiety in me left, life sure is a magically odd adventure at times. Altho we had almost lost it all I was still alive, having now found solace, I was ready for the next adventure…
