Word: wiset
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...hundred baht. Take it or leave it," says Wiset Samsee. I've been negotiating with the 28-year-old driver for some time, but Wiset is unmoved. He seems more interested in the procession of jiggling, pierced, backpacker flesh parading down Bangkok's Khao San Road than in tackling the Friday-afternoon rush hour...
...cigarette. "80 baht?" I venture. It's almost 6 p.m., and every minute wasted means another minute's worth of traffic backing up in the capital's sclerotic arteries. The hell with haggling, it's still less than $3. "Okay," I concede, "100 baht. And please, drive carefully." Wiset flicks a switch and the two-stroke engine explodes into life with a flatulent blast, filling the immediate vicinity with evil blue fumes...
...climb into the back seat. Wiset guns the engine and the vehicle peels out from the curb with an ear-splitting squeal. We part the crowds of ravers, rastas, scammers, weirdos and the rest of the Khao San fauna before we're spat out into the dozen or so lanes of sheer automotive apoplexy that is Ratchadamnoen Avenue...
...cardinal rules of riding in tuk tuks. There's a loud thwack, a roar of exhaust and a fiery jolt of pain in my kneecap. A goggled gladiator on a motorbike has clipped me on his way past, without even stopping to see if I am O.K. Wiset pulls over at the next set of lights. As I abandon the tuk tuk and hobble off in search of a taxi, the kind with four doors, four wheels and a meter, I'm wondering what's more amazing: that I still have two moderately functioning legs, or that it was possible...
Among aristocratic women, the game is particularly popular, a result not out of harmony with the comment of Owen Wiset's Virginian that Queen Elizabeth would have made a good poker player. Any woman who could fool a Spanish king certainly would not lose money to a cowboy...
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