Bua's apprentice

The auto rickshaw is ubiquitous in hot, poor countries; samosa, trishaw, autorick this most basic form of automated transport goes by many names. In Thailand it's called a  tuk tuk (the name is onomatopoeic, like put-put in English)  and is as recognizable a symbol of the county as the white elephant or the political coup. It's pictured on T-shirts, souvenir shot glasses and carved out of coconut shells and hawked in every part of the country.

 The odd three wheeled contraption that looks more like a lost bet than a vehicle spews black smoke and sounds like a chainsaw as it clogs up traffic nation wide. They're a main stay of Thai transportation, utilized by school kids and marketers for the ability to cram masses amounts of goods and humans in and go a good distance for small money. As much as they are a day to day necessity for some Thai people they can equally be the bane of a tourists holidays. The Thai news is riddled with tuk tuk horror stories ranging from innocuous tales of people being taken to rip off outlet stores instead of their desired destination to the more serious problems of  the tuk tuk mafias in Phuket and Pattaya intimidating and even severely beating people for denying their outrageously over priced services.

Personally I gave up on Tuk Tuks long ago as a minor annoyance with little function. They're not as nimble as a motorcycle taxi for getting where you need to go in a hurry and they cost about the same as a real taxi  without offering the comfort and safety of being in a big air conditioned metal box.

Pimped out tuk tuks gettin sick on the streets.

But to write about jobs specific to Thailand and not include the tuk tuk would be like writing about pornography and skipping the sex. And to do them justice its important to put them in their natural habitat, Bangkok, the city they have evolved to move through.

Along the popular side streets of Sukumvit rd. tuk tuk drivers park their rides in groups in front of hotels and major walking intersections and harass pedestrians. Often these tuk tuks are tricked out with serious stereo equipment, disco lights and extravagant interiors and just as in the jungle the species with the ostentatious colors are poisonous. These drivers stand around all day chanting a mantra that usually sounds something like ' Hey where you go? You want disco? Have nice lady? Massage? Drink whiskey? boom boom?' Maybe more amazing than the fact they're willing to stand around doing that all day is the fact that every once in a while someone takes them up on it.

It wasn't too far from there though that I ran into a driver who seemed sane and more or less decent. He approached me but instead of shouting out a list of the most obvious vices he could provide he started to tell me about a big breasted fiberglass sculpture that was sat in front of the Thai ministry of culture. Buddha's mother, he told me and then explained she was a character from the Ramayana. He sort of explained the connection in a vague way that had little to do with the actual mythology but his English was good and he seemed like someone I could spend some time with.I told him I wanted to learn about being a tuk tuk driver and that I would pay him for half a day and that he could still pick up fares along the way. When he understood what I was talking about he countered with the idea that if I wanted to learn about being a tuk tuk driver in Bangkok then I would have to act as his mark and let him take me to tailors and jewelry shops where he would receive a commission for delivering me. It seemed a fair trade off, we would use each other.

The economics of the tuk tuk drivers is a strange seemingly impossible economy. In addition to providing transportation to the locals for little money what most tuk tuk drivers in and around the tourist areas rely on is acting as touts for business. For hotels, bars, massage parlors of course but also for tailors, jewelers and trinket shops where they pick up a fee for delivering foreigners, whether they buy anything or not.

Bua has been driving a tuk tuk in Bangkok for 22 years, starting when he was only 18 years old. For 12 hours a day he hangs out in the Satorn area at a corner with 5 or 6 other drivers where will take a straight fare but also cajoles tourists into letting him take them to his 'sponsors' as he calls the shops that pay to deliver foreigners. The deal is he'll take you almost any where you want to go if you'll visit two of his shops where he collects a hundred baht each, plus a percentage if you actually buy something. By doing this his goal is to make at least a thousand Baht a day, half of which go to his expenses and the other in his pocket.

Bua in his ride.

Bua doesn't own his tuk tuk he leases it per year which works out to be about 300 baht a day. An additional 200 baht goes to fuel and he's responsible for upgrades and or repairs to the machine. His tuk tuk is fairly plain with the exception of having his name upholstered on the passengers seat and sporting a chrome deaths head gear shift. He would of course like to buy his own tuk tuk but he cant ever get far enough ahead to raise the 600k baht ($20,000), 150k for the machine and 450k for the license which is good for life. His daily goal is to earn at least 1,000 baht which after expenses gives him 500 take home.

We roll up to our first stop, a large tailors shop where there are already two or three other tuk tuk touts waiting outside for their people. I ask how long I need to stay inside so that he can get his commission. Never mind he says, as long as you want.

Inside I'm pounced on by one of the ten or so Indian salesman who right away takes me by the arm and shows me a hideous suit inquiring how many I might want. All Tailor shops in Bangkok are manned by Indians, because they're cheaper than Thai's, says Bua, but of course its because they can speak English.

I go through the pantomime of negotiating over a leather motorcycle jacket which raises the salesmen hopes. I keep asking for a quote and he keeps trying to get me to let him give me a fitting, thinking that once he had my numbers I couldn't back out of the deal. In the end I got a quote which actually was pretty tempting and took their card before leaving. Bua was waiting outside, O.K? One more? We agreed I would do four shops for him.

Bua's tuk tuk personalized with custom back seat.

We traveled around a small highly touristic part of downtown Bangkok going from shop to shop in light Sunday afternoon traffic. Visiting the tailors actually turned out to be fun as I haggled over the price of the fictitious jacket, in turn telling each shop I had received an ever cheaper quote from the shop I had visited before hand to the outrageous consternation of the salesmen who hooted and guffawed and wagged their heads at the pittance I was offering. It was the same in each shop.

This jacket sir, this jacket very nice and is going to look very good for you we should do a fitting just now?

Sure but I need a price first, the last place I went told me it would be about 3,500 baht ($100) what can you do for me?

3,500 is impossible who told you this. This is lie, this jacket for 3,500 can not.

Here, I would hand them a card from another shop, they told me 3,500, ready tomorrow.

Impossible, they are bad lying to you sir. Never for that price.

Of course all the tailors know exactly how much each would pay to have something made since they all use the same sweat shops to get their work done.

The jewelry shops were different, they didn't even try and sell me anything. They could see right off from my clothes and lack of accouterments that I wasn't a customer for them and yet still they gave Bua his 100 baht commission. It is a logic that befuddles me when I think about it, tuk tuks giving rides for free to tourists who agree to stop at two or so shops they don't want to go to where salesmen will argue and harangue them to buy something they don't want and 95% of the time wont buy so the tuk tuk can get a 100 baht commission from the shop that has made nothing on the deal. How many tuk tuks a day do they pay off? From what I saw there were three or four at each stop, if each stop is 15 minutes that equals 2,000 baht an hour, or 20,000 baht a day. It sounds impossible, but this is the way so much of the Thai economy works I cant doubt it too much.

Deaths head shifter,  always a cool touch.

As we were finishing up Bua asked me if I wanted to drive the tuk tuk which of course I did. I thought he meant in a parking lot or an abandoned side street some where but he pulled over right where we were, in one of the most congested areas in one of the most congested cities in the world and let me take over.

The tuk tuk controls are very basic; handle bar with throttle, foot clutch on the left brake on the right with a couple toggle switches for lights and indicators. The gear shift is an H pattern four speed with a wide, indifferent swing between gears. The throttle is jumpy and the brakes are touchy but revving it up and weaving through traffic is a crazy kind of near death fun. On Rama 4 road I get it to its top speed of about 60 kilometers an hour and the thing feels jiggly and top heavy on the road. Making turns it handles like a shopping cart and after only ten minutes or so of driving I'm sweating like a coal stoker, the drivers sear sits right above the engine and heats up fast.

Pedestrians do a double take as we whip by, farang at the command and a Thai in the passengers seat taking a video with his phone, its like a look into the possible future when the Asian economy finally crushes the west and farangs are migrating to the cities here to work as waitress' and ditch diggers. He let me drive it all the way back to my hotel where the staff know me and whopped as I pulled up in the tuk tuk. Bua and I shook hands on the deal and he took off to make the second half of his days nut.