Airport Unrest

Just my luck! They let in thousand of unwanted protestors without lifting a finger and they stop me with pointed rifles telling me taxis were not allowed past this checkpoint. I decided to play golf today at the Royal Air Force Golf Course at Don Muang Airport for probably three reasons. It is the cheapest golf course in Bangkok (about 12 dollars), it is in the middle of two runways ( one for the military and one civilian and I love to see planes take-off and land )and three I wanted to see what the conditions at the airport were like. If they had orders to stop a little old 'farang' guy in a taxi, why couldn't they stop the hordes that took over the airport?

Yesterday I played golf at the Thai army facility and a German couple said that they were still in Thailand at least a week after the planes were supposedly running. I guess there was such a backlog of tourists wanting to get out of Thailand that it took about ten days or so to get them all on planes leaving the country. However, each passenger received 2,000 baht or something like 60 a day to help defray the cost of their extended stay.

After these two kids wearing uniforms and playing with rifles made me get out of the taxi and wait for a club motorcycle I was not amused. After waiting for about 10 minutes, the motorcycle guy made me wear a helmet (which was way too big) and made no effort to help me with my clubs. One hand was trying to keep my helmet from flying off my head the other hand tugging at the golf clubs behind me so I would have something to play with when I arrived. The driver, because the road was quite open, was driving like he was it Le mans or somewhere and took off like a bat out of hell. It was lucky I arrived in one piece.

After paying my green fees and getting a fantastic hat for free, things were really starting to look up. It was going to cost me very little to play, I was going to see tons of airplanes take off and land and the course looked all right. However, as soon as I got to hole number one I realized it was not going to be quite the picnic I imagined. There were tons of other people waiting to tee off. I was not the only genius who thought the price was right. Luckily three old guys asked me to play with them which I agreed to immediately. One guy could hardly walk, another had some strange contraption on his neck and the third guy looked like he was 80. I outdrove all of them by 80 yards on the first hole. After we all got bogeys, one old guy asked me if I wanted to play 20 baht (or 60 cents) for each hole. I almost, in fact, I did, feel sorry for the guy and I was going to give him strokes! Wouldn’t that have been foolish. I won the second hole and he immediately gave me 20 baht and I was feeling very badly for taking advantage of such an old guy. Then they added an additional bet which was to play two persons against two persons taking the best score of the group for an additional 20 baht bet. If two people hit the ball to the left, for example, they were a team for the next hole.Somehow my teammate always seem to take an errant shot or two and I lost 20 baht on every hole and all of a sudden the ‘old’ guy starting punching the lights out getting birdie, par, bogie, birdie etc. Was I set up or what? Each hole cost me 40 baht or $1.20. All of a sudden I realized this was not going to be such a cheap day.

To add insult to injury, on the second hole I figured I better get a drink but did not have enough money so I went to run to my bag for more cash. Everyone was yelling at me to stop, stop, but I kept going straight for my bag, not realizing I was running through fresh, newly laid cement. My shoes got covered in yuk, two old guys had to repave the area I walked through and the cakewalk I was anticipating turned out to be more of a cement walk in reality as well as metaphorically.

The next time some Thai wants to bet with me I hope I remember to say no thank you, except there is no word in Thai for no!