Ah, Thailand, the land of mystery.
ILLUSTRATIONS: THINKSTOCK; ART: KANOKTHIP KHUNTEERAPRASERT
I write that with the least amount of sarcasm possible. Things really do happen here that are mystical and inexplicable.
I'm not talking about behaviour, as we witnessed during Tuesday's joint sitting of parliament _ an event so pathetic I was determined not to mention it in my column; alas the spirit was willing but my fingertips were weak.
The only mystery surrounding that ruckus was why the riot police didn't take the opportunity to empty the place of all the politicians, not just those 57 Democrats, and allow us to start all over again.
I'm talking about more intriguing mysteries, like the corpse of the monk over at Wat Hua Lamphong that refuses to rot.
"The monk's good karma keeps him intact," a staunch believer, as much well-accustomed to the good deeds of this monk as she was ignorant to the effects of clandestine formaldehyde injections, explained to me once as we stood in front of the glass case that houses that deceased monk.
Mystery is Thailand's middle name, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Things happen here that don't happen elsewhere in the world, as evidenced by the mysterious buses on the Bang Na-Trat Road last week.
This is a mystery for which I have no explanation. I must tell you that upfront, for fear you may think I will finally explain all in the last paragraph of this column. I don't.
I'm sorry; there is no closure. This is a story with no temple boy tip-toeing across the temple in the dead of night clutching a vial of embalming fluid. It is a true mystery. And it involves buses. Lots of 'em.
It began exactly 12 days ago on a rainy Tuesday morning as I was wending my way to work.
My wending requires a trip down the busy Bang Na-Trat Road, a major eastern arterial road out of Bangkok. You probably take it on your way to Pattaya, the airport, Ikea or the Crocodile Farm, if anybody still goes there.
I use it every day as I live out that way in leafy Samut Prakan. On my daily commute along the highway I pass such sights as Bitec Exhibition Hall, Central Bang Na, the Royal Dragon Restaurant _ the world's largest restaurant according to Guinness World Records _ and a giant billboard for the brand new Am Fine Condominium block and no, I would never put a down payment on a place that brazenly omits the subject in its title.
As I sped down the highway that Tuesday morning doing a conservative 130kph, it suddenly occurred to me that things were different.
Rows and rows of parked buses.
One after the other. Lining both sides of the highway, as if the road had been transformed into a used-bus lot. And they remained that way for the rest of the week.
Talk about a "bus stop"! On Friday, I resolved to count them all and I will tell you, just as one should not chat on a mobile phone while clutching a steering wheel, there should be a law against counting and driving.
First of all the concentration required made me inadvertently slow down to 120kph, rendering me unpopular with those poor souls behind me, not to mention slightly swerving to the left almost into a pickup truck full of worse-for-wear Cambodian labourers.
The point is this; when I got to 250 in my count I gave up.
Most appeared to be provincial buses, the ones that travel at speeds that make my daily commute along Bang Na-Trat Road resemble a snail's. And they didn't appear in dribs and drabs either.
There is a TV series in America at the moment called Under the Dome, in which a country town inexplicably finds itself cut off from the rest of the world thanks to an invisible dome. Such a scenario evokes two reactions _ how did the dome get there, and why would any sane person want to follow such a badly-acted show?
These buses were like that alien dome. Was there something special going on at Bitec Exhibition Hall, I wondered? The answer was no, and besides, Bitec has parking for buses _ hundreds of 'em.
Could these be buses that have shipped in protesters? The provinces have vast numbers of people willing to lay down their ploughshares and head on into the city to be political for one day. "Political" is not the right word _ "mercenary" might be better, since each receives a styrofoam box of rice plus a couple of hundred baht for the trip in and out.
Nevertheless, a political rally would explain the sudden "bus event" along Bang Na-Trat Road.
Was it Pefot? You may remember Pefot from this column two weeks ago.
This is the anti-government group currently camped in Lumpini Park, whose name I felt would never quite resonate in the Acronym Hall of Fame.
(I know it sounds like I have it in for Pefot, but honestly, their cause may be worthwhile but their leaders require immediate jettisoning. Last Tuesday, Pefot resolved to show its mettle by "marching to Silom Road". Admirable if your protest is situated somewhere near Government House, but not Lumpini Park. They only had to cross the road at the lights!)Anyway, judging by the numbers at Lumpini Park, there just aren't enough Pefotians to justify 250 buses parked alongside Bang Na-Trat Road.
It has been a busy week for Bangkok buses, by the way. Last month a survey revealed that the No8 bus was the least popular in town. That's the one that starts at Happyland and cuts all the way across town in the worst traffic areas.
As a result the No8 bus drivers have morphed into monsters, ignoring bus stops, getting into races with other buses and generally displaying all the ill effects of having to spend all day in the Bangkok traffic.
Finally, last week the Bangkok Mass Transit Authority called in the three companies it has outsourced this bus line to, in order to reprimand them. "From now on you have to display the bus driver's name prominently so that passengers can complain more easily about you," officials told them.
You can just picture those bus drivers nodding and waiing and looking remorseful, just before breaking into guffaws once the officials were out of earshot.
In the same week we had two bus drivers shooting each other not far from Bang Na-Trat Road. One bus cut off the other and so the other did the same in retaliation. It all ended in tears with the shooting of a teenaged female passenger, as is apt to happen when aggressive bus drivers carry guns.
This is all very interesting but does nothing to explain the proliferation of buses that mysteriously appeared last week.
Then disappeared.
Last Wednesday morning, as I set off for work, I noticed something baffling as I wended my way down Bang Na-Trat Road.
The buses were gone.
All of them. Not a single, solitary one of them left.
There must be a perfectly plausible explanation as to why a motley band of 250 buses would be parked on a stretch of highway for a week, then disappear as fast as it came.
I wonder if I witnessed a mass transit Brigadoon, where 250 buses suddenly appear every 100 years, only to be whisked away into oblivion again until the year 2113.
Maybe it's better that I never know. Mystery is attractive and alluring, just like Thailand is. And belief in good karma is far more exciting than a needle full of formaldehyde.
