 |
|
|
FRED
I’ve been late getting to work over the years, the reasons have always been good , reasonable and on the odd occasion unavoidable, you know the ones, the car broke down, the traffic was chaos, some idiot ran up the arse of some poor unsuspecting slob and every twit and his dog slows to check it out, the road flooded(very popular in Cairns in the wet season) anyway you get the picture and its happened to us all in one way or another, its part of the commuting process, just getting from place to place has its inherent hassles; well we were late getting to work today and it was all Fred’s fault.
We started the day as any other by piling gear into the truck so that we could transport it down to the boat so that we could all go diving, well in this case everyone but me was going diving, I just had to get the gear to the boat, a simple matter one would think and well within my scope of expertise…nup! Wrong again…..this is Thailand ….no such thing as bloody simple here, besides it wasn’t my fault it was Fred’s!
The road that leads from the bungalows down to the main road is dirt, I’ve mentioned this before, it has a huge drainage ditch on either side about two feet deep and about three feet wide, the road itself is slightly wider than your average car and doesn’t handle two way traffic and we have only the one way out…downhill…. if you meet a vehicle coming the other way one of you has to reverse backwards (usually the guy travelling up the hill) until you get to a driveway , you then back into it, allow the other car to pass and bobs your uncle ; it’s a system that works admirably, the trouble is that no-one told Fred about the system; in fact even if someone had told Fred I don’t think he’d give a rats.
You see Fred is a water buffalo, truth in fact his name probably isn’t even Fred, but that’s what I’m calling him, based solely on the fact that he looks like a Fred.
Fred usually lives in the coconut grove that borders the road, we pass fred every morning and never has he given us cause for concern, fred is what you would call docile, in fact as water buffalo go fred is dam near catatonic, he can be seen all day every day standing in the same spot with the same dumb buffalo look on his face chewing his cud or whatever bored buffalo do in Thailand, every now and then he disappears for a day or two then he’s back , life’s pretty cruisey for Fred; so why in gods name did Fred decided to alter his and our morning schedule…..you tell me…buggered if I know…..trust me I asked fred and an answer was not forthcoming!
So here we are driving down our dirt road minding our own business and like a scene from Crocodile Dundee we round the bend that was so crucial to Kurt’s downfall just a few evenings ago and there in all his majestic glory standing in the middle of the road was Fred, all ton and a half of him, six foot horns and a big long snot string dangling from the ring through his nose, he’s just looking at us, he sortv’e has those rummy eyes and a vacant dumb buffalo look, he didn’t even flinch when he saw the truck baring down on him , we stopped …of course…had we not, I suspect we would have come off second best ! Fred’s a big boy.
We then tooted the horn, a sure fire move guaranteed to scare Fred off the road….Ha…..Not bloody likely! Fred is made of sterner stuff!
So we try the next avenue of attack, we lean out the window of the truck and yell and wave our arms at Fred, tooting the horn at the same time….. Nothing….. all the while fred is just staring at us, any moment I expected him to utter the famous Homer Simpson’s….dooh…so we add lots of engine revving to the yelling, arm waving and horn tooting, nothing, nada, zip, fred just stands there drooling and staring at us.
Now I don’t know about you but I haven’t had a lot to do with water buffalo, in fact aside from the odd roadside sighting and Discovery Channel episode that features them ploughing a bloody rice paddy, I can safely say that water buffalo have not featured heavily in my education at all, lets face it, it’s sure as hell not covered in the learn to drive manual that you get in Australia under road hazards!
Yes yes I can hear all you brave souls saying “do a Crocodile Dundee” leap from the car and wave your fingers at him while chanting some mystic dirge and using only the power of my fierce gaze will Fred from the road ! What ? have you lost your freaking minds? When was the last time you got close enough to a full grown buffalo WITH HORNS WIDER THAN I AM TALL without the protection of a bloody big gun, I’ve seen footage on the buffalo catchers in the Northern Territory , these things tear bloody great holes in whopping big tough trucks!!! not on your life mate , this puppy’s staying right where he’s got the best chance of survival, in the two ton ute!! besides the question uppermost in my mind was “ will Fred’s demeanour change if I did get out of the car?” hell he’s already changed his morning ritual , maybe he’s having a buffalo midlife crisis! And I checked, a 1000 pounds or so of pissed off buffalo was not in the mornings plans, I had the paperwork right in front of me!………just to be really sure I had another long look deep into those rummy eyes….nup…. not me…….no way bob….it just aint gunna happen!!
So being the big brave bronzed aussie and a son of those legendary Anzac’s that I am, I turned and in the best authoritive tone I could manage told my Thai driver to get out and move the water buffalo! a simple and reasonable request I thought, surely it was covered in his learn to drive manual, after all it’s a Thai buffalo……
He told me to fuck off!
Can you believe that!?
Thai’s NEVER swear, certainly not in English and certainly not to their western counterparts, admittedly he was laughing at the time but this was not the answer I was expecting to hear, I wanted to hear “no worries mate I’ll jump straight out and move this 1000 pound bugger quick smart!” I certainly didn’t want “fuck off!”…..
“You move him” was the next statement…WHAT! Me!
Oh sod it, this was not going to plan at all!
Now we’re both laughing and Fred is still standing in the middle of the road totally oblivious to the problems he was causing, of course it’s at this precise moment the boss rings and wants to know where the hell we are and why isn’t the bloody gear at the boat where the paying punters are sitting waiting ready to go diving?
Have you ever tried to have a phone conversation with someone when you have lost the plot and are laughing like a loon? lets face it, the situation was completely ludicrous, I’ve got the boss on the phone, mad as hell, Fred doesn’t give a rats, my driver Too (that’s his name) is laughing as hard as I am (thai’s have a great sense of humour) and is still tooting the horn like a mad man and I’m desperately trying to explain that the reason the punters aren’t on there way to Koh Tao is because there’s a water buffalo standing in the middle of the road and it wont move! Funnily enough when I managed to explain exactly what the hell was going on the boss was quite Ok with the problem, in fact he calmed down and treated it as if it was the most normal thing in the world, he calmly asked to speak with Too and a rapid fire conversation in thai ensued, after which Too hung up, reversed the vehicle 20 mtr’s up the road jumped out and ran across the paddock to a small group of houses.
He was gone about 5 minutes and then came running back and jumped back into the car all smiles ….problem fixed he tells me ……fixed ?....How?....Fred was still on the road showing no signs of moving, Too’s sitting there with a big shit eating grin and while I’m still wondering how the bloody problems “fixed” a small boy, and I do mean a SMALL boy, he couldn’t have been more than 7 or 8 years old, comes rushing across the paddock grabs Fred’s nose ring and calmly leads him off the road and back into his paddock…..gosh why didn’t we think of that.
|
|
fred- koh Samui-Thailand 07/06/2006 06:35
