Part Three of: "A Series of Unfortunate Events: Brad Travels Southeast Asia"
Sadly, this one is true.
I had been in Phuket for two days at the time. I wanted to tour around the area a bit and see what was left of the tsunami damage. Michelle and I went to rent mopeds and within the first five minutes, I had driven it into a parked silver Toyota. I know what your thinking, well maybe you could just drive away and nobody would notice, right? Only problem with that theory is that I managed to sideswipe the car that belonged to a hotel. Parked in front of the open air check-in desk...where the manager happened to be sitting. Dammit.
Luckily, I wasn't injured (thank God). What happened was that I was trying to make a u-turn to go back and get Michelle after I'd driven maybe 150m down the road to sort of get my bearings on the moped. When I tried to accelerate slightly to get the thing turned, it shot across two lanes of traffic and was going too fast for me to turn the moped sharply enough to avoid the car. So instead of avoiding the car, I sideswiped it starting around the rear quarter panel up to about the drivers side (right side in Thailand) side mirror. Unfortunately for you, I forbade any of my friends from photographing the "scene" of this "occurrence."
The hotel manager was actually not that upset. He just wanted his money. Nor was the place that rented the moped to me angry. They just wanted their money. Originally, the hotel manager wanted about US$400 to fix the car. So much for things being cheaper in Thailand! Michelle was able to talk him down about $50, so although bad, it wasn't as bad as it could have been. The moped shop ended up sucking about US$60 out of me to fix the mirrors and headlight cover on the moped.
In the final analysis, I think the problem is that the throttle (or throttles in general) on the moped wasn't spring loaded. I guess I thought they would be spring loaded so that if you took your hand off of it, it would cut the engine. Not so, my friends. At least not in Thailand. Does anyone know if that's how they are in the US? At this point, I'm just curious.
Needless to say, I was pissed and at this point genuinely fearful for my safety. I'd already had the passport go missing cutting short my trip by four days, and now I had nearly been injured/killed. Luckily, I was able to extract some early birthday money from my folks back home along with a bit of an emergency loan thrown in for good measure. My travelers check supply had been entirely wiped out by paying off the hotel and moped shop. I'll probably pay them back the extra eventually...I think.
The other thing that pissed me off is that everyone else in Phuket rides the damn things seemingly without incident. Though a lot of the people there are European tourists and they have those Vespas back home which is sort of cheating. And Thais don't really count since it's in their genes or something. Thais can put like 2-3 people on one moped and the passengers still manage to sleep!
Up next, I either spent time in a Thai prison or get terrible food poisoning. Excitement, she wrote!