I love teh police, me.
Especially when you add a language barrier, laws you don't understand, a healthy dose of corruption and a culture that you've only known anything about for the last 3 days.

T'was new years day, Koh Chang, Thailand. The night before had contained as much merriment as you could expect on a tropical island with non exsitant licencing laws and fireworks made of pottery. This, lack of sleep and 2 of my mates (one of them's mankydog from the B3ta board, the other's big_treacle, but he's a bit shy) shortly heading back to the UK ensured that we weren't up for doing the same again, so we went to our favourite bar for a couple of beers before crashing out. The bar in question was our favourite mainly due to the owner. He never slept, laughed hysterically at anything you said, insisted on getting you very, very drunk and lived purely off tequilla slammers. Legendary.

As we approached the bar Bo, the slammer addict directed us to a table where 2 thai girls were sat. One was perfoming a quite blatant attempt at skinning up (emptying a cigarette and repacking it). Some local looking guys walked into the bar and had a word with the owner, who directed them to another bar down the beach. A couple of minutes later I take a cig out my packet and put it in my mouth, only to be grabbed from behind by a thai guy telling me he's a policeman and I'm smoking Ganja. Bear in mind that at this point the said thai girl was still making a (now slightly more covert) bad job of skinning up, so no one's smoked anything illegal at this point... given a couple more minutes we blatantly would have. We all tried to convince him it was just a cigarette, but he and his colleagues are quite determined to put the thai girl (who's unfortunately named Pooh), and I in the cells for the night. I got the impression that there might have been a "fine" we could have payed, but with the pay off equalling the equivalent of about £570 per copper, there being four of them and the banks being shut it wasn't really going to happen, so off we trot to the police station.

Woo!

One statement written in Thai (on a typewriter) later and I have an accumulation of filth stood around me demanding I sign. Yeah right, why don't I just walk up to the Bangkok Hilton and ask if they've got any rooms myself to save the pigs the petrol. Several mindgames later I'm still adamant that I'm not going to sign, using words like honour and honesty to emphasize my case. They decide a cell is the place for me. The cell wasn't too bad, that was until they put all the other male occupants from the other cells in mine. Trying to keep words like rape and murder out of my head I tried to get some sleep, but a concrete floor covered in biting ants made it a little tricky.

So morning arrives along with the boss man, the little boss man, the guy from the bar and my english mates. Everything official is being conducted by little boss man (Jiew) in THai, they interview me using Pooh, the girl that can't make joints, as interpreter then isolate me in another room. Jiew comes in and lo and behold can talk fluent english, he gets all the questioning out of the way, then sits staring into my eyes slowly tapping a finger on the desk for what seemed like an eternity before asking "you know Bangkok Hilton?", I replied that I did, to which Jiew promptly told me he thought I should rot there for my crimes. You get the picture. He starts explaining the bail procedure which I don't quite get so he hands me a ringing phone saying "english man... maybe he help you". Assuming I was talking to the embassy I reeled off the story of what had happened so far. The guy on the other end of the phone laughed and told me he was a bartender at the place where all the coppers hung out, but he'd see what he could do. Even asked me to come down for a beer after I got out the police station. Lovely chap was Rob. He spoke to Jiew and after that things were a little easier. Dragging the policeman that had taken me off the beach out of bed to tell him off in front of me might have been a little excesive, but you can't have it all your own way. Lots of other wierd stuff was talked about, england, my job (fixing computers, I couldn't be bothered to explain data over mobile networks), the boss man even came in and asked me to value a bottle of wine (?) at the time I was a stella man, so told him I wouldn't pay more than the value of it's equivalent volume in beer. I think they sussed that I was a waster travelling on a credit card with nothing to my name that wouldn't fit into a backpack. So what do they do? They rip up the statement, and write a new one, this one's more along the lines of "Crazy english man start fight in bar because he drink crazy whiskey" charge me 500 baht (about 7-8 quid at the time) and tell me I'm free to go. As I'm walking out the door wondering what just happened Jiew calls me back in and asks me to take a look at his laptop because it starts up slowly. Not wanting to mar our relationship I quickly disabled all that I could in startup and run away leaving Jiew with a satisfied smirk on his face.

I deffinately needed a beer after all that, it's now evening time and I've had about 2 hours sleep in the last 55ish.

The only thing keeping me very awake is the large amount of adrenaline that's still pumping through me. Lets go and see Rob, the nice man on the phone, he works in a bar.

Rob turned out to be a very nice guy, and we sank a couple of singhas as I told him what had happened after I spoke to him last. At this point he decided to inform me that Jiew the policeman was going to pop in for a couple of drinks, which he shortly does, announcing his presence with a big slap on my back and a shout of "HAHAHAHAHA! No Bangkok Hilton for you!" I bought him drinks all night, lost every game of pool and ended up getting on with him quite well considering. Turns out he used to be part of the tourist police on the Ko San Road. As we parted he gave me his card and a reassuring "If you have any problem, you call to me OK?" err... cheers.

On my way home that night I popped into the bar I'd been dragged out of previously to let the mad tequilla slammer drinking owner know I was OK. All he did was laugh when I turned up... but that was all he did anyway. Pooh and her freind were also there looking a bit downhearted so I stopped for a beer with them.
"what happened to that bag of Ganja, Pooh?"
"I bury in sand when police come"
A short excavation later and the bag is ours, we felt duty bound to cain the lot that night. Halfway through a J a guy with posture too good to be a holiday maker walks in and I feel my hackles rise. He says something to one of the girls, she turns to me and says, "This man soldier from Cambodia... he have very good paper" and shows me a packet of Zig Zag king skins. Brilliant, now we can get truly hammered. Keep the tequilla slammers coming please Bo.

With a sound like a chicken being ripped apart my b3ta cherry is no more... must have been the extreme length.

Girth varies upon stimualtion.

You love teh cock.
(ralphseviltwin, Fri 23 Sep 2005, 12:59, Reply)