Whenever I hear or read the phrase “the boys in brown” I know that the Thai police are going to be slated for something or other. But here in Phana I can have no complaint about the police at all. It is true that I have twice been ‘fined’ 200 Baht but I can’t complain about that either.
In Amnat Charoen I was ticketed for parking on the wrong side of the road on an even date, or maybe on an odd one. I couldn’t read the details of the parking sign. My fault.
On the outskirts of Ubon I was stopped at the Highway Police station and told I had been driving at 95 kms per hour, and the officers proudly showed me their new speed gun. They fined me, though, for not having my driving licence with me. And actually I had thought I was going faster than 95! Now I try to remember to slow down when I’m about 1 km away from there, but I’ve never seen them out with their toy since then. Perhaps they had only been testing it, or they had been lent it temporarily. Anyway, it did the trick of getting me to slow down from then on.
Showing my Thai driving licence, which I have also had to do at several checkpoints in the last few years, is always interesting. It was issued in 1969 and is very tattered although it is still in its original plastic wallet. It looks nothing like the current driving licences, and I look nothing like the person (a young me!) shown in the photo on it. But it is always accepted after a few minutes of puzzlement on the part of the policeman and sometimes an explanation from me about how long I have been inThailand.
There are often road checks by the police on the outskirts of Phana, always on the road to Trakan. When they see me coming, though, they usually wave me through, and salute me too. I like that. If they haven’t recognised my car, I stop, wind down the window, and the policeman says “I’m sorry uncle, I didn’t know it was you.” That’s nice too.
For several years we were visited at home by two policemen on a motorbike five times every day. Each time they signed a notebook which was kept in a little red box attached to the gate. This was because we were paying them to provide security for us (‘protection money’ is what Pensri called it, innocently). There is no crime in Phana, so it was never clear exactly what threat we were being secured against. They occasionally provided us with redundant advice about locking the house when we went out, but more often one of them would wander into the garden and either admire the flowers or criticise the layout. Policemen, it seems, prefer their trees and plants to be arranged in straight lines.
Several of the policemen have told me that they are keen to be transferred somewhere else because there is no chance of promotion in Phana. This is because there is no crime. One of them said he was keen to be sent elsewhere because no-one in Phana wanted to marry him. And now the tetsaban has taken over village security so there is no money from that source to be shared around back at the station. A policeman’s lot is not a happy one, indeed.
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