Did my monthly thirty second visit to Laos today. Only stopped twice by the porcine highway patrol. Using what must be considered either brilliant or pathetic in the extreme, the first officer who stopped us claimed that we shouldn’t be traveling in the right hand (passing) lane of the highway. What in the name of God’s creation to they create the two lanes for, I ask? He was happy to let of us with a gentle warning and relieve us of a negotiated 100 baht. “Keep left,” he uttered as we drove away. What’s more is that the police we’re positioned in a spot (in Thailand they don’t pull you over from behind, but rather stand in the middle of the road and wave you over) that isn’t far from an intersection, meaning that right turning cars would naturally turn into the right lane. The second swine snare – tis’ the swine that do the snaring, the public that is snared – we made through thanks to headlight flashing motorists traveling in the opposite direction that allowed me to pull into the non-bribery lane well in advance. We were stopped later and the officer almost had us on a registration violation for not displaying a sticker that lacked the very essence of its stickerness – adhesion, and thus was in our glove compartment. Not quick enough on his toes to manufacture any other porkpoop, the officer had to let us on our way.
In Thailand the police are simply the largest and best-organized criminal enterprise. Little more than highwaymen with uniforms, they have a military-like structure that means they answer to a central authority and not to local taxpayers. The only conciliation is that due to their meager salary, they are relatively inexpensive to payoff. One hundred baht is about two dollars and fifty cents US.