Pattaya–day 2

We had a great day. Here is the breakdown:

* Kicked it at the beach. $3 for a plate full of shrimp another $3 for a plate full of crabs.
* Rented motorbikes and Daniel immediately got lost. Followed someone who looked like me for an hour.
* I’ll be damned if I give a bribe to a corrupt cop… We got yelled at and threatened, and demanded to pay the bribe. Then we got our bikes confiscated. The crime? Our wheel was over the white line on a red light, along with like 50 other people.
* Google found me an expat military lawyer online. The guy told us that ‘our’ cops along with entire Thai police force was a bunch of thieves and robbers.
* When we got our bikes they demanded a holding fee. We showed completely empty wallets and gave them whatever cash we scraped together.
* Day ended with beer.

Total damage. Cop demanded 1000 Bhat each, even from the passenger… for a total of 200-300 Bhat fine. The entire twisted legal process cost us 2000 and we still don’t know what the hell we did wrong.

Advice we got from the tourist police: on day one of your visit to Thailand, get a couple of fake Thai driver licenses, and give these out every time you get arrested. Imagine that!

There is some advice here… lets see. Regardless of your intent or desire to follow the rules you can still get arrested for some obscure reason. You can pay a bribe, I say, don’t pay more than $20-30. Alternatively, you can simply walk away… having assumed you’ve taken the right precautions. When you rented the bike, or check into hotel, or do anything, under no circumstances, EVER let anyone have your passport. They can have a stack of copies or write down whatever information they need, but the original is always with you. So, assuming you werent stupid enough to give your passport when you rented the bike, you have only your deposit to lose. So, a 1000 deposit or a 3000 bribe. Math is simple. Simply walk away, and the bike rental place will get a bike and share it with the cops.

As we found out, a lot of times, the bike rental places tell the cops who to arrest and they get a kickback.

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