The Gas Taxi

At the end of my very first physical therapy appointment (for an injury I sustained while attempting an advanced dismount from an elephant’s hind leg), I hobbled through the sliding glass doors and into a taxi. I had to go to the Emporium—a very large and very posh shopping mall—to pick up a few supplies for school the next day. As the taxi started winding its way down the narrow, congested streets, weaving around motorcycles and motorized street vendor carts, I pulled out my bandage and started wrapping my foot in the slow, patient figure eights that the doctor had shown me.

When we got to Sukhumvit Road, the traffic thickened and oozed slowly, and the intersections were filled with the brazen puzzle pieces of cars squeezing themselves together, attempting to insert themselves into the cluttered, fatty artery of road with the hopes of somehow inching forward in spite of the impossibly long and ruthless stare of the red light.

This being Thailand, the traffic is silent. Noticeably absent are the jarring exhalations of horns, the spurts of profanity, and the crunch of impatient fender benders. The traffic is constant and organic. It is a living, breathing entity in this city. It is unavoidable, and requires complete surrender. It will have you. It will ensnare you and absorb you like oxygen particles, like nutrients.

And I was happily sitting in the back of the taxi, elevating my wrapped and swollen foot, watching the static faces of the drivers and passengers in the cars next to me. Not a flicker of frustration. Not a nervous stroking of a chin, or biting of nails, or fidgeting with the radio. Nothing. My taxi driver stared straight ahead, occasionally stretching and yawning, as we slithered our way into minuscule spaces and impossible angles.

After an hour of inching and stopping, inching and stopping, inching and stopping, we were finally half a block away from my destination. My driver gestured to the looming, luminous building up ahead, and pantomimed walking with his index and middle fingers, pleading with his eyes as his fingers took small steps along the dashboard.

Walking would mean having to endure the dangers of the Bangkok sidewalks. It would mean enduring the holes and puddles and grates and stray dogs and beggars and unreasonably high curbs. It would mean having to take staccato steps to avoid colliding with the wide varieties of metallic vehicles that command the streets here. It would mean negating the progress of my physical therapy session with a few achy, treacherous steps. I pointed to my elevated foot, smiled, and shook my head. My taxi driver erupted in laughter. “Okay, okay,” he said.

A few minutes later a godawful smell filled the taxi. Now, Bangkok is a city of many unsavory smells. There is the smell of festering garbage sitting in casual, open piles on the curb while the humidity provides a catalyst for the putrid decomposition. There is the smell of all different varieties of exhaust. There is the smell of meat cooking on charcoal grills or over open an open flame, right next to the pile of festering garbage. And every once in awhile, one or more of these smells will seep in through the aircon vents as the taxi shudders in traffic. This was not one of those times.

The smell of my driver’s gas was so robust as it ballooned to fill the entire interior of the taxi that I could TASTE it in the back of my throat. What in holy hell had this man been eating? Maybe some egg? Some basil? Definitely some fish or squid or shrimp. DEAR GOD, I thought, I am going to asphyxiate and die right here in this taxi. My obituary will read that I was gassed to death while I was on my way to pick up some mosaic tiles for a project with my preschoolers who are now so incredibly sad because they no longer have a teacher.

This being Thailand, I knew that I couldn’t roll down the window to let in some fresh (albeit highly polluted) air. The damage to the driver’s “face” and dignity would just be too much for my conscience to bear (though he clearly hadn’t thought about the damage to my olfactories when he unleashed his noisome fumes). Thirty seconds went by. Forty. Fifty. One minute. We hadn’t moved one inch.

“Y’know, on second thought,” I said with a strange voice, as my throat was multitasking in its attempt to allow me to speak while also suppressing my gag reflex, “I think I’ll go ahead and walk from here.”