I’m as prone as the next person to exaggerate for the purpose of a good story. The tale that follows is completely true, with no exaggeration at all, to the best of my recollection.  And believe me, it is pretty well stamped in my memory.

I was transferred to the 7^th RRFS when the 83^rd began to close down in October of 1970. I was bitterly disappointed with my new duty station until I learned the involuntary PCS would get me a 5-month early out after only 3 months in Udorn.  Then I was ecstatic.

I had a 1964 Ford Falcon station wagon which was much older than its years, but still a reliable car.  Shorty, the Thai mechanic in the motor pool, saw to that.  I planned to drive to Udorn, and I knew not to drive onto the post. Since cars weren’t authorized at the 7^th, it would have been confiscated until I left.  That didn’t fit my plans, since I was going to come back to Bangkok every chance I had.

Old John, a mil repairman somewhere  between the ages of 30 and 50 (old was different then), and I left for Udorn by way of Korat on a Saturday afternoon late in October.  We needed to report on Monday.  The plan was to make an easy 2-day drive of the approximately 350 miles. The best roads outside of Bangkok were two-lane country roads, suitable for about 50 mph at most and more usually 35 - 40.  I’d done a lot of driving in Thailand and was confident that all would be well.  I shouldn’t have been.

John and I threw all our stuff in the back of the wagon and took off at about 1:30. I had a Shell roadmap of Thailand and, with traffic and mileage, calculated that we should be in Korat no later than 6:00.  The route was completely straightforward: the map showed that outside of Bangkok you picked up Rt. 21, and it took you first to Korat, then to Udorn. 

At 6:00 we had gone the distance I calculated should have gotten us to Korat.  But the roadside was desolate.  There was nothing but jungle.  We pressed on, and it started to get dark.  Now, we knew that Thai roads didn’t always go through towns, but sometimes around them. We decided to stop at the side of the road, wait for full darkness, and find Korat by the glow of its lights.  We stopped, turned out the headlights, and waited confidently.  Perhaps you recall how dark rural Asia can be.  That’s how dark it got.  The one constant on the road was the Thai two-headed eagle signs with the ‘21’ showing we were on the correct route, so I still wasn’t too worried.  That came soon after. With no glow to guide us, we decided to push on.  We drove for only a few more miles and then we reached the checkpoint.  Armed Thai soldiers stopped us, looked in the back of the wagon, then waved us on.  On to where?  We spoke little Thai (I couldn’t distinguish the tonal differences, and got in trouble every time I tried) and they spoke no English.

We continued on, but with a bad feeling. We’d heard of bandits in the hinterlands, and we were obviously lost.  Finally, a Shell station appeared at the side of the road. They weren’t very common, and this place looked really good to us.  I went inside and there, posted on the wall, was the same map I had been navigating by.  I pointed to where we had to be on route 21, and asked for confirmation from the attendant. Inexplicably, he pointed far to the west and said “here” (tenee?). I pointed, he pointed, but to different places. I took him by the hand and walked out to a route sign, the ‘21’ we had been following, right outside his station.  I did understand Thai numbers, and that’s all I needed to understand his answer, which was “that’s all very well, but you’re here, on Route 17, more than a hundred miles from where you want to be”.  We looked again at the map. We were approaching Petchaboon.  Petchaboon is 220 miles north of Bangkok, and seriously in the wrong direction from Korat.

That hundred miles was as the crow flies. In Thailand at that time, all roads led to Bangkok. On our map, all the major (paved) routes spoked radially away from Bangkok, but there was an exception that looked like it would help.  To reach Korat, if you could trust the map (ha!), you had to go back the way we came about 60 miles to a road that was shown intersecting Rt. 21 (17) and go east for another 100 miles.  We had already driven 180 miles, and we were no closer to our destination than when we started.

We went back.  Back through the checkpoint, where they still didn’t speak English. Back to a large bend in Rt. 21 (17) where the intersection of Rt. 105 was to take us to Korat.  Need I mention that it wasn’t there?  The geography was pretty obvious, so we were as sure as we were of anything that we were where the road was supposed to be.  There was a huge gas station, dwarfing a US interstate station, at the bend in the road.  It was jammed with gypsy trucks, buses, tankers, cars, and people.  We went in looking for English speakers.  None.  We took to addressing every driver that came in, asking if they spoke English, or knew how to get to Korat.

Finally, a well-dressed middle-aged Chinese man, who looked contemptuously at us, tossed a comment over his shoulder as he drove off in his Mercedes sedan. He pointed “over there”.  With no other prospects, we went “over there”. It was a goat track.  All that could be said positively was that it was not muddy and it was wide enough for the car.  Ruts axle-deep peppered the twisting, turning, rising, falling, miserable excuse for a road.  Excuse for a goat track.  The Falcon was seriously challenged, and we kept a slow walking pace toward a stand of huge trees.  We reached the trees and passed thru, into what looked like a wild-west ghost town.  Weathered board storefronts with false second-story facades sprouted from either side of the goat track.  Few people were about, and those that were looked at us as you might look at a visitor from Mars.

At the end of the village, perhaps ten or so buildings-worth, was a road.  Make that two roads.  Beautiful, new, blacktop roads.  Meeting in a single corner (two corners?), something which I had never seen, the two roads made about a 60 degree angle as they headed away.  As you’ve guessed, neither of them was marked Rt. 105.  Of course, neither was Rt. 21 what the map said it was.  So the question was, which one? (We tried not to think that it might be neither one.) Foot traffic was infrequent, and we asked every person who walked by: an old man, a young man, an old woman, a middle-aged woman.  Many smiles, but not a word of English among them.  We tried matching the Thai alphabet characters of the signs on the roads with those for Korat or Nakorn Ratchisma from the Shell map. No match.

I was at a complete loss; at this point I silently watched a young boy, about 5 – 7 years of age, drive a water buffalo toward us.  He stopped and said “Whatcha need, buddy?” in colloquial, unaccented English.  All I could say was “Korat?”.  He pointed down the road on the left, said “that way”, then drove his water buffalo on.  I don’t remember even giving him 5 baht.  It may not have been appropriate.

We drove down the road he marked (Rt. 33), and the trip was surreal. At one point I realized the shadows ghosting along beside us were people walking at the side of the road.  We passed a single source of electric light, the only light other than our headlights anywhere. The blue fluorescent lighting marked a puppet show and the audience was assembling.  The road curved, climbed, and twisted most of the time now. I regard it as a lucky thing that we couldn’t see the drop-off.

After about a hundred miles on Rt. 33, we reached Korat. It was after 11 pm; we found a hotel, and had dinner. I ordered chicken, but I’m pretty sure it was cat. The ‘wings’ were strange looking. To think of it, I hope it was cat…

The next day was an anticlimax. We apparently got to Udorn uneventfully, for I remember nothing at all about it. I made the round trip between Udorn and Bangkok several times in the next few months. The most exciting thing that happened was being buzzed by a Thai Air Force F-5 near a giant statue of Buddha.  Nothing compared to the first trip. I sold the car with the map in the glove box.  I wish I still had that map.

postscript – I later heard (unconfirmed) that the map we were using had been printed during World War II to confuse the Japanese invaders.

Ralph Felice

March 19, 2004