STOLL/Falling Uphill ©2005
2
smkstoll@yahoo.com
"What? You're going to take me nowhere for two-hundred baht!" My anguish melts with a hearty
laugh, and I think the coin toss works in mysterious ways.
"Okay," he concedes, mistaking my laugh for contempt. "Half price. One-hundred baht. We go
nowhere."
"Isn't this nowhere?"
"No, this MBK."
"How long does it take to get nowhere?"
"One hour."
"Do you know how to get there?"
"Yes." He shows me a smutty picture of two Thai women in Patpong, Thailand's infamous and self-
dubbed Sex Capitol of the World. He points to one girl, "No --" and then points to the other girl -- "and
Where. No. Where. Nowhere," he smiles and the long whiskers on the on mole on his face flagellate the
air
"That's very funny."
"You no like?" He furrows his brow. "What you want?"
"I want to go nowhere. Do you know how to get nowhere?"
"Please write." I write it down for him in block letters and he recites, "N. O. W. H. E. R. E.
Nowhere." He consults a few other drivers in Thai and then says to me, "Yes. Nowhere is on Petchiburi
Road."
"Really," I say amused, "Okay, Let me get an ice cream cone first. I don't think there are ice cream
cones where we're going." And, I think, "I have to see this; besides, Pi is trouble." (Pi will track me down
later in the book and prove my intuition is true.)
We board the tuk-tuk, a birdcage on three wheels, and roar off in a puff of blue smoke. We both
grimace as we pass a gruesome accident where a motorcyclist slammed into the side of a car. Bangkok
has nearly 2,000 unclaimed corpses per year from road accidents. "Two thousand people going nowhere,"
