Expatiperro

In a see-saw 90 minute match, Bangkok's traffic defeated Matt Thier, maintaining its streak of ruining time-sensitive plans.

The result was especially bad news for Thier, as it caused him to miss his train to Vientiane, Laos, which rendered a $30 ticket useless. He was philosophical afterward, saying that there was really nothing he could have done to have avoided the result. But still, "it was hard to sit there and not imagine every second as pennies going down the drain," he admitted.

The match originally tilted in Thier's favor. Leaving his cousin's home with an hour to spare on what is normally a 30 minute trip, he encountered little traffic on the initial protion of the route, whch allowed him to enter the city easily and in almost record time. But 3 kilometers before the train station and just as his spirits were rising, the red headlights appreared on the horizon in front of him.

"I had a bad feeling when I saw the red, but I still had hope that we would make it there in time," Thier recalled. "I mean, we did have 40 mintues to spare- no traffic jam could be that bad, right? But obviously, I was overly optimistic."

Through a translator, Bangkok's traffic said that he struggled to find his game early, missing easy diversions and failing to direct traffic in an efficiently jam-causing manner. But luckily for him, he got back on track just minutes before it would have been too late.

"I don't play to lose. I'm a winner. I have my undefeated streak to defend, and I'm not going to let a little farang (foreigner) knock me off my pedastol," Bangkok's traffic brashly decalred.

"Plus, it's Friday. I'm always worse on Fridays," he added.

For Thier, the loss was bad enough. But adding insult to injury, on the way running into the train station, he slipped and fell into a puddle, soaking his shoes and the left side of his body. The final blow to Thier's ego came when the drive back to his cousin's took 20 minutes, or less than a quarter of the duration of the outbound trip.

"It goes to show that nothing's guaranteed when you're travelling," Thier moralized. "You plan and plan, and then just when things seem to be going well, someone throws in a wrench. In this case, considering the opponent, I guess I should have seen it coming."

"But whatever. At least I don't have to be on a rickety old train tonight."