Interlude: Thailand Rant

OK, I don't usually rant about Thailand because I realize that things are DIFFERENT here, but just can't resist sharing about my trip to the bike store.

My Trek Fuel blew a seal on it's Manitou Black fork a few months ago, and I wanted to get it serviced. I tried a couple of local stores, but none of them dealt with Manitou. A few people from the bike hash recommended a Trek dealer, inconveniently located on a congested neighborhood downtown. So I rode the bike over to check it out.

No one in the service department spoke much English. When I told them that the shock was broken, they leaned on the handle bars and bounced on it, then looked at me like I was nuts. "Yes, but it doesn't trigger when the wheel hits something . . ." They didn't understand, so I was reduced to miming. I tried to get the guy to take it outside and have a ride, but no luck. He said, "I call distributor" and told me to pick it up tomorrow.

The next day I walked 40 minutes to the store to retrieve the bike. My radar went up when I got the bill: 100 Baht (about 3 dollars). In the US, it usually costs several hundred dollars to get the shock serviced. Suspicious, I hopped on the bike and rode it off the nearest curb. Sure enough, the shock was still as stiff as a tree trunk and the impact was painful enough to put my elbows where my shoulders used to be. And to add insult to injury, the damn seal came flying off the shock and nailed me hard in the inner thigh. Oil sloshed over my foot.

I took the bike back to the store, where I had one of the week's more infuriating exchanges with the maintenance supervisor:

ME: (Smiling, as one must do in Thailand) I told you to service this damn thing! Were you just going to give it back, take my money and hope I didn't notice?

HIM: (bouncing on handle bars) See? Works good!

ME: It's not working when I hit something. I told you yesterday.

HIM: Ah. That because it need new this. (Holds up a shock seal)

ME: (blood pressure rising) Well then why the hell didn't you put a 'that' in?

HIM: Have to call the distributor.

ME: (barely holding it together) You said you were gonna call him yesterday!

HIM: Distributor not open on Saturday.

ME: So why did you friggin SAY you'd call him? I'm very disappointed, very disappointed. I live very far away! (clumsy attempts at Thai passive-aggressive Jedi mind-tricks).

HIM: I call today.

ME: But why didn't you call yesterday?

HIM: That was yesterday. Forget about yesterday.

ME: But if its closed Saturday, its not going to be open on Sunday!

HIM: (calls and lets the phone ring ten minutes) He not open. (points to bike). This fork old fork, bad fork! I sell you new fork. (goes and gets the cheapest RST fork off the wall and holds it out proudly). See? Only 1000 baht! Very good fork!

ME: Are you kidding? This is Manitou Black! (Top of the line fork)

HIM: But to order part from distributor cost 5000 Baht (about 180 USD)

ME: ARGH!!!!

I here commenced ripping out my hair, at which point the store manager, who spoke better English, came to my rescue. He explained that his bike store doesn't deal with Manitou at all because the only Manitou distributor in Thailand is a rival store across town. Aha! I gave him a very sad, whiny story about how I live very far from the store (15 min), and how I'd come all the way back for nothing, and his employees didn't listen to me or follow through on their promises, how they'd done a shoddy job and tried to pass it off as a real service and charge me for it, and how really I'd be much less upset if they'd just told me when I brought it in that they don't service that brand.

To his credit, he said he'd order the part through the competitor if it was available, and he even gave me a loaner fork to use while we waited on the order. This more than assuaged my urge to run home and post something nasty about him on Craig's list, and is why I am generously not mentioning the name of the store here.

Still, it's outings like this that make me happy to cancel all plans, lock the door on Bangkok, and pass a happy afternoon playing on the internet and watching bad movies on cable.