You can hit him if you want to

I've never been very adept at riding a bike, so imagine my pride on
successfully navigating the busy streets of a North Eastern Thai town
on an old bone shaker borrowed from my hostel. I was there as part of a
de rigueur mid-twenties round the world trip and had been in Thailand
for almost two months, on and off. I was slim, I was brown and I was
passionately in love with the country - I had even learnt some of the
language. It was probably one of the happiest times of my life.

The hostel I was staying in bordered the Mekong River and afforded the
most wonderful views of dazzling sunsets, which painted the sky a
post-apocalyptic orange colour every evening. The atmosphere was
laidback and residents sat around all day playing backgammon or reading
in hammocks. Being inherently nosey, I decided to investigate the area
and so, on the recommendation of the Thai/English hostel owners, I took
one of their bikes out to the local sculpture park. The ride there was
fairly uneventful, busy dual carriageways echoing with insistent car
horns soon led on to dusty backwater dirt tracks, and I arrived at the
park full of a sense of achievement and impending adventure.

I'm not exactly what you would call brave; wax models in museums
terrified me as a child (well, if I'm honest, they still do!), so I
definitely felt my heart skip a beat at the sight awaiting me. Towering
60ft into the air were the most frightening and awe-inspiring figures I
had ever seen; reclining Buddhas, sitting Buddhas, fat Buddhas, thin
Buddhas, Buddhas with a multitude of serpents rising up behind them.
And as if this wasn't disconcerting enough, they were fashioned out of,
of all things, concrete! It really was quite eerie and even now I can
sense a shiver running down my spine at the memory.

After tiring of being the token farang (foreigner) and posing for
photos with every Thai tourist in the place, I decided to carry on a
little further out of civilisation to where I was promised a craft
village awaited me. Always on the hunt for a bargain I set off. About
30 seconds in to my journey a red moped overtook me and, after a sly
glance in my direction, the driver stopped a little way ahead and began
to tinker with his engine. I just assumed he had broken down and was
fairly oblivious to curious looks by this time. However, when the same
routine was repeated twice more I began to get a very sick feeling in
my gut. With no sign of the craft village, nor in fact any apparent
sign of life at all, I decided to forget my quest and turned back
towards town. Lo and behold, my shadow suddenly had the same idea and
this time he meant business. Doing a passable impression of the Wicked
Witch of the East, with my bag perched in the wicker basket at the
front of the bike, I peddled hard and ignored his cries as I sailed
past him. Just for a split second, though, I thought his plight might
be genuine and turned my head back to check that he was okay. All I saw
was a blur and then?wham! I hit the ground with an incredible force as
my bike disappeared from under me. I felt a searing pain in my right
hand and had an instant bump on the palm that any cartoon character
would have been proud of.

My assailant didn't waste any time in pulling my bag from the basket
and searching for my purse. Just as quickly, I saw red. As I said
earlier, by this time I had been in SE Asia for quite some time and had
had various things purloined from me during that period (by fellow
travellers as well as locals). I just couldn't bear sitting by and
letting my hard-earned money be taken once again. So I did the one
thing you do not do in Thailand, I raised my voice.

Thai people in general are very good-natured and even-tempered, so it
is not a part of their culture to let off steam in public. Therefore,
the torrent of screams, unrepeatable abuse and anger that hit my
attacker completely took him off guard and gave me a chance to grapple
for my purse. I had never physically fought with anyone before, but was
too shocked and full of adrenalin to be scared. We scrapped like two
playground adversaries for what must have only been seconds and I came
out triumphant with purse in hand, even if I was lying on my side in a
ditch. It was then that I noticed that he had clambered back on to his
moped and was heading straight for my legs. At this point the fight
went out of me and undiluted fear set in. Sensing that I was defeated I
petulantly flung the purse at him and watched through a choking cloud
of dust as he turned tail and escaped.

By this time I had noticed how much pain I was in and that I needed to
get some assistance. I hobbled back to my bike and began to push it
down the centre of the track towards town, shouting for help as I went.
Luckily a youthful looking male suddenly appeared and watched, bemused,
as I tried to act out what had happened and get the correct tone for
the Thai word for purse - kapow - without sounding like an exclamation
from an old Batman episode. Amazingly he caught my drift and led me to
a shop nearby, where I was soon surrounded by a hoard of people all
wanting to help. With almost military precision and without me properly
realising what was happening, a search party was sent out, the police
were called and my wounds were attended to. I was in pretty bad shape
by this point with cuts on my nose and the lump on my hand getting
bigger by the minute. Everyone was affronted by what had happened to
the poor farang and were only too eager to make amends and comfort
me.

The police arrived, looking for all the world like extras from 'Chips'
in their brown uniforms and mirrored sunglasses. They soon realised
that questioning me was a waste of time and seemed to get a far more
satisfactory synopsis from the villagers before placing me into the
back of a squad car like a precious relic and driving me to the police
station. Fortunately, after a senior officer and I had exhausted our
limited knowledge of each others' native tongues and just sat blinking
and smiling at each other across his desk, I remembered that the Thai
co-owner of my hostel was bilingual. On receiving their call she took
no time at all in coming to my rescue, which was a huge relief.

The policemen's first priority was to get me checked over at the local
hospital and another squad car took us to an infirmary that put most of
the NHS to shame. It almost took longer to get from the car to the
entrance than it did to be seen by a doctor, due the large number of
passing well-wishers wanting to know what had happed to me and
apologise on behalf of their country.

Once inside, I spent some time sitting next to a terrified man on a
gurney. I understood why he looked so worried when my translator
explained that he had been bitten by a snake - I even caught a glimpse
of the fang marks when the nurse rolled up his trouser leg. Shortly
afterwards I was taken in to a small room to see a doctor and after
having the fleshy part of my palm pressed with what felt like more
pressure than necessary and then being sent for x-ray, the happy
diagnosis that I had not in fact broken my hand was meted out. Even
happier news was given to me when I went to settle my bill. The police
had taken care of everything and I would not need to claim on my
insurance.

Walking was turning into quite a chore by this time, as the whole of my
right leg from hip joint to knee was one long, black bruise
intermingled with grazes resulting from my earlier unexpected
appointment with a gravel path. The police agreed to come round to the
hostel later that evening to question me, rather than expecting me to
sit at the station, which was a blessing. Sitting in peace and
tranquillity by the Mekong, the whole episode started to take on a
surreal slant as I related the day's events to other residents. By the
time two young, friendly officers came to question me I wasn't certain
how much help I was going to be.

Once I had described again the exact train of events, the officers
wanted to get a good description of the offender. I had built up a
picture of him in my mind, but was no longer sure quite how accurate
this was. It had all happened so quickly. When they asked me what his
skin tone was like, I didn't really care to point out that all Thai
people seemed to have the same colour skin to me, and was amazed when
they put several people side by side to get an approximation. The range
of skin tones, which I had previously been blind to really was quite
startling. At least I could be sure of one thing - he had dark
hair!

After a somewhat frustrating interview - I simply couldn't remember if
the moped had a registration plate or not, how tall he had been, what
trousers he had been wearing - the police left me in peace and I set
about the task of cancelling my credit card. I had left all the details
with my parents for just search an emergency, but decided that the less
information they had about what had happened the better. Well that's
what the rational part of me said, anyway, but as soon as I heard my
Mum's voice on the other end of the phone I burst into uncontrollable
sobs and had to tell her everything. To her credit, she was amazingly
calm, but there was nothing I wouldn't have given for her to hug me
right then and make me better.

The next morning, after a fitful night's sleep, I creaked stiffly out
of bed and took a moment to admire my bruise. It really was a war wound
to be proud of, and I imagined there might even be other more hardened
travellers who would be quite jealous of such an obvious mark of having
'been there and done that'. If only it wasn't so damned painful! It
took what felt like an age to get dressed and I then made my way slowly
to the restaurant to have breakfast. I was just about to dive in to a
delicious looking bowl of muesli, yoghurt, honey and exotic fruit when
a policeman bounded excitedly into the hostel. He spoke to the owner
who relayed that there had been some developments and that they would
like me to go to the police station as soon as possible, although it
could wait until I had finished my breakfast. As soon as I had chewed
the last mouthful and put my spoon down the officer re-appeared and
proudly announced that they had caught someone they believed to be my
attacker. I was dumbstruck. It had never occurred to me that they might
actually arrest someone. I hobbled after the policeman out to the front
entrance, where I assumed a squad car was awaiting us. I couldn't
believe it when I saw a moped and realised that he expected me to ride
pillion. I could hardly walk, so lifting my leg high enough to swing it
over the saddle was tantamount to torture. I did eventually manage it,
however, and clung on for dear life as we sped along the short journey
to the station, inviting curious glances along the way.

I was set down in the police station car park and greeted like an old
friend by a crowd of officers who I recognised from the previous day.
One man in particular, Ding (at least that's what it sounded like!),
made me feel very welcome and chatted away to me in broken English
about what had happened the night before. Apparently, unbeknown to me,
there had been some local women working in the fields alongside the
track where I was mugged. Although they had been too frightened to
intervene at the time they had seen the whole thing, which enabled them
to give the police a much more accurate description than I had. They
noticed that the moped didn't have a registration plate, which probably
meant it had been stolen. An eagle-eyed officer had then spotted said
moped outside a nightclub, found out who had been driving it and
arrested him.

Just then, another two policemen joined us, with a young, unkempt guy
handcuffed between them. It seemed they didn't stand on ceremony in
this country - there was no line-up of suspects, no one-way screen, in
fact no formal process at all. They just hauled the detainee up in
front of me, there and then in the open car park, and asked me if this
was the man who had attacked me the day before. Not wanting to falsely
accuse someone, I gave him a few moment's consideration before
answering. I was just about to say yes, when he took the words out of
my mouth and admitted the crime himself. I was quite relieved as,
although I was fairly sure it was him, my mind was still playing tricks
on me and I couldn't have sworn on the bible that I was right. Now I
knew, however, I glared at him and could feel all the previous day's
rage welling up inside me again. He refused to catch my eye; in fact he
didn't seem capable of focussing on anything at all and had the vacant
stare of someone up to their eyeballs in drugs.

With the "formalities" dealt with he was led off and I was taken into a
waiting area, which I have the feeling was the policemen's mess. The
focal point (and obvious pride) of the room was a large TV with cable
access. Someone considerately flicked over to the English-speaking
channel, which bizarrely enough for the time of the morning was showing
'Angel Heart'. If you've seen this film then I'm sure you can
appreciate just how disturbing this was. If not, imagine Robert de Niro
as the devil incarnate in a business suit playing with your mind and
you'll have some idea what I mean.

Anyway, I was soon distracted, as my purse was brought into the room
and reunited with me. When you've been away from home for quite some
time, it's easy to get attached to the few inanimate objects and
personal items you have elected to bring with you. I was, therefore,
delighted to see that the contents (minus credit card of course) were
all present and correct, including some small snapshots of friends and
family. Everything was duly laid out in a row on a low coffee table and
some of the officers came to have a look. Soon, quite a crowd of them
were gathered around, pointing at one photo in particular and making
appreciative noises. I glanced over and realised it was the shot of my
best friend, who often elicits this kind of reaction from men. When I
had answered the question as to who she was, they all agreed that they
would like to be her best friend too. I suppose animal instincts cross
many borders!

I seemed to sit in the staff room forever, making a concerted effort to
ignore 'Angel Heart' whilst politely rejecting one officer's offer of
his holiday home in Phuket to convalesce! Eventually, though, my
attacker was led back in, and it became evident that we were to take
part in a photo shoot. Firstly we knelt either side of the coffee
table, pointing to my purse and contents and looking seriously at the
camera. I then had to stand next to my assailant and point an accusing
finger at him, all whilst trying to keep a straight face. By this time
I was really quite enjoying myself; the group of policemen doing the
thumbs up in the background of the shot just added to the entertainment
value. I turned to my friend Ding and said, "I'd really like to hit
him." "Go on then," he replied, "you can hit him if you want to." Being
terribly British, I of course declined? at first. After another couple
of minutes of standing next to him, however, the urge overcame me and I
smacked his chest with a swift backhand slap, as if trying to swat away
a very large mosquito. "You little shit!" I hissed to cheers and
applause from the policemen. Who needs victim support when this kind of
therapy is on offer?!

It was then made clear to me that we were heading back out to the crime
scene to do a 'Crimewatch' style reconstruction. I was led to a police
pick-up truck and sat inside whilst both my bike and assailant were
loaded unceremoniously into the back. We rode out past the sculpture
park and stopped when I felt we had reached the approximate area where
the attack took place. The police asked me to get back on the bike, but
when they realised the sheer physical impossibility of me being able to
rotate the pedals, one of them pushed the handlebars whilst I waddled
like a duck astride the frame. Not the best way to keep your dignity,
but I was assured that it was all a necessary part of the prosecution
process. As we re-enacted several parts of the crime, I began to
imagine that I was in a tabloid paper's photo story of the week. I'm
not sure that even they could find the sexual nuances in this
particular scenario, although having said that, some people might find
those police uniforms a bit of a turn on?

The rest of my stay at the hostel was fairly uneventful, although I had
transformed into a minor celebrity overnight. Everywhere I went I was
greeted by the neighbourhood constabulary, much to the amazement of
passing locals, who must have wondered how on earth a young English
girl came to be on first name terms with a much-derided and distrusted
police force. I had been led to believe that ineffective and corrupt
officials were par for the course in the Thai police, but in my
dealings with them they were nothing but efficient, polite and
considerate. They turned what could have been a very upsetting incident
for a lone female traveller into one, which I will remember with both
humour and some degree of warmth for the rest of my life. As for my
assailant, I hear he got five years, which means he must be getting out
just about now. I've felt the odd pang of guilt when he's crossed my
mind intermittently in the intervening years. It seems an awfully harsh
sentence, more than doubled because I was a tourist, and a very high
price to pay for a ?30 haul and one night on the beers.