Tag Archives: fino

A view from the right hand brake. This is where I live, have a look! High quality version is here.

So, beautiful Sunday morning, Lorraine and I hop on the bike and head down to the beach. Our first stop of the day was going to be Starbuck’s. The bikes are stacked up one by one and we go around the block in hopes a slot would open up for us. We swing around and still no open spots. So, in my Buffalo mentality I pull into a no parking zone which is about 1 foot from the last motorbike slot. I remarked to Lorraine, “hey, we’re only blocking Starbucks and since we’re going in, let’s just park it here”.

We discovered the 2nd floor outdoor patio which overlooks Beach Road and the beach and enjoyed our coffee for no more than 15 minutes. We come back down and I immediately notice that my bike is not there and I can see the bike we parked next to is still there. I turn to Lorraine and say “they took the bike”. Sure enough, we walk out and the street vendors are all smiling and say “police take bike, you go Soi 9, you pay 400baht”. I think we found it more humorous than anything else. We were more than ready to chalk this up to another Thailand experience. And anyway, we were at Soi 13 so, it was a short walk down to the police station.

We couldn’t remember the license number, we had the numbers, just not in the right order. We said, Yamaha Fino, brown. “Not here yet, wait 20 minutes”. Smartly, Lorraine says, you have a picture of your bike on your phone, don’t you?”. Sure enough, I had a couple, but none of them were clear enough to see the plate number. Then, I dug up this bad ass photo:

2-501, yep. I walked up to the policeman again and said “Sorng, Hah, Soon, Neung!”. He laughs, digs through his stack of tow tickets and finds my citation. “Tim, 400baht”. That’s a $12 ticket-and-tow, not too bad for a Sunday morning. Then he says “you take taxi to impound, 2kms, outside”. We pay, stroll outside and grab a taxi. Not just any taxi, a motorbike taxi. The three of us hopped on the bike and drove the 2kms to the impound yard which held at least 100+ bikes. Our bike is only 1 row deep, our helmets still hanging from their hooks.

Back on the road and lesson learned.