Bangkok Blogs

By now you’ve probably checked out the Siam Paragon. A massive, largely white and very shiny monument to asian capitalism, the Paragon has several unique aspects. One of these is the only place in Thailand where people must form an orderly queue.

If you want to grab a taxi heading up the road, you need to shuffle out onto the main parade beneath the BTS tracks and find a layby next to the cascading water that falls ever so slightly too close to the street. There are a collection of large umbrellas and two or three Thai employees doing their best to organise taxis for departing customers.

Typically, one would expect to see a free-for-all situation in which it barely mattered who got to the stand first, but the two security guards in charge of this area stand in front of any taxi who picks up customers from the rear of the line, demanding that the customer get out and then that the taxi travel on without picking anyone up.

This is mildly irritating because it makes you wait even longer in line, but I suppose the thinking is that the only way the drivers will learn to obey the rule is to be “punished” by not getting any customers and having to sit through the long evening traffic to come back around again.

We were standing out there last night and watched with increasing interest as one particularly angry looking driver and the shorter security guard had a contest to see who would chicken out first. The driver bumped his car forward, the guard blew his whistle… and so on for about twenty minutes.

Then a young arab guy took a taxi from the end of the line, but was hauled from it by the other security guard and told to go and fine one across the street.

You never know, this might be the start of queueing in Bangkok..