Strangeness on the bus (2, final)

A man in his 50s sat in front of me in the bus to work the other day. I watched as he pulled out an old cellphone, which looked so battered he could have found it on a building site.

He called a number, then uttered a few words. The person on the other end appeared not to have heard, so he said the words again.

The words were mercifully few, but he was speaking in a non-Bangkok dialect which I do not know. I can't tell you what he said (I almost asked a fellow passenger, but thought better of it), but it sounded like he was confirming a simple arrangement, like where to meet.

Second time, still no success, so he repeated himself, this time even louder. Damn it, the man was shouting.

In Bangkok, a certain amount of eccentricity on the bus is permissible: many passengers speak in a loud voice on the telephone. From the back of the bus, I have heard whole conversations take place, even if I am sitting rows from where a passenger is speaking.

We get to hear all the passenger's business: what she did today, where's she's going next, which bus-stop the bus has reached, what she had for lunch.

But this was exceptional. Each time the man in front repeated himself, he would make the last few words even louder. By this time, of course, other passengers had noticed. In fact, the bus had fallen silent. Did we have a crazy in our midst?

This wierd exchange carried on until the man was screaming the words into the phone. The colour had started to rise on his thick neck. It did not occur to him to vary his choice of words, or send a text message. He did not seem remotely self-conscious or embarrassed.

The person sitting next to him was staring at him in amazement. The ticket collector stopped what she was doing, and looked down our way to see what would happen next.

'That's creepy,' a schoolgirl said behind me. She was worried the guy was mad.

In the end he gave up his attempt and hung up. We all breathed easy again. He uttered a few words to the passenger in the next seat, explaining that the phone was old. Not an apology, mind, just an explanation. Still, the shock took ages to wear off.

As he took the telephone away from his ear, I saw he had inserted change from his bus ticket in his earhole. At least two one-baht coins were stuffed in there.

I have seen bus passengers insert one-baht and five-baht coins, but always singles. Never more than one at a time.

So just who couldn't hear whom?