Losgatgeid (a moment of dread)

After a 5 hour journey from who-knows-where to Hat Yai in a tiny minibus, the funny Osaka-jin and I are dropped off at yet another busstop to catch our next connecting vehicles. We wave our 12 Thai fellow passengers goodbye, and my new 5-hour friend heads off to find a better deal at a different bus station. My bus is supposed to arrive in a few minutes, and I desperately need to check my e-mail. I have no idea where I'm going in Singapore; no phone number or address. Just a city. I ask the Thai girl manning the phone where I can find the closest computer. She chases me back to my seat: "No email! You bus come now!"
Fine.
I check my money belt, and find that I only have 20 Baht on me. The rest is all USD and Yen. That'll get you nowhere fast in Thailand inaka. I wait until my bus is 15 minutes late, and then decide to rush over to the bank opposite me to change some money. I run up the stairs. Good, I can see the busstop from the window. At the counter, I open my bag to take out my Black Book Of Very Important Things. And in that moment, I realise that I left everything on the minibus which I waved goodbye 20 minutes ago. With everything I mean:
All my Yen.
All my USD.
My plane tickets back to Japan.
My bus tickets back to Niimi.
Everything.
On a minibus filled with Thai, somewhere.
Wakatta?

I walk back to the busstop taking inventory of my situation: I'm alone in the middle of nowhere in Thailand and all I have is my clothes, my passport, a set of poi, and 20 Baht which is about 70 Yen which is about R3.56. And a busticket to Singapore. Nice one.

Get back to the girl by the telephone who doesn't speak English. "Listen. Very Important. I.. lost.. something. Minibus. Black book. Very Important."
She looks at me and says: "You bus come now!"
"No," I reply, shaking just a little bit. "No bus. First - black book. Minibus. Can you help me?"
She consults a friend, and they phone another friend who speaks broken English, who speaks to them in fluent Thai, and all this is going on in Thai-go around me and I have no clue what's happening. Fianlly, they call over a dude on a motorbike and motions for me to get on. The bus is now 30 minutes late. He tells me it'll be 40 Baht, and I say 20 now, 20 later. I hook my backpack onto my shoulders, get on the motorbike and we zip through the mad traffic of pedestrians and cyclists and tuk-tuks and busses. And he stops at another busstop.

From the start, I decided to just go with whatever the moment brings, so in incomprehension I sit on the corner of a street, looking slightly distressed, not knowing what the hell is happening. The motorcycle guy is happily chatting to his buddies, and I stare at them, hoping to pick up a positive English word. But nai. An old Thai man with a long grey beard breaks away form the group, come over to me and tells me "No worry. You get everything back. Mae pen rai."
Not even 4 minutes into my most distraught diary entry, the motorcycle man calls to me, "This you minibus?"
And it is.
The driver steps out, and in his hands he has the most beautiful black document book I have ever seen in my whole life. Mine. He asks me to check inside, and everything is just as I left it, still warm from the floor where I sat close to the engine. I feel like hugging them, but I have a bus to catch, and we get back onto the motorbike. I'm not even holding on, as I'm using my hands to pray thankyous to the deities that are always saving me from myself.

At the original busstop, the girl is still sitting by her telephone.
"You bus come, you bus leave!" she shouts over the noises of traffic. "No next bus!"
Saying something in Thai, the motorbike guy motions for me to get on again, so I do, and we are back in the street again. He pushes through cars and skips orange lights, until he spots a big bus further on in the street. At the next traffic light, he drives next to the bus and repeatedly smacks it on the side with his palm. The bus stops in the middle of traffic, the driver gets out, words are exchanged and my backpack is loaded into the luggage compartment. I am kwah-pun-kaah'ing in a bow so low the Japanese would have applauded me. I give the guy U$D20, climb the stairs onto the bus, find my seat, and sit down for the next chapter in My Winter Holiday. On my way to Singapore.