Tim Rice
From Guns and Bikes to Stable Stationery

© Travelers' Net 
Text by Joe Josef. Photos by Joe Josef

"Knights of the Road"

Yes, "Rice" is his real name. And no, they don't make any jokes about that in Thailand.
TRV.NET: -Why not?
TR: -I don't really know. Actually I wonder about that myself. In Taiwan, where I lived for a couple of years, they thought my name was the hilarious thing. But here...
As the sun goes down, the "Stationery & Stuff" sign is glowing in the light. Paolo and Joey, the two pet turtles, are relaxing in the big, blue tub they call home. I can remember when these animals had the size of matchboxes. Now it's more like shoe-boxes. It is funny how time hurries by, isn't it?

TR: -Yes. It seems like only yesterday I was running around with long hair and a long beard. Riding motorbikes, diving under the ice, flying in a Cessna... TRV.NET: -Hold on! One thing at a time. You have been a hippie? And a motorcycle man? TR: -Sure. I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, USA. In 1973 when I was twenty years old and a hippie I rode a Triumph 650. I was a member of this motorcycle gang called the "Knights of the Road". You know, all the other gangs had names like "Hell's Angels", "Satanic Monsters" and the like. Our style was a little different. Not that we didn't fight and shoot and all that. But we had a social conscience as well. We organized charity work, donated money to educational purposes and the like.

Guns and Scorpions

It is kind of hard to imagine soft-spoken, balding Tim Rice as a gun-toting Robin Hood type in the ghettos of Detroit. These two persons seem worlds apart. But as he poses in front of my camera I recognize the posture and suddenly an image shines through. A young man, full of desire for dominating his environment.
TR: -Well, the worst of the lot were the policemen, y'know? The "Knights of the Road   were kind of dignified, so we had a lot of police-guys joining us. And when they got drunk, you had better get out of the way, because they liked to shoot their guns!
TRV.NET: -But you carried a gun yourself?
TR: -Yes. In America, especially a place like Detroit's West Side, carrying a gun is a rather sensible precaution. I was responsible for running this motorcycle business. I had to go to the bank to deposit money. And once in a while I had customers in, who not only complained, but carried a gun themselves.
TRV.NET: -And then what? Your complainer had a gun, then you would pull out your gun as well and you would stand like a couple of Clint Eastwood figures aiming at each other?
TR: -Yes. And also - I had some lovely pets at home. Snakes and scorpions. I would use the animals as "watchdogs" for our storefront. We had this showcases, you see, with nice items to attract customers. And you bet they wouldn't stick their hands down there to steal anything when they saw a scorpion sitting on top of the handle-bar or tank-lid.

Push the limit

The winters in a place like Detroit are not as all as tropical as on Phuket, Thailand. Keeping up with his hobbies, Tim had a lot of freezing to do.
TR: -For me it was especially motorbikes and scuba diving. So in the winter the lakes around Detroit were frozen, with a solid layer of ice on top. While other people went skating, we would screw sheet metal screws into the tires of our motorbikes and drive them around on the ice. It was a lot of fun. Part of the game was the danger, too, of course. I would always push the limit towards the thin ice in the middle of the lakes. But that is not, where the diving comes in... We laugh.

TR: -No, but in order to scuba dive at all, diving under the ice was our only alternative. In the summer the water used to be muddy and murky. But in the winter it was clear. TRV.NET: -But was there anything worth looking at? TR: -No. But that was not the kick, either. The kick was the sense of danger. It was freezingly cold down there, even in your dry-suit. And the only way out was the way you came in. So in order to not get lost, the divers had ropes attached to their bodies, so the buddies could haul them back in. Detroit was not the only place where Tim did his thing. He longed for warmer places. So as a young man of only 20 years of age he decided to join a group of motorbike enthusiasts, who planned a trip through Africa.

Get smart!

TR: -We went through the continent from North to South. A group of twelve people, everybody rode a 250 Honda dirt bike. The leader of this adventure - I think his name was William - had bought the bikes in crates. We and the bikes went to Spain. We assembled them there and took to the road.
We had a lot of paper-fighting to do. At that time, there was always a war going on somewhere on the so-called "Black Continent". We had to sit and wait, we had to bribe the bureaucrats. I remember once we sat around for a whole week in order to meet the right man to throw money at. And since they were fighting all the time and overthrowing governments, you never knew exactly which government was at power for the time being. Chances were that the visa you got six months ago was issued by one government and by the time, we got there, somebody else was calling the shots...
But we went through with our exploration in six weeks. Back in the States I finally bought the shop I had been working at.
Tim kept on drinking and fighting and balling, but he also worked as a counselor for Detroit's street kids.
TR: -I tried to tell them that they didn't have to cut their hair and they didn't have to stop having fun and all that. But they should stay in school, get smart, get educated. Then, with a job, with money in their pockets they would be in a position where they could have their hair and their fun AND being accepted by society instead of having people giving them shit all their life.

It had to be Thailand

1985 marked a different era for Tim. He left the USA.
TR: -I got an offer to run a motorcycle parts and accessories export business in Taiwan. I did that for two years, but I felt I was getting nowhere. The Chinese over there kept all the control to themselves. I couldn't come through with anything new, I wasn't making any inroads. Also scuba diving - which played a great part of my life then - was not an easy commodity. Taiwan was a military dictatorship then. Scuba diving was for Chinese people with a military permit only. So I had to be smuggled past the military. Which I did once a month or so...
Tim decided to split. An old friend of his flew in to take his job.
TR: -So my friend said "hey, shouldn't we take vacation first?" He was a scuba diver too. We decided to do a week in Pattaya. My friend left after one week, but I stayed on until my plane ticket ran out six weeks later.
Back in the US it was cold and dreary. I decided that I had to go back to Thailand. I took a plane to Pattaya, where the owner of the dive-shop I had been scuba diving with, had promised me a job.
I actually did work as a dive instructor, working my way up to IDC staff instructor, Master Diver and Trainer.
It was in a Pattaya Dive shop that Tim met his future wife, Wendy.
WR (Wendy Rice): -Yes that was ten years ago. I was working with a dive company in Bangkok, where I was born and raised. The dive company sent me to a Pattaya branch for a while.
Tim and Wendy decided to join fates. As they both were in the diving business it was natural for them to set up their own shop.
TR: -We wanted to go to Phuket, because Phuket is cleaner, nicer, better than Pattaya. But the competition was already there. I didn't have the amount of money to start a dive operation big style and I didn't want to start from the bottom. So I branched out into something quite different.

Carbon paper and chaos

TR: -I was in a dive shop at a certain time and they ran out of carbon paper. So the owner asked "Can't we just buy some somewhere?" And the dive shop staff said "No, there is nowhere in Patong Beach you can by carbon paper. You have to go to Phuket town. But the last bus has left at five o'clock, so you will have to take a taxi or wait until tomorrow..."
That is when I decided I wanted to sell carbon paper in Patong Beach!
After seven years Tim's and Wendy's shop is still the only one of its kind in Patong. What's more, Tim might be one of very few, or maybe even the only "farang" to run a business such as his.
TR: -I have salespeople coming in and they always say that I am the only farang they ever see. Mostly it is a Chinese thing, office supplies.
TRV.NET: -Why did you choose Thailand as a home? What in your opinion makes Thailand so special?
Tim sits back for a moment and squeezes his eyes shut.
-The weather, he says. And the chaos!
TRV.NET: The chaos?
TR: -Yes, in a positive way. You know, the last time I was on vacation in Los Angeles I saw signs on the beach saying  "Don't litter the beach". I saw signs in the park saying "Don't walk on the grass". I saw signs in the busses, saying "Don't eat ice-cream"... there were signs and rules and laws and prohibitions and bans everywhere.
In Thailand the government pretty much leaves the individual alone. You as a person have a much greater individual freedom here than back in the states.
Sounds just like an old "Knight of the Roads", doesn't it?

Miss Wendy Rice's advice to Foreigners

If you want to live in Thailand or if you are looking for a Thai wife: do NOT believe any of those phony love letters your Thai girl sends to you! Try instead to find a girl who:

1) doesn't lie
2) is educated
3) has a background that you can relate to

Being one of only a few Thai persons who are fluent in English, Miss Wendy runs a translation business whenever time permits. Most of her customers are girls, who work in the service business. (Stationery and Stuff is located only few meters from Christin's, Patongs biggest Massage Parlor). The girls are always busy writing love letters to their boyfriends overseas. As one could expect, the letters regularly contain three paragraphs: one about how much they love and miss the man they are writing to, one about the evil fate that has befallen them (they are sick, their mother is sick, somebody in the family had a motorbike accident) and finally one plea for money.
-All of these letters are pure fantasy from the first to the last word, Miss Wendy said. -I don't know where the girls get it from and why they have to construct all these fabrications. I had one girl coming in and asking me to write a letter to a boyfriend of hers. She was going to leave Phuket and go back to see her mother, who had fallen sick, it said. Shortly after she came here again. This time she wanted to call her boyfriend and ask him for more money."But you cannot call him" I said "you already wrote to this one and told him about your sick mother. He thinks you are visiting her right now!"
"Oh yes, I forgot" she replied "but I really need the money. Can't you just make something up? Call him and say I called you and told you to contact him?"
And this is what happens all the time. I honestly never saw one single letter that was telling the truth!