Police in Chachoengsao moved fast this week, intercepting a pickup truck rolling down the main highway from the Thai-Cambodia border. Behind the wheel was 37-year-old Thai driver Thotsaphon, a man who had barely finished a prison stint before jumping right back into the smuggling trade.
Stuffed in the back were four Chinese men, filthy and caked in mud from head to toe, looking like they had just scrambled through ditches and border scrub.
According to local reports, Thotsaphon confessed without much pushback. He admitted he had already served time for human smuggling in the past. This run was supposed to earn him an easy 3,000 baht a head—12,000 baht in total for the four passengers.
For the four men in the back, the gamble was far more expensive. Each had paid between $3,000 and $5,000 to travel from China down through Poipet, planning to slip across Thailand and push onward to Myanmar. Instead, their journey ran out of road halfway across central Thailand.
Eking out a living isn't easy, but running the border trade is high-risk business. The driver and his four passengers are now in custody, with the Chinese nationals slated for deportation. With so many pickups tearing down Thailand's highways every day, it just goes to show you never really know what kind of cargo is sitting in the back.
