We will tolerate almost any bad behavior in the Hash House Harriers. In fact we encourage it and reward those that participate in shenanigans just in a general sense. There are a couple of things that are not tolerated though and that is making a bad name of the Hash locally as we have worked quite hard with community outreach to be an accepted part of this society where we are visitors and also drunk driving, which is not tolerated at all.
We know that most of our members are going to have their buzz on when they come to these events of ours and therefore we provide sober transport in what is considered a "bus" in Thailand. It's really just a makeshift pickup truck that has been lowered and converted into some sort of personnel carrier.
I don't know when this picture was taken but I am presuming it was sometime between December to February because there really aren't many opportunities to ever feel cold in Chiang Mai or really anywhere else in Thailand other than those bars they have where everything is made of ice... or if you go to a movie.
Anyway, we have had the same drivers for many years and he stays sober, transports all of our chairs and gear, and returns us all to the central area where he picked us up at many hours before. He is paid for this, it's not like he does it out of the goodness of his heart, but he offers us a good rate and never lets us down.
Without fail he always turns up on time to pick us up downtown where we meet outside of the McDonalds at the Tha Pae Gate, and then he drives us to a location in the middle of nowhere, waits for us, helps with cleaning up, then gets all the gear back on the truck and takes us all back home. His job isn't thankless, we thank him all the time and he is an honorary Hasher even though he has never been on trail with us.
We all consider him a friend of the family and we hope that he feels the same way in return. Even if he doesn't, the price must be right because he always turns up on time and if we have too many people to cram into one "bus" he has many friends who also have these sorts of vehicles that he can call at a moment's notice to get more people on the road. In the many years that we have been doing this in Chiang Mai we have never had an instance of drunk driving and this is one legacy that we really want to maintain.
I think this goes for every other Hash Kennel around the world because it could be very bad for our reputation globally, if all of a sudden some controversy were created by someone crashing. They would be able to be immediately identified as a member of the Hash because we all normally wear quite silly clothing indicating as such.
So if you are a Hasher anywhere in the world I am certain that you stick to the same system. We like to have a lot of fun and sometimes that fun comes with drunkenness. It hasn't yet, nor will it ever be tolerated for people to deviate from this system that we have in place and this is why we hire the drivers.
It's really a lot easier to just sit in the bus anyway though, isn't it?
