The Michelin Man in a Buddha pose, Bangkok, Thailand.

Journal and photo by Nancy Olson

Today, I basically worked on my computer most of the late morning and early afternoon, and then I remembered my broken computer. I’ve been using Nick’s old laptop, one that has already been around the world once, because the HP I bought in D.C. broke several months ago. I think there’s an issue with one of the bulbs in the screen, because it simply does not light up. I can just make out the screen, if I view it from the right angle, but it is extremely difficult to see. It’s quite frustrating to have a dead laptop, and I certainly won’t have the cash to buy one when I get home.

Because we’re in Bangkok for a few more days, at least, and because Bangkok has an HP Service Center, I decided to have the folks there take a look at my screen. I’m at least two, maybe three years beyond my one-year warranty, so my plan was to see if we could get lucky. Maybe it’s just a loose wire, or maybe it’s the world’s cheapest repair.

Todd went with me, because 1) I’m not well-versed on the inner workings and hidden mechanisms of my computer, and 2) I’m not at all good at groveling for a good deal on such things as T-shirts, produce, or computer repairs.

We had to take the sky rail to the right area of town, and then we were supposed to “exit the skyrail at the big Black Canyon Coffee sign, walk up Silom Street, turn right on the corner, and it would be on our right, beyond some hotel, and in a big office park.

Ok, great, but walk up the street in which direction? If we went right, a right at the corner would mean we’d have to cross a bunch of traffic. If we went left, we wouldn’t have to cross traffic. Deductive reasoning told me we’d need to go left. We started walking, we came to a corner, and we turned right. We looked for the hotel as we walked, but we didn’t see any hotel at all. And then we came to a dead end. Either we should have gone right when we went left at the beginning, or we turned right at the wrong corner. Still convinced we weren’t supposed to cross all that traffic, I had a feeling we’d turned at the wrong corner.

Todd and I decided to hop into a tuk-tuk and have him take us to the hotel. We could walk to HP from there, and asking a Thai-speaking driver to take us to HP, I knew, would be impossible. Drivers know where hotels are, and they know where the party areas and temples are, but that’s about it. Unless you speak Thai. He asked somebody where the hotel is, and he took us around the block. We had been very close. Had we turned right at the second corner instead of the first, we’d have found it.

Anyway, we walked inside, vadered (took the elevator, or “vader”) to the third floor, and walked up to a receptionist. And here is the beginning of the most mind-blowingly incredible example of customer service greatness that we have ever experienced. This is where HP officially took the cake. She asked us what the problem was, and I told her my laptop screen doesn’t light up. I was expecting her to start asking about warranties and the age of my computer right then. But no; she walked us right back into the guts of the building to a room that was labeled something like “Repair Technician Room.”

WOW! She walked us back, told the young guy in there what was wrong, and he went to work. He opened up my laptop, plugged it in, saw that there was no screen, and plugged my computer into a desktop monitor. Bingo. The hard drive is perfect. Only the screen is non-functioning. He and the girl walked out of the room. She explained, “I will go get the engineer now.”

The three of them came back with another man, and that man went to work. He opened up the computer, took something out, plugged it back in, screwed the tiny screws down tight, and tried to turn the screen back on as I held my breath. No dice. He explained something to the first guy, and he explained to us that there was a bad bulb, or something, and that the screen should be replaced for 20,000 Baht, or about $500 USD. Yikes! We don’t have that kind of money!

Todd stepped up at that point. He asked if they had an old computer lying around that could be pirated for parts. They checked. I mean, they actually really checked. No. No spares. They felt very bad, and one of the guys went to get his supervisor. They head of the repair division came down to meet us, and he explained the problem, and that they were sorry they didn’t have what was needed to fix it. They were very sorry. Genuinely. They checked on that part again, and they realized there wasn’t one in Thailand and that it would have to be ordered from Singapore. We’d said we were leaving in about four days. The part won’t be here soon enough.

They tried and tried for quite a while to come up with a solution, but nobody could. They gave us the part number, and they told us we might be able to get it at our next big-city stop: India. We had told these guys about Drive Around the World, and how this laptop is what we use to update our web page, etc., and they truly wanted to solve our problem. But they couldn’t. So, they supervisor went and got a little box and handed it to Todd, saying it was a gift for us from HP. Whoa! They felt bad, so they gave us a gift. It was a Swiss Army-style pocked knife, with lots of gadgets. How cool. Unfortunately, we didn’t have anything to give to them. I’m going to go back with some stickers and Hello key chain lights for them later.

I am stunned by the amazing service we got there at HP. I never would have expected to walk in, go directly to the repair guy, and stand there and watch as three engineers opened up my computer and tried to get it to work. Never. I was certain we would walk in, be told our warranty is up, and then be told they can perform a diagnostic (no guarantees) for a large fee in order to see how many hundreds of dollars a repair or replacement would cost. Instead, they just jumped right in with hardly a word spoken. And when they couldn’t help, they felt so rotten that they sent us away with a nice gift.

Unbelieveable. Thanks for the experience, HP.

Help support our cause: The LONGITUDE Expedition is the longest journey ever attempted with a focus on Parkinson's Disease. The Drive Around the World team aims to raise money for Parkinson’s Disease research by driving four Certified, Pre-Owned Land Rover Discoverys around the globe following lines of longitude. Readers are encouraged to pledge small amounts of money per expedition-kilometer via a pledge form that can be found on our Parkinson’s page by clicking HERE. One hundred percent of donations received go directly to Parkinson's research, and all who donate $10 or more will be entered into a raffle to win an expedition-equipped Land Rover Discovery.