Getting Our Motor Running in Thailand

Speed up. Don’t slow down. Go to the left. Squeeze between.

Everyday, millions of Thai men, women and children of all shapes and sizes, babies to octogenarians, defy death with an easy-breezy non-chalance that would make most Americans crap their pants.

Everywhere the S.O. and I went in Thailand, the primary mode of conveyance was the motorbike. Everyone had one. Motorbikes seemed to outnumber, cars, buses, taxis, túk-túks and săwngthăews. School kids, delivery people, food vendors, and people getting from A to B, jumped on and off motor bikes like they were stepping on and off a curb.

Bangkok was dizzying in its traffic craziness. The lane markings were faded and were only suggestions, really. Túk-túk drivers tooled around farang (foreigners) and locals alike, in tricked out motorbikes with seats for two tourists and probably up to four Thai people, tiny as they are.

The narrow streets that snake through and connect major thoroughfares in Bangkok are so complex and confusing that even taxi drivers occasionally have to stop and ask directions. Túk-túks are made to zip up, down and around the backstreet sois, going at breakneck speeds where cars are too wide to fit.

But it’s the motorbikes that have the all-access pass. They go where cars, túk-túks and săwngthăews cannot. I often saw them driving the wrong direction, I suspect because the next turnaround was a little too far away to bother. (By the way, Thais drive on the left side of the road, the driver’s wheel is on the right side of the car. It’s like landing in Bizarro world for the uninitiated.) Motorbikes drove on sidewalks, on piers…places in the West where pedestrians ruled and where you’d be slapped with a ticket faster than Zsa Zsa slaps a police officer if you were caught driving down the Santa Monica pier. The S.O. didn’t need much convincing from me not to rent a motorbike in Bangkok. I guess his primitive urge for self-preservation kicked in. I threw him a bone—“We’ll rent one in Chiang Mai!”

We went up and down the Chao Phraya in riverboats, a much less crazy and hectic way to travel, stopping at various piers and footing it to different sites.

In Chiang Mai, the S.O. rented a sweet little Honda motorbike. It was a “Jaguar”, grr. I had a blue helmet with a “UFO” sticker on it. Almost brand new, just a few thousand miles on it, I felt okay about riding it as long as I didn’t have to drive it. Less populated, less “urban”, Chiang Mai was a bit safer, but only by the few inches more clearance we had between the bus to the left of us and the car to the right of us.

In the streets, riders protected themselves from the waves of soot and exhaust with surgical face masks and ski masks, their bikes weighed down with the day’s groceries or deliveries at their feet. Passengers were never passive, so comfortable in their spots, they easily gave up their hands to carry boxes, crates, packages and sacks. My hands were always clutching my S.O.’s torso for dear life.

I saw Thai mothers clutching their babies—infants—close to their chests with one arm, driving with the other, trios of schoolgirls riding side saddle, and a family of four out for a stroll. Dad, kid, Mom and kid all sandwiched together on single motorbike. I wondered how kids with their too-tiny hands fully grasped the bike handles as they stood in front of their motoring grandmothers, and dusted me and Vila, who putt-putted behind them at a comfortable 40 mph.

We had worked up enough confidence in Chiang Mai that by the time the boy and I got to Koh Chang, we had abandoned our helmets altogether. It didn’t help that my helmet was pink and made for a 12-twelve year old’s cranium; my S.O. claimed that his helmet messed up his hair. I had to agree. I will only say that the vacation m indset does tend to displace reason. Me and the S.O. raced around hairpin curves, navigated the two lane roads, drove in pitch black darkness and struggled (at times) to climb the steep hills around the island. I tried not to take it too personally that I had to get off the motorbike and walk up a few hills. Our Koh Chang motorbike was not as powerful as our bike in Chiang Mai. For reals. Or maybe it was because it was used to hauling tiny Thai booty rather than my big-American booty, the owner of which had no choice but to start eating carbs again in Thailand, which really didn’t help the drag coefficient of the bike. Oh well.

We felt completely exposed on the motorbike but for the most part, completely safe. Thai drivers looked out for each other. There’s no such thing as road rage there. No one is chucking any dogs out car windows there. No one gives each other dirty looks and pantomimes expletives at each other. That’s just how they roll. The way Americans drive, I would never elect to abandon my ten-year old Jeep Cherokee with its bumper hanging on by a thread, reminding me of a cigarette dangling from corner of someone’s mouth. In America, I seek the protection of my car from other drivers. And it just wasn’t that way in Thailand.