Road Rules

This week I took a final step in setting up my new life here: I bought a motorbike.  Bicycling around the city doesn’t take long to get old, thanks to the heat, the distances, and the fact that bikes are at the bottom of the traffic totem pole, resulting in many “close call” riding experiences.  Driving here is relatively safe in comparison to other large Asian capitals, though traffic may seem bad at times, it doesn’t even compare to larger cities, and moves quite slowly.  The “road rules” appear crazy on first arrival from the States: lanes are irrelevant, you pass through any holes in traffic that you can to get ahead, at stoplights bikes squeeze through the cars to get to the front, and driving on the wrong side of the road is not entirely uncommon.  But there is indeed some “method to the madness,” which I was able to pick up on while biking for the past two weeks.  Motorbikes are incredibly common here, and definitely outnumber cars on the streets.  Packs of motorbikes line every sidewalk, parked wherever they can fit.  Since many people use motorbikes as a primary mode of transportation, you can see anything and everything being carried by bike, from babies (usually not wearing helmets of course), to chairs and other furniture, to by far the strangest thing that two of my housemates witnessed the other day–the driver’s own IV.

Although there are more bikes than cars, you still have to keep your wits about you while driving, because the majority of cars that are on the road are large.  Owning a car to begin with is a bit of a status symbol, so many people who do own cars have giant, flashy vehicles, like the stereotypical “American consumer” SUV.  It surprised me when I first arrived how many brand-new looking Toyotas filled every parking lot.

A friend gave me my first driving lesson on Monday in a large parking lot, where I learned how to change gears, balance, and come to a stop without falling over.  24 hours later, I was driving out of the Kolao shop on my new bike.  Although it’s only been a few days, it’s already drastically improved my life here: I get to work so much quicker (and less sweaty), I can drive around at night (good, since it gets dark at 6pm), and I feel the just a bit more like a local when I breeze past the backpacker falang haggling for tuk-tuks downtown.