DRIVING IN BANGKOK (or: Not too fast, but so furious)

[kaiserkuchen]

I have been meaning to post about this for ages; basically every time I have to drive the 100kms roundtrip into town I am mentally composing this entry. It certainly does wonders towards centering myself! I was nervous about this ever since I got the car in C'Mai and knew that I had to one day steer it through the streets of the capital but now I

Comments

[branquignole]

YOU WATER MONITOR LIZARD xD

God, that sounds like a nightmare. I really don't think I could drive under these circumstances. The worst I know is driving in Mannheim which, for German standards, is pretty horrible- so many lanes skjdsj;slsk so many jerks on the roads. Don't you just love it when you indicate you want to change lanes, see the person beside you slowing down to supposedly let you file in in front of them and then ACCELERATING ALL OF A SUDDEN BECAUSE SERIOUSLY TWO SECONDS IS TOO LONG TO TAKE TO CHANGE LANES NOW YOU'VE LOST YOUR CHANCE I CAN'T WAIT FOR YOU ALL DAY.

I live in a smaller town though, and while driving is really easy-peasy here, people just feel so ~entitled. There is so much honking and general stupidity à la this car is going 2 km/h less than I am, must pass it ~now going on like you wouldn't believe. :D I think they bought their licenses from the same shady places people in Bangkok got theirs from, hee.

[kaiserkuchen]

They get pretty huge too, and I will never get over how weird it is to see them in parks downtown (like HERE lol the dude going "that's a HUGE fucking lizard...") or in the canals near office buildings. DINOSAURS AMONG USSSSS

[branquignole]

Holy frick, that is one huge lizard. o.o

That's not weird at all! I think it's perfectly normal to be nervous about driving in another country, no matter how much the rules do or do not differ. People drive differently everywhere, and I would be horribly nervous about driving anywhere else, gah. Driving barefoot though, SERIOUS OFFENSE. :D I think it's got something to do with the fact that your bare feet don't really have much of a grip on pedals, though I do agree that it's probably safer than driving with flipflops, hee. The Punkte thing is not all that alarming though; you actually ~get Punkte for breaking certain rules, but it's mostly stuff like parking offenses or speeding. It's pretty easy to avoid Punkte. (:

Haha, IKR. I used to be annoyed with my sister for talking about driving so much, but I was exactly the same when I got my license. SO MANY FEELINGS.

[kaiserkuchen]

It's like a mini dinosaur! BLAST FROM THE PASTTTT.

Dude, I actually would argue that I feel like I have BETTER grip and control when I drive barefoot-- I can differentiate the feel of the gas/break pedals and nuance the pressure better. Though I guess one would get used to it pretty fast with shoes on in colder climes when one isn't constantly wearing open shoes (also constantly removing shoes could get old after a while, especially in winter lol). The one time I drove with sneakers on felt weiiiiiiiiiiiiiird though *whines*

[kaiserkuchen]

It's just so fun to say, too. It's that -EAAAAAAAAAA sound lol, *srs nods*. Speaking of monitor lizards, I am still bitter I didn't get a chance to take pictures of that very memorable anti senate-voting "Just Say No" campaign (ridic message, because PEOPLE SHOULD VOTE) which had the tagline "don't let animals into the senate" and had posters of be-suited men with buffalo/grinning jackal-dogs/monitor lizards/monkeys and etc heads in a very well designed and quite hilarious manner. Very straightforwardly insulting too, which is still quite shocking in mainstream Thai politics, or at least when it comes to their campaign posters.

I am soothed(?) to hear that our Southern neighbours are also such ...delightful drivers lolol. How was the whole procedure for when you were prepping for your M'sian license?

[miabee023]

... I am suddenly very glad I live in the state of Washington, where everyone is a nice driver to the point of absurdity, such as letting someone into standstill traffic even if they've only been waiting all of two seconds. (Well, except there was that guy today who honked at me for going around a corner too slowly. That person was decidedly abnormal.) I dunno, it always amuses me when people come visit us from other states and we'll be driving around crappy traffic in downtown Seattle and they'll suddenly remark, "... nobody's honking!" and we all just look at them like, "... yes?"

I mean, it probably also helps that I live in the US, where everything is ENORMOUS. My sister is taking some German friends of hers on a roadtrip at the moment to the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone and so on, and we all had a good laugh when we received their postcard, which included the choice phrase of:

Everything is bigger than I thought it would be and I love America.Best insult ever, though. I will have to start shouting that at people who drive

[kaiserkuchen]

......I actually cannot imagine that, lol. I feel so magnamious when I stop for jaywalking pedestrians already (the only kind we have lol walkover bridges what walkover bridges) instead of being a dick like most other people... Also some of the jaywalkers are ballsy as fuck, eventhough I'm a local I still stick to the tried and true method of waiting for a little clump of people to cross the street with, operating under the idea that while someone might be happy to run one person over and hightail it, a group of more than 3 makes this more unlikely to happen XDD.

Heeee! I can only assume the same thing will happen to me when I eventually make it over to the States as well-- one sees the pictures and all, but I don't think it's quite fathomable unless you've actually been there yourself. Grand Canyon roadtrip sounds excellent though!

Also I am very glad to have shared this vital nugget of Thai language to you then ;D ONLY THE CHOICEST OF INSULTS FOR YOU TO USE, MY FRIEND <33

[miabee023]

Aw yeah, jaywalking out of necessity. It's a fairly common saying that you know you're from Seattle when you find yourself standing at a street corner at 2 am in the pouring rain with no car in sight, waiting for the walk signal to light up. So as you might expect, it was a bit of a challenge for me to adapt to the Italian method of crossing the street, which, similar to Bangkok it seems, largely consists of boldly stepping into speeding traffic, confident that all the cars will magically stop for you. But! I daresay I got rather good at it, and had a good time leading my parents around Matera this summer and watching my mother have to stifle her natural instinct to yank me backwards whenever I stepped off the sidewalk.

I can only hope you will someday be able to enjoy my country! Do try to swing by the Northwest, where the weather is always mild and there are no insects. And, I mean, we also have dramatic mountain and water views around practically every turn. So that's pretty awesome too.

[kaiserkuchen]

Ahaha oh man, the Seattle way is adorable and the Italian way also seems very similar to what I have seen of the German/Austrian way. Though there is also the added fact there that it's because people EXPECT drivers adhere to traffic rules like stopping at zebra crossings and thus stride forth in full confidence when cars are incoming. Which I had the biggest difficulties accepting, much to my European friends' bafflement... but my strategy of always thinking the worst of drivers has been proven well-founded in Asia so I'm sticking with it lol. How did you find the traffic to be in Turkey when you were there?

ONE DAY, AMERICA, ONE DAY <33333

[laulan]

People don't use turn signals?! That alone would give me the vapors! O_O I am in awe of your, O Brave Driver.

[kaiserkuchen]

It's like you almost have to practice telepathy on your fellow motorists-- "is that Toyota just drifting towards the lane divider lines because he's an asshole and can't or OH WAIIIIIT he just switched over abruptly yup yup who needs turn signals amirite :///"

<33