Thai Transport

I’ve been living in Thailand for three weeks now, and I’m always vacillating between sensations of complete normalcy and waves of disbelief. One thing that is very different here for sure is getting from one place to another. In the U.S. it was one of two options: feet or car (or bicycle when Joe was persuasive). Here there is a whole new set of possibilities.

Instead of busses there are songthaews (literally means “two rows”), which are converted pickup trucks that run on (semi) regular routs at (semi) regular hours. Two benches are built into the inside edges of the truck bed and a metal frame and roof offer cover from the elements and some protection against falling out. There are official songthaew stops, but when you see the one you want you can always just wave and it will come over and pick you up. When you arrive at your destination you buzz the driver, hop out the back, and pay 10 bhat (about 30 cents). The only downside to songthaews are the fact that they only run about an hour after dark, which usually means you can get where you want to go, you just can’t get home.

Songthaews might sound slightly dangerous, but not when you consider the alternative: the tuk-tuk (named after the sound the motorcycle engine makes). Tuk-tuks are to tricycles what motorbikes are to bicycles: one wheel in the front, two in the back. Tuk-tuks are a for-hire type of transportation, and are basically a taxi-alternative in big cities like Bangkok. Here in Khon Kaen they take preference over the samlor (same thing but with a bicycle instead of a motorbike). Fares are negotiable, and once a price is decided on you just hop in the back and hold on for dear life because since tuk-tuk drivers are paid only the amount agreed upon, they want to get you to your destination as fast as possible in order to fit in as many rides as they can. They will run anyone off the road and I would suspect if they arrived with only 50% of their passengers they would still expect 100% of the fare.

As tuk-tuks are difficult to find on/near campus (where we live) and songthaews are slow and sometimes irregular, most students (and Joe and I) get around by motorbike. Our motorbike is very reliable—once Joe gets it started. It’s a rented manual and usually it takes Joe about five tries before she doesn’t stall and I can hop on the back and we’re on our way. It’s been a little better since last week when Joe discovered a little switch that said “start”. This might be forgivable if it was written in Thai, but since it wasn’t, the boy has no excuse. One thing I can say is that Joe’s a very safe driver, and we always wear our way-too-cute-for-words matching helmets (unlike a lot of Thais who don’t like to mess up their hair-they just let the helmet dangle from the handle bars!). One thing that is dangerous on a motorbike is me in my work clothes. Skirts are pretty much mandatory for work, and I learned the hard way that short skirts and riding on the back of a bike is a little more Jordan then Khon Kaen is ready for.

I’d like to post some pictures of these various vehicles, but the internet at KKU has been especially slow lately (15 minutes or more to load a page). As soon as I can figure out how to reasonably post pictures, I will.