Driving in Thailand
You know that feeling when you're driving along an open stretch of road and the perfect song comes on the radio? It has to be the radio, tape isn't allowed. That would be too planned. A song that maybe has no other place than when you're heading north on Highway 1 towards Stinson Beach at about 7:32pm. On a sunny evening, of course. You're cutting the curves, you're bellowing out the words like the karaoke star you really are and you're thinking life couldn't get much better. John Mellencamp's Jack and Diane would probably work well for me at such a time. I really have to be alone to get the full effect; somehow, my dreams are bigger then. Gigantic. It's all a cheesy film scene right about then.
That's how I felt on Friday as I took off from Fungus Gorilla II (Batu Ferrenghi) in Penang. Except that it was 9am, the roads in Georgetown were not moving, the bus in front of me was burping black bubbles of exhaust junk in my face, Britney Spears was on the radio and I was driving on the left hand side of the road. And I think, if I recollect, I was probably singing along. To Brit.
Driving on the left hand side of the road was the least of my worries as it turned out. There really is no right or wrong side of the road in Thailand. After half an hour across the border, I released if no one else worried about which side they were driving on, I shouldn't concern myself with such trivialities either. Much better to simply avoid anything aiming directly towards me. Particularly when we're both going at some three digit km/h number.
Driving in Thailand is a game of who is the most stubborn. Two lane roads are very deceiving when they're empty. They look like any other two lane road. Add a few moving animals, scooters, and cars and the road turns into a seven lane streak of chaos: two lanes in the middle for the two psychedelic buses passing the two cars which are passing the two scooters. And somewhere in there is at least one chicken and probably a scrawny looking dog. And you'd better bloody well hope that God does more than bless you if you sneeze when you're behind the wheel in such a situation.
Anyway.
How many times has the battery in your automatic lock system run out? The one on your key chain? And have you ever heard of turning off the manual locking system to a car? I haven't. Or at least I hadn't until there I was at 6pm one evening, locked out of my car in a middle-of-nowhere town in Southern Thailand. Never again will I wonder who on earth goes to all of those watch stores.
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