A Taste of Thailand

I’m heading to the airport in about an hour to leave for India, after a great eight days in Thailand.

Figures at the Bangkok airport

I got in Friday night a week ago and stayed with my daughter Jessica over the weekend in Bangkok.

Monday I flew up to Chiang Mai to spend a day with Compassion Thailand (and my report on that is here)

and then flew back to Bangkok on Wednesday, staying with Jessica again. I saw Peter McIntosh, Asia director for the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada and got a denominational perspective on overseas missions. I was going to meet with a missionary family but there was illness in the family and that meeting fell through. I spent Thursday and Friday in the classroom with Jessica, and did a talk about Canada to all the grade four students. Because of my fiasco getting a visa that I needed, I did not yet have my Indian visa, so I went to the Indian visa office Monday morning and picked it up Friday night. It was close, but my sabbatical plans continue to unfold as planned and I’m all set for Kolkata and Delhi.

Observations about Thailand

Here are some observations about Thailand:

• The most noticeable thing about Bangkok is the traffic. It is incredible to watch. My heart was in my mouth for the first few days (particularly because the taxis do not have seatbelts!), but after I saw how it worked, I have felt perfectly safe ever since. Here’s how it works. Let’s say you have a six-lane road divided into three lanes each way with an island in the middle. You would think that means you have three lanes of traffic. No, actually you have nine lanes of traffic: three real lanes, two shoulders, the solid lines between the shoulders and the road, and two lines marking the three lanes. All are in use. Let’s say the lanes and shoulders are in use by five cars abreast. How more crowded can it get? Well, the lines are all wasted space, and nothing is wasted in Thailand. The lines are really thin lanes for motorcycles. But it gets better. You are at a stop light? The space between you and the car in front is also a lane. At right angles to the flow of traffic of course, but a lane nevertheless. Motorcycles will cross at right angles right in front of you to get to a lane where they can advance further.

Let’s say you want to change lanes and there is a bus beside you. No problem. Just slowly start edging over, and the bus will edge over and so on. Traffic flow is not rigid in Bangkok. I would say traffic is quite fluid. There is a continual shifting of cars between lanes. Many cars drive on the lines too. No one stays in the same lane for longer than a minute or two. Just a constant shifting. The drivers must be far more aware of what is going on around them than we are in Canada. You want to get out into traffic from a side street? Don’t wait, just push your way in. Cut someone off. But the Thai drivers expect that and everyone just adjusts and flows around you. The only horns I heard came when someone did something rude—instead of a gentle nudging over or cutting in, they made a sharp turn cutting across in front of a car. That will get a horn. You want to cross the street? Don’t wait for the traffic or the chicken will never get across the road. You just step out and start walking. But don’t run. You’ll get killed. Keep a steady pace and just walk, and again, traffic will just veer around you. I can imagine a Thai pedestrian wouldn’t last long in downtown Toronto, and Thai drivers would create chaos in Canada. I only saw evidence of one accident while here and surprisingly I saw no vehicles with side scrapes! I have never had so many cars come within less than an inch of mine, no exaggeration, and not scrape us. (I was in taxis the whole time—I wouldn’t dare try to drive here.) It actually became fun to watch the flow of traffic.

Thailand is a lovely country and well worth seeing. Just be sure to have a guide.