A Little Scare…Driving, Tuk-Tuks and Bikes in Asia
I have largely neglected my duties to this blog so far by not updating all of my readers on the state of driving on this side of the world. For those who have not yet had the pleasure of traveling or backpacking through Asia, well, it’s unique and an assault on Western safety sensibilities. To understand the way these people drive you pretty much have to completely abandon your conceptions about Western driving tactics and strategies and instead accept the organized chaos of a free-for-all.
From what I’ve discovered so far, the lines in the road are merely a suggestion and you can only describe the traffic as fluid. It’s perfectly acceptable to move into oncoming traffic in order to pass a slower moving vehicle – everyone just shifts to the left, then to the right, and if you want to drive on the completely wrong side of the road…well, hey, that seems to be okay too!
The first days in Laos had me insanely tense and white-knuckling it through every drive…now though, I can only sit back and just sort of marvel at the organized chaos that somehow, you know, just seems to work.
Part of the reason that the traffic is so nerve-wracking is because I am in a tuk-tuk for most of these drives. The tuk-tuk is the essential way around town for backpackers…and, well, any traveler really…they’re cheap and plentiful.
I have to admit that I was a bit taken aback when my first tuk-tuk driver made nine of us pack into the back (to a Westerner like myself it seems to me the tuk-tuk was intended for six…but hey, apparently that was just me) and then preceded to weave and dart through traffic.
I won’t be overly dramatic and say that visions of my life flashed before my eyes…I think that privilege is reserved for the crazy souls who agree to a motorbike ride and then cling to their drivers, huge backpacks fastened to their backs, and not a helmet in sight – I understand that money is scare but Bali, Indonesia has helmet laws which means it is possible.
Ok, perhaps if the cheap backpackers without helmets clinging to the motorcycles don’t elicit fear in your heart it’s the families zipping past the tuk-tuks at full speed. When I say families, I mean that an entire family is precariously clinging to one motorbike… and no one is wearing a helmet.
Again, I understand that I am viewing this from a completely Western perspective, but the fact remains that seeing these young children perched precariously on bikes gives me pangs of fear…injustice…in my heart.
A typical scene on the road:
Dad is driving with a kid (maybe two) in his lap while mom casually hangs on to his waist with one arm – the youngest child is usually wedged between their bodies (I saw one infant that could only have been three months old!) and another toddler is then perched leisurely on mom’s knee and serves as the motorbike’s official welcome party; the knee-perched child is almost always at that cheeky age of about four years old and thus waves cheerily at tuk-tuks passing by chock full of farang (westerners).
What I’ve found out just recently though is that the driving in Laos is tame compared to Cambodia – when I arrived into Siem Reap I couldn’t help but have a bit of shock – Cambodia is much more developed than Laos in many regards and Siem Reap was a proper bustling city!
Holy schnikes am I glad that I don’t ever have to drive a car; without growing up in this style of traffic I’m not sure I could keep myself sane navigating all of the different types of traffic!
