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Richard Meredith
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December 2006 Street-life danger in Bangkok
As all travellers know, the Thai capital of Bangkok is famous for its ..er ..colourful street-life. But there´s another kind of traffic in town these days that isn´t so appealing. Like many of Asia´s big cities there are times in the day when the roads reach grid-lock and no one has yet suggested any of those fancy detours, vehicle restrictions, anti-congestion surcharges and the like, with which the West tries to cure the disease. But trust Bangkok, where you could say kerb-crawling is a way of life, to come up with an ingenious answer. It´s quite illegal (as you might expect) and no one is appearing to do much about it (as you also might expect), but the ´city of angels´ is the first place I´ve come across where an increasing number of frustrated road users simply drive the sidewalk (aka pavement) as a way to beat the jams. Picture the scene. I am walking on Sukhumvit Road, one of several main arteries into town. It´s a little after 8am. The road is already one long line of hooting, fuming, mechanical pieces of metal going absolutely nowhere. So what do they do (well, anything with two wheels anyway)? Answer: They deliberately power up onto the sidewalk and take it on from there. You can´t believe it. Anything narrow enough to make the jump is suddenly scattering rush-hour pedestrians in all directions. And some of those two-wheelers are a frightening sight .. everything from the go-faster bicycles of city types with a manic ´I´m-late-for-work´ look in their eyes, to powerful Suzukis and Yamahas, usually mounted by two-up young tearaways masked against the smog. The traffic cops, of course, turn a blind eye. As often as not, there aren´t many around anyway, but even if they are, it´s more than likely they are stuck in the jam along with the rest. |
So the two-wheeled tigers feel free to commandeer the sidewalk as their personal rite of passage, and no one, it seems, is prepared .. or able .. to do anything about it - which is extremely bad news for little ol´ ladies venturing out early for a bit of shopping, over-loaded back-packers struggling to make the station, children on their way to school, street vendors setting up shop for the day, and a yelping straggle of cats and dogs scratching into last night´s sacks of restaurant garbage. Everyone leaps for the nearest doorway. Fast. It´s dangerous and illegal; a wrong right-of-way. But as a method of turning a half-mile kerb-crawl into a 30-second by-pass, you have to admit it´s an inventive solution. In the West, with our disciplined and highly-regulated road systems, this kind of traffic anarchy would have purple-faced highway officials heading hot-foot for the Mayor´s office. But way out East it is all rather different. Bangkok´s pavement pirates probably consider the sidewalks only as we would special lanes reserved for buses, taxis or bikes. The opportunity is there for them to take .. and they get away with it. In the topsy-turvy world of Asia´s new economic prosperity, some of Bangkok´s citizens are finding a whole new set of ways to re-write the rulebooks. Next thing you know, they´ll be issuing crash helmets to pedestrians. © Richard Meredith & Mercury Books 2006 |