Motorcycle Mayhem

For about a month now, I have been riding a motorcycle which I purchased from a colleage at school: a 2005 Honda Dream 125cc. As the school is roughly twenty-five minutes from town, it was almost a necessity to have if I am to get away from time to time. While there have been a few hiccups (I need a new front tire and there are some oil leaks from the engine), it has been a vehicle of intrepid bliss.

I admit that I probably drive too fast on the thing. Generally I drive faster than most Thais do on their own motorbikes (which is probably about 50 km/h), and often faster than many in cars (probably about 70 km/h). I think the quickest I have clocked is about 108 km/h, which seemingly is not very quick for a car but is exceptionally fast and dangerous on a motorcycle. One wrong turn, one abnormal bump, one collision with one of the multitude of animals which inhabit the maze of streets in Chiang Mai could drastically shorten my motorcycling campaign. Really it's just a bit of luck with a bit of defensive driving, but in retrospect, likely more luck.

In my first week at the school, I met an American ex-pat working in a guesthouse who was confined to a wheelchair because he had been hit from the side by a truck while crossing an intersection at night on his motorcycle eight years prior.

This brings me to the peculiar fashion in which traffic is maintained in Thailand. It is illegal, for instance, to ride a motorcycle without a helmet, and yet the majority of people don't seem to adhere to this law, nor are they reprimanded by the authorities. Moreover, the Thai youth seem to think that one is not "cool" if one dons a helmet. Personally, I find it liberating to not always wear one (a blithe habit I have acquired here but could never attempt in Canada), although I realize the greater risk associated with doing so. On occasion, the police will set up checks where they will ticket motorcyclists who have been remiss, but it doesn't happen very often, not enough to change the mentality anyway. It is not abnormal to see three people on a motorcycle either, sometimes with one of the riders dangling both of her legs off to one side. The females maintain that it is because they wear skirts, which seems to connote that appearance supersedes safety. I suppose that even in our caskets, we still try to look good.

But this isn't even the worst of infractions. One of the main reasons driving at night is so dangerous is because there is a preponderance of drunk driving in Thailand. There doesn't appear to be any laws regulating driving while under the influence, and if there are, they certainly aren't enforced. I actually once was driving in Chiang Mai at about 4pm and saw someone sprawled out on the shoulder of the highway, with half their body dangling from their car. The girl I was with didn't want me to stop (helping strangers is not a high priority in Thailand - cars barely move for flashing ambulances to pass for instance), but I did anyway because I thought he might be hurt. It turned out that he was completely drunk with his keys in the ignition, lying on the ground with the upper half of his body out on the side of oncoming traffic. When I tried to tell him to sleep in the back of his truck and took his keys out of his ignition, he kindly offered me some chips and put the keys right back where they had been. No one seemed to care. Just another day in Thailand.

In the same vein as drunk driving, there are a inordinate amount of hit-and-runs throughout the country. Because the average Thai does not have the monetary allowance to pay for hospital bills or vehicular damage in the case of an accident, they usually flee the scene instead (The Thai minimum wage is about CAN $6 a day). The books I have read only buttress this point further, almost tacitly justifying it. Even worse, a farang (foreigner) will usually be the one considered culpable because they do not know the local laws, but more so because in most cases they lack the ability to communicate and defend themselves to the Thai police officer who arrives at the scene.

Could it get any worse really? Well, yes.

In Chiang Mai (and likely many other areas in Thailand), there have been motorcycle gangs that terrorize innocent people driving their motorcycles during the day and especially at night. Some people have been verbally abused, some have been robbed (a twenty-one year old Canadian woman in 2004, for instance), some have been thrown off their bikes while driving (they ride up to a victim and push them off), and some have even been killed. I have even heard stories of biker gangs decapitating people with samurai swords in Chiang Mai, although the law enforcement supposedly dealt with it a few years ago. For whatever reason, likely tourism, it is not very well documented. At least not in English.

In Chiang Mai just a few weeks ago, however, a twenty-one year old was brutally stabbed with a samurai sword in front of an Esso station by a motorcycle gang. He is lucky to be alive. While the police has made some arrests, many are still at large.

Must I now live in fear that I, too, could fall victim to such insanities? Getting attacked by a group of people on motorbikes wielding a sword is not a quintessential Thai cultural experience in my opinion.

Thailand might be marching towards the season of fall, but to me it seems as though the weather isn't the only factor making Chiang Mai a bit colder...