The Belly Button Window Details



About Belly Button Window

The Semi-Regular Newsletter


Readership

Thailand, December 29, 1999

Bangkok Traffic is Insane!

How odd, roads full of idiling cars going nowhere fast.

Just don't ask me how I got this shot!
Red lights to the horizon!
You wanna stare at this early on a Monday?
The downtown parking lot
Each morning it wakes me up, as its foul smell penetrates the hotel I'm staying in. I don't really know how the street-side vendors survive, for the carbon monoxide fumes from Bangkok traffic are noxious even on the fifth floor of an alley a block from any major road!

Yes, I know I wrote about Beijing traffic, but there is a difference in Bangkok. Unlike the Chinese capital, where the millions of bicycles holding up an orderly flow, in Bangkok there are just too many cars!

Reminding me of the few times I commuted into DC from Northern Virginia, even the overpasses in Bangkok are filled with bumper to bumper traffic all driving on the left side of the road. The photos at left were taken around 8am on a Monday, so you can just imagine how much worse it gets.

Now add in a dose of equatorial heat and humidity, and I'm surprised Bangkok isn't the world capital of road rage. Even with all the cars humming with air conditioning, it takes more patience than I have to sit in the long lines waiting for a light to change or an opening to form.

Personally, since I either avoid the streets at that time, or take a motorcycle taxi, I'm not stuck in the mess like I was in Beijing. Here, unlike there, the Thai's got smart a while ago and practice no-rules driving mixed with white-line driving motorcycles and a bicycle ban, to speed up the scene from a complete stop to slow crawl.

Thailand, December 28, 1999

Don't Mess With the King of Thailand

You know your in Thailand when you see HM Bhumibol Adulyadej everywhere A younger, dapper King Pretty paintings in Bangkok traffic Seventy-two years of style Yesterday, in making my first Thailand-specific weekly PhotoJournal entry, I went looking for a Thai flag GIF. I wanted to put the flag of Thailand...

Thailand, December 27, 1999

Not For the Timid, Motorcycle Taxis Are Fast!

Hold on to that plastic helmet, Motorcycle Taxis are wild! Get that suit outta my way! Gentlemen, start your engines! No, Mom, I swear this isn't me! Yes, even the Fuzz! So you are in Thailand's capital city, dreading the awful traffic, and unsure of where the buses or limited...