Thailand, December 29, 1999
Bangkok Traffic is Insane!
How odd, roads full of idiling cars going nowhere fast.
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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. |
