On traffic and taxis

The city of Bangkok operates at a pace altogether unlike any city I’ve ever been to. A year in Philadelphia was but sugarcoated languor compared to the speed and honest grit that inhabits this bustling metropolis.

In our little district of Nongkhaem (approx. 25km west of downtown Bangkok), the term “sidewalk” has a loose meaning (if any at all) and if you’re not watching your back, front, and sides at all times you are likely to be toppled over by the perpetual stampede of every manner of motorcycle and motorized cart weaving through the pedestrian minority. And yet, the locals maintain such a well-tempered balance and respect for proximity that the fact that they push its limits would never cross their mind. It is this balance that struck me in my first week here.


Now, months later, it is more trying than fascinating and we have begrudgingly gotten used to dodging motorcycles as they graze our backs while we’re standing at food stalls or walking home. The constant flow of motorbikes careening down the sidewalk exists as one of the few things about this place that grinds our teeth.

The only time I feel empathetic towards those driving on the sidewalk is when I see an entire nuclear family (man, woman, and at least two children) piled high on one motorcycle. This circus feat happens more often than you’d think and traveling this way is second-nature to the locals. Seeing toddlers bounce past unrestrained on a motorbike makes me think of my sister-in-laws and their kids back in the States. They do parenting a little different out here in Bangkok, and I have to say that I kind of dig it. Fast, loose, and barefoot. 

At the same time, playing passenger in a taxicab in Bangkok seems to be the very paradigm of taking one’s life into their own hands. But if the choice were left to me, I would trust no one else than a Thai cabby to take us through this wonderful city. The amount of cars screaming down the road at one time is unreal—no matter what time of day. (Which partly explains why so many people just drive on the sidewalks). The traffic in Bangkok rivals no other place, and it offers one of the most exhilarating means of public transit that I’ve ever taken.

Bright pink and green taxis careen down the highway, bobbing between giant smog-sputtering trucks whose payloads are menacingly strapped to their beds by torn tarps and dry rubber cords. And while I press my forehead against the window in awe of this gushing river of rusted metal and smoke, a motorbike stacked three passengers high blows past my face at breakneck speed and weaves between the braking traffic as we anticipate the next jerk into high gear. Not two seconds after the first motorbike squeezes past our taxi another one races by with only inches left between my door and the pickup truck touting six or more passengers in the neighboring lane—the moto driver’s purple vest and helmet signify that he is also a form of taxi, and the girl sitting sideways behind him stares ahead blankly, somehow bored by this motion-sick dance of fate as her hair wisps backwards, gently licking the side-view mirror of our taxi while our driver straddles the dotted white line at 80 km/hr until he can push his way over to our exit.

We floating cars and motorbikes are the blood cells in the blue-black veins of Bangkok’s pulsing traffic circuit. As one ventricle opens, we gush forward like a flood until we jam up into a temporary halt and are released again towards this country’s heart. Every time I jump into this living river of restless metal and vibrating fate my mouth hangs open in bemused awe. The measure of balance is incredible and if these leather-faced pilots didn’t act and react in total synchronization these arteries would clot and close up in a cacophonous roar. 

And yet, we relax as if we were the only ones in the stream.

Sometimes it takes great speed to steady a quavering heartbeat.