Lionel - Thailand Stories
THAILAND STORIES SHORT : ROAD RAGE
Road rage /ˈroʊd ˌreɪdʒ/
noun
“anger or violence between drivers, often caused by difficult driving conditions”
noun
“anger or violence between drivers, often caused by difficult driving conditions”
Sometimes, this city get’s insane. There are moments that just make you feel like you accidentally got stuck inside some cheaply produced action movie. Being stuck in rush-hour traffic in Bangkok is usually nerve wrecking enough as is but today this city has outdone itself once again: I was not only in the middle of traffic, I was also in the middle of an accident involving my taxi driver and a couple on a Motorcycle.
Picture the following: It’s rush hour in a city with one of the worst rush-hours this world knows. You really don’t want to spend forever wandering the city in order to wait until the worst of the literal gridlock has subsided. What would you do?
Like any sensible tourists with “too much money” (is there such a thing? If there is.. I don’t have it.), we took a taxi. It started off as well as anyone with a glimmer of an idea about traffic in Thailand would think: The driver was watching movies on his smartphone whenever there was a red light or any other chance to look away from traffic. Now, don’t judge me but after everything I have witnessed in this town (e.g. a taxi driver higher than a motherf* still taking in customers), this didn’t really bother me in the slightest. It went pretty well anyways up until we got to an unusually busy branch-off in the road. It was buzzing with Bikers left and right while the taxi driver was trying to turn into the street. It happened so fast, I’m still not sure who was at fault – granted: I was kinda busy with Reddit on my cell…
To most, that in itself sounds more than exciting enough but just like in any bad action movie the accident was only the prelude to the real story:
We were now standing in the middle of a three-way intersection in the backseat of a taxi that just collided with a Motorcycle. Now, I’m not a stranger to this city and its people – I’ve lived here for 3 months so far after all – and up to this point really thought I knew quite a bit about Thais… This drastically changed right there and then. Usually, the Thais are extremely laid back and grateful. No one would even think about scolding another Thai in public as keeping their face is extremely important to them.
The guy on the Motorcycle? He didn’t give a f*. He immediately started screaming aggressively at our driver who was trying his best impression of an apologizing dog being scolded. But as in any cheap action flick, screaming wasn’t nearly enough for this guy: Using his bare fists, he started banging against the hood of our taxi until he pumped himself up enough to gesture our driver to get out. Somehow proving a somewhat existing ability to judge a situation our driver did not comply; He remained seated in the car. Unfortunately, that’s where his ability to judge the situation ended as he decided to lower his driver-side window. Motorcycle-Douche decided to use this opportunity to throw some punches. Several clear blows connected with our taxi drivers head while we were locked inside. The most baffling thing to me? The taxi driver took the punches without so much of a complaint. He was apologizing throughout the whole ordeal proving how bad Thais are with public scoldings.
Sadly, that’s not the end of this story. To further add insult to injury the taxi driver kept the window lowered even as the biker approached for a second serving of punches. Afterwards, to our surprise, it didn’t take long for the situation to cool down a bit. Just minutes after taking a beating, our cab driver apologized to us in the few broken English words he knew and calmly got out of the taxi to make some calls while we started to leave.
I felt sorry for the guy so I gave him 100Baht – a drop on the hot stone after what just happened – as we started walking home.
Cover-Photo by Igor Ovsyannykov on Unsplash
