Driving a motorbike around a rotary in Southern Thailand is probably the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done. I would not say that I am necessarily someone to whom the adjective “reckless” has ever been attributed. I have, however, done “risky” things like climb up and jump off of slippery, barnacle covered rocks into bodies of water whose depth I have pre-determined as OK by watching someone else jump in and surface.
(usually the "someone else" who jumps in first)
At least with “cliff” jumping, or rather my own personal experiences with it in Thailand, I am aware that my fear is really only a slightly exaggerated fear of the possibility of hitting literal rock bottom and lying tangled in a mass of seaweed and rocks until the mermaids take me away to a castle/jail at the bottom of the sea. Usually, this fear subsides (after I’ve watched at least three other people successfully complete the jump, surface, and breath). Usually, my feet leave the slippery rocky surface and I’m in that couple-second-long-limbo between “so this is what flying feels like” and “oh wait now I’m falling into waters of questionable depths, I really hope it’s…” and then I’m underwater. Usually, once I surface and re-adjust my bathing suit I comment on how fun it was (because it is, honestly, very fun) and calm my breathing down as inconspicuously as possible and decide to do it again.
I wish I could say that after I come to a rotary and wait about three minutes for the small break between cars and motorbikes that drive at literally 100 km/hour through the rotary I am filled with the excited fear with which I am imbued when I jump into the water. But as soon as I’m in the rotary usually one of two things occurs. A truck either stops in the middle of the rotary, in the smaller inner circumference of the rotary that is clearly not meant for large trucks dispelling large quantities of ambiguous black fumes, or it decides that it wants to go in a different direction or maybe take a sudden turn off the rotary to further contemplate which of the various roads it wishes to take (clearly things that should be thought of before one enters the rotary). Back in the US, I drove around a rotary in my trusty Rav-4 approximately three times, all of which were on the Cape. The experience always made me nervous (I really dislike driving in a circle around something, my abysmal performances in bumper cars and Mario Kart are testaments to that), but at least on the Cape the Range Rovers and Land Cruisers and convertibles and pedal bikes were manned by people actually in possession of driving licenses who did not appear to be contestants on the Mow Down the Foreigner on the Fino Game Show. Driving a motorbike around a rotary is an exceedingly more mentally-taxing endeavor than driving a car, especially when one has to get ¾ of the way around the rotary as I do practically everyday. Driving a motorbike is like driving a bike only if you tell yourself that too much and then put your feet down to try to stop the bike or slow down you will be a very sorry person indeed. The real similarity between the two is, obviously, that they both necessitate a sort of rhythmic oneness with the bike. I was watching the Martin Scorcese documentary on Bob Dylan (No Direction Home, seriously great way to spend 3 hours) and there’s a part where Allen Ginsberg is describing Bob Dylan as possessing a breath that was one with his songs. That is the best way to describe the optimal motorbike rider. Bob Dylan is not the kind of person that probably fretted about driving around rotaries on a motorbike, but imagine the opposite of Bob Dylan on a motorcycle and you get me. The real problem is the swaying with the motorbike as it turns because, given the insanity of how your fellow road-travelers drive, you have to be ready and are usually forced to stop at a moment’s notice. The action of swaying on a moving vehicle tends to make me nauseous and also nervous (in other words, I am definitely not one with my motorbike or my breath). That game where people move from side-to-side in a van? It always made my palms exceedingly sweaty and me want to throw up/cry. The same reaction occurs when I turn around the rotary. It’s just one long, terrifying, extended circular swaying motion.
I should explain what the road through town looks like to enhance the visuals of what it’s like to drive here.
Me + bike...it is a very good looking bike, I will give it that.
Each side has two lanes, although “lane” would be misleading since cars and motorbikes that are parked along the sidewalk invariably take up the entire outer lane and then 1/3 of the second lane. There is no speed limit anywhere in Thailand, as far as I can tell, so those people (usually sinewy young men driving bikes that I’m convinced have been altered to be as “vroom-y” as possible) who are in an apparent rush to get somewhere (which is interesting because nobody in Thailand has ever been on time to anything) speed up at what seem like the worst possible times to be maneuvering a motorbike as though you are in a high speed car chase. They not only speed up, but they zigzag between trucks and cars and motorbikes and pedestrians and around corners and then around the rotary, which is where the maniacal driving exacerbates the innate confusion of a rotary. And that is my motorbike story.
So motorbikes are, needless to say, something that I will not miss about my experience in Thailand. Although there are certainly moments on the empty back roads of Phang-nga where I can drive at relatively fast speeds alone on the road and pretend I’m Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider (and my coiffure has grown to the “Goddamn hippies!” length of D. Hopper, for those of you who remember that most iconic of motorcycle movies). And those drives are thoroughly enjoyable.
Six months and about two and a half weeks ago, when I mentally prepared myself to move to Thailand for seven months, I made a list of things that I would miss about the US and a list of things that I would love about Thailand. As I packed my L.L. Bean turquoise lunch box with what would be my airplane meals for the flight to Thailand, I remember being vaguely aware that it’d probably be difficult to find whole wheat bread in Thailand. That proved to be accurately prescient but what I did not anticipate not having was any sort of meat besides chicken. I do eat shrimp and fish occasionally, but chicken is the real protein in my diet. One trip to the market or Big C and a glance at the meat section (intestines, pork belly, tongue, little bone/fat balls of something simply labeled “pig,” chicken fingers…as in the hands of chicken which actually have nails/talons and look like everything I’ve ever thought a witch’s hand would look like, etc.) sort of dampens my desire for anything other than chicken or shrimp. Since I’m on the topic of food, I might as well admit something. I went a little bit overboard with the Thai food during the first threeish months here. Paht thai gai/paht thai gung or khao paht gai every day for lunch and one of the many varieties of Thai soup (tom yam gung, the ridiculously spicy/infamous Thai soup, and "bus station soup"...a brothy noodle-based soup with a chicken leg that is absolutely delicious and served from a stand at the town's bus station, hence the sobriquet) or chicken dish (the favorites being gai paht met mamuang, aka cashew nut chicken, and khao man gai, aka market chicken I've described in a previous post) for dinner. I was sort of addicted (probably because they use enormous amounts of MSG in everything they cook…a fact that I finally realized after noticing most of the shop ladies pouring spoonfuls of something white and crystallized into everything they cook). Here are the highlights from the Thai dishes that I’ve eaten, aka Food Items I Will Definitely Miss.
The best paht thai "shop" in town.
And far and away the best paht thai gung I've ever had.
The above dish definitely takes first place but a close second is som tam, aka spicy papaya salad. Papaya here refers not the really delicious salmon pink/blood red (depending on how ripe the papaya is) fruit but the raw/unripened version which is more akin to a vegetable. Som tam is the ultimate in spicy Thai food and it's made by putting a variety of ingredients into a mortar and grinding everything together into what resembles a julienned vegetable salad. The key ingredients that are put into the mortar (other than the obvious slices of papaya) are whole chilies, slices of limes, long beans (the Thai version of a green bean only thicker and more bitter), dried shrimp and roasted peanuts. I've tried a couple of varieties all over Thailand and my favorite is definitely a place in Phang-nga that Giggs took me to last week that included small blue crab legs in their som tam and a side bowl of sticky rice to dip into the leftover som tam juice (limes + chilies). It was just spicy enough that my nose started to run but not so spicy that I started to cry (which has happened more than once in my various attempts to find the Ultimate Som Tam). I forgot to take a picture of the som tam so...your imaginations will have to suffice.
The last thing on the Food Items I Will Definitely Miss list is the Holy Trinity of papaya, mango and banana. The latter item actually deserves four separate entries on this list as there are four types of bananas available in Phang-nga. I have yet to understand how to pronounce the varieties in terms other than "big," "really tiny," "resembles a finger," and "somewhere in between big and finger." The finger ones are the best but they are also the hardest to find. At the night market there is a lady who sells boiled sweet potatoes (which are delicious) and bananas and I've been going to her stand often enough that she's figured out that I'm a true banana fan and hands me the group of bananas that she describes as "alloy" (Thai word for "delicious). We have established a wordless communication/understanding via our mutual love of bananas. So that Holy Trinity has truly been a staple of my daily food intake since arriving in August. I'd only had papaya once before and I remember being obsessed with the lime-juice-squeezed-on-papaya breakfast dish at some tropical family vacation. That is a basically daily constant of my post-work snack. Mangoes, on the other hand, were on Becca's Blacklist because of a sort of terrifying experience when I was ten with a rotten mango that I opened and smelled and never once looked upon a mango again until coming to Thailand. The mangoes here are perfectly sweet and delicious and orange-y yellow whereas the mango of my ten year-old trauma was more of a greenish red and unnaturally large. I don't want to dwell on it.
Papaya.
Typical side-of-the-road banana tree. I've been tempted to snipe a banana or ten from these trees but I'm very afraid that a rabid dog or an armed Thai banana farmer will chase me for miles.
These are of the "somewhere in between big and finger" variety.
Mango salsa on the left, which is my new favorite thing to make here. Suggestion for anyone who wants to make his or her own mango salsa: add a little bit of sliced basil. (Honey, lime and ginger chicken on the right...I've been forgoing the MSG-heavy Thai food recently and cooking new and exciting things.)
My time here is coming to an end (I leave for Bangkok on the 14th) and so I'll end this post with some pictures of the sky while I still have the chance to and because...well...I'm obsessed with the sky and have taken way too many pictures of it at various stages of the day/weather to not share them. These were taken last night right before a torrential thunderstorm. None of these were altered at all...the streets and sky truly had a nightmareish look to them.
