Lynn's Trip to Thailand part 7: A Few Bucks for a Tuk Tuk
As usual, I will quote the text and comment on it.
According to this website, this is how you pronounce Tuk Tuk:
The name Tuk Tuk comes from the engine noise of the three-wheeled cabs that ply Thai streets. It rhymes, more or less, with duck, with the ''T'' rendered as if it were somewhere between a ''T'' and a ''D.''
So we have for the first time, a travelogue title word play that works with the actual pronunciation of the thing. The currency in Thailand is the Baht, but I wouldn’t be surprised if taxis in the tourism areas of Thailand did take bucks.
Today, we asked a tuk tuk driver to take us into the town of Krabi, but he insisted we go to his house first and get his car. The tuk-tuk is maneuverable, light and cheap to run. Vendors sell gas in wine bottles and it's fun to see a driver "feeding" his ride. He took us down a series of tiny rural roads and we were soon quite lost. The thought of never coming home crossed our minds, but it would have made for a cool and adventurous ending!
While researching gas in a wine bottle, I found this interesting article in the Phuket Gazette, which pretty much confirms what Lynn said about it.
Kop's house was a tiny concrete cube with a corrugated metal roof and an outdoor kitchen. His 2 boys were playing noisily outside and his wife, wearing the hijab and very polite, welcomed us as if bringing home strangers was all part of her day. It's a good thing we took the car. The road to Krabi is unfinished, fast paced and long. A few minutes into the trip, a truck making a U-turn ahead of us crossed the path of a young man on a motor scooter and the impact was awful. The traffic formed a "y" passing the scene on either side, everyone looking at the victim, lying, bleeding on the road. He was lucky to be alive. There wasn't much left of the scooter. Another good reason to be travelling with an experienced driver! People crowded in to help and as we left the scene, the ambulance arrived, but we were unnerved by the incident for the rest of the day.
For a view of a Thailand hijab, see this website. Since Kop's wife is not mentioned as a mysterious, veiled woman, I suspect her hijab looks more like that picture.
Again, the hillsides really take your breath away. On either side of the road, massive walls of limestone tower above you, the vegetation hanging off it is thick and rich and interesting fruits and flowers hang just out of reach. So many kinds of plants- if the human race started somewhere, it must have been near here. You couldn't starve if you tried! It took about 45 minutes of furious turns and more near misses to get to Krabi and the sky was beginning to darken. We had time to run to the big night market before the rains came and the market was a great place to take shelter. We were about the only Caucasians there, so we felt we had come to the right place.
As for the trip from Ao Nang to Krabi, www.mapblast.com say it is 22.3 miles and takes 36 minutes. The description of how to get there is this:
1. Depart Ao Nang, Thailand on Local road(s) (North) - 3.0 miles
2. Turn RIGHT (East) onto Local road(s) - 5.3 miles
3. Turn LEFT (North) onto Local road(s) - 1.8 miles
4. Turn RIGHT (East) onto #4 - 8.9 miles
5. Turn RIGHT (South) onto Local road(s) - 3.2 miles
6. Arrive Krabi - 0.0 miles
That's a lot of local roads.
According to the Weather Underground, the only precipitation in the area for the last month was on March 11, when it rained from 5:30 to 7:30 pm, which pretty much matches Lynn's description of night rain. It also tells you what kind of delay there is between the event and Lynn writing about it.
We have been looking for the best of local grub and we hit the mother lode. Everywhere you looked, food was being prepared and it all looked so good! Chicken on skewers, great steaming pots of meat in curry sauces, fruits of all kinds, desserts and drinks...it was heaven. We bought a little from as many vendors as we could and ate as we walked from stall to stall. The rain began to cascade down onto the plastic tarps, canopies and umbrellas. We dodged the torrents as they fell, too eager to hit the next banquet to notice how wet we were. The folks enjoyed our enjoyment and the time went fast. This was truly a highlight and it didn't matter that we had no time to see more of the town.
Here is more information on the Krabi town night market with pictures of food that are much more appetizing than the picture Lynn posted. Now I'm hungry. I can see why Lynn couldn't resist and finally ate something.
We were glad to find Kop, our driver waiting for us and the drive back to Ao Nang was even more exciting in the dark. Everyone drives a scooter here. Hoards of young people, tourists, kids, families all course around the turns. Few wear helmets and according to Kop, there were a lot of accidents - too many. Next, we have planned a tour of the limestone caves and a ride on an elephant. When in Ao Nang... do as the tourists do...
According to this website, road accidents are a real problem in Thailand mainly due to untrained drivers who don’t properly understand how to operate their vehicles. My guess is that this trip is what Lynn is talking about what she will do next. I notice it does include an elephant ride. As for doing what the tourists do, I suspect in Lynn's case, it is more doing what Katie and Lane want to do.
According to this website, this is how you pronounce Tuk Tuk:
The name Tuk Tuk comes from the engine noise of the three-wheeled cabs that ply Thai streets. It rhymes, more or less, with duck, with the ''T'' rendered as if it were somewhere between a ''T'' and a ''D.''
So we have for the first time, a travelogue title word play that works with the actual pronunciation of the thing. The currency in Thailand is the Baht, but I wouldn’t be surprised if taxis in the tourism areas of Thailand did take bucks.
Today, we asked a tuk tuk driver to take us into the town of Krabi, but he insisted we go to his house first and get his car. The tuk-tuk is maneuverable, light and cheap to run. Vendors sell gas in wine bottles and it's fun to see a driver "feeding" his ride. He took us down a series of tiny rural roads and we were soon quite lost. The thought of never coming home crossed our minds, but it would have made for a cool and adventurous ending!
While researching gas in a wine bottle, I found this interesting article in the Phuket Gazette, which pretty much confirms what Lynn said about it.
Kop's house was a tiny concrete cube with a corrugated metal roof and an outdoor kitchen. His 2 boys were playing noisily outside and his wife, wearing the hijab and very polite, welcomed us as if bringing home strangers was all part of her day. It's a good thing we took the car. The road to Krabi is unfinished, fast paced and long. A few minutes into the trip, a truck making a U-turn ahead of us crossed the path of a young man on a motor scooter and the impact was awful. The traffic formed a "y" passing the scene on either side, everyone looking at the victim, lying, bleeding on the road. He was lucky to be alive. There wasn't much left of the scooter. Another good reason to be travelling with an experienced driver! People crowded in to help and as we left the scene, the ambulance arrived, but we were unnerved by the incident for the rest of the day.
For a view of a Thailand hijab, see this website. Since Kop's wife is not mentioned as a mysterious, veiled woman, I suspect her hijab looks more like that picture.
Again, the hillsides really take your breath away. On either side of the road, massive walls of limestone tower above you, the vegetation hanging off it is thick and rich and interesting fruits and flowers hang just out of reach. So many kinds of plants- if the human race started somewhere, it must have been near here. You couldn't starve if you tried! It took about 45 minutes of furious turns and more near misses to get to Krabi and the sky was beginning to darken. We had time to run to the big night market before the rains came and the market was a great place to take shelter. We were about the only Caucasians there, so we felt we had come to the right place.
As for the trip from Ao Nang to Krabi, www.mapblast.com say it is 22.3 miles and takes 36 minutes. The description of how to get there is this:
1. Depart Ao Nang, Thailand on Local road(s) (North) - 3.0 miles
2. Turn RIGHT (East) onto Local road(s) - 5.3 miles
3. Turn LEFT (North) onto Local road(s) - 1.8 miles
4. Turn RIGHT (East) onto #4 - 8.9 miles
5. Turn RIGHT (South) onto Local road(s) - 3.2 miles
6. Arrive Krabi - 0.0 miles
That's a lot of local roads.
According to the Weather Underground, the only precipitation in the area for the last month was on March 11, when it rained from 5:30 to 7:30 pm, which pretty much matches Lynn's description of night rain. It also tells you what kind of delay there is between the event and Lynn writing about it.
We have been looking for the best of local grub and we hit the mother lode. Everywhere you looked, food was being prepared and it all looked so good! Chicken on skewers, great steaming pots of meat in curry sauces, fruits of all kinds, desserts and drinks...it was heaven. We bought a little from as many vendors as we could and ate as we walked from stall to stall. The rain began to cascade down onto the plastic tarps, canopies and umbrellas. We dodged the torrents as they fell, too eager to hit the next banquet to notice how wet we were. The folks enjoyed our enjoyment and the time went fast. This was truly a highlight and it didn't matter that we had no time to see more of the town.
Here is more information on the Krabi town night market with pictures of food that are much more appetizing than the picture Lynn posted. Now I'm hungry. I can see why Lynn couldn't resist and finally ate something.
We were glad to find Kop, our driver waiting for us and the drive back to Ao Nang was even more exciting in the dark. Everyone drives a scooter here. Hoards of young people, tourists, kids, families all course around the turns. Few wear helmets and according to Kop, there were a lot of accidents - too many. Next, we have planned a tour of the limestone caves and a ride on an elephant. When in Ao Nang... do as the tourists do...
According to this website, road accidents are a real problem in Thailand mainly due to untrained drivers who don’t properly understand how to operate their vehicles. My guess is that this trip is what Lynn is talking about what she will do next. I notice it does include an elephant ride. As for doing what the tourists do, I suspect in Lynn's case, it is more doing what Katie and Lane want to do.
posted by howard at 7:50 AM
2 Comments:
It was almost reassuring that Lynn's description of the accident she saw was so breezily insenstive and stupid; that's because it allowed me to find out why Mike acted the hateful way he did when he came across a car wreck fourteen years ago.
Lynn's interview with Caring Today pretty much told me all I needed to know about her care of others. Considering that, I can imagine seeing someone bleeding from an accident would be very shocking to Lynn, as sheltered as she makes herself. I can definitely see her becoming unnerved or possibly worse. She has no experience with that kind of stuff.
As for Lynn and this Thailand accident compared to Mike Patterson, she doesn't act like Mike. If she did, she would jump out and start drawing a picture of the injured man to sell.
It's easy to slam Lynn on insensitivity for the line "Another good reason to be travelling with an experienced driver!" Nevertheless, as far as I can tell from my on-line searching, drivers in Thailand and notoriously bad, and you do want an experienced driver.
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