Reckless but not wreck less...

Saturday 5th April 2014 finds Kanchanaburi recovering from the storm of the night before. I personally was on the way back from Bangkok when the storm struck. The normal two and a quarter hours for the journey stretched to nearly four hours as the rain lashed down and some of the most spectacular lightning I have ever seen lit up the paddy fields, temples and forests. As we drove along we hit streams of water flooding across the carriageway. In traditional Thai style, the driver made the usual allowance for the changing conditions... i.e., none at all. We were also slowed by the police trying to clear away the remains of an accident. A white saloon car had met head on with a small pick up truck coming in the opposite direction. Judging from the damage to the vehicles, they had probably met head on. The truck wasn't too bad but the drivers compartment of the car had been modified out of existence. I hope the driver survived but fear that is an unlikely outcome...

Arriving back in Kanchanaburi I found the town recovering from the effects of the storm. Many branches and even fallen trees littered the streets and there was still extensive flooding in some parts of town. On a happier note, the air was delightfully cool which came as something of a relief as recent daytime temperatures had often been in excess of 40C. The town itself in the area of the night market was eerily quiet and I found it something of a pleasure to stroll down the normally bustling streets in such a situation.

The Thais have a pragmatically fatalistic way of dealing with such situations and tend not to overly concern themselves about such troubles. They will merely pick themselves up, dust themselves down and start all over again. This is to be admired in many ways, such an attitude allows them to adjust relatively smoothly to coping with some fairly extreme weather and other tribulations. One could even say they can be enviably phlegmatic.

The flip side of this attitude though is an almost unbelievable recklessness that has to be experienced to be believed. I referred to this several weeks ago during my blogs from Chiang Mai. At the end of one of those I reported an accident which killed 15, mostly children, involving a long distance bus. In the few weeks since at least two more such accidents have occurred (probably more actually – I only get to hear about those involving multiple fatalities). In the first a bus plunged off the Khun Pha Muang Bridge and fell some 165 feet before hitting the ground below. 29 people came to a rather sticky end in this particular incident. The bus driver is believed to have fallen asleep. 

The second incident involved a double decker bus choosing to overtake cars whilst going down a very steep slope coming off a mountain in Tak province. The road is question is a known accident black spot (where isn't in Thailand!?). The steepness of the road is notorious but this section is also replete with S bends. None of this was apparently of much concern to the driver (he later claimed that his brakes had failed – given the nature of the road and the type of manoeuvres he was involved in it would appear hardly surprising that an 8 ton bus would be hard to stop in such circumstances). The bus smashed through a concrete barrier and tumbled over several times before coming to rest in a crumpled heap some 100 feet below. Another 30 died in this incident with 22 seriously injured casualties being taken to hospital.

Any one of these accidents happening in Europe would be considered as something of a disaster. Here in Thailand they are almost a weekly occurrence. In Europe there would be an inquiry and recommendations made to how to avoid such an accident in future. Here they just hose down the road and start again. In the words of Catherine Tate “they ain't bothered”.

Oddly, although driving standards are pretty low throughout SE Asia, Thailand has by far the worst record. Conditions aren't that radically different in Malaysia or Vietnam and yet their accident rates are far, far lower.

This recklessness isn't confined to the road but finds expression in many other aspects of life here. In a weeks time we will be starting the annual Songkran festival, or Thai New Year. For a country that already has its hair fairly low slung at the best of times they will be letting it down even more during this festival. The bars and the roads will be full of inebriated people who somehow seem to believe, much against the evidence, that misfortune will not befall them. In the week of Songkran last year 321 people died and 3040 were injured...and that is just the official figures. Reality is probably much higher.

The government's (and in Thailand one uses that term very loosely) role in all this seems to be to make the odd gesture but then carry on mcuh the same as ever. I recently read that, according to Thai government figures, only around 50% of motorcyclists wear crash helmets in this country. Having read this, and in the spirit of accurate reportage, I bought myself a coffee and sat beside the road in the tourist area of Kanchanaburi. As I slowly sipped my beverage I counted the number of compliant motorcyclists driving past. The first one hundred provided me with exactly three who actually wore a crash helmet. Now, my maths are not great but I believe that is not quite 50%, in fact, I am pretty certain that comes to a grand total of er...3%! To be fair that was just one sample on one day at one place but I think it makes the point. In Thailand the government are there to paper over the cracks, not to address the issue.

Whilst considering this week's article I came across a somewhat macabre but very typical story from the outskirts of Bangkok. Some workers found a World War 2 bomb in fields whilst digging and thought this was a chance to make a little extra money on the side. They manhandled(!) it into the back of a pick up truck and drove through the city where they deposited it a scrap merchant who paid them for their troubles. At this stage, a couple of the staff in the shop started to address the problem of what to do with such a large metalic object and decided that the best solution would be to attack it with an acetylene torch. Luckily for them, at that moment an elderly lady who had seen such things in her distant childhood warned them of the potential dangers and advised them to report it to the police. Unfortunately, with a literally breathtaking degree of recklessness, they chose to ignore her advice and continued to cut into the casing. The old lady ran...

About a minute later, as the old girl was warning her sister in a nearby house, the bomb exploded wiping out a considerable area of the local neighbourhood. The elderly lady and her sister fortunately survived, although their house was completely destroyed. The men doing the cutting died along with a couple of the workers who had found the bomb; they had decided to stick around and watch the process of the 'dismantling' of the explosive device. Altogether, seven people died and nineteen were injured.

This sort of thing is almost comic in its absurdity but entirely symptomatic of a type of craziness that seems to be uniquely Thai. In my time in the UK I recall people forever bemoaning the Health and Safety at Work Act, and with some justification. The fussiness of some of the measures taken bordered on the extreme but... when you experience a country that takes almost the polar opposite approach you begin to understand and appreciate the benefits of caution.

I recently took a stroll in Erawan National Park famous for the seven stages of its waterfall. It is indeed a beautiful sight as it cascades down the hill via a series of pools and streams. Some of the paths though are made up of bridges with planks missing, extremely slippery rocks over which water is running (often with twenty or thirty foot falls right beside), and stairways that one could only describe as rickety. None of it would be allowed to open in the UK. Here in Thailand it is not even considered a problem unless someone has an accident. There is no sense of foresight, so sense of anticipation, no concept of avoiding the problem before it happens...only the notion of clearing up the mess and starting over again once it does.

Erawan is spectacularly beautiful and quite an experience in and of itself. I would advise anyone with a love of natural beauty to go but...be cautious! There are many objective dangers and one needs to be aware that such things as the maintenance of paths, bridges and stairs have a very low priority here. One regularly sees tourists stumbling down off the mountain with all manner of cuts, sprains and bruises. At times, there is a tendency for much worse accidents to occur too.

 My time in this beautiful country is fast coming to an end and, if all goes to plan, I will be in the UK within a couple of weeks. There are many aspects to this land that are fascinating and beautiful and it truly does live up to its reputation as 'the land of smiles'. There are many aspects that I will miss greatly, particularly in regard to the sheer abundance of all things natural here. A few metres from here where I am typing these words flows the River Kwai. On its banks a person can spend many a happy hour simply observing nature in all her colourful profusion. Life teems here. Unfortunately, life is also cheap here in a way that is difficult for someone raised in Europe to comprehend. That is one aspect of this fascinating and enigmatic land that will not be missed by your nomadic flaneur...

Risky Business...

Today the joys of nomadic flaneurie have brought me to a quiet and pleasant little guest house in the Northern Thai city of Chang Mai. Sarah's Guest House lies just a couple of hundred metres from the the moat and city wall of the old town. The place has a pleasant, although slightly run-down ambience of the sort that one often comes across in Thai cities. In such a hot country, the architectural emphasis is often on maximising air-flow and coolness and so it is that I find myself sitting beneath the stilted verandah listening to the sounds of water trickling from a small fountain whilst enjoying the first bowl of porridge that I have had the pleasure of consuming for many a month.

Chiang Mai is Thailand's second city and lies in the extreme North of the country. At the time of writing there are still some uncertainties as to how the current political turmoil here will pan out and the future looks somewhat uncertain for this beautiful land. One of the possibilities that has been mooted is the division of the country between the North and the South. If this did indeed come to pass then the city of Chiang Mai could, one day, find itself the capital of Siam. Oddly, the name Siam was originally used to denote people with dark brown skin (from Sanskrit) and was meant in a slightly derogatory sense. The people of the north are indeed slightly darker than those further south. Present day Thailand is a curious mixture of various ethnic groups held together by the oft asserted notion of 'Thainess'. Much work is done in schools to reinforce the idea of this identity but there still exists tensions between the different groups that all too often flare up in political strife and sometimes even violence.

Thailand does, at times, feel like a dangerous place to be, despite its undeniable beauty. Not only do the politics appear to be potentially problematic but day to day life in Thailand can be risky in itself. I read only last week of the very common practice here of injecting formalin (a form of formaldehyde) into fruits and vegetables to maintain their freshness longer. It does indeed have that effect, but unfortunately also leads to health problems of various sorts, some relatively minor such as skin irritation or sneezing, but long term ingestion can lead to consequences the details of which are far too gruesome to go into here.

There is a fairly loose and patchy application of the law in this land, an attitude that permeates life from the highest social strata to the lowest. An obvious example would be the law requiring the wearing of crash helmets. This was passed in 1979 in view of the high number of fatalities in motor cycle accidents suffered by the people of Thailand. Standing on any street in a major city in this country one will mostly notice crash helmets by their absence. In a very short time hoards of motor cyclists will pass by but only about one in four will actually be complying. You may even notice a nearby police checkpoint but very little actual in the way of a response from the policemen inside. I originally heard that the law only applied to foreign nationals. An understandable misunderstanding as they seem to be the only ones who are stopped; there normally follows a stealthy financial transaction quite costly for the poor tourist involved but more profitable for the representative of the local constabulary.

One would think that travelling by bus would be a safer option in Thailand, and one would be right but... it is merely a relative safety; buses in Thailand cannot be considered safe per se. The drivers, particularly of the mini-buses, have to work long hours to make a living. Rumour has it that they often imbibe yaba, a substance that enables them to keep going for extended periods but also produces a certain psychological intensity that leads to feelings of being 'bullet-proof', perhaps not the ideal state to be driving buses in...

My own personal experiences of travelling by this mode of transport in Thailand has lead me to revise much what I thought I knew about the laws of physics. Certainly it would seem that buses can get around sharp bends at far higher speeds than I had previously considered possible. Also, my perception of space would seem to be somewhat awry as often these self-same buses manage to squeeze through gaps that appeared to be almost narrower than the bus itself (at speed, naturally). Such driving does indeed take minutes off the journey but one feels it may be a pyrrhic victory as it feels as if it may also take years off of one's life in terms of the stress entailed.

Before I was privy to much of this knowledge I rather naively hired a motor bike from one of the numerous shops supplying this service in Kanchanaburi. The day itself proved to be an excellent adventure whilst I rode around the hills and mountains of West Central Thailand near the border with Myanmar. Unfortunately, the return to the city lead to a change in my relationship to surface of the planet from the vertical to the horizontal when a white van (some things never change) pulled out from the side across two lanes and into yours truly.

Nursing eleven abrasions, three large bruises, two egg-shaped contusions and a bump on my head (luckily I had insisted on having a crash helmet) later that evening, I could not help but notice similar casualties amongst my fellow travellers in Kanchanaburi. One chap was so swathed in bandages that he looked almost mummified. Understandably, he was moving with the slowness one associates with the role; one could almost feel his pain just by looking at him.

Many years ago a very famous Greek mathematician who went by the name of Pythagoras, although at the time he was known as much for his philosophy as for his mathematics, pointed out the shortcomings in our approach to risk when he said: “Self chosen are the woes that befall man.”

We are indeed all too often the architects of our own downfall. A more modern quote, oft cited by my brother in regards to his flying activities, seems apt: “There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are not many old, bold pilots!”

The avoidance of risk is often decried in our modern world but, as one matures, one begins to understand that brash risk taking is better left to the brash. Again, Pythagoras had something to say on the subject, advising that it would be better to avoid such misadventures and instead to “live quietly in the constant light of truth.” Deeply unfashionable maybe, but then again so many of the best things in life are.

Truth itself, of course, is often hard to come by. When faced with the truly alarming road traffic fatality rate in Thailand the politicians decided to do something about it. The measure taken did indeed lead to a halving of the fatality rate in just one year. I hear you ask 'what could they have possibly done to lead to so successful an outcome?' The measure they employed to reduce the appalling figures entailed changing the way they collected the statistics. Now in Thailand if you leave the scene with a semblance of a pulse you are not considered a fatality. No matter if you die thirty seconds later in the ambulance you are no longer deemed to be a road traffic fatality but are lumped into some other, less controversial, statistical category instead. This solution, if one may call it that, did indeed work but one cannot help but feel that it rather misses the point...

 Back at Sarah's Guest House I seem to have been befriended a couple of wandering felines. Such debates about the nature of risk taking are of no interest to them it seems, but a soft scratch behind the ears or a full length stroke to the tip of the tail is far more to their liking. Soft Thai music is playing in the background and this place remains agreeably cool and pleasant despite its proximity to the centre of Chiang Mai. 

Shortly, I will have to head out into the frenetic chaos and mechanised madness that typifies the roads around the old city. Beyond that though, there are areas of surprising calm inside the walls themselves. Within these precincts a local Wat (Buddhist Temple) offers massages for the princely sum of 140 baht ($3) for an hour. So far on this trip I have forsaken the temptations of such therapeutic interventions due to some of the more compromising aspects that are involved in some of the commercial establishments. This injured body though would appreciate some tender loving care at this point, so I think that a visit to the temple would indeed be in order. So, without further ado, I think I will take my leave for another week with a final, apposite thought... take care out there!

A short and rather sad addendum to this post. Following my massage I was strolling around the old town when I came across today's Bangkok Post. It told of yet another bus accident, this time leading to the loss of 15 passengers, mostly children, with 45 more injured. The driver of the bus was unlicensed and fled the scene. The unpleasant details can be seen here: 

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/397583/school-bus-tragedy-kills-15-injures-45