COMMENTARY
ALFRED THA HLA
What a difference a day made? Sunday, June 15, provided an ominous insight to the motoring perils that Bangkok denizens are exposed to on a daily basis.
It began with the disappearance of an overhead bridge for pedestrians at Sukhumvit 103 that normally connects to a Honda showroom. It was dismantled to make way for the completion of the Udomsuk terminal of the BTS skytrain. It's called progress.
So yours truly and a handful of pedestrians land on an unfinished road divider, requiring a Nadia Comaneci balancing act on a 20cm-wide concrete slab thingy; which in the writer's case, leaves barely enough room for his weathered K-swiss to stand on as bodily fluids are almost exchanged with passing motorcycle traffic.
Also present are remnants of construction work in the guise of wooden planks filled with hideous splinters caked in hardened cement; and scattered steel skewers capable of impaling without discrimination against race, creed or genus.
And let's not forget the hordes of impatient motorcyclists, who numb conventional rationale by their inability to differentiate between red and green lights; in addition to the type that morph (at night) into cantankerous weapon-concealing bike gangs, aka dek waan that make Hell's Angels bikers look like cherubic angels on the walls of the old Redeemer church. Risks galore.
"Tai, Tai, Tai" (Die, die, die), shouts someone.
Some stranger was willing me to cease to exist, I thought, but instead a convincing thud was heard, followed by a sickening cracking and crunching of plastic and metal.
A motorcyclist, probably dazed from late night's Euro soccer, ran a red light and crashed into two motorcycles; five souls sprawled on the tarmac, one gingerly making a call on his mobile while pleading to those carrying him to put him down because his lower right leg dangled at a horrifyingly impossible angle. At least he didn't use the mobile while driving.
Wearing a somewhat stoic expression in the face of adversity I head on to the office. Post's bi-annual publications [and free air-conditioning] are justifiable incentives to work on Sundays.
Meanwhile motorcycle taxis fail to pass the 43-baht-per-litre cost of petrol over to me because I walk to the office from the MRT's Klong Toey terminal.
Up the overhead bridge at the five-way Klong Toey intersection, people gawk at the Sacred Heart Convent school.
An elderly Ama dressed in Chinese garb, probably someone's mother and a grandmother to many - was lying face up on the road as Por Teck Tueng volunteers and three policemen stood nearby. Hit by a motorcycle at the intersection at around 1.30pm.
It reminds me of a friend, Tho, a member of the 35,000-odd registered Bunnags in Thailand - descendants of a couple of Persian traders since the Ayutthaya period - as he crossed the street with his three-month-old son in his arms while negotiating slow Silom traffic towards Bangkok Christian hospital only to be torpedoed by a motorcycle.
Or how the lives of too many farangs in touristy destinations are snuffed out by speeding cars with flashing hazard lights simply because they don't have an inkling whether the vehicle is going straight, about to stop or turn left or right.
Local norms dictate that hazard lights mean the vehicle is going straight, but I recommend you freeze every muscle until the angel of death passes.
What's sad is that car companies, which organise test-drives and such, still insist on perpetrating improper usage of hazard lights.
Risk is understated in the lives of Bangkokians who have crystallised their fears of crossing city roads (and lately, police cordons) into an art form, be it locals or expats, young or old.
I'm not saying politicians aren't looking after the safety of their constituencies since a select few of the former will be kept busy defending their stellar four-month performance; or that business corporate citizens don't care enough for the hand that feeds them, the consumer. Nor am I passing the buck on to the economy and its passionate hunger for progress.
I'm not implying that there are too many motorcycles - expanding as we speak once finance companies stop receiving monthly pick-up truck payments as crude hits US$136 per barrel.
Bangkok is by far still one of the most charming cities in the world.
It was just a really bad Sunday.
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