Street Tweets: Motorcycle Madness & New Media

Bangkok's Ubiquitous Motorbike Taxi Drivers

In all my years in Bangkok, I’ve only had three motorcycle taxi accidents that would rate as “credible.”

By credible, I mean where I’ve sustained injury, ended up on the asphalt or at the emergency department of my local hospital. Minor mishaps, including bumps, scrapes and the occasional SUV side-mirror in the ribs don’t count. They are too numerous to mention. Many of my friends have not been so lucky.

In the worst misadventure, I was hurled face-first onto my busy street, breaking my spectacles and ending up with shards of glass in my eyes, skinned knees and various cuts and bruises. But as the motorcyclist and myself had veered over to the wrong side of the road to avoid being sideswiped by a mini-bus, we count our lucky stars that, miraculously, there were no oncoming vehicles to crush us to crumbs.

In the most embarrassing one, a car cut across lanes – in Bangkok indicating lights are optional – ploughing into us. Somehow, in order to be prevent myself from falling into an open sewerage drain, I leaned in the other direction, towards the offending vehicle, ending up on its hood, where I rode for the next half a block, much to the amusement of the sidewalk noodle vendors, pedestrians and everyone else watching.

.

You would think that these narrow escapes would have put me off motorcycle taxis forever.

Nope.

Years in Southeast Asia have imbued me with a rather distorted karmic outlook on life. While two accidents within six month should have signaled it was time to ‘stop’, I saw it as a sign that the odds were against it happening again, for a while at least.

I’ve never understood people who cancel their flights on an airline that has just crashed. I mean, what are the chances of the same airline exploding in a fireball or ramming into a mountain the next day?

My friends and I are the type of people who embrace danger. We book holidays at destinations where bombs have just gone off, insurgencies are raging and in countries that have been recently put on Embassy warning lists as places to avoid. 

Terrorist threats, civil war and natural disasters, to us, mean fewer crowds, reduced airfares and bargain accommodation! Yes, I realize ‘normal’ people don’t think like this, but ‘normal’ people don’t live in Bangkok, or if they do for any length of time, they cross the threshold from normal to mildly insane and, often, beyond.

You know you’ve become a local when you only have a vague recollection of when the very prospect of getting on the back of one of these death machines induced terror: of when you would cling to the driver white-knuckled and close your eyes awaiting imminent head injury -- helmets have never caught on -- or limb loss.

Now, you don’t even hold on. In fact you are able to balance on the back of a bike with 5 bags of groceries and a carton of beer while talking on your cellphone. And the fact you are driving the wrong way up a pavement doesn’t faze you in the slightest.

I have learned to lengthen the odds. These days I don’t travel long distances on motorcycle taxis, but they are essential for beating Bangkok’s appalling traffic. They are fast, convenient and oh so dangerous!

“Flitting between jammed cars with knee-endangering speed, the motercy (motorcycle taxi) is the one sure way to make an appointment. Perhaps with your next life,” writes my good friend and famous author Phil Cornwel-Smith in his best-selling book Very Thai -- Everyday Popular Culture.

I have relied on motorcycles taxis to transport me, quickly, to military coups, romantic rendezvous and to sneak me into no-go areas during Bangkok’s periods of civil unrest.

When you get to know your local ‘gang’, and they are very much gang-controlled, you build up a  rapport. My local boys have known me for years, they know that every Songkran – Buddhist New Year – I will present them with cash gifts and bottles of Johnny Walker as is customary – to thank them for their services. I know them so well, that I trust them to transport important documents, such as my passport, to Embassies unaccompanied.

When I was stricken with a particularly bad case of Dengue Fever a few years back and had to visit the local hospital three times a week, the same guy would turn up without fail to ferry me there, then wait until I’d had my treatment and check up and take me home again, even going against his nature, to ride slowly, despite the effects of half a dozen Red Bulls, given my frail condition. Between my motorcycle boy, my maid and good friends, dealing with this debilitating disease was so much easier than it would have been in the West. I knew I had people to look out for me.

Recently, I’ve noticed, much to my delight, that the motorbike taxi mafia are no longer all male.

Meet Khun Noi.

Khun Noi is Soi Thonglor’s first female motorbike taxi driver. When I featured her on Facebook a while back she became a sensation. She’s gorgeous, sensible, safe and keeps the kamikaze boys in their place. Noi is building up a fan base and is in demand for her driving skills. She also offers occasional make-up, beauty and hair care tips, or at least she did with me!

“Men in Thailand think that women can't drive or do anything. In fact we do everything, so why can’t we be motorcycle taxi drivers? I have proved them wrong,” she told me while ferrying me home from the Botox clinic.

Motorcycle taxi drivers transport, deliver, pick up, and have a wealth of inside knowledge of where and how to obtain a variety of products, that I won't go into details about except to say that some of these 'products' are not exactly legal. So I'm told.

Now, much to my astonishment, they’re embracing the digital age and have moved into social media.

Heading the charge is Dejchat Phuangket, (pictured above), who became a celebrity by scooping everyone earlier this year, tweeting and blogging photos of bombings that happened not far from my home.

He also used his iphone to film the aftermath, and, as a result, was featured in hundreds of newspaper  and TV stories around the world. Other motorbike taxi dudes are following his lead and rip around Bangkok's mean streets with smart phones, mini cameras, you name it.

Dejchat, 39, bought a book to learn basic Internet skills and spent two years studying it. He now has two blogs and a Facebook page, as well as his Twitter account where he has 7,500 followers, including moi. I am green with envy. His Klout score must be through the roof!

As well as Bangkok happenings that he witnesses on his travels, he retweets international news events and is currently following the U.S. election campaign and the aftermath of devastating storm Sandy.

A modest man, Dejchat is perplexed at his superstardom, which now includes appearing on social media panels!

Not bad for a guy who left school, aged 11, to help work in his family’s rice paddies in Sisaket province in Thailand’s poor northeastern region.

When drought hit their crops and their livelihood, Dejchat moved to Bangkok, like so many others, and took a job in a factory, which he hated.

So he decided to become a motorcycle taxi driver and despite a potentially lucrative career on the public speaking circuit is content to remain one, earning between 400 and 900 Baht ($13 - $30) a day.

He is a remarkable man who prides himself on ethical and unbiased reporting on Twitter and his blog sites. 

“I try not to state my opinion, I just stick to the facts,” Dejchat messaged me. “This is very important, especially in regards to politics. Opinions would cause conflict, and I don’t want that, I want peace for all of the people in Thailand.”

Well said, Dejchat, my latest Bangkok hero and, now, story advisor and vital 'breaking news' source.

Follow Dejchat at:

Twitter.com/motorcyrubjang and

 www.oknation.net/blog/motorcyrubjang 

Follow Phil Cornwel-Smith at
@verybangkok