Sukhumvit Drivers Deserve Respect!

Since people see me being chauffeured around by hubby dear and my daughter to ‘Ladies’ Dos,’ I often get asked whether I can drive at all. I’m irked that people equate white hair with helplessness. I wasn’t always old, and as for driving, trust me when I say that I’ve done a cabbie’s share during my Kobe years. I was a soccer mum, going-to-the-doctor-at-odd-hours mum, party-drop-off/pick-up mum (pre-mobile phone era), and mum that grudgingly covered her PJs with an overcoat and hid haggard eyes behind shades to drop the kids to a school just a short walk up the hill from home. Like all mums, I wasn’t only a soccer mum, but also a ‘sucker mum;’ years upon years I waited for any of the four to keep their promise to trudge up to school by themselves on the ‘morrow; one that never came. There was also dear hubby to be picked from the train station on the days he chose the train over the 45-minute drive to Osaka, especially with the rising costs of parking, gasoline and the highway toll.

The honest, embarrassing truth is I was never comfortable behind the wheel; I panic easy. Although Kobe streets are narrow, but traffic is scant and everybody drives in an orderly manner. So, when we shifted to Bangalore, I couldn’t even contemplate driving amidst the relentless honking; cows jaywalking or squatting mid-road; marauding strays; goats and sheep being herded to the butcher around the corner; and in those early years, wild horses looking to scrounge food among the garbage piles. None of them were confined in pens like Old McDonald’s farm, but they were here, there and everywhere. As for people, it’s an unspoken understood reality about any road in any city across India that everybody is taking the shortest route to wherever they’re going, no matter where it cuts across. But what nailed the end of my driving career was the threat that the driver of the car, if involved in an accident with a pedestrian, can get mob-lynched. We hired a driver!

Then, back in Bangkok, where the traffic is as infamous as it is amazing, there’s no way I was getting behind the wheel to navigate through those pesky, mosquito-like motorbikes that swerve by so heart-stoppingly close. I’d also never, ever, be able to get out of my lane, ‘cause I’d be waiting for the right-of-way, which no taxi or car or motorbike, or even the tourist pedestrians, would have afforded me.

Additionally, I was and I guess will always be hopeless at parking; and as to my sense of direction, the less said, the better. Losing my way driving was a given, but I lose my bearings even walking; Siam Paragon and CentralwOrld is, to me, a maze. It’s not that I’m going senile, this was still the case way back in my early days shopping in the hustle and bustle of Osaka.
I’d find a public phone and call hubby dear, and describe my current position in relation to any significant building, and he’d verbally navigate me back to a familiar junction.

But with all is said and done, despite my awry inbuilt GPS and lack of parking and driving skills, I did manage life in Japan. That’s not to say I didn’t have brushes with the road cops. Luckily, I was using my Thai international license and so, when I got pulled over, and as a really young foreigner, I conveniently acted dumb and feigned zero understanding of Japanese, which was almost the truth. Lucky for me, back in those early days of the 70s, the cops barely knew ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in English, so thanks to this wide language chasm, I always got away scot-free.

Subsequently, by relenting the wheel, I totally lost out on the autonomy of going where and when I want. But on the flip side, it’s a blessing for those of you braving our chaotic, unruly traffic; with me off the road, there’s that one less menace; that one less maniac to deal with.