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Published: February 4th 2009
My fascination of the scooter trend has resulted in a list of sorts that may or may not be suitable blogging material. I'm gonna go for it! As our midway point in this holiday is approaching I can almost feel the sensations dull of seeing a toddler hold on for dear life as he stands up in front of his sitting parent while they are balancing a 50 lb bag of rice in the rear of the bike, making a right hand turn crossing traffic while being passed by a huge SUV taxi. Thus the need to blog about it now, while I still have the ability to be surprised by the scooter habits they have adopted here. I'm pretty sure when the scooter made its appearance here or anywhere on the market it was originally intended for one driver and maybe one passenger adorned with a helmet and goggles for short trips, adding a cute basket up front to hold some fresh produce, maybe a futbol or your beach towel. Not only is it fairly rare to see one passenger per scooter, it is becoming less and less usual to see only 2 passengers per scooter. The helmet ratio is
about 1 to 100 that use them diligently, and crazily enough with it being so sunny here, barely anyone wears goggles or sunglasses while riding, prefering to use a bamboo fan or a flap off a cardboard box to shield the sun from their eyes. And if there is a cute little basket up front it usually packed so high with stuff the driver is leaning a bit to one side to see around the impeding bulk. The space for their feet which is probably about 2 feet long and maybe 12 inches wide is a constant cargo area always filled with a 5 gallon jug of water, the sack of rice mentioned previously or the one to two children all in this amazing limbo of life and well, crashing to their death. Here is a short list of what I see on average everyday...
Family of 3...dad the driver, mom holding new born baby
Family of 4...mom driving, older sister on the back with toddler #1 wedged between mom and sister and toddler #2 standing up in front
3 school boys...none of them look to be of driving age, which come to think of it, do they have
a legal driving age here?
middle boy of family of 3 eating soup...well, I guess if your really hungary
talking on cell phone...not all that surprising I guess
man driving while riding with his monkey holding onto his side
one man driving one handed carrying a bird cage
2 riders, 3 bird cages...yeah, driver had one, passenger carrying two (these are not small, they are smaller than the rooster cages)
2 riders carrying 2 rooster cages...yes, probably on their way to a cock fight. (Note: these cages are huge!)
driver holding umbrella...what else, it was raining?
2 riders, passenger completely under rain pancho
2 woman, 1 baby being breast fed...I'm not exaggerating, when we stopped at the stop light, this was confirmed
1 driver and 1 old lady passenger sitting sideways...this was very "proper looking"
little old man driving the scooter...(there are very few old people here, Poupe said the life expectancy is in the 50's, don't quote me)
lots and lots of tourists driving scooters...not following protocol either, that's why there is so many deaths by scooters in Samui
oh my gosh, how could I forget? The dogs...we've seen them riding in front of family of 2 and family
of 3 and even appropriately in the basket up front.
The scooters with the little sidecar are a little more expected to handle a load. We've seen tons of variations of what this can encompass, not to be limited by the following...
several old woman riding in the sidecar
sidecar filled to the brim with laundry bags and young girl sitting on top of the bags
sidecar equipped with warming oven filled with unidentifiable meat sticks
sidecar filled with school children, men on their way to work, and ladies on their way to the market
sidecar filled with Coconuts!
I know I've posted most of these pics in other entries, but obviously I felt it was important enough to share them again all in the same place. This island work is tough business folks.
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