First of all, there is no driver education. People simply buy a vehicle and start driving, imitating what others do on the road. Therefore many of the concepts with which most foreigners were introduced to are unknown. Some of these lead to danger.

Thailand has one of the highest motor fatality rates in the world. The people who die most often are riding scooters. There is a helmet law here, but it is sporadically enforced, and almost universally ignored by young people who put great stock in seeing and being seen by other young people. So they put more effort into their hair and makeup than in protecting their heads from accidental injury.

Likewise, rear view mirrors on motorcycles are used for checking makeup and hair, not for looking behind before entering a roadway. In fact, almost nobody ever looks behind them, either by turning their head or looking in the mirror when entering into a stream of traffic. It’s just assumed that those coming up from behind will give way. Thais are big on merging.

There is no concept of right of way, which Westerners find infuriating and puzzling. If someone slides into your lane no matter how closely or unexpectedly, that’s just part of life. Because right of way is unknown, there is no incentive to choose a lane or to stay in in it. Signaling is rare.

In Thailand hardly anyone honks their horn. To do so would be impolite. In Vietnam, a much more aggressive place, horns are honking constantly. In fact, when I rented a motor scooter in that country, the first thing the person I rented it from showed me was the location of the horn.

Crosswalks are universally ignored. Even if those attempting to use a recognized crossing would press the button, wait and get a WALK signal, they would be foolish expect traffic to stop. Sometimes it seems that zebra stripes are a cruel joke, a way to herd targets in close proximity. Watch here:

Pedestrians cannot safely assume that they have any rights, and because any sidewalks that exist and almost always clogged with someone trying sell something, sometimes even the tables and chairs of a roadside restaurant, or a parking lot for motor scooters, pedestrians usually don’t bother to try to ambulate on sidewalks at all and simply walk in the street.

I just saw a Facebook post that made me angry.  In trying to figure out why, I’ll first tell you what the post said.  “I’m trying to come up with a niche marketing site, so I don’t have to get a job. Does anybody have any ideas for me?”  This was on a Chiang Mai travel blogger Facebook page that caters to the needs of the self-described Digital Nomads, the postgraduate set who are hanging out in the developing world, living as cheaply as possible on their trust funds or parental allowances.  They’re big into TED talks and having coffee together, are never seen without a laptop or notebook, usually Apple, and are somehow convinced they’re the cutting edge and avante garde of some movement or other, though they’re not sure what.

 

I remember being young and lazy and vaguely feeling entitled, and if I could meet myself now I would cuff that long-haired loser about the ears and tell him to stop getting stoned, hanging out in coffee shops drawing the same psychedelic swirls with his thin-point Flair pen. When I taught college I would try to counsel young people who had obviously never been obliged to really work a rough job, and they would want to know my opinion about going to graduate school. I’d ask “What are you especially good at?” and they would answer, “I dunno. I was thinking about English. Or maybe Art History?”

 

The only advice I could offer them is the same my father told me.  Graduate schools are suspicious of people who want to hang out and hide from the real world. A good graduate school will only take applicants who show promise to catch fire and really do something. To these, they will find a way to support by letting them teach or do research. A bad graduate school will let you in and take your money, while letting your delude yourself a little bit longer.

 

I responded to her query, biting my tongue as best I could, suggesting that she “find a need and fill it,” and in the time it took me to write these paragraphs, she responded. “I was just hoping for links to sites that could help me clarify my thinking.”  OK, sorry, I let my prejudices get the best of me. It just seems to me that if you’re not on fire about something by the time you’re in your late twenties or thirties, visiting a web site probably isn’t going to help.

 

Maybe my emotional response comes from the fact that I, too am living the Chiang Mai, spending most of my waking hours on my laptop, and wondering what I should be doing with myself.  But I’ve got social security to keep me going here, so I can hang out a little bit longer, maybe a lot longer, drifting along without purpose.  Easier to pick on her than to face myself.

 

God knows I wasted enough of my life waiting for work that would prove easy and obviously profitable to come along and grab a hold of me. Helen Keller, born deaf, dumb and blind, had this to say.  “Life is either an exciting adventure or it is nothing.”