Many people have asked how we get around here in Thailand. Not being allowed to drive motorized vehicles, we rely primarily on our bicycles when we're at our site.
When we need to go to town, however, or when we need some big-city transportation, things get a little more exciting. Of course, in the BIG city (Bangkok) there are taxis and buses and all those "normal" modes of public transport. But up here in the north, it's not that fancy. Instead we have the SONGTAEW.
"Song-taew" translates literally as "two-rows." A songtaew is a pickup truck with a covered back, usually furnished with two benches facing each other, and occasionally a middle bench as well. If there's a lot of luggage, it gets tossed up top.
If we want to go to our provincial capital city, perhaps to eat pizza, buy oatmeal, or get on the train, we walk about a kilometer to our local songtaew departure station (the road in front of a convenience store. We tell the driver where we're going and wait for 8 passengers. It can be a very short wait or a very long wait. Once there are 8 people -- or if the driver is in a hurry -- we take off. It's a 52 kilometer ride over the mountains. Sometimes we stop to pick up more passengers, and sometimes we drop people off.
How crowded can a songtaew be? We once counted 21 people!! It was rather squishy. We've also ridden with a motorcycle and with large sacks of rice.
When we arrive in the city, there is an official stop where all the remaining passengers pay the driver their 30-baht fare (about 75 cents) and from there he proceeds to drop us at our destinations. It's quite convenient on this end.
The songtaew. A classic Thai institution!
1 comment:
Ah, yes, the motorized vehicle of the developing country. We called them "bashees" (ba-SHAYS) in Mali. There is nothing quite so uncomfortable as riding on an unpaved bumpy road for 350 kilometers during a 100 degree day in one of these...glad that you, too, can experience it! :)
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