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So I get off the sky train and walk up to the motorcycle taxi guys like I do whenever I go home, and hop on the back of this dudes Harley... don't know why this particular taxi guy drives a kick ass Harley but he does and I prepare to enjoy the ride. Most motorcycle taxi guys drive not so kick ass motorscouters, the motorscouters can weave in and out of traffic so are always the smartest way to go during rush hour... which in Bangkok is almost all the time! heh. But he isn't going through traffic to get to my apartment, I'm just too lazy to walk the long blocks and don't mind paying 0.50 Canadian to save myself some time. So off we go and we don't go very far down the street before we come up to some traffic! There is never any traffic on this street so I'm very curious and my chauffeur says "moto-cy acciden" (motorcycle accident). So I'm scanning the crowd and realise they are all standing around a nice lump on the street that they covered in newspaper... we drove not more than a foot away from it as we slowly went by, I had never been that close to a freshly dead person before and it freaked me out that I wasn't effected.... In Canada I would feel something but here I just look at the body lump and think "that might be me someday". Life is way cheaper here than back home and I'm starting to think that way too, kind of scary the way a place changes you.
Not more than a week later I'm booting down a street in Pattaya on my rented motorscouter and I foolishly decide to pass a taxi truck (Song Tao) on the outside and speed up as I do so... I must have been going 60km/h when another Falang (foreigner) with his Thai girlfriend on the back decides to cut right across the lane without looking to turn right, he stops abruptly directly in front of me and everything just slows right down... I felt like I had all day to decide what I was going to do but only had a couple of limitted choices. I was thinking very calmly to myself, "ok, I'm going to lean my shoulder to the left and swerve to hit the back of his motorcylcle so I don't mangle his leg and when I hit I'll let myself go with the flow of energy and try to roll." And that is exactly what I did, after 14 years of martial arts training this is probably the single best use of my skills ever. At impact I flew through the air over the handle bars already starting my roll and hit the ground hard but rolled right out of it and into fighting stance haha. It happened so fast it was like a blink. One second I'm thinking in slow mo, the next I'm standing 15 feet away from our bikes looking ready for an invisible enemy. I didn't feel a thing. All I can hear is about 40 bar girls laughing and pointing at me from the sidewalk as I walk over to check on the falang and his girl. They are totally fine, they just plopped over on their side with little more than a scratch because I only hit the back wheel of the bike and sent my energy over the handle bars. Police just happen to be standing right there with all the laughing bar girls, they see we are ok and ask us if we have settled it, we both agree there is nothing to settle, we were both at fault. I was definately going way to fast and trying to pass on the outside and he didn't look before cutting across the lane. If I had hit a Thai guy it would have been a totally different ball game and I would have had to fork over some money, lucky me. I walk my twisted bike over to the bar on the side and all the girls are all laughing still until I take my helmet off, then they all go dead quiet, I hear a couple say in thai, "handsome man". I remember thinking "ya, don't laugh at the handsome man!" Talk about humiliating having a large group of people laugh at your near death experience and no one even trying to help you, pretty lame feeling. It cost me $70 Canadian to fix up the bike, I was lucky, I was able to twist the front wheel back into place and only had to get the lights and mirrors and scratches fixed.
I decided to take my safety a tad bit more seriously after that, I don't do stupid manuevers anymore. Thankgod for my training, that roll really saved my butt.
Damian Mavis
Honour TKD
Not more than a week later I'm booting down a street in Pattaya on my rented motorscouter and I foolishly decide to pass a taxi truck (Song Tao) on the outside and speed up as I do so... I must have been going 60km/h when another Falang (foreigner) with his Thai girlfriend on the back decides to cut right across the lane without looking to turn right, he stops abruptly directly in front of me and everything just slows right down... I felt like I had all day to decide what I was going to do but only had a couple of limitted choices. I was thinking very calmly to myself, "ok, I'm going to lean my shoulder to the left and swerve to hit the back of his motorcylcle so I don't mangle his leg and when I hit I'll let myself go with the flow of energy and try to roll." And that is exactly what I did, after 14 years of martial arts training this is probably the single best use of my skills ever. At impact I flew through the air over the handle bars already starting my roll and hit the ground hard but rolled right out of it and into fighting stance haha. It happened so fast it was like a blink. One second I'm thinking in slow mo, the next I'm standing 15 feet away from our bikes looking ready for an invisible enemy. I didn't feel a thing. All I can hear is about 40 bar girls laughing and pointing at me from the sidewalk as I walk over to check on the falang and his girl. They are totally fine, they just plopped over on their side with little more than a scratch because I only hit the back wheel of the bike and sent my energy over the handle bars. Police just happen to be standing right there with all the laughing bar girls, they see we are ok and ask us if we have settled it, we both agree there is nothing to settle, we were both at fault. I was definately going way to fast and trying to pass on the outside and he didn't look before cutting across the lane. If I had hit a Thai guy it would have been a totally different ball game and I would have had to fork over some money, lucky me. I walk my twisted bike over to the bar on the side and all the girls are all laughing still until I take my helmet off, then they all go dead quiet, I hear a couple say in thai, "handsome man". I remember thinking "ya, don't laugh at the handsome man!" Talk about humiliating having a large group of people laugh at your near death experience and no one even trying to help you, pretty lame feeling. It cost me $70 Canadian to fix up the bike, I was lucky, I was able to twist the front wheel back into place and only had to get the lights and mirrors and scratches fixed.
I decided to take my safety a tad bit more seriously after that, I don't do stupid manuevers anymore. Thankgod for my training, that roll really saved my butt.
Damian Mavis
Honour TKD
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