Monsoon Rains & Body Bags

It's the monsoon season - the most balmy time of the year - my favorite season. Comfy temperatures and strong breezes push blustery, often ferocious, rain squalls over the island every day. The cool winds would be most welcomed during the winter months, when, oddly enough for this location seven degrees above the equator, the still air and heat descend on tourists who flock to the island for what we call, "the high season." Water sports, however, are much more enjoyable during the winter months and what else does one come to a tropical island for, if not the beaches?

There are no images accompanying this post, but the images associated with it will linger long in our minds.

A and I left Patong for the trip home around ten-thirty the other night. It had been another enjoyable, cool evening. We looked up at the fast moving clouds dancing around the moon as we bent into the Nissan for the forty-minute trip home. Maybe the rain was done for the day. Maybe there would be a calm window for us to travel in without extra cautions. It was not to be. We crawled past the police checkpoint leading out of Patong. The cops were ducking for cover as the first pounding drops of another rain squall hit our windshield. One never knows if the rain will last three minutes, or three hours at this time of the year.

We snaked through that squall easily and headed over the impossible winding mountain that separates the east and west sides of the island. We got over the mountain without having to deal with lightning, thunder or pelting rain and it appeared as if we might sail home dry. It was not meant to be. A roaring wet Lady of Hell & Fury came out from behind a cloud twenty-five minutes into the trip and buffeted us the rest of the way home.

Motorbikes are the predominant means of transportation, but more and more cars vie for space on the highways as the economy improves. Wise motorbike drivers pull off the road and look for an overhang to tuck themselves under during downpours. The roads are slippery and potholes are filled with water, so a motorbike driver can't scoot around them. Visibility is close to zero, especially at night and helmets are not equipped with windshield washers on their visors, so the best option for a motorbike is to pull off the road and wait it out. Unfortunately, some motorbike drivers think their driving skills will beat the miserable odds against making a safe journey.

We were about fifteen minutes away from home, crawling at a snail's pace through the pelting rain, when we spotted the whirling red lights of police vehicles. Our emergency lights were also blinking, as were most of the other slow moving cars on the road and everyone was driving cautiously and sensibly. We saw a policeman running along the side of the road as we got nearer the flashing lights surrounding an accident. A tan pickup truck was askew and perpendicular to the road, it's nose embedded in a roadside food stand. Two mangled motorbikes were spread about thirty feet apart. My heart dropped. The horror of it all - the image that will never go away - was the two body bags laying in the road quite a distance from one another. At least two people died on that spot not long before we drove past. It's a terrible feeling. We drove the rest of the way home in silence - the scene atrophied all conversation.

I've made a number of remarks about Thai drivers and driving conditions in earlier posts and, for the most part, I give Thai drivers very high marks - not so much because they are better drivers than anyone else in the world, but because they somehow manage not to kill one another off in greater numbers in face of the anarchy of these unpredictable highways. Anarchy is the only way to put it. Traffic laws are observed in a very off-hand manner and it's rare to find someone pulled over by a cop for an infraction. You learn to watch every motion of every vehicle before and behind you when on the highway and learn to read the signs that someone is going to run a red light - almost everyone does - or make a turn without giving a signal, or pass you when it appears as if there is impassable oncoming traffic in the opposite lane. There is no such thing as a relaxing drive here and every bit of the driver's attention has to be directed to the business of survival. That is not an exaggeration. Driving has become an exercise in extreme concentration for me, although I'm no longer nervous about it - jumpy nerves are as dangerous as inattention.

There is a pattern to it all, but it takes a while to figure it out. A van in the oncoming lane heads straight at you as it is passing two or three motorbikes in his lane. You are expected to veer over to your shoulder and give way to the oncoming van. If you don't, it's you who have caused the problem and possible collision, not the oncoming vehicle in your lane. Crazy, eh? That's only one craziness - there are countless others and you cannot navigate this vehicular spaghetti safely until you learn them all. It's the way it is and it's getting worse with the increasing number of vehicles.

The police seem to put most of their energy into pulling over and fining motorbike drivers who aren't wearing helmets. Most traffic deaths are motorbike riders, so I suppose the police try to reduce the fatalities by enforcing helmet laws, but it's obvious that the biggest killers are speed, total disregard of rights of way and ignored traffic lights. Highway lighting is poor, or nonexistent, except in a few intersections and it's difficult to see lane lines (as if anyone would bother to honor them). Until those issues are addressed and enforced in an aggressive manner, the fatalities will continue to escalate exponentially with the increasing number of vehicles on the roads.

The sacrosanct rules of the road here are hyper-vigilance and sensible speed. Too many drivers seem to be in a hurry to crawl into their body bag.