There are so many books published about finding yourself. Finding oneself. Epic journeys through foreign lands to wring out the ennui of daily American living and be left with "what's really important."
Like going to countries that all start with "I" in search of food, God and love. In that order. Oh, if it were only that recipe driven. If life were an alchemist's puzzle to be sorted out with access to the proper grimoire, it would all be so much simpler, wouldn't it? But it just ain't that neat.
The point is to get shoved out of ones comfort zone and see how one survives. Of course, my idea of being out of my comfort zone is running out of Peet's coffee and being stuck with some other brand until I find what I like.
Yeah, well, that's shattered.
I now hurtle down the road at 50 miles an hour on a vehicle that weighs less than me, surrounded by people who don't wear helmets and ride three or *four* to a bike....some of them sidesaddle.
Yes, I'm talking about mopeds.
I am driving on (what I consider to be) the wrong side of the road. You know the scene in "Absolutely Fabulous" where Eddie gets into the Fiat in farm country outside of Paris on the right side of the car, finds there's no steering wheel and pounds on the dashboard screaming "I HATE FRANCE!!!"? I live there now.
When I used to babysit, I was taken to a place called "upside-down land" or "backward land" where the words were backward, or I had to go through doorways backward or follow arbitrary rules "given" to a five-year-old who, in turn, taught them to me. All very cute and clever until the announcement that bed-time in "Backward Land" was 2 AM.
This is karmic payback, I know it. The old "wrong side of the road" meme is tired, but it's still a helluva challenge. I have a terrifying memory of the story of friends who summered in England during college and were in an awful head-on collision because after narrowly avoiding a different fracas, they returned to the road in the right lane out of habit, came around a right-turn corner and....yes. So, here I spend my days puttering around on a two wheeled death trap, turn right from a left lane and have a millisecond's panic as I try to remember which lane I'm supposed to be in. This is further complicated by the augmented bedevilment of being from the Bay Area where A) one way streets abound without reason and B) no one knows how to drive anyway. Consequently, my frame of reference is completely useless.
And one would think that as much as I complain about drivers back home, I wouldn't be fazed here.
Sadly, that's of no help. Here, they have their own rules which match nothing I've ever read, nor the silly little white and yellow lines on the highway.
One has to give in, soak up the culture, go native.
If observed very carefully, a method...no, a ballet emerges from this madness. Mopeds keep to the very left of the road. Then cars can pass on the inside, toward the centerline, as needed. Cars signal with the right turn signal to notify others that they are passing. We on our mopeds merely pay attention (pray for divine intervention, if needed) and let them pass. If there is a car going slower than the rest, the fast car will pass that as well, signaling dutifully, pulling right to go around and so forth. If one is walking, one walks into traffic so as to allow oncoming cars to see you. All this on a road 30% narrower than two lane roads in the United States, and mostly surrounded by a 1 to 1.5 meter ditch on either side full of really nasty and sharp looking bushes.
It's Buddhist country. Did I mention that? They aren't aggressive the way we are. When you pass, you pass, you'll get there. You don't floor it and get around, you just signal, toot the horn, pull around aaaaaaaand slowly pull back into the lane.
I am driving down the road and I see a man walking a cow heading toward me. And a moped is coming upon him from behind, on the appropriate "other" side of the road. Passing him is a slowly moving car which is now going to be passed by a full sized, load carrying 2 ton truck which dutifully beeps, signals, pulls still further out in the road. Facing me are two vehicles, a moped, a man and a cow. All the available modes of land-based transportation in Thailand bear down directly on me. There is a gap into which I can....and now must....drive. Which I do.
I close my eyes and think of England.
It's their fault these people drive on the wrong side of the road.
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