Seymour Cumming:

Thailand’s calamitous traffic is one of those things the TAT accidentally left out of the tourist brochure. At best it’s amusing and novel to drive around in 2 feet of water and spend whole mornings in traffic jams, at worse it’s a nightmare. Chiang Mai hasn’t even got around to a decent drainage system (the moat is a little outdated, don’t you think?), and Songteaw pick-up points are badly needed on Huay Keaw road, but in Bangkok you can get to work on anything from skytrains to elephants. I was there the other day you see - it took longer to get to my meeting than it took to reach my hotel all the way from Chiang Mai.

Honestly, Bangkok is mad. Madder even than a madcow on cocaine!

It’s one big, hopeless, traffic jam that outdoes Cairo, Lagos and Athens in both intensity and volume. It’s a great big circus of belching buses, tricky tuk-tuks, shuffling samlors, tyrannical taxi drivers, and mad-cap motorbike taxi riders.

In 1999, after years of arguing over the tender, the sky-train opened to great fanfare but the Prime Minister apparently couldn’t make it to the ribbon-cutting ceremony because he got stuck in a traffic jam of people who were trying to get onto the bloody thing.

Yup, Bangkok is a comedy of town-planning ‘eras’. Whole battalions of traffic wardens work 24-hour shifts to keep everything moving. More than half are reputedly undergoing respiratory treatment.

Actually, I read somewhere that the longest anyone ever spent in a traffic jam in Bangkok was 44 years (no, no, sorry that’s all wrong – according to my Lonely Planet, the average Bangkok resident collectively spends 44 days a year in traffic). No shit! They even sell plastic inflatable potties at most gas stations to help avoid the inevitable gastric-accident. Rush ‘hour’ is a bit of a redundant term there. People fall asleep, pass-out, pass away, give birth, feed their entire family and more during the course of a journey home. Whether you’re heading home at 5pm on a Friday or arriving from London at 5am on a Sunday morning, the traffic is there to greet you!

OK, so it’s not REALLY that bad, but it did take rather long to cross town. Sometimes the quickest route between two points usually involves a detour of hundreds of kilometres (and that’s just to get yourself onto the expressway!).

Hours spent in the back of taxi is perfect for writer’s fodder, but my point is; there is no point. Travelling on the skytrain costs 10 times more than the motorised alternative. Despite the jams, it will only ever be used by people who can’t afford a car.  Bangkok’s elite love spending time in traffic because it gives them more time to show off their Benz.

And then there’s the underground system. It’s nearly finished but whether it’s for transport or drainage purposes is still unclear. News is; the trains will only be delivered in 2005, which of-course leaves plenty more time to mis-planning and corruption.

Investigative-journalist-at-large, Seymour Cumming sees things a little differently in life. He has previously been a used car salesman, fruit picker, ‘shock jock’ and newsroom war correspondent. He has written for Farmer’s Weekly, Nyet!, Porn Unlimited, Chessworld and  Cross-stitching Magazine.

He’s been to more than 50 countries, some for less than a day, and is currently working on a travel novel, but he’s written the author’s biog, and not progressed much beyond that.

Seymour Cumming archive is here...