Near Death, Near Miss, Great Story

Well, if the chicken story wasn't scary enough for you, allow me to describe the experience of riding a "tuk-tuk". A tuk-tuk is a scooter that rides anywhere from 3-190283019 people. No, it does not get bigger, people just sit closer together. There is a driver and a backseat.

Anyway, riding the tuk-tuk is very scary, because they weave in and out of traffic, and it is basically open air. The tuk-tuk is just like a scooter--you're not surrounded by much metal. These drivers would make a NY taxi cab driver look like driving miss daisy. On Thursday night, the Thai students and faculty threw us a farewell party on a river boat. Dave, Jennie and I decided to take a tuk-tuk to the University. Although in walking distance, traffic makes crossing the street a live game of frogger. What should've been a 5 minute ride turned into a 40 minute saga of the driver being lost (and denying it. Typical male). We ended up missing the boat entirely.

We raced to the boat dock, in hopes of some sort of miracle. There was one. The boat had left, but there were kind Thai students with a cell phone and who spoke English! They called Pik (one of the Thai students on the boat) and Pik gave them directions to hail us a cab so we could attempt to catch the boat at the halfway dock. (Thank goodness Jennie had Pik's number!!!). So we hop in a cab. Thanks to Bangkok traffic (which, by the way, I've come to loathe), the ride was another 40 minutes. We just barely made the boarding time for the 2nd leg of the trip.

I'll tell you, I'll be darned if I ever set foot in another tuk-tuk again. Or so I thought....More to follow. Right now, the timer is counting down on the airport computer. I'll be in Chicago in 15 hours!! And I'd darn well better be arriving with peanuts and footies. See you across the Date line.