A good driver is hard to find

We are now on Phuket island in the southwest of Thailand. We plan to write a longish blog about Chiang Mai (fantastic, loved it) and Phuket (jury is still out) during our long bus rides to Malaysia. In the meantime, enjoy some stories about terrible drivers in SE Asia.

We have reached our wits end. Every time we get in a car we feel like we are risking our lives. SE Asia has some seriously terrible drivers and people don't seem to value their lives as much as we do...

For example, on the taxi ride from the Airport to our Hotel in Phuket we are cruising along when both lanes of the road ahead were occupied in relatively heavy traffic. The driver addressed this perceived road block by accelerating heavily and PASSING IN THE SHOULDER AT 125 km/hour (75 mph). Thankfully, he did slow down and drove safe after our protests from the back seat.

Admittedly gun shy, we approached the taxi stand at Central Festival (a modern shopping centre) in Phuket City this evening with some apprehension. The scene at the stand was as follows.

There were maybe 12 men congregated around the stand wearing the same floral patterned shirt; two are sitting behind a desk where the prices are listed and the other 10 were hassling tourists for rides. We expected these to be the drivers. Also hanging around was a middle aged Thai woman who was mumbling unintelligibly and stumbling around like she was either intoxicated or mentally handicapped (sorry if that sounds offensive, but it is an apt description). She was clearly blind in one eye. We felt bad for her and assumed that she was trying to sell us some of the goods from her basket or trying to see if Erika wanted a pedicure.

After we negotiate the price, we are assigned a driver. We said, "who is going to drive us?" and they pointed at THE HALF BLIND AND POSSIBLY DRUNK AND/OR MENTALLY IMPAIRED WOMAN! We immediately said “uh uh, no way” and started to walk off. They assigned another driver, who did attempt to pass a truck by going over a painted median into on-coming traffic, at night, in the rain. Thankfully, he also slowed down and drove reasonably after we protested from the back seat. Seriously, a half blind lady...

A good driver in SE Asia is priceless and we are willing to pay. We had a taxi driver named “Aye” in Chiang Mai who we hired four different times because he drove like a sane human being. We found “Tin” in Phuket this morning and are paying him 1500 Baht tomorrow to chauffeur us all day because he drives like he wants to see tomorrow.

More on Thailand later. We have 7 hours on a bus to Hat Yai ahead of us...