Bad Drivers on Ko Phangan

Lots of horrible drivers here on the island driving their motorbikes around. Seems like everyday I meet or run across another person who is bandaged up or has some nasty wounds from crashing their bikes. I used to think that it was primarly a women thing being bad drivers but increasingly more and more I am coming across guys with bandages and cuts. My first week staying at Jinda Bay Resort on the island I met a French girl who had flipped her motorbike over while driving up a steep hill heading toward Haad Rin on the eastern side of the island. She wound up with a heavily bandaged and stitched up foot and ankle. Another day when I was pulling out onto a road I looked to my left up a small hill and noticed a girl pull out from the other side of the road and fly across the road straight into an enbankment. Fortunately she didn't appear to be injured and got right up. Another girl in my yoga class came into class the other day wearing a cast on her left arm, apparently broken from wrecking her bike. In addition, my friend Samantha from yoga class has crashed her bikes twice and has the scratches, scabs and scars to prove so.



While definitely lesser in number than the women, I have encountered guys here and there who have driven their bikes into the ground. Several days ago I met a man sitting next to me at the computer room from the US with a heavily bandaged up wrist and hand from sliding his bike into the road. He said he tore a nice sized chunk of skin off of his hand. Must have hurt like a bitch I would imagine. I have had a couple of close calls myself , mostly on heavily rutted up dirt roads off the beaten track. Fortunately I have been quite lucky and have good enough strength and balance to control the machine. Most people I would imagine are wrecking their bikes at curves and bends on the main roads when they should be slowing down. This seems to be the main area to show caution when driving on the roads here. At most of the curves there is often alot of gravel and small pebbles that can have a ball bearing type effect if you are going too fast. Easy to lose control on this gravel and go sliding into the street, ripping and scraping up chunks of flesh from all areas off the body. It seems to be pretty common sense to slow down alot when approaching these curve and bends in the road. On the straight aways it is fun to gun the bikes and get them going pretty fast. The speedometers are in kilometers per hour, not miles per hour as in the U.S., and I have gotten mine up to around 80 kph. in certain straight aways.

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Picked up a Thai hitchhiker this past Sunday heading on down to the town of Thongsala. Not too often u see a Thai out hitchhiking for a ride. He was an older man and I figured I would help him out an give him a ride on the way I was heading. I felt a little apprehensive along the way cause u never know if someone has ulterior motives or is trying to be sneaky. I was wearing my backpack and hoping he wasn't trying to stealthily sneak his hands into it and grab stuff. I know it's paranoid thinking but one has to be aware of these kind of possibilities. I haven't been robbed of anything yet nor have I lost anything valuable thus far. All it takes is a momentary lapse in awareness and shit can happen. It was also kind of weird how the gentlemen kept trying to speak Thai to me along the ride. I know some Thai language - just some basic words and phrases - but he was speaking sentences to me as if I possessed some level of fluency in the language. I suppose he was just trying to convey where abouts he wanted to be dropped off at. Eventually I reached his destination and dropped him off. He was quite grateful and smiled appreciately and grandly as the Thai people do so well.