Learning to cross the road in Bangkok
Notes from a first week in Bangkok: tuk-tuks, the art of the confident step, and the street food stall I went back to four times.
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Nobody warns you that the hardest skill to learn in Bangkok has nothing to do with language. It’s crossing the road.
The confident step
Back home you wait for a gap. Here there is no gap. You step out — steadily, predictably, no sudden changes of mind — and the traffic flows around you like water around a rock. Hesitate halfway and you break the spell.
An elderly woman took pity on me on day two and simply walked me across, holding my sleeve, the way you’d help a nervous dog.
What I got wrong
- Over-planning. I had a spreadsheet. I used it once.
- Avoiding the heat. You cannot avoid the heat. You can only schedule around it: out early, nap at two, out again at five.
- Skipping the boat. The Chao Phraya express boat costs almost nothing and is the best transport in the city.
The stall I kept going back to
A woman on a corner near the hostel made one dish, and only one dish. There was no menu, no English, and a queue of taxi drivers, which is the only review that matters. I went back four times and never learned what it was called.
