Bicycles, Thailand, and you.

Safety tips:

1) Seeing as you have no lights and no one wears a helmet…make sure to swerve with force into the lane of traffic you will be following.

2) If you see a dog, first, pretend it’s not there. It doesn’t exist. Definitely no eye contact. If one does make eye contact pedal with all speed. Your life, or at least your heel depends on it. If said dog begins chasing you a (9 in 10 chance) try to out run it. If this does not work (as happened a few nights ago) turn around shouting “Bai! Bai!” (“Go!” “Go!”). If the dog continues at you pretend to throw a rock,
Thankfully this last strategy worked the other night. As the dog just about sank his teeth into Codie’s ankle we successfully scared it off with fake rocks but, due to the close call, we now have the baskets of our bikes lined with rocks and stay away from street we know have mean dogs (the teachers here even give some street dogs names. Like "Two Blocks" named appropriately because he will follow you barking for two blocks. There is also a particularly vicious dog downtown that can easily run down a bike and, get this, he only has two legs! He drags his hind legs behind him as he propels himself with his fangs and dog slobber going at full speed. He’s MEAN! He wants those legs back and if you’re walking or riding a bike there’s a good chance he’s eyeing yours.

3) Expect to be laughed at a lot by Thai people who think riding your bike is something quite silly when you could easily afford a motorcycle (aka murder-cycle judging by the traffic accidents). Codie and I are all for renting motorcycles in the smaller towns but not in “everyman, woman, chilld, and small puppy in the basket for themselves” towns like Surat Thani.

4) Beware the random speed bump and or pothole. Potholes happen but speed bumps here seemed to be planned to pop out at you when you least expect it presumably to help Thai people laugh at farang (foreigners) heaving over their handlebars unexpectedly.