Crash! Boom! Bang! How to Fall off Your Motorbike Ungracefully

The very first step is that you have to have a motorbike. Otherwise none of this will matter and you’ll just have to hope that your tuk tuk driver is drunk, because otherwise the whole crashing thing isn’t going to happen for you.

We rented a motorbike here in Chiang Mai. It’s $50/mo, costs about $3 to fill up and fits a family of three just perfectly. You know that post about getting rid of the car seat in Bangkok, well let’s just say we’ve embraced local modes of transportation even more. There’s a complicated system I use to justify this to myself but here are the highlights: Thais drive with their children all the time (usually just standing on their lap, hair blowing in the breeze), most of them don’t use helmets, we only drive in town where the speeds rarely go above 15 mph and because everyone is too poor to have insurance or replace their vehicle, everyone drives very nicely (once you account for the complete lack of traffic rules).

So my husband drives, I put the baby in a wrap with a baby helmet (the store owner laughed at me when I tried to buy a helmet for him, assuming I was just kidding) and I hop on the back. It’s a baby sandwich. Hubby, Baby, Me.

There are two reactions we get as we zip around town. The first is from Thais who invariably notice the baby and lean off the edge of their bike, stretch out one hand (steering their bike with the other) and try to touch his hand or foot. If they are driving with a baby, they usually shake their baby at me, smiling and try to make the two children touch hands. All of this while we’re driving down the street, avoiding potholes and for the Thais, usually carrying some large package on the front of their bike.

The second reaction is from foreigners. Usually they drop their jaw, nudge the person next to them, and on a few occasions, whip out their video camera – because apparently there’s a big demand for videos of bad parents on YouTube.

Today we were driving to Warorot Market, on our way to meet a friend for a little photography date, that I hoped would result in a nice photo essay for this blog (instead you get this post, which let’s face it, me falling down beats photos of street markets any day).

A motorbike ahead of us slowed down. Drew sped up to pass them on the right. I noticed their right hand turn signal was on. Uh oh. I hit him on the shoulder, “Drew, no!”

He sucked in his breathe and squeezed the brake handle. Not noticing the bike full of farang sailing towards them, the driver slowed even more and lazily swerved to the right — just as we caught up to them. “Oh hello there” they probably thought.  We might have responded “Ahhhhhrrrggggg!” or maybe that was just in my head.

There was a brick wall. Pavement. Broken glass.  It was dramatic and stuff.

Afterward, I asked the women from the other motorbike (who had come with us to the hospital) what had it looked like when we crashed. To me, it felt like we were flying through the air, the bike far behind us, our arms stretched out to break our inevitable fall.

She said, “Oh you slowed down… and then sort of… toppled over… slowly.”

Oh. Man. That is so lame.

But I did learn an important lesson. Hospitals in Thailand will give you painkillers for a minor scrape on your knee. They’ll also prescribe antibiotics. And antibaterical cream. And whatever else you’re willing to pay for as you’re in mild shock from your big, exciting boo-boo.

I should say, the baby is perfectly fine. It’s like we were walking down the street and tripped. I wouldn’t joke about my son getting hurt. So put away your mean letter writing gloves, you won’t need them today.

If you’d like to recreate this spectacular mountain of bodies slow-motion falling to the curb, preferably in front of a large tourist area, like Tha Pae gate, here’s the key: don’t act like a Thai driver. You see, what we should have done is completely ignored our internal safety reflex and instead of slowing down, we should have sped up. In the face of certain danger, the best thing to do is drive faster, with unwavering confidence and danger will just bounce off you like fried eggs on Teflon. It works for everyone else in Thailand.

Total cost of our little adventure:

• Three stitches on Drew’s chin
• A scraped knee
• A broken side mirror
• $50 in emergency room fees
• Missed photography date
• Our pride
• $15 for one large pepperoni and mushroom pizza from Pizza Hut (we felt comfort food was in order).

Now we just need to figure out where the hell we left our motorbike.

Pic: drburtoni