The adventures of me and my tuk tuk

By Seymour Cumming

Man, all this laying about 'lifestyling it' here in Chiang Mai is doing me no good. Just the other day my Mama phoned and said, "Get off your lazy butt and do something for a living will ya." Well, I can't find one of them teacher jobs (says my English is too dodgy) and my previous venture in the bar business didn't quite work out with my German partner (we couldn't see eyeball to eyeball), so I tell Mama to send over a loan of a thousand bucks cause I'm gonna buy me a tuk tuk. Hot damn, now there's an idea. There's so many of the buggers about I figured it's gotta be a money spinner.

Anyways I buy this groovy blue and yellow one off a guy name 'Tuk'. "Tuuk maak, velly cheap," he tells me, "for you I make special price." Well, Tuk had the gift of the gab, he owns two other tuk tuks which he rents out, if there is anything this guy doesn't know 'bout the tuk tuk business then I guess it ain't worth knowing. He even says he starred in the legendary tuk tuk car chase scene in that movie Ong Bat. So I trusted him and bought the tuk tuk.

Crickey! Since then I had to replace the gear box, fit new tires, change the clutch, repair a snapped acceleration cable, re-attach the speedo and bribe the bloody police because the reg was fake. But Tuk, he just chuckled and said, "Mai pen rai, must be bad spirits, better to go temple for blessing."

I guess he did tell me all the places to go for cheap parts so I kind of forgave him. Rings are also shot but we decided to leave them so it can fart black smoke and look like a real tuk tuk eh! I've also had the muffler removed so it now sounds great, all the other tuk tuk drivers take me seriously.

Tuk comes with all sorts of handy advice. "You no get lich drive tuk tuk station to hotel, you must drive tuk tuk station to gem shop to tailor to jewellery shop to antique shop to Starbucks then hotel, you get commission velly good."

He says he's been driving tuk tuks for 20 years, sent his kids to university in Australia, drives a Volvo after hours and has 'velly smart house, three storey with massage shop'. I would never have suspected, except that he offers all the new tourists a ride to their hotel for only twenty baht, with a free tour of Chiang Mai. Man you get some suckers.

Well, after about a month of driving tuk tuk word gets around of this crazy farang and soon this mafia henchman shows up. He says I have to join the Songtaew Association, otherwise I will get 'bad fortune' with my tuk tuk. So I meet the Jao Pho (godfather), pay the extortionate fees and they give me this handbook on songteaw and tuk tuk driving in Chiang Mai. I kid you not, so I have it translated and I tell you what, bloody glad I did!

Here's what some of it says:

Manifesto: We the Songtaew Association own Chiang Mai. We have 50 years of power, we control the roads, the issuing of licences, the lining of pockets and all town planning decisions. Nobody can touch us. If the mayor gets pushy, we just park all our thousands of songteaws at Tapae Gate, simple.
Objective: To turn Chiang Mai's traffic into same like Bangkok and block all roads, cause congestion, irritate all other drivers until everyone stops driving their car and uses our songtaews instead.
Method: You are lucky to be one of us, we are systematically issuing more and more licences for songtaews every year until there will be more songtaews than people. We encourage your friends to join, we will loan money to buy a songtaew, we organise everything, even your fake driver's licence.
Priviledges: As one of us you are allowed to do anything you please on the roads. You can stop where you like, park your car on a busy road, obstruct traffic, pull over wherever it suits you, cross all lanes of traffic, do a u-turn on Suithep road in rush hour, halt your car outside Kad Suan Kaew and take a nap (if there are already too many red trucks here then you can go outside Suan Dawk Hospital).
Road rules: Never mind, the police will never stop you (many of them moonlight as songtaew drivers, they are one of us), no need to use wing mirrors or obey stop signs, everybody must wait for you, no problem to drive very slowly looking for passengers walking on roadside.
Remember we own Chiang Mai. Red is the colour of the future.

Investigative-journalist-at-large, Seymour Cumming has previously been a used car salesman, fruit picker, 'shock jock' and newsroom war correspondent. He has written for Farmer's Weekly, Nyet!, Chessworld and Cross-stitching Magazine.

He's been to more than 50 countries, some for less than a day, and is currently working on a travel novel, but he's written the author's biog, and not progressed much beyond that. His controversial commentary on ex-pat life in Thailand appears in Chiang Mai City Life Magazine.