headed for the open road

In my last few weeks here, my position has evolved (or possibly devolved) from "legal intern" to "glorified chauffeur". My job is to negotiate Chiang Mai's insane traffic in the infamous "rot BABSEA", a 20 year old mitsubishi champ with a few hundred thousand kilometers on the clock. I've already crashed it twice (lamp post, ditch), but no-one seems to notice, one of the perks of driving in Thailand. Downsides include a total lack of power steering, unmarked and pointy speed bumps on the road and other drivers. Thai drivers are, in a word, crazy. You think Italians are bad, but trust me, you ain't seen nothin' yet. On the motorway today people stopped to turn left without any kind of signalling, pulled u-turns in front of me, causing me to slam on my (pretty useless) brakes, and, most memorably, forced me to reverse round a corner for the first time since my driving test by powering up a very narrow soi towards me in an 18-wheeler.
But it can be fun too. The roads don't really have any speed limit, and I'm not paying for petrol, so it's fun to put your foot to the floor and head for the mountains. Today the shadows of trees on the straight road in front of me looked so much like oil from the distance I actually slowed down and tried to remember if you were supposed to turn into or out of a skid. Thankfully it was a mirage, because the split-second conclusion I came to was that I had absolutely no idea.
We were headed out to visit a couple of schools in Samkamplaeng to try and raise money for a marathon we're putting on in November. It's a beautiful place to drive, and today was a sunny respite from the grimness that is monsoon season. You see rice paddies on one side, little wooden houses on the other and mountains straight ahead, and you only have to slow round to swing round passing bicycles. When we got to the actual schools, me and Clara just smiled politely and let the Thai conversation wash over us. I picked up the bit when they looked at us and said "pratet angrit" (England) and "Oxford. The only reason we're there really is that in Thailand, your business looks better and more prestigious if you have a farang (foreigner) working for you. And the Oxford name has a lot of clout here, so they like to throw that one in, despite the fact that nothing in your university education has really prepared you for driving on Thai roads, which is the only useful thing you've done.
Ah well, I'm not complaining. It's fun to go as fast as you can, put some reggae on and head for the hills. It beats trying to u-turn on the ring-road anyway...