The other week my significant other decide she wanted to get her car licence. So she rang up a car driving school and signed up for 10 hours of lessons. This school (perhaps they all do) also included the chance to complete the drivers test also.
The first question she was asked by her driving teacher was “do you want to do the test or just pay?” !!!Now I’m no newbie to Thailand and its system of bribes – but that just appears a little bit too systematic to me rather than a few (well very many) people making a little extra on the side whenever they can!
A week or so later she announces that she is doing her test WTF ? – that’s fast! She got it to, so now my g/f is able to drive a car through-out Thailand. Now I’m not saying she’s stoopid – far from it – she’s a smart gal – but in farang land ( I know I know TIT ! ) but in da west – one generally needs to complete something like 10 times that number of hours learning how to drive – just to gain confidence, read traffic, road rules? Ability to respond to different driving conditions (ie rain, fog, night) (all her lessons were the middle of the afternoon.) ability to calmly respond to emergency situations that may arise.
Most of which can only be leaned through experience and TIME spent driving!She decided she only wanted to get her automatic licence – tho I convinced her to at least get some lessons in a manual ( turns out she had a total of 10 minutes – before the instructors car broke !? and only managed to use 1st, 2nd and 3rd gears!)
Apparently she never learnt how to reverse ( and by implication reverse park!) Anyway I own a manual 4WD – u guessed it she wants to drive it now, ok ok I’ll sit with you – show me how well you can drive. Feck me – she accelerates hard straight at a brick well in our apartment carpark – I slam on the hand brake and have a wee chat with her which consisted of you don’t need to go fast in the carpark – and her saying I wasn’t going fast.
OK – its Sunday morning – should be light traffic – overshoots the driveway exit leaving the nose of the car in the middle of the road – lucky no traffic was coming past, overcorrects the corner so we end up on the wrong side of the road.Couldn’t stay in the white lines down sukhumvit road – generally accelerated towards cars that where already braking despite me asking her to repeatedly to “Chaa Chaa!” (which means go slow go slow!)
We arrived safely – I promised some more lessons at a later date, – while filing a mental note to check my insurance cover! If this in any indication of the general population - its no wonder they all drive like feckn maniacs!
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