08 May 2010

A Night of Death, Part 2

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Still oblivious to the fatal Red attacks in the Sala Daeng area that I had just left, I was cruising north toward home in a taxi at 1:15am Saturday morning when another type of death confronted me.
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As the taxi driver sped north up almost-empty main expressways on the Bangkok side of the river, we suddenly noticed brake lights and traffic disruption ahead. There were a lot of motorcycles and cars ahead slowing down and parting for some kind of obstacle in the four-lane road.
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Then the driver braked hard and we saw it. A motorcycle was on its side in the middle of the road, and a young person, possibly female, was lying still astride it, apparently unconscious and possibly dead. My Boy Scout instincts demanded that I stop to offer whatever first aid I could, but the traffic pressure behind and around us prohibited any possibility of stopping.
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Next, further down the road and also in its middle, was a severely damaged motorcycle still smoking. A bit further beyond it was another young person lying in a pool of blood around his/her head. I can confidently say that – even on such brief examination from the taxi – this person was dead. To lose so much blood so quickly from your head is fatal.
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My taxi driver called it in, but someone else already had because two ambulances were approaching fast from the opposite lane.
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As we continued north, we maneuvered our way through hundreds of motorcyclists, who were moving more slowly now and apparently freaked out by the accident behind us. None of them were wearing helmets – odd because helmets are mandatory in Thailand and are usually seen on main roads.
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They were late-night teenage motorcycle racers. It is a culture that has been around for a while. Hundreds of teenagers assemble late at night, usually on weekends, and race in mass rallies on the nearly empty streets. What surprised me was the percentage of them who were female, either as passengers or drivers.
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This did not make the main news, however, since it is commonplace here.
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-Zenwind.
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2 comments:

  1. So much death and destruction in one night.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Land of Smiles sometimes shows its bleak side.

    ReplyDelete

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