This website, and all pages within this website, and all videos, tape recordings, podcasts, and other materials including photographic images and captions, offer, disseminate, convey and represent our opinions, hunches, suspicions, best recollections and editorial views.
This is just a page of random videos we might post from time to time.
Video #1 is merely a ride to a local shop to buy a needle and thread kit. The big "supermarket" didn't carry them (ah, SE Asia)(they didn't carry chip dips either), but a little open-air Chinese shop had about 20 varieties. Unfortunately the one I chose was junk, and so had to go back and buy another (no returns or exchanges here). Which was also junk.
We'll try to post weird and miscellaneous clips here from time to time, mostly of life in SE Asia, just for fun. In the first clip, below, there's a water buffalo a few minutes in, on the left side. Easy to miss. But not so easy to miss when they lurch into the street. We're constantly asked, "Well, what's it like there? What do you do all day? Got any videos?" So this page is for that. Just video musings of no particular consequence. Time passers and curiosity quenchers.
I gave up a decade ago trying to explain life, here, across "The Great Cultural Divide", because you just have to be here to understand it, and even then, you won't. "East is East and West is West and never the twains shall meet" (Kipling poem). No truer thing was ever said. It's not just a cultural chasm in which from birth onward they learned different things and developed different viewpoints -- the actual physical hardwiring in the brain is completely alien and to us, and very often (almost always) deeply and utterly and mystifyingly illogical. It's in the DNA.
Thailand is now rated at the world's number one most dangerous place to drive. It had been rated #2 and #3, alternately, off and on for decades, but it was learned by independent researchers that the Thai gov was simply cooking the books because being #1 was too embarrassing (educate the drivers and enforce the traffic laws? Oh perish the thought!). I think they have pushed that number down again of late, back to #2 or #3, but that's not reality. #1 is reality. In fact, logic and reality of any type here, like down Alice's Rabbit Hole, is pretty damned hard to find. Personally, for driving, I find Cambodia to be worse and India to be worse yet, but the numbers don't bear that out.
A friend was driving a new SUV here a few weeks ago. A 14 year old girl was riding a regular motorcycle down the sidewalk, helter-skelter, no helmet. no license, no papers. She blew the red light and t-boned him as he sat in an intersection, waiting on traffic to clear. Girl wasn't badly hurt but all were hauled to the police station. Parents were NOT contacted.
First it was decreed that the friend, a western Caucasian, shall be taken to jail, the car impounded, until either he paid all damages to his car and the girl's bike and for her injuries and inconvenience AND a few hundred USD under the table to the police for being so lenient on him, or he and the car would remain in jail until the matter came to trial (6 months, here). He argued and his insurance agent showed up about then.
It was then judged that the friend could go if he paid everything for the girl, and a few hundred US to the police.
They argued.
Then they said he could go after paying only the police, not the girl, but the car was still to be impounded until a trial.
They argued.
Finally it was agreed that his insurance would pay for his car, and nothing to the girl, and no reimbursement to the insurance company from the girl's family (the insurance agent was required to agree to this before anyone would be allowed to leave), but he still had to pay the police a few hundred USD, and no jail or impound.
This was after seven (7) full hours of arguing in the police station.
Finally, he just got in his car and drove away and no one stopped him.
That is life in ALL SE Asian countries.
It keeps you on your toes.
The traffic in this first video is as light as I have ever seen it, in decades. Just lucky.
The resolution and framerate on these will often or usually be sufficient that you can hit "pause" for a freeze-frame and you'll usually get a frame that's clear enough to look around at, and even zoom a little. At some point we'll post some things in 5k, just for fun.
Remember, these have little value at all except to those curious about everyday life in SE Asia. They're just for passing time and seeing new sights.
Some vids might require a strong connection
#10 What's it like to live in Thailand? THIS. 24/7
#9 L-O-N-G Ride to Immigrations
#8 Ride along the lake to 7-11
#7 Near Miss (no need to see what happened after vid ended ;-)
#6 Petrol station spill
#5 Another ride to and back from the store
#4 Interesting intersection, episode 1
#3 Video, Ride through narrow sois, up north in Thailand
#2 Video, Ride along Pattaya Beach, up north in Thailand
#1 Video, Ride to Shop for Thread
BGC Manila, semi-slum area (middle class)