Chapter 8 - Buying a car


back to chapter 7 topgo to chapter 9
For about half a year I lived on South Sathorn Road near the office and thus could walk to the office. Then my wife and I decided to move into a house. Because of the sky high rental fees for houses near the banking and embassy area where CIMCOs office was located, we rented a house in Sukhumvit 77 road which is also called Soi On Nut. Unfortunately this was so far away that I needed a car. So one nice Sunday afternoon we went to motor show in a shopping mall.

The Thais love cars and so the place was packed with people. Most of them gathered around the big imported Mercedes and BMW cars costing a fortune, which means about double the price of what they would cost in Germany, and still so many are being driven on Bangkok's roads - yes there is incredible wealth in Thailand. However, I did not intend to shell out ridiculous sums for such luxury cars and therefore made my way to the booth of Daihatsu which produce budget cars. There I found a lovely small red car called "Mira". I liked it and the price was reasonable, so I decided to take a close look. First thing I did, I opened the hood to see what kind of engine the car had. I stood there for about one minute. Suddenly a Thai salesman approached me and asked in perfect German: "Gefällt Ihnen das Auto?" This means "Do you like the car?" - I was baffled, so I asked the man why he knew that I was German and he answered that only a German would first take a look under the hood before doing anything else with a car. It turned out that the salesman used to work for BMW in Germany for many years. I liked him, so we closed the deal after he promised me to put longer rails for the driver seat into the car so that I could actually fit behind the steering wheel.

A few days later I could pick up my car. Everything was perfect. The long rails had been indeed put in place and I could easily fit into the vehicle. The whole process was smooth and pretty much the same as one would expect it anywhere else in the world.

Picking up the car was the easy part, but I was still scared of driving for the first time in a brand new car on the "wrong" side of the road. Luckily I drove my wife's car some kilometres before so I got some training. It was still a strange feeling. But I have to say that left side driving is not as difficult as I thought it would be. The fact that the steering wheel is on the "wrong" side helps, too. Even shifting gears with the left hand instead of the right hand is easy. So I got used to driving in Thailand pretty fast - driving on the "wrong" side of the road - that is. Getting used to the other oddities that one might encounter on Thailand's roads takes much longer.

Most of these oddities are usually life threatening, for example, heavy trucks driven by drunken or doped drivers chasing you, or trying to push you off the road. Equally dangerous are pedestrians who cross eight lane wide highways in the middle of the night. The scariest thing which happened to me however was a complete truck wheel which came flying towards me because a truck on the opposite side of the highway had lost it - how can you lose a whole wheel?

The roads going upcountry are usually very well maintained and are quite smooth and I have never even seen one speed control :-)
One just has to make sure that a road one is hurtling down actually goes somewhere... my boss Victor once drove his new sports car into the mud, because the road suddenly ended and there were no warning signs or barriers whatsoever... odd !


back to chapter 7 topgo to chapter 9