In which I respond to emails both concerned and curious...

Fear not, all my bits are still attached. After my menacing post a few days back - which I feel adequately conveyed my then-foul mood at Thai traffic - several kindly folks feared that something worse than ill temper had befallen me, and emailed inquiries of worry. All's well - in fact, I have yet to so much as skin a knee in Thailand, despite the abundant foolishness of buying a bicycle rather than add to the ubiquitous throng of motor scooters.

Yet my good health is no thanks to Thai drivers (expect undue generalizations to follow), whose contagious friendliness and impeccable manners elsewhere in life is not carried with them onto the pavement. Mistake me not, Thailand has far from the worst traffic I've seen. It's certainly a step up from Egypt, where the rules of the road were mere formalities except when (literally) clarified by the barrel of an AK47. It's thankfully not Botswana, where the generally sparse traffic was made occasional nightmare by the fact that many locals considered drunk driving a legitimate competitive sport. And the modern, well-maintained road surface is a world away from the disintegrating asphalt that rattled my skull in Costa Rica or (shudder) Mozambique.

By these measures, this seething stew of cars, trucks, scooters, tuk-tuks and the damnable song-taew minibuses seems almost... civilized. In fact, Chiang Mai drivers actually obey stoplights and even use their turn signals from time to time - treasured luxuries for a jaded developing-world pedestrian such as myself. Nor are their technical skills sub-par. Thai drivers display preternatural reflexes and a surgical talent for threading their varied vehicles through whatever minute pore has opened in the motorized pandemonium.

But they marry these individually laudable traits to a white-knuckled appetite for relativistic speeds and all the high regard for personal space you'd expect from an ecstasy-popping labrador retriever. The result is a weaving, careening body vehicular in which lane boundaries frequently disappear and scooters are ever shrieking through the capillary-like spaces between the cars. No inch of roadspace is wasted. In the midst of all this, for a half hour each morning and each afternoon, is wee me on my silly farang bicycle.

I've long since imprinted to the drive-on-the-left customs of Thai traffic. I hug the outer left edge of the road whenever vaguely possible, and I've gotten quite adept at spotting the viable gaps in traffic for that bewildering odyssey known as crossing a street. But no amount of road sense could adequately prepare me for drivers who think a thumbs-breadth is adequate clearance when they zip by at 100 km/h. Much less was I ready for the ultimate traffic nightmare - scooter and tuk-tuk drivers who hurtle directly at me in the wrong direction while I naively cling to belief that as long as I remain in my left-hand scooter lane, no harm can befall me. With only a "what the hell is your problem" stare betraying their intentions, these drivers, a dozen a day at least, prefer to pass a block or five the wrong way to the (admitted) conundrum of crossing the street and driving the non-insane way.

The end result? I've been run off the road (though thankfully never off my bike) a handful of times in the last week, and never once has it brightened my day. I'm glad I ignored CUSO's absurd penny-pinching strictures and bought a $400 bike that can handle being occasionally thrust over broken pavement or outright grassland. I'm sure that decision has saved me much heartbreak.

And how now do I cope? Mainly (and counterintuitively) by going faster and riding far more aggressively than I would have dared back home. If I can keep up with the scooters, I seem to earn their grudging respect, and I can apparently outwit the cars by more boldly (yet carefully - don't worry, Mom!) exploiting the gaps therebetween. I spent the day riding this way through the worst of downtown Chiang Mai, and felt safer than I have all week. I'll get the hang of this yet... and, with any luck, I'll still have all my fingers when I'm done!

PS - Chiang Mai, though lovely and welcoming, is surely the most pedestrian-unfriendly city I've ever seen... more on that to come.