Wednesday 6 April 2011

Walking in Bangkok

In Melbourne, we take walking on flat obstruction free footpaths more or less for granted. In Bangkok, it's an adventure in itself.

The erection of objects on the footpath is quite common place. In this case, a power box. Note that the base of the box is in concrete, so the width of the footpath you can walk on is about 4cm plus the rounded kerbing.

Overhead obstacles. This sign went across the entire width of the footpath. Nicole modelling the overhead clearance.

Mind your step.. This was one of the larger step changes, and to be fair, is exacerbated by a falling road elevation. In general, the kerbs are taller and sharper than we're used to. We hypothesised that this was to do with either heavy rainfall, or to stop the motorcycle riders riding on the footpaths. Either seems plausible.

After all that, wherever there is a decent width of footpath, a street vendor fills it, generally selling some form of local delicacy, usually on a skewer cooked on a BBQ/grille type setup.

The net result is that in some areas you spend half your time walking on the road in between cars. The car-pedestrian accident statistics must be horrendous. Crossing the road is an amazing life & death exsperience, to be the subject of a future post.

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