Mean Street

I live somewhere between the towns of Chalong and Rawai in the southeast corner of the island of Phuket. I recently explained to a friend that this area is the "real" Thailand, or at least a trip 25 years back in time relative to the western shore, which is dominated by touristy beach towns. Overexposure to their hedonistic ways can severely impair one's faculties, but here on the west coast we're more in tune with the waves and the birds and the toads. Idyllic, yes, but today's Phuket Gazette blew the lid off my daydreamy backwater.

Where to begin? Well, the 7-11 I stop at daily was the scene of a grisly murder earlier this month. If you hurry you can read about it here, but the story is that a few careless words late one night resulted in the stabbing death of a local man.

Days later, and even closer to home, a local businessman was killed in a drive-by shooting. Two Thai police officers were arrested in connection with the purported contract killing, but the gunman remains at large. Details are available online, but now I know why an SUV parked awkwardly on the side of the road attracted so much police attention last week. Authorities preserved the crime scene for at least two days; I passed by numerous times but remained wholly ignorant of what had happened (the bullet holes were covered by a tarp).

Last night, with my blissful naivete still intact, I was minutes behind a terrible accident involving a motorbike and (possibly) two cars. I pulled off to the side of the two-lane road when I realized this was not an ordinary traffic jam. I was just a few hundred yards from my street but could not have left even if I had wanted to; within minutes I was blocked behind rows of parked motorbikes as curious passersby gathered.

Two people were lying in the road, a 40-something man and a slightly older woman, both Thai. The man was barely moving his right arm; the woman was not moving at all. There was a curious lack of blood. Police were on the scene within minutes and an ambulance arrived soon afterwards, but the interim was a disquieting period of mob rule. A young man began to cover the woman with newspaper, but moments later another man ripped them away.

Crowd reactions varied from quiet concern and morbib curiosity to callous indifference and gallows humor, but were united in disgust when a foreign man in a pickup truck ran over the wrecked bike as he rubbernecked his way by. He stopped immediately and was quickly surrounded by an angry throng. With the crowd whistling its disapproval, a police officer escorted the driver to the side of the road. I would not expect the police here to let that kind of stupidity go unpunished and imagine the guy did not escape without a fine.

The male victim was loaded into the ambulance by stretcher. His eyelids fluttered wildly and again he moved his right arm slightly. The ambulance wasted no time in leaving the scene, and with the police focused on traffic control, the woman was again unattended. The crowd pushed towards her and another young man took her head in his hands in a violent and emotional attempt to revive her. He was quickly pulled away, and after several more agonizing minutes a "Rescue Team" arrived in a covered pickup truck, the same service that recently answered a call from my landlords to remove a snake from their rock garden.

I could not see in what way they might have checked for vital signs but a break in the crowd revealed them carefully wrapping the woman in a white sheet and covering with sand a small pool of blood nearby. The crowd finally receded as they drove her away. I started to leave but a matronly woman insisted on telling me her version of the events. Most of the key aspects of her account were in Thai, but I understood her to say that two cars were involved, that someone was turning, and that someone else was passing. Anything beyond that would be speculation.

Thailand has for years led the region in roadway mortality, but not without good reason. Thai drivers are no worse (but certainly no better) than their Asian counterparts, but Thailand's transportation-friendly energy policies, robust economy, and liberal traffic laws have made for a boom in private ownership of motor vehicles and an uneasy coexistence of cars and motorbikes. Beijing, in comparison, is far from a driver's paradise but motorbikes are banned in much of the city and are otherwise climatically impractical. Motorbiking in Vietnam is not for the faint of heart, but the country's steep import duties and strict quotas make motorbikes, let alone cars, a luxury beyond the means of most of its citizens.