Transportation in Bangkok

Transportation in this city is...I don’t even know how to finish this sentence. The variety, the options, the stifling madness is never ending - depending on the time of day and where you need to go. Bangkok has over 5000 buses that run on hundreds of different routes. The buses can be in any sort of shape, have air conditioning or not and come rush hour are usually standing room only. There was a recent article in the Bangkok Post that discussed the condition of many of the buses lamenting the fact that perhaps a third are long past their expiration date but the law of the land allows them to keep going. There is apparently one bus that has been on the road now for 54 years!!! That’s almost twenty years longer than I have been around. I sure wouldn’t have lasted that long on the streets of Bangkok! Many others are in the 30-40 year old bracket! But buses are cheap and plentiful so they are used.

Another cheap and plentiful mode of transportation is the motorcycle taxi. Thousands of men and their motorcycles hang out at end of streets and sois to take you where you need to go. Cheap, plentiful, sometimes a little scary. Many foreigners choose not to ride on them as they think it is putting your life unnecessarily into someone else’s hands. I always say that it’s survival of the fittest. Those who aren’t good drivers aren’t around anymore to put me at risk!

Also plentiful and sometimes cheap (actually always cheap compared to fares in the west) depending on where you need to go and whether you get stuck in traffic are Bangkok’s eye catching taxi’s. As one article I read recently states “Bangkok taxis have dyed themselves into a catalogue of candy hues to stave off the capital’s traffic blues. They come in shocking pink, lollipop yellow, lime green, ruby red, deep ocean blue, aubergine purple and tooth-aching orange.” How many taxis can you see in the line up of cars in the photo below (third one down)?

Then there are Tuktuks – Thailand’s famous three wheel…well it’s a tuk tuk. Enough said –Google it if you don’t know!

What has saved this city (or at least many of the people who live here) in the last decade or so is the advent of the Skytrain elevated mass transit system and the MRT (underground subway) that quickly and conveniently zips people from one end of the city to the other passing either above or below the congestion that everyone else is sitting in. Both are cool and clean in contrast to many similar systems around the world but identical in that they carry easily and efficiently thousands of people plugged into their ipods and phones. Both the Skytrain and MRT are great but if you know anything about Bangkok and Thai ways, the MRT is really really impressive. The Skytrain is elevated. While that is complex in and of itself knowing that Bangkok consistently floods and is sinking at the rate of an inch a year or so (or so they say) and knowing that there are 50 year old buses still running because the laws are funky – it is amazing that an underground (and not ten feet underground – but a long long way underground), very modern and well built subway system exists. The first time I went on it I thought “This is impressive for anywhere let alone Thailand!”

And for those who want to keep up on what is going on in the Kingdom, the new elevated line out to the new Suvarnabhumi Airport (there’s another reason the MRT is impressive – it was clearly not a rush job unlike the embarrassment that the new airport was and continues to be) runs right behind us and is scheduled to open August 12 – Here only, on the thewilsonswanderings blog is a sneak peak of the trains that will run on it!

But our favorite, well perhaps most interesting mode of transport and one that we seem to use the most is the Khlong Boat. Bangkok is a city that was built on the edge of the Chao Phraya River (River of Kings) and has continued to spread out. Often called the Venice of the East it spread out not based on a road grid but along canals or khlongs as they are called here. Many of these canals have been paved over now but there are still a few that are used for daily transport. One of these is the San Saeb Klong which runs east west almost all the way from the Chao Phraya River on the eastern historical side of Bangkok out to the edges of the city in the west. It is cheap, incredibly convenient and the most interesting ride you will take in Bangkok. So much so that we are going to give it its own post soon!

I think that all readers of this post who have lived or traveled in Bangkok at any point in their lives should post a comment with a story or at least one word to describe transportation in this wonderful city.

Duncan