A Songteaw is the equivalent of a bus. It's made from a truck with a metal cage and some very rudimentary bench seats placed inside. Nakhon Phanom is too small to have songteaws within the city, but if one is coming from out of town, there are songteaws all the time.
I've said before that I live in a village. If I want to go into town, I walk to the edge of the village and wait alongside the highway for a Songteaw. They come at different times and all time. There's no schedule.
I love taking the songteaw into town. Jostled and bumped against twenty other people, I can sit and view the countryside or talk to a grandmother with black teeth. A little boy might try and share his corn on the cob with me or simply stare at me with open-mouthed awe. I'm the only white person in the truck and probably the first white person he's ever seen.
Sometimes the matrons on the ride with talk about me assuming that I can't understand them, but mostly they just accept me as an anomaly and continue their lives.
It's nice not to be commented upon.
Rememberance
14 years ago
3 comments:
you will miss that song taew- maybe one day we can go visit your fam jam in ban klang and you can show me the ropes of the song taew to ban klang / back.
At a roadside
I see a girl
Whose hair is the
Colour of pearl.
She is content
To wait around
For a Songteaw
There's one inbound.
This reminds me of my Moroccan bus trips! I actually took the bus by myself once (not advisable for young ladies...I was 29 and probably considered an old hag by then!). I will never forget drinking water out of a communal mug (also not advisable, but I had been there for several weeks so probably already had the local bugs). Just as I had fallen asleep we stopped in a village and I was awakened by a loud RAP RAP RAP on the side of the bus, and looked up to see two men shoving a live sheep into the luggage compartment below. They were taking it to the city for the Eid Al Kabir for ceremonial slaughter. It bleated all the way to Rabat!
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