Welcome back to Khon Kaen! For a moment, pretend that you need to go to the library, or maybe a friend’s apartment in your city. How do you get there? Do you take the bus? A taxi? The subway? Does someone drive you there? Who comes with you? Do you see strangers on this mode of transportation? What does it feel like and smell like? Is it hot? Cold? A perfect temperature?
In my last article, I mentioned songtaews (pronounced “sohng-tao”). A songtaew is a type of public transportation throughout many cities in Thailand. It is a pickup truck that has been retrofitted with benches and raised bars on both sides of the flatbed, and a tarp or metal canopy over the top to become a small bus. When you retrofit something, you add something to it that it didn’t have when it was originally built or manufactured. In a way, a songtaew is similar to the covered wagons that pioneers used when they migrated west through the United States, except instead of being pulled by horses and mules, it is powered by a car’s engine.
