All my Thailand photos are in the Thailand 2007 Flickr Set. Here are some of the regular cars and trucks I saw around Thailand. I took tons and tons of these, but I was shooting through windshields a lot, and out of a dozen, sometimes only one would be good. I cannot emphasize enough just how awesome Thai car culture is. It’s like Mexican car culture, only instead of being influenced by American car culture, it’s influenced by Japanese and Indian car culture.
Thai car culture is very truck oriented, since rain in Thailand is often synonymous with flooding and monsoons. You want to be high up in that stuff. The one thing I kept thinking about when seeing the flood of brand new trucks, especially the Toyota Hi-Luxes that seem to be everywhere, was the role of the Toyota truck in the success of Mujahideen resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghansistan, made possible by bulk purchases by our then nominal ally, Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, in those messy, early days, right before the blowback started to roll in. The importance of the pickup truck in 4th generational warfare cannot be understated, but that’s really neither here nor there, just what was in my mind at the time.
Above - A Toyota with a Puma cut-out tailgate. Thailand has embraced consumer culture and branding in a way that’s staggering. I would see brand new mopeds with full body supergraphics for Masked Rider, Lipton Tea or Pucca all over the place.
Above - Seen in Kalasin, on my last day in Thailand proper. Buddha statues wrapped in orange and traveling in holy style.
Above - Mobile Buddhism. Every Thai male is a monk for a brief period in their lives, often just a month. Pictures of the King in his month of monastic practice hang in nearly every home. So you’re constantly seeing monks, but most of these guys are just on temporary duty, kind of like religious Army Reservists. Despite the kitschy popularity of the Tuk-Tuk, most Thai buses and taxis are just trucks with special cages in the back.
Above - I figure this is a 1970’s Toyota Corolla. I love 1960’s and 70’s Japanese cars, especially when they have the mirrors mounted way out on the hood. This was seen in Si Racha, the same day I finally realized my life’s dream of eating Siracha Sauce in its hometown, as well as consuming horseshoe crab.
Above - You see a lot of yellow vehicles in Thailand, and because you’re a total gringo, it takes you a full week to realize that they’re all in a particular shade of royal yellow, in honor of the King’s birthday celebration, or just the King in general. This car was seen outside a university art gallery in Bangkok. It was in beautiful shape, and the only Beetle I saw the whole time I was in the country.
Technorati Tags: Thailand, cars, trucks, vehicles, monks, Buddhism
May 8th, 2008 at
Eating Siracha Sauce in the place where its named after is awesome! one of my favorites along side Tapatio!