Scooter Bikes in Bangkok – You Thought Our Traffic Was Bad?
By Tony Sham
August 10, 2026 Forget about trying to cross the street in Bangkok. Unless you've stretched, taken a few deep breaths, and have all your personal belongings strapped to your body, the chances of you getting across to that tasty looking pad thai joint without at least one jump scare are pretty slim.
Don't go looking for a crosswalk, and don't expect the light to turn red. You're on your own pal. Better say a prayer.
The Great Bangkok Stampede
Imagine a stampede of motorbikes and cars of every description trundling along as fast as the driver in front of them allows. Swerving, scuttling, and ripping over pockmarked streets that are so rain slick half the time you gotta wonder how they all stay upright. The first time I watched a motorcycle cut off a van in the center of a four-lane highway I nearly had a seizure.
Then I had to laugh, imagining someone trying to pull that stunt on the Belt Parkway and getting creamed. I could feel my blood pressure rising just at the thought of witnessing such insanity. Could you imagine if one morning, at like 10AM in Manhattan, a fleet of vespas invaded 6th Ave, swerving between taxi cabs as fast as possible?
You think the bike lane is bad? Imagine New York City's entire road system, all five boroughs, transformed overnight into one gigantic bike lane. That's Bangkok. I know a few people who'd have a stroke halfway through rush hour on day one.
Anarchistic Flow: Where Road Rage Goes to Die
What's even crazier is that road rage doesn't seem to be a thing here, at least not to the degree that I experienced it in New York. As a veteran of several close calls, I've blown my top off so bad I produced curse words that don't even exist in the English language. Here, drivers just seem to accept the chaos like it comes with the territory. Half of them don't even wear helmets.
I want to be careful about speaking in absolutes, as I'm just a visitor to Thailand, but it really feels like there's a calm, understood, method to the madness - a sort of anarchistic flow the Joker would be proud of.
That being said, if you think you're gonna catch my ass driving a dirt bike through Bangkok, swerving potholes at 40 MPF to go get a fuckin smoothie, go back to the top and reread this article.
Entering the Madness: My First Grab Bike Ride
Of course, this sprawling, incredible city's too massive to walk everywhere, especially not in a hundred-degree heat with rain storms on the horizon, so that’s where Grab comes in. It's an app that's basically Uber, which is super convenient for someone like me who isn't training to shoot the next Fast & the Furious movie and doesn't need to practice their burnouts.
