{"id":582,"date":"2010-11-07T22:21:35","date_gmt":"2010-11-07T15:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.opportunityfoundation.org\/ofblog\/?p=582"},"modified":"2010-11-07T22:21:35","modified_gmt":"2010-11-07T15:21:35","slug":"road-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/9a296638a8.nxcli.io\/ofblog\/2010\/11\/07\/road-trip\/","title":{"rendered":"Road Trip!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"A large song taew ready to go.<\/p>\n

Yesterday we went to the \u201cBaan Song Muang\u201d children\u2019s rights conference in Baan Kruad about fifty kilometers southeast of Nang Rong. It is a two day conference with children invited for the first day. Most of our staff and kids went, and I went along as well. We rented a large song taew for transportation. <\/p>\n

Countries in this part of the world have various ways of transporting groups of people on the road. Of course the bus is present in all of them, but if you do not wish to meet the bus lines schedule and route, the distance is not too great, and you want to save money you may end up riding in the back of some sort of truck. The less well off in India often ride long distances standing room only on large flatbed trucks with wooden fencing stuck into the holes around the beds edge. The roads are so bad, and the trucks sprung so harshly that I doubt you would want to sit anyway. In Myanmar the small sized pickup (I can\u2019t remember seeing any full sized ones) is often used. It has a rack placed over the pickup bed and benches along the sides and center on the bed. I\u2019ve seen 20 on the benches down and another 12 on top. Add to that three or four in the front seat and you have 35 people as seen in the photo taken on our second trip there.<\/p>\n

\"\"Traveling third class in Myanmar. Taken on the way to Moulemein. Would you feel safe sitting on the tailgate?<\/p>\n

In Thailand we have the song taew. In small form this is like the pickup seen in Myanmar except I\u2019ve never seen people seated above on a small one and the center bench would only be there if children are carried. For more people the large song taew is a standard flatbed truck with the song taew framework over the bed. There are benches down the sides and center, although with about 20 people we did not need the center bench. I think they ease up on the suspension a bit as well. With that and the better roads in Thailand and just a small amount of padding on the seat the ride was not so bad.<\/p>\n

It certainly is breezy. Usually the wind is welcome in place of air conditioning, but for our trip we closed the front vent and a few of the side windows. With a light jacket we were quite comfortable.<\/p>\n

In the back of the framework there are ladders up to the roof. I see the students up there often when a song taew, the common form of school bus here, pulls out at the end of a school day. I would have liked to try that, but the school kids take the bus every day and know where the low hanging branches are and lately the police will stop you if they see someone up there. Besides we don\u2019t want our kids doing that, and I have to set an example.<\/p>\n

\"\"A nap before we get there.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s handy not needing the middle bench. We left a bit early, so on the way we spread a mat out in the middle and some of the kids rested. Having our new two year old girl was great, as each of the girls wanted a turn holding her. In fact, we really could have used her twin sister as well, but unfortunately she had a touch of flu and had to stay home.<\/p>\n

Anyway, we got to the conference fine. I\u2019ll describe that in a subsequent post. When we returned the lack of the middle bench was again appreciated. The kids first held a dance game. One starts dancing and then points to someone else who must get up and dance briefly before again pointing. Dancing was never my strong point but the kids seemed much amused when I was called upon. Next came the \u201cheavy load\u201d game which I won\u2019t describe and finally some practiced their traditional Thai dancing. Maybe some of the grace and ease seen in this dancing comes from practicing on the deck of a moving song taew. It should be pretty easy on solid ground after that.<\/p>\n

\"\"The little one crashed on the way back.<\/p>\n

With no seat belts I\u2019m not sure what U.S. lawyers would think about it, but speeds are less here, so I did not feel as unsafe as I do in my car facing the faster traffic on Thailand\u2019s major roads.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A large song taew ready to go. Yesterday we went to the \u201cBaan Song Muang\u201d children\u2019s rights conference in Baan Kruad about fifty kilometers southeast of Nang Rong. It is a two day conference with children invited for the first day. Most of our staff and kids went, and I went along as well. We […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[66,70],"class_list":["post-582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whatsnew","tag-myanmar","tag-nang-rong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/9a296638a8.nxcli.io\/ofblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/9a296638a8.nxcli.io\/ofblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/9a296638a8.nxcli.io\/ofblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/9a296638a8.nxcli.io\/ofblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/9a296638a8.nxcli.io\/ofblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/9a296638a8.nxcli.io\/ofblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/9a296638a8.nxcli.io\/ofblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/9a296638a8.nxcli.io\/ofblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/9a296638a8.nxcli.io\/ofblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}