PED XING

[By the time you're reading this post, I would have already left Chicago for a semi-long vacation in Asia. I'll be checking back with you as time and opportunity permit while I'm roaming about. Some normalcy will resume once I get settled into a hotel with internet connection at my next destination.]

See this PED XING sign? At a risk of being reckoned an idiot*, during my first year in the US, I had no clue what the sign said let alone what it meant. To make my ignorance more embarrassing, there was a time when I thought the sign bore the name - Chinese name - of a place.

And if, up to this point, the depth of my stupidity hasn't become clear to all who are reading this, I once even told someone to meet me at a restaurant located in a strip mall right across the place called Ped Xing. "You can't miss it," I said. "They put two big bright yellow signs on both sides of the street right in the front." Not until a year later did I come to realize what the sign said. Good thing I'm always a careful driver and don't need the dumb sign to tell me to slow down when I have to anyway.

As I'm drafting this pre-trip post, all my bags are packed and I'm all giddy with excitement. As apprehensive as I sometimes am about being served weird things by doting family members to whom I will forever be a 5-year-old girl, I know home is where nourishment of every kind is. The moment I see my aunt's kitchen, I'll dive into it head first. That's where you find homemade Thai food as it should be. I also look forward to my daily dose of fresh tropical fruits, especially durian. I'll hit the beach. I'll be camping in the mountains. I'll shop. I'll play. I'll roam the country like a stinky tourist with a giant backpack.

Yet, in the back of my mind there is a lingering fear. I am afraid of dying while crossing the road in Bangkok. I am not kidding; it almost happened several times before. My friends, or whoever happened to be with me at the time, had to physically restrain me from darting mindlessly into the street and getting killed by oncoming vehicles.

Without realizing it, over the past several years in the US, I have gradually adopted the way Americans cross the road. While failure to re-adapt to my own culture in other areas may not be so catastrophic, failure to remember how to cross the road properly in my hometown could easily turn me into Bangkok roadkill.

You see, one of the privileges which people in the US sometimes take for granted is the pedestrians' ability to cross the road in anyway they want, wherever they want (oftentimes yards away from the crosswalk), and manage to get away with it. (If you have never witnessed this type of thing, please camp out somewhere between the exits of your neighborhood grocery store and the parking lot right in front of it and you'll see a lot of what I'm talking about.) Regardless of the circumstances, it seems the motorists are responsible for stopping for all pedestrians whether or not the pedestrians cross the street in a responsible or considerate manner.

This kind of thing could easily get you killed in most places around the world, including Bangkok. Pedestrians are to cross the street only at crosswalks where they have the rights of way. Outside of the "zebra" crosswalks, you're on your own, man. Even so, you have to walk fast; leisurely strolling while swinging your hips as if on a catwalk is strongly discouraged. The streets of Bangkok are already extremely dangerous as it is; you don't need to inject drama into this whole thing by jaywalking. Promenading the street hoping the cars will always stop for you at the mere sight of your right ankle is a sign of lunacy. If jaywalking doesn't get you badly injured, it will at least get you fined - perhaps posthumously.

I need to remember this. Oh, I pray I remember this.

I will be gone from my blog for a few days before I re-emerge somewhere in Asia. I'll try to post pictures and updates on Twitter, so please follow me if you care. Check out the sidebar for a hint on where I will be blogging from next. Until then, thank you for being a loyal reader. I promise I have so many cool things to show you in the next several weeks, including recipes from my family vault. Please stay tuned.

But if I disappear from my own blog permanently, there's only one explanation -- I've become one of those Peds Xing the perilous Bangkok streets where I'm not supposed to X.

*Yeah, like that hasn't already happened ...