In the States we have Bike Rodeo’s that promote safe cycling, and rules of the road for youngsters, oftentimes with a model roadway with lanes, signage and education.  Here in Trang it’s been a feature event during National Children’s Day, along with major performances by all the local school groups taking the stages with dance and song. Hundreds and hundreds of school-age children and families (mostly mothers) come to the Sports Arena complex for the all-morning events.

The Trang Cycling club gathers traffic cones, goodies (packaged snacks donated by City, Toyota Dealership and other businesses), sets up a tent, tables and chairs and arranges for City Hall-owned bikes and tandems to be delivered to an asphalt playground within the Sports Arena complex.

Not sure what to expect, especially since the plan to inaugurate an educational layout fell though, we set up eight cones, strung Toyota flagging around an oval circuit and waited next to the tables bedecked with hundreds of bags of snacks, pencil packs, and notebooks.  Five shaky but serviceable tandems and five more equally tired regular bikes sat by waiting for riders, while throngs filed by to the big top, a permanent cavernous shed that covers at least a soccer field or more of playing fields.

As it was, we soon became swamped with hundreds of kids vying for a chance to ride a bike round and round and round the simple track.  There is no way they could handle an “education-type” venue in that melee of kids and parents taking their families, sometimes four, on a tandem round the loop.  Kids too small or without a parent got behind Club members on the tandems for a spin.

That snack table became enlarged and overwhelmed when the ice cream cone cylinder and Popsicle cooler showed up just before noon. My job was to turn the bikes around and set kids off clockwise (left side of the road).  Being a Farang (foreigner) was a novelty and sometimes intimidating for the kids, but it helped with my Thai to say the same thing over and over, and it must have been okay because I posed for a lot of family photos.

Culturally the difference is that we’d want order, education and no liability.  For the Thai, they don’t worry about liability (National Insurance, few tort lawyers and a “kids fall” attitude).  They just want to promote the fun of cycling even if it’s just round and round on clunky bikes.  Works for me, I had a great time. We probably got 300-500 folks round that tiny tiny loop.

Weekend continues with a Rally over the mountain.