Scooter accidents

I woke up the other morning and realised that I've been on the various beaches of Thailand for five weeks now, and that I would fancy seeing something else. So I'm headed back to Bangkok now with a ferry and overnight bus, and then after a couple of days carry on northwards to Sukhothai and Chiang Mai.

In the islands the preferred mode of transport seems to be by scooter. I'm not very good at driving, and my experiences with motorised two-wheel drives is limited to driving into a wall with my brothers moped when I was twelve. So I haven't exactly found the courage to hire one, and yesterday when I took a scooter taxi to the view point over Chaweng beach I was terrified. Obviously not my mode of transport, and I don't think it suits that many others either.

Yesterday alone I witnessed drunk driving, people looking for scooters as they'd forgotten where they left them (drunk) as well as a scooter accident - all too much blood for my taste. Also, no one wears a helmet. I met a girl who'd driven really slowly and carefully, but still ended up in an accident leaving her temporarily immobilised and dumped by her travel buddy (?!). In addition to normal scooters, there has been a couple of water scooter accidents. Two days ago it was windy and the waves were irregularly strong, and one of the water scooter drivers tried to park it on the beach only to get stuck on a bigger wave that threw the scooter all the way on some beer-drinking holidaymakers. Another water scooter ran out of fuel and was towed to the beach, only for the scooter to tip over in the shallow waters, only narrowly missing out the guy who was riding it. I'm getting convinced that anything with a "scooter" is hugely dangerous!