DRVR Pan Thailand Road Trip — Leg 1
Bangkok to Hua Hin Total trip distance Distance 198 KM
We join DRVR CEO on a trip to Hua Hin a bustling Thai resort town located on the Western side of the Gulf of Thailand. It’ popular with Thai’s and foreigners alike. The King of Thailand has a palace in the area.
Vehicle Toyota Yaris — 2015 — Provider Avis
Avis pricing is sharp and good value for money. Once we stripped out all of the extra insurances the vehicle was under 700 THB a day
What we did not like:
Avis Charge a whopping 20,000 THB for the deposit and it’s a long wait to get your money back (deposits in Thailand seem to be non-refundable for the most part)
GPS tracking device used — GV65 Queclink
Overall performance of this device was excellent. This is a budget devices that DRVR offers and was our first experience testing this device on a long distance trip.
Telco Sim Provider — True — Rating based on coverage 7/10
True by their own admission have the least % of coverage across the country. DRVR found that this was certainly True. We experienced drop outs and interruptions to the service before leaving Bangkok city limits.
Music Play List:
Adele 21 & 19
Various Artist — The Harder they Come
Learning Thai Podcast
Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 1
Thai Radio Stations
The first 90 minutes of the trip are fairly uneventful driving from the eastern suburbs of Bangkok across town. Then down the main freeway. If you’ve not driven in Thailand before it’s an experience. Thai roads are amongst the most dangerous in the world — according to the UN second only to war torn Libya.
David told us that DRVR has been working on solution to help solve this problem. Key to this it reducing the number of motorcyclists who are killed on the roads. The European Union has mandated that all new vehciles are fitted with eCall. A service which automatically contacts Emergency services if an accident is detected. The research shows that this sort of service saves lives. We’ll come back to this topic on a later.
Driving at night or twilight is even more dangerous in Thialand than during the day as we discovered. Our trip to Issan in the North East was even more releveling. David told us his least favourite drivers were the Drivers of high end pick up — usually Ford Ranger Wildrtrac or Toyota Hilux — Revo. These drivers seem to be the most likely to swerve across three lanes of traffic with out looking. Another favourite trick is to weave in and out of lanes whilst driving 30 km faster than the rest of the traffic. He quipped with us that it should be mandatory to have GPS fitted if you buy one of these vehicles.
After what seems like endless suburbia the scenery gives way to Pineapple plantations and more rustic scenes. Speed limits seem quite high in Thai Roads compared to countries such as Australia (110 vs 130) not that speed limits were obeyed by anyone. There were also differential speed limits based on vehicle type 130 Car — 100 — Bus — 80 Truck on motorways.
There seemed to be an almost total absence of traffic police on this particular trip — our trip to Issan had police checkpoints every few score KMs.
After arriving at Hua Hin — being directed to the wrong place by Google maps (seems to be a very common problem). The next day David explored some of the area around the town.
GSM reception became increasingly spotty especially outside of the town. A side trip out to the countryside and to elephant safari (no Elephants were ridden in the making of this blog post revealed that our preferred mapping partner MapBox still has work to do as we appeared to be driving across open country.
The trip back to Bangkok the next day was largely uneventful. In terms of driver behaviour the most alarming site on the roads was the way that Mini van drivers (many filled with tourists and other passengers) routinely driver recklessly. Overall the exercise was worthwhile, it gave us a view of driving in Thailand and allowed us to test devices, network providers and mapping.
