Motorcycle

This is evidence that not all the motorcycles in Taipei are scooters. They are a small percentage, but they do exist.

They also come with some special attitude, of course.

Parking

Many motorcycle drivers, specially if the motorcycle is small, do not seem to care too much what they must do to leave their machine where they want it to be. Here in Taiwan, even more. I have seen some re-arranging two or even three scooters so that they can squeeze in theirs. As an example, this couple I saw last week.

They moved the left-hand scooter a little bit to the left and, after some effort, managed to put their scooter in the small space left. I am not so sure, though, about how the rest could get their scooters out afterwards.

Dialogues

I would have never imagined it. It was after 9pm, at the same time that my (for pedestrians) traffic light turns green, a scooter and a SUV stop almost in front of me. Before I can step down onto the road, the SUV driver gets out of his car, walks towards the scooter driver with a scowling face, says something to him and gives him a big shove. While I begin crossing the street, they start talking. I thought there could be a brawl right there, but no, nothing in the end. Who knows what could have happened before.

I had read that these things happened from time to time, but after seeing so many weird things in the street traffic, I was beginning to believe that they did not care at all. Well, looks like bad temper is universal.

Road crash

When I was going back home last night, I saw, at just one block from my apartment, the first example of a road accident that had happened a few minutes before. There was an ambulance on the other side of the street, its doors open, three or four policemen measuring the distances of the trajectories of the vehicles and, as I walked by, I could see a scooter driver sitting on the sidewalk and another one on a stretcher with the ambulance guys taking care of him, but he seemed to be moving. Everything looked like a crash between two scooters, but I could be wrong.

Before coming to Taiwan, I read in some guide that there were many road accidents here —I am not at all surprised—, but apart from all kind of bumps and dents on the frames of cars and scooters, and many almost-absurd evasive maneuvers in the general driving, I had not yet seen a scene like that. In the long run, you end up seeing everything.

Little blue trucks

Here there are two examples of the characteristic small trucks, almost vans, that run around Taipei, at any place and at any time.

The cabins are blue and they are relatively small. As far as I can tell, they are used by repairmen, deliveries or different kinds of transport. The frozen goods delivery trucks do not usually have this color, although I have seen a few too. Contrary to what could be expected, they are not from the same maker. I have seen different brands, even if at the beginning I thought they all were from Mitsubishi.

I do not know why, but I fancy them. They have a very asian look, and it is not because of the characters. Too many movies, maybe. As you can imagine, they speed by loaded with any kind of stuff, lurching from one side of the street to the other.