I've been sitting shotgun for a week now on the 50 minute drive to and from work. Brad and I decided that this afternoon I would drive home from work. I had known this was coming, I did purchase my International Drivers Permit back in the states. The past week I had kept half a brain out while Brad was driving trying to get my mind ready to get behind that wheel.
Please keep in mind that not only does driving in Malaysia include the steering wheel and the vehicle on the opposite side, but also a multitude of Asians zipping between cars on motorbikes. If you consider the lane a cars territory, the line in between is the territory of the motorbike. This line must be respected.
Prior to plopping down into the drivers seat I had decided that this would be like playing Toad's Turnpike on Mario Kart, just set on mirror mode (my apologies to the few of you reading this who don't know what that is, ask your children, or their children.) You see mirror mode is weird and confusing, but if you slow it down a bit you'll get to the end of the race without killing yourself. Sure, traffic is going the wrong way but you'll get used to it.
I was wrong.
Ok, I guess I was half wrong. It is definitely like mirror mode, the turns should be going the other way and so should traffic. The part that I failed to consider is that you would also need to cut that controller in half and put the directional pad on the right side and the buttons on the left. I can't tell you how many times I flicked the blinker with my left hand and for some ungodly reason the wipers went off. Or how I grabbed the door handle when I had intended to put the transmission in reverse. I don't know what I would have done if it was raining...
Anywho, we made it back safe and sound. I think that was partially due to the fact the 97% of that drive is on divided roads. Meaning I didn't have the option to slide into the right lane. Someday I might even try this on a manual transmission.
You definitely have more courage than I. I've driven on the "wrong" side of the road on a few trips we've taken and found it doesn't take too long to get used to it. The hardest part is places without lane markers like parking lots (it's amazing how well our brains are trained to veer right when presented with something in front of us).
ReplyDeleteSoutheast Asia is a whole new ballgame though. Even after being in Thailand for a month, I would have never attempted to drive in the city. Scooters and tuk tuks everywhere, buses taking the right-of-way because they can, and even people driving in the oncoming lanes (for 1-2 blocks) when traffic wasn't there. That said, with how chaotic the roads were, I never saw an accident the entire time I was there.