My great Taipei love affair has been with my 125cc Yamaha scooter. It rarely cocks up, and indulges my tendencies for escapism and cheap thrills. Taipei is the CITY OF SCOOTERS, with Taiwanese owning more scooters per capita than any other place in the world; there are 10 million of them island-wide. Taipei also has one of the highest rainfalls in the world, so half the time we are the city of raincoats zipping around. Every intersection has strategically placed scooter boxes, so you can whiz through and edge in front of the approaching traffic. What at first looks like chaos eventually shifts, and routes through the traffic become as clear as the yellow brick road.
There are a mere four traffic laws for scooter riders, the rest are in traffic purgatory. The laws are as follows: 1. Don’t get between a bus and the curb; 2. Don’t get anywhere near a taxi; 3. Don’t brake on the white lines in the rain (unless you liked ‘slip ‘n slide’ when you were a kid); and 4. Never speak in Chinese to the police (unless it’s to utter nonsensical apologies).
Aside from the laws, there is a general code of conduct to follow; this code revolves around the issues of physical contact on the road, and parking. Light physical contact such as the clanking of mirrors, or knocking on car windows when you’re in their blind spot, is perfectly tolerable, and even foreigners adapt. I realised this when I pulled into a traffic box one day, clipping the mirror of the next scooter, and my boss turned around and said in his very cheery Canadian way “hey hey, how’s it goin’?”
Parking poses its own special set of challenges, and often demands the heaving and pushing of a whole row of scooters, just to squash yours into an improbable space. When parking, it pays to remember that: the lines on the road are just decorative – they’re worth nothing; and scratching and breaking off small pieces of other peoples scooters is well within the acceptable code of conduct!
.Nic and I ready to set on one of our first rides in the rain!
.r and i on one of my last rides before leaving taipei!
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