Crosswalk: Holy Gridiron

There are no real crosswalks in Bangkok. There are white lines to indicate where people can choose to take their life into their hands, but they are really only guides. Right of way doesn't fall to the pedestrian as it does in the States. You look both ways, just as you were taught as a child, and then you run for your life.

I have found a secret weapon, though, in this precarious battle of man versus machine. Monks. There are monks everywhere in the city, heads shaved and wearing bright saffron robes. The crosswalk benefits of the Buddhist monk are two-fold:

1. Their orange robes make them the equivalent of a Human Traffic Cones -- easily seen by careening taxis and tuk-tuks.

2. Their status as venerable men of the Enlightened One make them nearly unhittable. Much as you don't hit a priest, you don't hit a monk. What horrors must lie in wait for the person that runs over a monk.

So, if the opportunity presents itself, and there is a Buddhist monk somewhere in the vicinity, I come right up alongside him. When he goes, I go. To use a football analogy: he is the Holy Blocking Fullback to my Foreigner Tailback, clearing a safe passage to the sidewalk endzone.

Hey, the Lord Buddha works in mysterious ways.