Out For Lunch

Friday afternoon means out for lunch, and then car shopping. As before, we went out to Reua Mai and had a cheap gourmet Thai meal.

Just a word to the wise though... if you've never eaten spicy Thai food before, and somebody sets this crab with glass noodles dish on the right in front of you... well, you have been warned.

After that, we drove up Sukhimvit road to do some car shopping. Used cars are exceptionally cheap in Thailand... however, that is because they are exceptionally abused by the Thai people who buy them. It's a vicious circle: People never took care of their cars, so used car dealers wouldn't pay decent money for them on trade in, so now no matter how well the car is taken care of, they can't get anything for it on trade in, so there is no sense in taking care of it.

Well, at least the cars are cheap enough that if you get a real major lemon, you won't feel the need to kill anybody over it.

I was looking at a bunch of used BMW 5-series, in the range of 6 to 8 years old, all selling for under $7,000. The only problem is that driving a BMW in Thailand is like driving a Cadillac Escalade in America... homey. Which is actually, as opposed to the reason above, why they are so cheap: In image-conscious Thailand, late model BMWs are exactly what you don't want to be seen in.

One lot was selling a Maserati, but it was a 1993 could-be-a-Ford-Fiesta style Maserati. No thanks.

I saw a really pretty 1971 Mustang (Australian, with the right-hand drive), and was all excited for a moment, but when I popped open the hood, I discovered that somebody had put a Honda straight-6 in it's gullet. So sad.

Well, there is really only one car that I want to buy, but I don't know where it is at the moment, and that is a 1970's-era black Corvette that was sold in Pattaya about 3 years ago. I'm going to go to the Thai DMV to see if I can find it and make the person who has it an offer. I used to have a Vette when I was in college, and I would just love to have another one... especially here in Thailand.

Most likely though, I'll settle on something like the nice Honda miniSUVan I saw. Only 2½ years old, and still under warranty... although the 90,000 km on the odometer was a bit of a put off.

No matter what I buy though, it will be putting a nice buffer zone between my precious typing utensils and a traffic accident... which is a luxury that motor scooters cannot provide.