Bakkie Taxis of Thailand

If you thought South Africa had a big bakkie culture, think again. Thailand has taken it to the next level and use bakkies as taxis, as Ciro De Siena found out on his recent trip.

Stepping onto the Koh Tao jetty after a five hour ferry ride is like stepping back in time. Long tail fishing boats are parked in perfectly straight lines parallel to the pier; moored via old scooter tyres to ropes running just under the water's surface.

The dull orange lights of the tiny town barely bother the darkness, creating an amber glow across the bay. It is peaceful, idyllic even. A scene from a movie.

Stumbling into the dimly lit and very basic, wooden ferry terminal, the peace is immediately shattered. What feels like hundreds of taxi operators, baying for the contents of your wallet, shout "Taxi?!" in unison and incessantly, with very little regard for your personal space or general sanity. We've all heard the tales of taxi scams in foreign countries and desperate not to fall victim, we put our modern weaponry to good use: Google Maps. Take that, really annoying taxi guy with no shirt on.

It turns out our hotel is 2km from the terminal. R14.50 in an uber back home. On Koh Tao? R160, or 400 baht. And there's no negotiation whatsoever. In a remarkable case of industry collusion, the taxi operators have collaborated on a pricing structure where everybody wins except the customer. A cheery old man (also shirtless) explains this to us, taking us through the standard Taxi card used across the island, which features a map of this miniscule land mass and the pricing for each route. So, 400 baht it is. In an instant, the shirtless old chap hoists the heaviest of our bags over his shoulder and we're off, down a tiny narrow alley (one of Koh Tao's main strips) to the main road, where he leads us to…a black Toyota Hilux.

This is our first introduction to the Bakkie Taxis of Koh Tao. They're everywhere, as ubiquitous as the venerable HiAce is in SA. The Hilux and the Isuzu D-Max, sold as the KB in South Africa, are the dominant vehicles, followed by the Ford Ranger, Mazda BT-50 and Chevy Colorado, a good-looking bakkie with the face of what we know as the Chevy Trailblazer. We're helped onto the back of the bakkie, asked to sit on the little benches and hold on. At this point I started wondering why every single bakkie is a 4×4. It wasn't long until we found out. Growing up in South Africa, catching a ride on the back of a bakkie is nothing unusual. In fact, the padded seating and grab handles would be considered a luxury back home – a vast improvement on the status quo.

But spare thought for visitors from Britain, for instance, a country where Health & Safety is practically a religion. A country where bakkies might as well not exist. To a member of Her Majesty's Health & Safety brigade, the thought of transporting live humans on the load bed of a pick-up, across a dark and remote island where there is seemingly no word for "helmet", is a stroke-inducing nightmare. To a British tourist, this unique form of taxi must be as curious as it is terrifying. To make matters worse, this is an actual quote from the main guide book available everywhere on the island: "Most of the concrete roads on Koh Tao are quite small, bumpy, rough and steep, with random sand patches for added excitement."  Now en route and turning off the main road into what looked like someone's driveway, we started climbing a hill which quickly gave way to badly rutted gravel. The Hilux handled all of this but it was the descent that was bordering on the ridiculous. A road this steep would not only be illegal in South Africa, I think it might not even be possible.

Using low range, our driver eased us down into the hotel parking lot, with barely a chirp from the tyres. We'd made it, and I never thought I'd ever hug a Hilux until that moment. Over the next few days we came to understand why the bakkie (or truck as they're locally known) is so fundamental to life on this island. We hired a brand new scooter (R100 per day) and set about exploring the island, which made us realise that the road to our hotel was essentially a beginners course in on-off-roading. Some of the roads on Koh Tao are absurd.

Veritable concrete rollercoasters filled with blind corners, blind hairpins, no shoulders, exposed drains, sheer drop offs and severely storm-damaged gravel sections. Which, I can proudly say, we navigated without incident on a scooter. It had offroad tyres though, which probably helped a bit. But being overtaken and squeezing passed bakkie after bakkie filled with hotel guests, it becomes obvious that unless the hotels invested in helicopters, this island just wouldn't work without the 4×4 capabilities of Japan's finest pick-ups. There are some hotels which you simply would not reach without them. Goodness knows how they actually built the hotels there in the first place. Google Tanote Bay as an example.

And the pride in the vehicles is extraordinary. Big racing-style wheels are the order of the day, which wouldn't be out of place on a Subaru WRX. As are chromed tail lights, smoked out headlights and massive sound systems. The bakkie culture in Thailand is incredible. Flicking through Thai television, you'll inevitably come across bakkie racing, or even bakkie drag racing. On Koh Samui, the bakkie is used like our minibuses are back home. Hop on, hop off, wherever you please, and please do take a flyer for a strip club on your way out. The shiny aluminium canopies are even fitted with bus-style bells which help you alert the driver that you'd like him to stop. They're called Songthaeaws, and I'm sure they've saved many a reveler from a nights sleep on the pavement.

Bakkies are used as promotional vehicles. Blinged out with giant sound systems, they crawl through Samui's streets blaring advertisements for everything from Muay Thai tournaments, to nightclubs and even the local go-kart circuit. Perhaps island life is a fantasy; a real life theme-park for adults where real-world rules and pesky health and safety regulations can be gently ignored without drastic consequence. But if visiting this isolated emerald isle in the Gulf of Thailand has taught me anything, it's that we don't use our bakkies enough. There's so much untapped potential in these beasts of utility.
Check out our bakkie comparisons here. Watch our bakkie drag race here.