The Samut Prakan Temple Fair is still going strong. I went there early this evening to walk around and to take some pictures. One of the sideshows that I visited was this Wall of Death. It is so-called because a motorcycle rider drives up a vertical wall. He starts slowly at the bottom and then quickly gains speed as he goes round and round in an anti-clockwise direction. Before you know it, he is whizzing by, inches from where we were watching from the top. It is a thrilling act to watch. Instinctively I moved back as he zoomed by me. Some people covered their eyes with their hands. I cannot imagine how scary it must have been for them the first time. Now they can ride round and round with their hands waving in the air.
I have heard before about motorcycles on the wall of death but I didn’t realize that they also had cars. This is the pick-up truck that drove round and round until it reached the top. The driver was leaning out of his door and waving at us. One of the tricks they do is grab banknotes from the hands of spectators as they whizz by. The did this on the motorcycle as well as the pick-up. What is amazing is that they don’t wear any protective gear. The car has no roll bars and no-one is wearing a helmet. However, what is even more amazing, is that the motorcyclist is only ten years old! His six year old brother is a passenger in this car that his father was driving. Both of them were reaching out of the open door to collect the banknotes.
The show costs only 40 baht which isn’t much more than US$1. However, it only lasts about ten minutes. It runs in the evening in two locations. This one was at the City Hall Plaza in Samut Prakan. There is another on the other side of the river in the grounds of Phra Samut Chedi. The Temple Fair goes on from now until 20th October 2009. We are posting pictures and videos daily on the Samut Prakan Forums and over at www.Paknam.com.
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