Thailand road safety needs a lot of improvement and so do the side walks. In particular access for the people who need it the most, people with disabilities. We took this opportunity to highlight the issues and troubles people in wheelchair have to deal with on a daily basis when they want to travel and go around Bangkok. As well as visit one of the cutest cafe in town, the world’s first Siberian Husky Cafe located in Ari!
Are Bangkok’s roads “Natty in wheelchair” friendly?
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#Thailand #Bangkok #Thaiger #Wheelchair #Husky #SiberianHusky #SiberianHuskyCafe
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Nattys f-bombs even sounded nice.
People 'helping' people … Land of Smile !
Natty, it's great to raise awareness of how terrible Thailand is at this. I'm curious as to whether Thailand has no laws covering accessibility or whether the authorities are just too incompetent or corrupt to prosecute anyone. You're lucky the condo development you went past only used uneven tiles. Many have raised paths with no ramping at all, totally cutting off wheelchair access to the path in front of their buildings. Infrastructure changes take a long time to be ubiquitous. From the time that a country has (enforced) construction laws concerning this, it'll be 30 or 40 years before people can really rely on accessibility. (The USA is very good, but that's because they started to mandate it in the 1970s.)
Great report Natty and Jason 🙏Hard enough to get around being able bodied 👍
Its a great video Natty I could not wait to Watch it, I my last job in the UK before coming out to Thailand I worked "Customer Service Manchester Airport " mainly assisting passengers though the Airport. Iove the job and found most people in wheelchairs to be amazing . I walk alot in Thailand and Get alot of comments from thais who bike 1 min down the road, but i do it for excerize I love to walk, It taken my lady a while to get use to walking with me . This brings me on to my comment , I am SHOCKED to see how bad the payments are in my Area, I live in Pattaya (Jomtien) and i am always looking down to see the holes and uneven surfaces, I thought many times to myself how hard it must be for Disable people and surprized as this is a Tourist area. I found many areas to have long streched payments under repair at any one time, and this seems to the worker long time to repair a section, then I found out WHY . I understood tha the money is allocated to repair the area but they do many areas at once and also dont want to loose the contract, so they take the time ….Which is crazy for me. The Pattaya election are on soon, I would love to see a group of Wheel chairs outside City hall asking for a better service for the disabled .
Thanks Natty. Why the comment about being pregnant? Should we read something into it? Did you want to take one of the dogs home with you?
Pity they can spend lots of money on a Bangkok election, and yet very little on disability awareness or the need to look out / take care of your fellow citizens.
They should also have a 'name and shame' program for the number plates of 1000s of cars and bikes running the crossings while people are attempting to cross.
Both an informative and entertaining video – well done.
Great story Natty. I'm disabled and use a wheelchair. Everytime my wife and I visit BKK from Isan my wheelchair and I struggle as you did. Tip 4 U. Wear wheelchair gloves. Every with a purpose built wheelchair it's just as daunting to navigate BKK. So many of us wheelchair users would love BKK to upgrade the footpaths. Here's hoping.
Great video really entertaining
This was awesome, Nat. Hopefully it helps bring more awareness to some much needed changes.
How sore were your arms the day after this experience, Natty?
them crossings should have lights on them same as we have in the uk the lights go red stopping all traffic until 30 seconds later they change to amber then to green for go anyone goinng through on red faces a big fine
Awesome video!! 👍👍👍
Great video Natty. A sure way of getting cars to stop at pedestrian crossings would be to have traffic lights installed – then tyre spikes that come up out of the road on the stop line when lights go red. Driver behaviour would change very quickly
Very good video. lots of disabled ♿ need these kind of things.
Most Bangkok sidewalks are not even safe for pedestrians. It is sad. When I last visited (live in Prachuabkirikhan) Bangkok the sidewalk directly in front of Landmark and other 5-Star hotels are well maintained. Maybe not even or perfect, but good. But past the hotel and they begin to fall apart and there are not wheelchair ramps everywhere (even on Sukhumvit).
Then motorbikes driving down the sidewalk to defeat oneway roads is death. Elevators to go up to BTS etc are very few nit at every station. It is tough.
I note many of the Thais are still good samaratins
Like you said in the show before…the current laws exist and need to be harshly enforced especially at zebra crossings. Glad you survived.
Lol Thais don't stop for families walking over crosswalks with toddlers. If life was an RPG we could say Thais put all of their points into Kick and zero points into driving skills. It doesn't help that kids start driving bikes without licenses or lessons, they drive nuts.
Natty you are one brave lady
Only decent pavements where I wasn’t constantly looking down almost felt like Uk I found where in Thong Lor , once I saw a guy’s wheelchair wheels melt while on Kho san Road
bangkok is not pedestrian friendly so its not a suprise that its not disability friendly. you should not be really walking anywhere in bangkok unless you want to shave years off your life and get lung/skin cancer along the way. public transportation is for poor people. hope u dont get in trouble for feigning a disability to shame bangkok infrastructure. obvious ly the norm is not to being roaming around bk in a wheelchair so i dont know why youre surprised to see people staring at you. if you would like to see ramps everywhere to accommodate people that are not going to use it, just inject billions of dollars into the infrastructure and disrupt pedestrian traffic while youre at it. the karen narrative is a bit of a turn off. nobody cares that a person that has the means to be privately transported to go to a husky cafe, cant get there easily using public transport
This video is a great insight which shows the everyday situations that able bodied people take for granted. As always, Natty shows great humility and patience which must be an absolute nightmare for real disabled people who must feel reluctant to ask for help. Great video
Bangkok has little concern for pedstrians let alone people on wheelchairs or mothers with baby carts…. Drivers are even worse.. I was a cyclist in Bangkok for years and I was amazed on how inconsiderate they were
Come and try Surin.
I enjoyed your wheelchair report and when I suggested you should see Surin. Youd definitely be in the rosds most of any trip/ journey.
Regarding the disability access issue .. I understand Gary's anger however Gary I do ask that you rethink taking this down, disability awareness must start somewhere oh, and simulations such as these were such strategies that I would use 35 years ago to get people to comply with a disability access legislation, eventually I recruited a group of people with disabilities who were able to lead the simulation and debrief various groups who were part of this social change. I reminded everybody that I briefed at government level that nearly all of us will sustain some form of disability through the. In our life be it temporary or permanent. Therefore it is critical that we get Society structured correctly now for our own selfish reasons and the reasons of supporting people who have disabilities right now
Natty, it shows the work that needs to be done to make it easier for people with disabilities.
Ha ha Naty i think you joke I think Thailand is for normal people Dangerous to Cross the roads I am sorry to tell this but you Thailand is so fare away .Not only Thailand also so many Eu country no have facilities
An excellent idea. You did well highlighting the many challengers disabled people face.Well done.
I had to use the elevators in both the BTS and MRT for a short time because I was forced to use canes. Several of the elevators were not functioning. Once I was told that I couldn't use the elevator because it was meant on for those in wheel chairs. More than once, pushing the button to get access to the elevator did not work despite waiting for half and hour. I'm impressed with your strength Natty.
Wheelchair users tend to be very wary of people pushing them without asking first. So there are two sides to the ignoring you experienced, Natty. I think you will probably get help if you ask, but the ignoring, I wonder what that is about?
Here you will find many who will try to help or want to help but at the same time none will help, roads and sidewalks, store fronts still have a long way to go. There still are many areas that are not for the disabled and the parking is another issue here. So, if your going to tackle the disabled or handicapped here you need to start with the society as a whole to get an real change not POLITICS that favor the wealthy