Quotes of the Day

One hundred baht. Take it or leave it," says Wiset Samsee. I've been negotiating with the 28-year-old driver for some time, but Wiset is unmoved. He seems more interested in the procession of jiggling, pierced, backpacker flesh parading down Bangkok's Khao San Road than in tackling the Friday-afternoon rush hour.

"That's nearly twice what a taxi would cost," I protest. He shrugs and takes a pull on his cigarette. "80 baht?" I venture. It's almost 6 p.m., and every minute wasted means another minute's worth of traffic backing up in the capital's sclerotic arteries. The hell with haggling, it's still less than $3. "Okay," I concede, "100 baht. And please, drive carefully." Wiset flicks a switch and the two-stroke engine explodes into life with a flatulent blast, filling the immediate vicinity with evil blue fumes.

I climb into the back seat. Wiset guns the engine and the vehicle peels out from the curb with an ear-splitting squeal. We part the crowds of ravers, rastas, scammers, weirdos and the rest of the Khao San fauna before we're spat out into the dozen or so lanes of sheer automotive apoplexy that is Ratchadamnoen Avenue.

In the time it takes me to get home — which could be anywhere between 20 minutes and an hour, depending on traffic — hundreds of unsuspecting tourists will enter similarly Faustian bargains with tuk-tuk drivers in all corners of the capital. A white-knuckle, smog-shrouded ride in one of these golf-carts-on-steroids should be on the top of any Bangkok tourist's checklist, up there with a visit to the Grand Palace, a kickboxing match at Lumpini Stadium, shopping at Chatuchak weekend market and a longtail-boat ride to the Temple of the Dawn. Tourists get palpitations, incipient lung spots and bragging rights back home; in exchange, the smirking pilot gets a sweaty handful of baht and the chance to strike terror into visiting souls.

Of course, the tourists don't know any better. They've never been held hostage by a twitching madman at the business end of a methamphetamine binge, who changes lanes like Elton John changes costumes and thinks cries of "slow down" mean "go faster." It's unlikely they have seen what the side of a bus can do when it becomes intimate with a tuk tuk's flimsy frame.

I, on the other hand, reside in Bangkok and know what I'm getting into. Against all better judgment, I've undertaken this ride to determine just what it is about these rust-ridden motortrikes that commands such fondness, and whether the ubiquitous vehicles can survive a future full of cheap air-conditioned taxis, gleaming bus fleets, Skytrains, subways and road-safety committees.

The tuk tuk's fans trumpet it as a kind of national symbol, in much the same way that we associate purring BMWs with German efficiency, racy Ferraris with Italian passion, and big, loud SUVS with big, loud Americans. Like Thailand, the tuk tuk is noisy, smoky and sometimes dangerous. Like some of the kingdom's politicians, it's prone to sudden, inexplicable changes of direction. And like the Thai economy, it needs a lot of tinkering and sometimes its wheels fall off completely.

The Thailand Automotive Institute wants the tuk tuk declared the kingdom's national car, while the Ministry of Industry regards them as "charming" and "fun for foreigners." There's no denying that they make the perfect gift for the man who has everything: Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra gave one to Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, who reportedly was thrilled.

Fishmonger Ratana Sripong says she couldn't live without the useful buggies. "They are perfect for picking up fish from the wet markets," she says. "No taxi driver is going to let me get in his car with dripping bags full of ice and fish. But the tuk-tuk drivers don't care — they can just hose out the mess and get back on the road." Ratana has noticed a price increase in recent years. "I think some of the drivers have become a bit greedy. They are used to getting big fares from tourists, and you have to remind them you're Thai." She worries that someday tuk tuks may vanish altogether from Bangkok roads: "It's true, a lot more people are taking the Skytrain or taxis. I know a lot of my friends think tuk tuks are too dangerous and smelly, too low class to be seen in. But I'll be out of business if they ever disappear."

Of the six companies manufacturing tuk tuks in Thailand, by far the biggest is Bangkok-based Watt Industrial. "We can make up to 50 new tuk tuks a month," says owner Anuwat Vo-onsri. "But it's usually fewer than that. No new operating licenses have been issued in Bangkok for more than a decade, so we don't get much domestic demand for new tuk tuks. Mostly it's spare parts and repairs." Even if local demand is falling, Thailand remains the world's foremost exporter of the three-wheelers, shipping up to 5,000 new and second-hand tuk tuks a year to neighbors such as Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Laos, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. "People all over the world are interested in tuk tuks," Anuwat says. "They buy them for novelties or for transport vehicles, garbage trucks, ice-cream vans." Another big manufacturer, Asian Quality Company, is exporting a VIP tuk tuk to Egypt and Europe, mainly for use at resorts. It costs $4,750, almost double the price of the basic model and boasts a slick, aerodynamic look, a cleaner-running four-stroke LPG-burning engine, and could almost pass for a minivan except that it has three wheels.

If the tuk tuk has become a hot item abroad, however, and at least tolerated at home, it hasn't always been thus. In 1961, the then–Prime Minister, General Sarit Thanarat, ordered a complete ban on the pint-sized three-wheelers to take effect four years hence. He claimed they were a noisy, dangerous menace; however, he died in 1963, before the ban could be implemented, and his successor, in the face of strident protests from drivers and owners, decided Bangkok could live with the tuk tuk after all.

The first tuk tuks were imported from Japan in 1959, but within a year the Thais started making their own, much cheaper version, which quickly displaced its pedal-driven cousin, the samlor. "I can still remember hopping into my first tuk tuk," says Pratheep Sieangwarn, who switched from pedal power to one of the first Japanese imports when he was 24. "Oh boy, were they fast. It was fun." A month shy of 70, he quit driving only two years ago and remains president of the Tricycle Association of Thailand. "I miss driving every single day," he admits. "I'd never have retired, but my eyesight was going. And you need all your faculties to drive in Bangkok."

Pratheep enjoyed a charmed life behind the handlebars: not a single serious accident, although he says countless driver friends were maimed or killed over the years. "But I don't believe tuk tuks are more dangerous than other vehicles, as long as you are trained to drive them," he says. Ask Pratheep what the future holds for the tuk tuk, and he gets misty eyed. "Will there be tuk tuks in Bangkok in five years? I think so. In 20? I doubt it. One thing I know — Bangkok won't be the same without them." How so? "I think they give the city ... character. A soul. Ask anyone — tuk tuk drivers are always first with all the gossip.''

Sangjan Homhourn, a 24-year-old who has been driving a tuk tuk in Bangkok for five years, is less than sanguine about the future. "Sometimes I think about changing to a taxi instead or going back to the family farm," he says. "I have two boys, and they want to drive tuk tuks when they grow up. But I tell them, no, there's no future in it. I think pollution, and better public transport, will be the death of the tuk tuk in the end."

Most likely the tuk tuk will eventually go the way of the samlor and of its person-powered relative, the ricksha, becoming just another tourist curio and footnote in the annals of Asian transport. But to watch tuk tuks zigzagging cheekily through cracks in the traffic, to listen to that deafening two-stroke note that sounds like a defiant raspberry directed at detractors, is to realize that the tuk tuk is not going to go without a fight.

Lost in reveries of the end of an era, I neglect to notice that my left knee has strayed beyond the chrome curlicues that bound the passenger seat, breaking one of the cardinal rules of riding in tuk tuks. There's a loud thwack, a roar of exhaust and a fiery jolt of pain in my kneecap. A goggled gladiator on a motorbike has clipped me on his way past, without even stopping to see if I am O.K. Wiset pulls over at the next set of lights. As I abandon the tuk tuk and hobble off in search of a taxi, the kind with four doors, four wheels and a meter, I'm wondering what's more amazing: that I still have two moderately functioning legs, or that it was possible to attain enough speed to have an accident during rush hour in Bangkok.

• Jason Gagliardi
• Is Thailand's iconic tuk tuk on its way out?