Noot was worried before we had even left the house, because of rain.Noot has never driven in the rain. Why? It has never rained since she has been driving, as simple as that. So her first words were about postponing the test till tomorrow.
I convinced her not to worry as it would probably stop soon. The only problem was Noot was meant to drive to the Transport Department as practice but she refused as the rain was tumbling down, so I drove there.
Outside the Transport Department everyday of the week it is like this. There is a long line of trucks waiting to enter.
Every vehicle in Thailand that is over 7 years old need to have an independent inspection and then the Transport Department do their check as well. This was at 8.55 in the morning. The line would have been a good 600-800 metres long just along the road outside the department.
Our first and only stop is just before you enter the Transport Department. You need a medical certificate saying you are healthy and have no medical problems. So very conveniently there is a “clinic” situated here. Outside there is a steel, fold away table and two plastic chairs. You give your ID card to the man sitting there, he was wearing dirty clothes and a lovely flannelette shirt, he writes all your details on the certificate and then another man runs it inside to a real doctor who then just signs the certificate. Noot or the other people don’t enter the building, so there was no blood pressure check or anything else to take place. What do you expect for 50 Baht.
We parked and entered the Transport Department just after 9am. It isn’t one of the amazingly beautiful government buildings you see about Thailand but it serves its purpose.
Now, the first things was handing over all your paperwork, this is checked and then you are told to stand about 15 feet away from this colour chart where you are tested for colour blindness. It is an easy test with the man in white pointing to about 5 colours and you just say what they are.
The cut off time for submitting all your paperwork is 10am sharp. In the group this morning there were over 60 people testing, 16 people for their car licence and 48 for motorcycle.
They all crammed into this little room which was entertaining in itself. They were shown the next tests. There are 3 tests.
Reflex Test: Be seated behind an alternative gas and brake pedal and push the accelerator until the green led's start to light up. Hit the brake pedal before the led's reach the red zone. You will have to repeat this test twice.
Depth Perception Test: Use forward and back buttons to align a moving pin with a fixed one, in a small box at app. 10 meters distance. Initially it looks more confusing than it actually is, but if you have a problem with 3D vision, you can be tricky to pass this test. You repeat this test twice.
Peripheral Vision Test: I hadn’t seen this test before. You place your nose in the small grove and look directly at the large yellow dot. On the sides are two small glass dots that light up in red, yellow or green. Your eyes are not meant to look sideways but I watched and 95% of the people did. The man supervising was too busy signing all the paperwork to really watch them properly.
After this you enter a room to watch a video of traffic offences being committed and the fine it could bring. This went for 50 minutes. Then there was a presentation by the man who oversees the testing procedure. He went over so many things. He covered street signs, traffic police signals, basic road rules and so forth. The presentation lasted just over an hour and right on 12pm or lunchtime we were told to go and have lunch.
There is a small canteen there that sells a small range of food, so we ate and then ventured back at 12.45pm for Noot to sit her last part of the theory side of the tests. The written test is the final step. You have 30 multiple choice questions to answer and you can make 7 mistakes. You are given a card and you place it in the computer you are assigned and then simply answer the questions. No-ones questions are the same as they are computer generated. A good idea to stop cheating, I suppose.
I was waiting a little anxiously outside the test are for Noot, I thought she would pass but again you never know with some nerves and the push of the wrong button or an unlucky guess. Noot emerged with a Cheshire grin, so I guessed she passed. She got 25 out of 30.
It was now after 1pm and we had been there for 4 hours already and she still had to do the practical test or driving test. We ventured down to the test area and the people sitting their motorcycle licence hadn’t even started doing their practical exam, they were still sitting down listening to instructions.
There were more than 60 people, people who had failed a few days before were back trying again as well. We took a seat to watch the proceedings and hoped that it wouldn’t take too long. It had already been a long day.
Brunty.
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