I implore you to hire a scooter

Travel like a local, wobble like a tourist

Every mode of transport is a compromise. Speed, efficiency, safety, comfort, cost… you can’t have it all. As a Land Rover guy I’m partial to anything noisy and uncomfortable, and as a wannabe cycle tourer I love the peace and immersion that comes from being on a bike.

But one form of transport that excites me more than any other is the humble scooter.

Tourists rarely hire scooters, even though these things are dead easy to ride. You’ll get the hang of it in a few minutes. There are no gear changes to worry about, and the brake levers work in the same was a bicycle. Around town they feel impressively nippy, and if you want to hit the open road you’ll be able to crank the speedometer up to about 60mph, once you feel brave enough. In the meantime you’ll be zipping around at 25mph having the time of your life.

Quietness is another reason. You can trickle through peaceful neighbourhoods almost as unobtrusively as if you were a cyclist. At low revs, most modern scooters emit just a gentle little purr, and some have stop-start so you’re silent when you pull over.

Alleyways and tracks are rarely worth the detour if you’re driving a car, but when you have the flexibility of two wheels – able to weave around potholes and pull a U-turn in seconds – you’ll explore to your heart’s content.

And they’re cheap! I hired a Honda PCX125 (the UK’s best-selling model) a few weeks ago in Thailand for the equivalent of £9 a day and buzzed around the area averaging 120mpg (2.35L/100km), so the afternoon’s riding burned less than two litres of petrol. Admittedly, I was with a friend who had to be carted back to the hire shop in a motorbike sidecar after his (non-Honda) scooter broke down, so his enjoyment wasn’t quite as complete as mine, but I think he still had fun.

My friend’s rescue chariot awaits.

Everyone rides

But I think the biggest thrill comes from riding side-by-side with the locals. In some parts of the world, everyone rides – or has ridden – a scooter, sometimes shared by a bewildering number of people. Mum on the back, child between her knees, dad at the handlebars, infant perched somehow in front of him, with their flattened scooter wheezing underneath. (I once rode pillion on the back of a little 50cc jobby in rural France and found it terrifying, so… maybe don’t do that.)

Wear a helmet. Or don’t. There may be a law of the land, but here on the unmonitored backroads of the world, nothing presides over an individual’s common sense, or lack of it, and their trust in a higher power.

Kids, old folks, men and women, scruffy or smart, alone or squidged together. You find yourself wondering where they’re going and where they’ve been, who’s waiting for them at home, what their place of work looks like. And this kind of barrier-breaking does something to undermine the corrosive sense of otherness that can cloud our perceptions when exploring a ‘new’ place. It makes foreign soil feels less foreign.

If you come from a part of the world where scooters are rare, and where a wearisome level of attention is paid to our cars as an expression of social rank and political affiliation, there’s something refreshing about scooter life. It’s egalitarian. Scooter riders, whatever their ideology or way of life, are united in their adoption of the most cost-effective means of transport on the planet. The scooter says almost nothing about a person as they focus on simply going about their day.

Riding with them, you can pretend to yourself that you’re part of their shoal. Even if they can see from your wobbling path and befuddlement at local traffic etiquette that you’re either a tourist or a lunatic.

Perhaps both.