While on the World Race, I was in Southeast Asia for 5 months. Anyone who has been in this area of the world will know that mopeds (they call them "motorbikes" or "motos" in Asia) are one of the most popular forms of transportation. Well, I've seen some pretty crazy things being done on a moped, and since I could get pictures of them, I'll just describe them in great detail here!
While in the beach town of Da Nang, Vietnam, a teammate and I were walking down the street to the coffee shop nearest our hostel when something caught our eye: A man on a motorbike with a plate of bread on his head. But wait, this wasn't any old plate, it was at least five feet in diameter and PILED with baked goods. The mountain of bread had to be at least a foot tall. But the best part was that he was driving incredibly fast on this small side road, weaving in and out of traffic, all the while flawlessly balancing this insanely large plate by keeping his head perfectly level as the rest of his body moved from side to side. I don't know how to best explain this story, but please close your eyes and picture it. He also had his small son sitting behind him, who stared at us walking down the street like WE were the ones being weird.
Also in Da Nang, in a taxi on the way to a coffee shop where we would be teaching English, I saw an entire family of five crammed onto one tiny motorbike. The husband was driving, the wife was behind him, and they had two small children, around 3 and 5 years old, just chilling on either side of the motorbike, standing on the little foot rest area with their elbows resting on either of their mothers knees. The final member was a tiny baby who was being breast-fed... on a speeding motorbike on a busy street.
My personal favorite motorbike incident happened in Bangkok, Thailand. While sitting in a tuk tuk on the way to my hostel, I looked across from us and saw a lone man in a hospital gown sitting on a motorbike. The weird thing wasn't just that he was in a hospital gown... I hardly even noticed that. The weird thing was that he was holding an odd-looking pole with his right arm. It was at least 5 feet tall and one end was resting on the foot rest, and he held the top end at arms lengths. As we got closer, I saw that there was a line connecting the pole to his left arm... and that was when I realized it was an IV stand. A man in a hospital gown was riding his motorbike on a busy freeway while an IV bag filled with who-knows-what was feeding who-knows-what into his left arm. He seemed incredibly unfazed by it.