An Autumn Challenge

Yesterday I was challenged by Susanne, one of my customers in the tuk-tuk tours I do in Lisbon, to create a blog telling the stories of the people I meet, the daily situations one encounters while driving a tuk-tuk in the capital of Portugal, and at the same time forcing myself to write more often. Susanne is a writer by the way. So I decided to just do it. And here we are. 7 years ago there were no tuk-tuks in the streets of Lisbon. Well, those days are gone. There's about 900 of them nowadays, and the popularity of this means of transportation doesn't seem to stop. Tuk-tuk is an onomatopoetic word formed in imitation of the natural sound made by their small engines. However and fortunately so, the one I drive is electric and doesn't make that tuk-tuk sound. Doesn't pollute too. So it is a quieter, cleaner contrast to the original tuk-tuks from Asia. The story of the tuk-tuk origin in Lisbon, as I was told, goes like this. A Portuguese businessman inspired by what he saw in Thailand on one of his vacations, bought a tuk-tuk just to drive around his wife on the weekends. Just for fun. But he got such a reaction from the people he encountered on the streets that he sensed there was a business opportunity there. And he was the first one who took it. Nowadays there's over 900 of them around the city and it's proven to be a very popular way of navigating the seven hills of Lisbon.