Those Asean drivers, or any one else new to Hua Hin, need special driving courses before driving here. After nearly six years experience here, I still feel like driving downtown is like playing a video game, something like the old Missile command or Asteroids Atari games. You have motorbikes and the like coming at you from all directions nearly all the time and have to avoid the hit constantly, but unlike those games you can only dodge and don't have anything to shoot back and destroy them before they hit you!
I liken a drive down Phetkasem road to a slalom run down a ski slope as you have to constantly swerve to avoid obstacles or to go through "gates" when your lane is blocked by some illegal turning or double parking idiot, or someone nosing out to stop one traffic lane at a time to make a right turn onto the road. Can be a terrifying experience for a new Hua Hin driver.
I've driven all over Thailand and I haven't seen anywhere else as bad as here in that respect.
I think the problem here is there is that Hua Hin is a great mixing bowl of drivers from all over Thailand and other countries with different experiences and skill levels. You have the Bangkok drivers who drive fast until they want to double park to run into a store for something and you have the Issan and southern people that have come here to try to find jobs in the "boom" town who are used to driving motorbikes in any lane in any direction they please, as well as the walking (cart pushing) and slow driving "tricycle" peddlers along with tourists and "vacation homers" who live here for a couple of months out of the year and have very little experience in Hua Hin driving conditions.
Add to that a totally ineffective and corrupt traffic enforcement force, local leaders who pocket money that should have gone to traffic lights or other traffic controls, and a crumbling infrastructure that was designed to handle 20% of the current traffic and voila, the perfect traffic storm!
Pete 
