Asia: the spiritual home of the gadget. After a month of reporting on the gadgets we have brought with us on the Fiesta World Tour, I figured it was time to hit the streets and see what new Asian toys I could get my hands on.

After Dubai, we leaped ahead to China for the next leg. India, sadly, was off limits. I flew into Hong Kong and snuck across the border to the Chinese gadget powerhouse of Shenzhen. This is where the iPod and iPad are made.

In China, any 21st century boy or girl is only as good as his/her gadgets, and the place to find those on Huaqiang Road in Shenzhen. To get a sense of what it’s like, imagine Tokyo’s liveliest retail locales, add a dash of Bladerunner on steroids, and flick on megawatts of neon.

This phone looks a bit like a McLaren and includes both Mercedes and Porsche trademarks.

An expeditious Google search reveals that there are 13 dedicated, multi-level and densely-utilized electronic and telecommunication markets on Huaqiang. They house 18,000 individual stores and directly employ more 50,000 people. When you the seething mass of shoppers, it is believable that the street attracts up to half a million shoppers each day, with the two largest markets pulling in 50,000 punters each, rising to 100,000 during holidays.

iPhones were being touted aggressively on our visit ($110 for the 16Gb iPhone 4 model; though it’s hard to tell whether it’s real or fake). But we had no interest in knock-offs, copies, or even discounts on ordinary gear. We were looking for weird stuff; for madcap stuff. And within minutes of entering the Shenzhen SEG Communications Market, we’d found much of interest.

I wanted garish. So I plumped for a keyring with a hidden micro-camera (from the instruction pamphlet: “Hope it can help your life safe and happiness.”), and another Bond-like piece of kit: a cigarette case with the ability to record video and 2Gb of memory secreted within. A mobile phone shaped like a racing car and decorated with the a hodge-podge of supercar logos completed the deal. I paid just 40 dollars for the lot.

Well if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. The keyring camera failed to charge and so ended up as a keyring with a large bit of plastic dangling on the end. At least the cigarette packet camera fired up immediately and the first video was pretty good. If I were spying on a cowboy builder or cheating spouse, it would do the job just great.

The MercPorsche SLarrera phone (with a mix of Porsche, Mercedes Carrera and Cayman styling and trademarks) was a great deal. Twin SIM sockets and Bluetooth almost made my iPhone 4 and Nokia backups redundant. But the big problem was language. The sole screen language is Chinese, so the minute I said goodbye to my guide the phone became useless to me.

The Huawei E5 mobile Wi-Fi unit was all but useless in China where 3G networks are mainly limited to the cities. But, by a stroke of luck, once we were across the border in Thailand we fitted it with a 2G SIM voice card. That made the unit just about as valuable as the Virgin MiFi was in the States. The pleasant difference is that Thailand’s Happy network clearly did not bank on such a use for their pay-as-you-go SIMs. As a result, I surfed for 5 days for just $6. I only hope for the same value in Malaysia and Australia as the global trip comes close to an end.

Finally, to the biggest gadget test of the trip. Two things Bangkok has plentiful amounts of are sunshine and smog. And those are two reasons for Thailand’s green transport guru, Air Marshal Morakot Charnsomruad, to take the tuk-tuk, the most iconic of Thai modes of transport, and make it solar powered.

Thailand's Air Marshal Morakot Charnsomruad with a solar-powered tuk-tuk and a fuel cell vehicle he is developing.

“Thailand is in the solar belt and so has lots of solar power,” says the 77-year-old Charnsomruad. “Houses, offices, trucks…you name it, there is no reason why they should not have some solar power.”

The canopy atop the bright yellow three-wheeled C-FEE is covered in solar panels. It is midday in the Thai capital and the sun is beating down through the thick tropical air to charge the tuk-tuk’s under-seat battery.

“There is not enough power from the panels yet to actually power the electric motor directly,” says the inventor. “But it increases the 60km range and saves carbon emissions by keeping the battery topped up.”

Jeremy Hart drives a solar-powered tuk-tuk at top speed through the streets of Bangkok.

Ironically, the solar tuk-tuk has sold more in less overtly sunny locales like London than it has in its native Thailand. Here it is twice the price of a smelly, two-stroke petrol version, which limits its appeal. The Air Marshal thinks the government should do more to support the three-wheeled green machine.

The tuk-tuk controls are simple. A rocker switch for forward, neutral and back. A stop and go pedal and a steering wheel. Oh, and a horn.

I stomp on the accelerator and the single nose wheel almost lifts off the road. The torque is supreme. And on streets where fury and noise reign, it runs almost silently. Only a little whine gives away the sense of drive beneath my flip-flopped feet. The tuk-tuk carries a little more weight than a petrol version but handles nimbly. And after 2 hours of play, there is no hint of the power running out.

I vow my next circumnavigation will be by tuk-tuk.

See Also:

• Ford Fiesta World Tour 2010
• Ford Fiesta World Tour 2010
• Rockford Spins, Drive-Thru Weddings and Flatbread Tacos
• Travelling Around the World in a Gadget-Filled Ford Fiesta …
• Firearms, Boots and Dirty Cars as Canvases

Authors: Jeremy Hart

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