We found the first abandoned pickup – The Rustbucket – exactly where we left it. It was frozen solid. The battery was dead, the seat was covered in frost, and a family of pigeons had moved into the engine bay.
The "Pickup" part of the mission took five hours. We had to:
By 4:00 PM, the sun was setting. We now had a convoy. Two tuk tuks. One rope (for the inevitable breakdown). Three freezing idiots.
We departed at 06:00 on a Thursday in December 2023. The temperature was -2°C. Tuk Tuk Patrol Pickup 3 -Globe Twatters- 2023 W...
Driving a tuk tuk in winter is a unique sensory experience. The wind doesn’t whistle past you; it punches you in the face. We had thermal layers, ski goggles, and a Carabao energy drink sponsorship (they don’t know we exist, but we had the stickers).
The first hour was bliss. Country lanes, frost on the hedgerows, and the pop-pop-pop of the two-stroke echoing off the valleys. Then the "W" happened.
[Depending on your specific "W":
The original Tuk Tuk Patrol concept was born in 2021 from a small Indonesian-Polish modding collective known as Rofflecopter Games. The premise was simple: take the humble auto-rickshaw (tuk tuk), common across Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America, and turn it into a paramilitary patrol vehicle. The first two games were side-scrolling 2D mobile titles with basic “pick up and drop off” missions.
However, Tuk Tuk Patrol Pickup 3 (full title: Tuk Tuk Patrol Pickup 3: Global Twatter Crisis) was released as a free PC mod for Garry’s Mod and Teardown in Q2 2023. The developers described it as: “What if Crazy Taxi, Papers Please, and a Twitter flame war had a baby in downtown Bangkok?”
Location: Somewhere wet, muddy, and ridiculously ambitious (The ‘W’ Run – Winter 2023) We found the first abandoned pickup – The
The Crew: The Globe Twatters (Patrol 3)
If you have never heard the sound of a 200cc air-cooled engine screaming in despair as it drags three hungover adults and a roof rack full of cheap lager up a 1:4 gradient, you haven’t lived. You haven’t even been to the pub.
Welcome back to the asylum. This is the long-awaited debrief of Operation Pickup 3, the Winter 2023 expedition undertaken by the finest (and legally blindest) minds of the Globe Twatters. By 4:00 PM, the sun was setting
For the uninitiated: The Tuk Tuk Patrol is not a real patrol. It is a promise. A promise to take three-wheeled death traps, a questionable amount of high-vis clothing, and a sat-nav older than the driver’s liver, and drive them into the heart of winter. Pickup 3 was not just a drive. It was a rescue—or at least, a very slow, very orange attempt at one.
Final score:
Globe Twatters – 12 verified pickups (disqualified on #13 due to “aggressive flag waving”).
Rival crews – 9 and 7 respectively.
Local police involvement – 3 separate “friendly chats.” No arrests. One high-five.
