RIDE THE AWESOME – RIDE THAILAND – PART TWO OF THREE

If you missed PART ONE, click HERE.

DAY TWO – CHIANG MAI TO MAE SARIANG – 243KM

“They might have ridden off a cliff.”

Out of the hotel and straight into Chang Mai traffic. Cool. My traffic kung-fu is strong. But we are not lane-splitting or tearing up the inside of the left-hand lane like the Thais on scooters do. I quickly understood why George, who was the lead rider, chose not to. My fellow riders were clearly not emotionally or spiritually equipped for that. Had George ridden off like the Klingon he is, we may all still be in Chang Mai. I’d have a gambling den by now and be running guns across the border, but the gentle souls I was with may not have found their feet as easily. So, we idled slowly out of Chang Mai. And here’s a clue: Thai traffic lights are slower than a pensioner on a Royal Enfield, and just as annoying. Some of them take more than three-minutes to change.

But Chang Mai is not all that big and in about half-an-hour we were out of it and into the countryside. This is the hilly part of Thailand and we were off to have coffee with an elephant. Yes, that is what I thought too. What is that about? Well, what it’s about is a short climb into foothills on some iffy switchbacks and a leaf-strewn surface, before riding into a “farm”. There were two elephants there. One adult was chained to a tree. One small one was pacing and swaying in an enclosure. There was a coffee shop beside them – which was not a shop as we understand it, but a wall-less wooden structure that served coffee. We took photos, but I could tell no-one was digging this as any kind of tourist destination. I did not drink the coffee and did not spend a cent there. Captive elephants are not a thing I enjoy viewing, and when I later spoke to Vorsty about it, he agreed this “attraction” may not make the cut next time around.

We left, and the road got twistier, and just as I began to wish the pace would be quicker, a rider overtook me and waved Vorsty down. He was told someone had crashed. So Vorsty turned around and went back and I went with him. It’s easier to apply wound pressure, and find missing limbs when there are two people involved.

We rode all the way back to the elephant prison. I enjoyed the hell out of that because we were suddenly going at a normal pace rather than tourist pace. We saw no accidents. We stopped next to an above-ground water pipe that was badly leaking and looked like it might rupture at any second and kill us both.

“They might have ridden off a cliff,” I said to Vorsty.

“Not much chance of finding them then,” he said.

Then his phone pinged. The missing riders had ridden up some mountain, realised they were lost and contacted the group via WhatsApp.

It seems like the corner-man system had had its first rupture. The two Americans and the sweep rider had missed the turn-off, presumably because the nominated corner-man got bored and rode off, and they were now somewhere in a part of Thailand which differed from our part of Thailand.

They were on their way back, so Vorsty and I rode to the turn-off and waited. The group re-assembled, and we started heading down the mountain we’d ridden up to a lovely café owned by a Frenchman and his Thai wife. The Frenchman, when I put him to the question, told me he was hiding out in Thailand because he’d been involved in some heinous buggery somewhere. He was on the lam, as it were. Or he was full of shit. It was hard to tell. But the bastard could sure cook, and make great coffee. I promised not to tell Interpol.

This was lunch. But first we had to wait for the back-end of the group. They had stopped because one of the Japanese girls had crashed.

One of the Americans, Dave, had also crashed. But he just kinda fell over in a brutal hairpin, picked it all up and carried on. The Japanese lady apparently compression-locked the rear-wheel on her R3, and tumbled into a table drain full of soft leaves. So she was alright, too.

This was awesome, I thought, grinning like a sweaty baboon and shovelling delicious Pad Thai into my mouth. Adventure! Excitement! Danger! Motorcycles! Yea, verily the stuff of life.

We then rode to the highest point in Thailand, Doi Inthanon (2565m), and briefly enjoyed temperatures in the mid-teens. We took some pictures, as you do, then strangely rode straight past one of the most epic sets of structures in Thailand. These were the King and Queen Pagodas. The Royal Thai Air Force erected the modern tiered pagodas near the summit to commemorate the 60th birthdays of the late King Bhumibol and Queen Sirikit. Apparently, the beaut Vachiratharn Waterfall is also right there, but we rode on.

I got it. This was a riding tour. And riding has to be done if we were to get anywhere. And it’s not like you can sit on 140 all day. You can’t. You’re always as fast as the slowest rider, a factor any tour has to take into account. And besides, the road just got crazy good. Massive fast sweepers, with great elevation changes, which, if you were smart and let the people ahead of you go for a bit, or stop to have a wee, you had it to yourself for a few kays until you caught the people. I had to have several wees on my way to Mae Sariang.

A few kays out from our evening stop, a few of us stopped for a drink. I saw two legit rigid choppers parked outside a small shop, and took a few pics after asking the two guys working on them if that was cool. One was a Sportster and the other a 650 Yamaha with sissy bars, tool rolls, the lot. If it wasn’t for the totally Thai pine forest surrounding us, the alien shops, and the rickety wooden stalls selling fresh produce, it could have been Texas.

Mae Sariang greeted me like an Asian movie set. Narrow bustling streets, crazy electrical wiring, the smoke of hundreds of roadside food stalls, and scooters everywhere. The road down into this place was incredible two-and four-lane blacktop, and if you were vile and accursed, you would have had a mad old time banging through those corners. Just saying.

My hotel room in the Riverhouse Resort on the banks of Yuam River was also rather movie-set like. Teak furniture, and a view across the river of muddy water buffalo. But the air-con was on, the pool was hugely refreshing, and that night it hammered with rain while I sat in a vast unwalled restaurant 100-metres from my room, and enjoyed food I did not know, but would from now on search for evermore. None of us ever ordered a thing for the entire tour. George would pre-order all our food, and as we sat down, it was served to us. Magnificent.

NOTE: Marinating yourself in mosquito repellent is advisable, especially if you’re near rivers. But do not bother with our Aussie chemicals. Go to the first Thai chemist you see (and you will see many), and buy the local stuff. It smells wonderful and works heaps better than our stuff.

DAY THREE – MAE SARIANG TO MAE SOT – 303KM

“She buying you or just renting you?”

I had a quick look around the morning market, and noted the huge availability of giant rat traps. Stood to reason the Klingon Empire had giant rats. Something has to keep them big-arse buffalos outta town. I also saw the morning Buddhist ritual, which entails groups of barefoot Buddhist monks walking the streets and being given alms – traditionally food – then blessing the alms-giver and moving on.

We rode out at eight and I noted Vorsty, now the sweep rider, had the Japanese lady who’d crashed as a pillion. Her bike, the R3, was in the van following us. Probably a good thing for her, and I admired Vorsty’s sacrifice.

The corner-man system failed again early in the piece, but I seemed to be the only one utterly indifferent to this. While we’d wait, I’d chat to the locals, and stare wide-eyed at whatever Thailand was showing me at that time and place. It’s the only way to travel.

A few kays further on, and I found myself behind George as the road quite suddenly became empty of traffic and turned into a stunning four-lane wide mountain-circling racetrack. But our pace remained sedate. I was chafing, but I behaved until…well, I could no longer behave. I pulled up next to George and pointed at my penis, yelling: “Need to pee!” in case he thought I was asking about something else. George grinned and nodded, and I shot off.

It was stupendous. Imagine five lots of Putty Road’s legendary Ten-Mile section strung together, then throw in some mad elevation changes. No corner speed-advisory signs – you work it out, pilgrim – no cops, no cameras, just corners.

I did eventually stop to have a wee, and met and old man who came out of his hut to see if I was OK. He asked me if I was a Christian. I told him I wasn’t. He blessed me anyway and invited me to stay at his house. I told him I was waiting for people, but I was grateful for his kind offer. He went about his business and I waited some more. Then I decided to ride back and see if an oopsy had occurred that was delaying them. No stress for me, and I’d get to ride these mad corners twice more at least, I figured.

Nothing had happened. They were just taking their time, so I asked George where we were stopping, was told it was about 30km of insane bends ahead and it was roadside coffee stall, and off I went again. But that coffee stall was closed. I waited until everyone had arrived, and George made a few quick calls, established there was another coffee\drink store five kay up the road, so we made our way there. I felt I was the only one fizzing like an aspirin trapped in a Coke bottle. How was it possible Thailand had such roads? How can there be more of this? Little did I know just how much more there’d be.

Our next stop was a Buddhist temple with a line of golden monk statues out the front. I did not think much of this temple. It seemed run down and nowhere near as amazing as some I had seen. Maybe it was of some historical significance, but no-one seemed to know. There was a school just next to it, so I spent some time waving at the kids and revving the GS, which seemed to amuse them greatly.

We were now in this amazing river valley, and the road wound gently along the Moel River, which marks the border between Myanmar (formerly Burma) and Thailand. And because this is the border region and Myanmar is run by a military junta after a coup in 2021, and people are always trying to flee this odious regime, we encountered three military checkpoints.

We were stopped and our documents were checked and photographed in a business-like manner. I kinda thought the soldiers would haul away the Americans just because they were Americans, or the French because of the shit they’d caused in Vietnam, but it all went very smoothly. Clearly, having a pair of Thai guides with us smoothed the process. Not all that many people speak English out here.

We then rode on to pause briefly outside a massive refugee camp that houses some ten thousand unfortunates from Myanmar, some of whom have been there for more than a decade. It was hugely confronting, but thanks to Vorsty’s new girlfriend, the mood was lightened. I came back from admiring this amazing Turkish pump-action one of the Thai guards was holding, to find Vorsty had been trading individual cigarettes with a crazy brown-toothed lady. She was cheery enough, and she clearly had a set on the big, bearded Vorsty farang. I knew this when she hauled out a 100 bhat note and tried to force him to take it.

“She buying you or just renting you?” I asked him.

“Get on your bike and let’s go,” he replied, gently breaking the crazy lady’s betel-nut chewing heart.

We made it into Mae Sot – a town the size and bustle of a city, and were greeted in the forecourt of a hotel called The Teak – a stunningly modern high-rise edifice – with cold perfumed towels and iced drinks. And then Tommy arrived with an esky full of cold beer and my day became exponentially beauter. How could it not? Vorsty was on a promise, the Thai army had not put me in a cell, no-one had crashed today, and I had seen some stunning and confronting things. And now my hotel was exactly the kind of place rich men bring their giggling young mistresses and a kilo of Viagra to – it was full luxo.

By this stage I had a pool buddy, Frasier. Frasier was an Aussie IT engineer who lived in Singapore and was not old enough to be part of the Birkenstock-and-bunions crowd that comprised the bulk of our group. He was, like me, determined to get into the hotel pool after each ride as soon as humanly possible. But he was heaps quicker at getting out of his gear than me. For me, it was like peeling off a one-size too small wetsuit.

Also, by this stage, I had come to enjoy the company of Jeremy, the younger of the two Americans on the ride, and he too became a pool-and-beer-drinking buddy. It’s hard not to do this when a round of three giant Singha beer bottles, dripping with ice, costs about ten bucks, and they let you drink them in the pool.

Dinner that night was once again delicious and plentiful in a nearby restaurant. But, because I am at my very best when sated and beered, it was also the time I chose to buy my wife a small white jade Buddha, which the restaurant was also selling. I felt the transaction went well, despite me buying it for the price I later saw pasted to the bottom of the little figurine.

On our post-dinner walk, Vorsty’s once again found himself the object of adoration. Which serves him right for telling the nice lady that she carried the large plate she had balanced on her head very well. She followed him around for a while, clearly seeking to further their blossoming romance.

The next morning I copped the full dose of morning market frenzy just around the corner from the hotel, and was left wondering how such high-intensity traffic chaos works without swearing, yelling, and beeping. It’s simply miraculous.

DAY FOUR – MAE SOT TO SUKHOTHAI – 162KM

“For seven bucks, I bought a carton of Marlboro and saw a dog fight. So winning!”

We left our hotel and rode to the huge Rim Moei market that sits right on the border of Myanmar. And I do mean right on the border. It is a vast area, and I certainly wished we had more time to explore the hundreds of stalls selling…well, everything.

But the most striking thing was the razor wire that stretched along the long concrete platform that bordered the market, that was on the banks of the Moei River that separates Thailand from Myanmar. You might recall Australia had a hand in recently building the nearby Friendship Bridge between the two countries.

On the Myanmar side of the razor wire were other stalls, and these stalls sold cigarettes and booze, at prices that were clearly insane. The Myanmar people are exceedingly poor, which was obvious if you looked across the river and saw the bamboo huts they were all living in. But they are determined to earn what money they could in whatever way was possible. And if that means selling illicit booze and durries to whomever they can across the razor wire, then so be it. There were members of the Thai army there, but they were pretty laid back and allowed the process to carry on. They were more interested in the impromptu dog fight that erupted at the base of the platform just as I was guiltily hammering down the price of a carton of Marlboros from nine bucks to seven bucks.

“This place is incredible,” Vorsty said, as I loaded the durries into my top-box. I planned to flog them later to Freido for a fat profit.

“For seven bucks, I bought a carton of Marlboro and saw a dog fight. So winning! And so guilty,” I replied.

“There are casinos just across the river,” George said.

“Which is just your way of crushing my hopes and dreams because we’re not going there, isn’t it?” I said to his smiling face.

George led us out of Mae Sot, and once again, amazement came crashing in on me. We had started a magnificent climb out of Mae Sot on a six-lane road that would not have looked out of place in Germany. Except where German Autobahns are largely straight and flat, this one had endless curves in it. And huge elevation changes. It was utterly insane.

George, who had previously been riding in a most restrained and cautious manner, suddenly transformed into Somkiat Chantra, and set to with a will. I immediately gave chase, and there should be songs written about what followed. Knowing I must not overtake the lead rider, and understanding he was going at a worthy pace, I focussed mainly on the sheer visceral joy of putting together fast bend after fast bend, weaving past slow-moving trucks, and keeping my lines pretty in case bitches were watching from the hills. You never know, right? The surface was great, the corners all constant-radius and easy to see through. And it went on and on, for more than 50km. Eventually, Geroge waved his arm indicating we should slow down and I saw a police checkpoint ahead. I rolled up next to him. His face was split by a huge grin and we fist-bumped each other like kids.

We cruised through the checkpoint, and made our way to a lookout, from which little could be seen, because there’s shit-tonnes of pollution in Thailand, and while that haze gives you cool blood-red sunsets, it doesn’t help out with views.

We had a few more bends coming off the lookout, and made our way to the banks of the same Ping River that runs through Chang Mai for more great food, and a nearby cake shop, where I valiantly fought off diabetes by only eating one delicious cake.

We had to slab it down straight roads the rest of the way to the Dawn of Happiness (aka Sukhothai), but I was kinda OK with that given the overwhelming pleasure I’d had that morning.

Sukhothai was once the epicentre of the Sukhothai Kingdom. It was originally a trade centre under the control of the Khmer Empire from 946AD to 1052AD, until a local leader, one Pho Khun Bang Klang Hao, led a revolt against the empire, and became the first monarch of the Phra Ruang Dynasty. Sukhothai blossomed, and later, under the reign of Ram Khamhaeng the Great (1279 to 1298) it began trade relations with the Yuan Dynasty of China – itself the successor of the Mongol Empire – and developed techniques to create and export amazing ceramics. Khamhaeng the Great also introduced the Thai script to his people and Theravada Buddhism.

The place is now a UNESCO World Heritage site, and the home of the sassiest Tuk Tuk driver in all of Thailand. Pete hired him after letting me recover briefly in the most splendid hotel I had ever dared to enter. This was the Sriwilai Sukhothai Resort, and it was more palace than anything else. The pool was next level and my pool buddies and I got to see how California girls behave when they are on holidays. And that’s lounging about on the day beds, tanning their plump gluten-free bums, and taking selfie after selfie after selfie after selfie. And talking utter shit. If “vapid” was incarnated in the flesh, it would be this lot.

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ONE DAY, BUYING PETROL…

28 February 20210

“I’m 23, it’s my body, and I’ll do what I want with it,” one princess was heard to drone through her nose. I briefly wondered if I could talk her into fighting swamp cobras with her biscuit-eating arse. I would so bet on that. Then I got out, dried off, found Vorsty, and climbed into the rattiest Tuk Tuk I’d ever seen for a tour of the ruins of Sukhothai.

“Tuk Tuk Sukhothai!” seemed to be the limit of our driver’s jolly English. He was a cheerful soul, and via the help of Google Translator, Vorsty made it known we wished to see as much of the UNESCO ruins as we could. So, what we were first shown were rice paddies. Then we were shown birds that live in rice paddies. Then a cat. Then more rice paddies.

“Are there ruins under the rice?” I asked the driver.

“Tuk Tuk Sukhothai!” he laughed. But he did eventually get us to some ruins, and they were amazing. Vast and ancient Buddhas, stepped pyramid-like structures and temples, and literally dozens of old ceramic kilns were scattered about the huge parklands. Vorsty and I actually picked up some old fragments of pottery laying about and asked the driver if it was OK to take them.

“Tuk Tuk Sukhothai!” he agreed.

We got him to drop us off in the middle of Sukhothai because we had resolved to buy our ladies gifts that reflected our love for them.

“There’s nothing but food here,” I said to Pete, as we walked along between the stalls, where Thais bought food, then sat down on the grass by a lake to eat their meals.

“I’m thinking the yellow jelly stuff might travel the best, but I’m pretty sure it might not be edible when we get it back.”

The only other things we could see that were for sale were industrial cleaning products and some old scooters. And we had not had enough beers to think they would be suitable gifts.

We did encounter the two Japanese ladies from our tour, who had acquired pushbikes to pedal around the town. We waved, they waved back, then Vorsty ruined everything by yelling out: “Don’t crash!” whereupon the lady who’d already crashed twice, crashed for a third time by running into the back of her friend’s bike.

My bowels were still solid, so I did not shit myself with laughter, but it was close. Not so sure about Vorsty. He’d been having some liquid-like issues. When we had collected ourselves and the ladies had pedalled off, we stood shaking our heads in disbelief.

“She may be cursed,” I said. “If she was on a pirate ship, she would have been heaved overboard to spare the crew further disasters.”

George had once again arranged an incredible feast, in another wall-less restaurant, and was busily feeding my new addiction. This was a condiment made of fish sauce, chopped chilli, lemon juice, and garlic. I was putting it on everything. And while some of the others would encounter the odd less-than-solid bowel movement as their bodies adjusted to this new cuisine, my shit (pardon the pun) remained fine and dandy.

NOTE: Just a word on Thai toilets. The actual cisterns in the hotels all sat a little lower to the ground than ours. This was a good thing. They all came with a hose and a nozzle to assist in the removal of matter from your bottom and the bowl. And you only have to not face that bastard the right way once, fire that jet of water into your dial, to not ever do it again. Every other toilet I encountered (some of which were squatters) in road-side stops, servos, and restaurants, was spotless.

DAY FIVE – SUKHOTAI TO PAK CHONG – 410KM

“Can you feel my soul hitting you in the face?”

This was our longest ride day. I get that the distances we were riding don’t seem all that long to Australians who may be used to regularly smashing out 800km days. But, when you have 18 riders, lengthy petrol, lunch, and coffee stops, never mind waiting for errant strays who have failed to see the corner-man, or corner-men who fail at their jobs, you are riding for at least eight or so hours a day.

I was just fine with that. Yes, it was relentlessly and brutally hot, but I was alright with that too. I was in Thailand, bitches! Riding bikes! What did I really have to complain about?

I found something, of course. Vorsty was leading, and we were pretty much just slabbing straight four-lane roads on our way to Pak Chong. At the first coffee stop, I asked him why he was riding like a nervous gibbon.

“Can you feel my soul hitting you in the face?” he asked.

“Yes, I have been drinking it along with my own sweat.”

“I don’t know what the go is with the speed limits. It drops from 90 to 50, or it doesn’t and it should, or I think it should because we’re in a town, and I probably need to speak to George about it.”

George subsequently informed him it was OK to bang along at 100-plus, provided he didn’t hit any people or dogs. Vorsty duly upped the pace a touch and we made our way to Pak Chong. We were in the southern part of Thailand now and not all that far from Bangkok.

Then we stopped at a fish market. I’m not sure why. It’s not like there were any whales or sharks there. I didn’t much care about the fish, all of whom were freshwater specimens hauled out of the nearest flood-mitigation reservoir beside the market. But I deed need some cold water, and once again, Tommy was right there with the towels and liquids.

I went for a walk to examine the fish market, and was soon being cheerily yelled at by a stout Thai lady.

“Flee tly! Flee tly!” she squeaked at me, pointing to thumb-sized bits of fish on the stall between us. I had never heard of the Flee Tly fish, and I was not going to buy any. But she kept yelling, and it dawned on me she was offering me a “free try”.

I duly took a piece of fish, and despite having sworn not to eat bizarre stuff being sold in strange places, I ate it. It was not bad.

But because it was hot and I was tired and we still had a way to go, my mind started playing tricks on me. A few kays down the road I told myself the fish was now dissolving my spleen. Then I told myself it had eaten its way through my abdominal wall, and my heart was melting. Of course, none of this was happening, but when you’re hot and tired and you’ve eaten something strange, funny stuff starts to go off in your head.

About two hours later we arrived at the Kirimaya Golf Resort, and if I had imagined we’d already hit Peak Hotel, I was wrong. Sitting beside a golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus, this was the kind of resort I have only ever seen in movies. Movies where supermodels butter themselves in exotic oils and lounge by the pool in seven-inch heels, while slim-hipped billionaires cooly peer at them through Prada sunnies.

My damn room was just stupid. It had a balcony with an enormous day bed on it, in case the Super God-King Size sleeping platform in the room itself was somehow lacking.

Once again, we were permitted to drink beer out of bottles in the pool, and that evening I eschewed dinner with the group, ate in my room (it’s hard to pass up a four-course meal for $15), and decided to go to the spa and have a massage.

No, it was not that kind of massage. It was entirely another kind, which I felt bordered on Elder Abuse. The strongest woman I had ever met ground the kilometres out of me, fed me ginger tea, then washed my feet in warm water scented with freshly-squeezed lime juice and flowers. It cost me $25.

I floated back to my room. Well, actually, I was driven back in a golf cart, but I could have just as easily floated. The resort is so vast, you need a golf cart to get around. Just pick up your phone, tell them where you wish to go, and by the time you walk out of your room, there’s a golf cart waiting for you. Must be kinda awesome to be rich, I guess.

PART THREE UP SHORTLY…