Astronomy Illustration (1868 - 1881)
Gorgeous illustrations from the French artist and astronomer Étienne Léopold Trouvelot.
“I dont want to ride over any 3-foot downed trees, just wanna be able to climb some hills, cross some streams, basically Jeep roads, wherever a car and street bike cannot go. And the Versys can do that…”
- JakeSabre
(finally, the trip report)
4 regular joes and one scruffy jane, getting by in the 9-to-5 trenches with the same brutal bosses as anyone else. No fancy gear, no classy uniforms and no bullshit - just a shared, unreasonable hunger for journeys in the saddle… and maybe some fried tarantulas? Only two of us had ever ridden across onto Thai soil before, but the air in december has a way of smelling like adventure!
It was a mixed bag of bikes - Yamaha TDM900, Suzuki Vstrom 650, Kawasaki Versys, Honda Fireblade 929, a rented D-tracker - that chased down the horizon to northernmost Thailand, and we were amazingly fortunate to slip in through a brief window of time when the flood waters lay low.
We took the highways, low-ways and no-ways. 7000km over 20 days, over a largely tarmac route with some punchy off-road trail segments which the Fireblade bravely soldiered through.
In the spirit of countless travellers before us, who so open-heartedly shared their maps, stories and resources (thank you especially to Joemac, Goh Mia Chun and Samantha!), here’s a rundown of noob insights from the trip that hopefully makes itself useful to somebody else:
COSTS
- We each spent around SGD1.2k on food, petrol, lodging and some shopping.
- Guest houses in Thailand are cheap, and get even cheaper if you arent picky. A night in each town cost us 600 - 700 baht total for two rooms/one big room, except for Hat Yai, Cha Am, Krabi, Mae Sai and Phayao, where we paid about 1000 baht.
- gashol 95 (which is about as good as you can find, with big PTT petrol stops every 50 - 100km on major roads) costs slightly more than the equivalent in singapore.
- We kept our cheapo asses out of restaurants and ate mostly from street hawkers, which were often ridiculously cheap and bloody delicious (20 baht for a bowl of beef noodles!), if you dont think too much about how it’s prepared or what sort of living thing the meat used to be. We ate frequently and well, testing the stretch limits of our riding gear.
- A full-body thai massage will set you back about 250 baht for an hour, and that’s fair tax to sore muscles after a punishing ride day. We indulged almost every other night! - 2500 baht from each of our pockets went right into bungee jumping and go-karting at chiang mai’s extreme sports park - a roaring treat you shouldnt miss.
USEFUL STUFF TO PACK
- Maps, because nothing truly works like old-school ink-on-paper, and because GPS always screws with your mind and tries to lead you into bangkok city. You can pick up updated and detailed maps of thailand from major PTTs along the southern and northern highways.
- Black tape & cable ties. These hold a variety of sins together! The expedition rolled home mostly held together by ties & tape - my boot straps, Joshua’s improvised gear shifter after a bridge-crossing disaster, Victor’s saddlebag after a villager’s kupchai t-boned him… and the Fireblade lost a couple of fairing screws that werent taped over before we left!
- Handy cleaning essentials from our friends at Motul, which helped make the long roads kinder:
a) Chain paste: this one’s thicker, easy enough to apply and stays on even through dusty trails.
b) Insect remover and visor cleaner: mighty useful on the long highways up, where you will get face-bombed by anything from bees to big juicy butterflies. We used these to clean our bike windshields too!
c) Hand cleaner: we got the grime off our fingers easy with this rub-out formula - saves the inside of your gloves too.
LODGING
We did it the cowboy way - just rolled into town and started scouting! Found some real gems, and all of them have safe parking and free wifi:
1) Hat Yai
Winstar Hotel
Park your bikes behind the lobby, and slip the security guard about 50 baht to watch them all night.
2) Nakon Sawan
Shanya Guesthouse
Resort-style decor for budget inn prices, and free use of their water hoses on your grubby bikes. Keep your mosquito repellent handy though.
3) Chiang Mai
a) Lanna Discovery Guesthouse
Park your bikes on the slope at the entrance. there are other backpackers here to trade stories with, and the landlady will teach you a handy Thai phrase or two if you’d only ask!
b) Rider’s Corner
Even if you dont stay the night, at least pop by for a beer and steak! A must-go meeting place for international motorcyclists, and you’ll meet some real inspirational people there. Say hullo to Philip for us, and ask him to show you some good riding routes around the area.
4) Pai
Pai Klangdoi Resort
After the insane, blustery cold, rollercoaster turns of Mae Hong Son, there’s really nothing, nothing like warming your toes by campfire - I swear, these parts will have you wishing for heated throttle grips! Prepare a set of thermals; temperatures drop to 4 deg at night.
5) Doi Ang Kang
A Chiang Mai local told us, “you haven’t really experienced Doi Ang Kang until you camp out there for a night.” Truer words have never been said. Rent a tent at the mountain’s military base, endure the bone-grinding cold with thermal layers and locally-brewed strawberry wine (hardcore stuff, but you’ve got to make friends to get this!), and be rewarded by a sweepingly poetic sunset and sunrise. Hot showers can be bought at a nearby public toilet for 50 baht, but expect no other amenities.
6) Chiang Rai
The North Hotel
Charming and cosy enough for its small price tag, and within walking distance to the supremely awesome night market - the main entertainment stage is shared by tranny dances and bizarre gyrating children; go figure.
7) Phayao
Roll into any of the inns facing the lake, prices are competitive and you can park your bike right outside, unmolested.
8) Krabi
Pak Up Hostel
A designer hostel in main Krabi town that’s walking distance to many little eateries and bars, and much cheaper than staying at Aonang bay, although that’s where the action is. The bay is a good 20min scenic ride away. The other backpackers had a good chuckle at the sight of us riding back in neon beach shorts and full riding boots…
For a complete ride log, join us at facebook.com/ridenorth wilder paths, please post up your own stories and tips, because our adventures dont end with this one!
rode up for a weekend in KL with the riotous badassery that is Beautiful Machines - gotta say i’ll be back soon for more!
flightplan.sg - we are made of awesome, and 2012 is going to kick sweet ass.
1) the reverential hush that every poetic sunset, decorated night sky and morning birdsong evokes. the day i cease to wonder is the day they bury me.
2) the rigorous honesty and open-heartedness of friends who are more family than they’ll ever know.
2012, lets see you stride in with all the bold swagger of a proud mountain range.
for most of dec 2011, i lived out of motorcycle panniers, tracing a winding, varied road across the face of thailand, crossing shortly into myanmar. here are excerpts from short correspondences with T along the way; these are probably the best and most raw logs of the experience:
…
12 dec
we rolled into chiangmai by lunch today. weather and traffic have been kind. went straight from riders cafe to the extreme sports park- bungee jumping and go karting. think my brains havent caught up with my body.
13 dec
roadthoughtdump before i concuss.
consider Living, as maybe a cake of Time- Time as a finite resource which people are inveterate consumers of. the timecake is tasted, chewed on and digested in completely different ways by different people- maybe some have complex intestinal folds and higher absorption rates, others just swallow without tasting, and eject most of it undigested.
which might help me understand why different folks have different reactions to stuff- 4 riders, 4 different thresholds of wonder.
will sleep on this.
13 dec
im the only thai speaker in the team, and its a very mangled street ver of the lang- enough to ask for toilet, road directions, order hot coffee and beg for our lives. been randomly making friends with locals and expanding my vocab haha.
my mind hasnt recovered from the mountains. happy sighs.
15 dec
the mae hong son loop by night is a whole different beast. by last light we still had 160km left to go before mhs town- to clear that, it took 4 hours, alot of dangerous roadside pee stops and one chain bearing scare.
i’d call it a mixture of survival instinct and muscle memory, the way we rode that 160km. the bends are out of some madman’s riding textbook, hairpin off-cambers, peppered with gravelly potholes and sections of road that’ve completely eroded off into space. pitchblack most of the way, because the starlight cant get past the trees.
at one point we stopped and killed the lights - looked up to find the sky had become a giant incandescent soup bowl of every feckin star, dead or alive, too many for the waking eye to behold in one lifetime.
no pictures to describe the moment- believe me, you must hold it in your own hands for yourself.
16 dec
haha these roads have now become too cold for proper thinking… i crashed my bike in a river today, now putting back life into my veins by our campfire.
its too cold, too cold. we’re alternating hot ovaltine and beer!
the bad knee got rebusted, but the fire is doing it a world of good
16 dec
never met a biker whose body wasnt fallin apart!
pai is the perfect zombie apocalypse town, foggy and full of dramatic red brown shrubbery. ah feck, its so cold everyone looks like theyre smoking
24 dec
wettest coldest ride to krabi ever, i nearly passed out from cold- the boys had to help me off the saddle.. but krabi is gorgeous and its almost christmas!!
26 dec
the team split ways after sadao.
i just rolled into ipoh not long ago- bloody punishing ride from krabi to here. suffocating weather, border crossing, terrible jam down NS highway, and having to hunt for un-haunted budget hotels. i feel like a wringed out towel, but happy to be on own time, more or less.
nighttime ipoh is really quiet and looks like a b-grade zombie movie set.. the first cheap hotel i found made me want to run home screaming lor. im at ymca ipoh now, which also looks like zombie movie set, but blockbuster level, so not so bad.
27 dec
maybe hard to believe, but i think im happiest like this. all mashed out from doing stuff.
28dec
HOME RUN! for god knows what reason, i cried like a fuckin puppy in my helmet all the way home from customs…
3 years in the dreaming and 6 months in the planning - tonight at 2200hrs we ride for northern thailand. nearly 8000km, but still only a baby step.
the open road - i will always romanticize it out of proportion, its rough-tough spontaneity, those unreachable horizons, and that machine-and-two-wheels smell of freedom. above all, that sense of an overwhelmingly larger world.
this time i’ve got the best wolf pack to share the journey with. we’ll be home safe, so long as we dont let romance overtake common sense. well not too often, at least.
completely warmed also, by all the love, gifts and support from folks, especially grandmaster goh, joemac and jap + his motley crew at wheels & weiners.
we’ll see y’all 730pm tonight at w&w (25A perak road) for one last milkshake for the road.
—-
8/9 DEC
singapore - hatyai
10 DEC
hatyai - hua hin
11 DEC
hua hin - sukhothai
12 DEC
sukhothai - chiang mai
13 DEC
chiang mai, day ride to doi ithanon
14 DEC
chiang mai - mae hong song
15 DEC
mae hong song - pai
16 DEC
pai, day ride to fish caves and random awesome things
pai - fang
18 DEC
fang - day ride to doi ang kang - mae salong
19 DEC
mae salong - mae sai - golden triangle - chiang rai
20 DEC
chiang rai, day ride to sunrise at pui chee fa (laos border)
21 DEC
chiang rai - chiang mai
chiang mai - nakhon sawan
23 DEC
nakhon sawan - cha am
24 DEC
cha am
25 DEC
cha am - krabi
26 DEC
krabi - pattani
27 DEC
pattani - ipoh
28 DEC
ipoh - singapore
—-
“the world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper”
- W.B. Yeats
2 dec is for those whom we cannot bring back. although we see their faces in the most silent of constellations, and whisper their names into the loudest of winds, they remain memories on the other side of the door.
i’m right here, doing the living for you gabs.
