On To Bangkok

We had a good run once we left Phuket, following the west coast of Thailand, alongside the Andaman Sea, then along the Burmese border. When I say good, the road was good, lots of nice twisty bends, & only two near fatal head on collisions. The first was a guy on a scooter coming straight at me on the wrong side of the road, the second was a car also on my side, causing me to use maximum braking & dive for the shoulder. I knew those ABS brakes would come in handy! We crossed over to the east coast, the Gulf of Thailand side, then headed for Bangkok. The traffic started to build up about 120km outside the capital & just got heavier, & it was boiling hot & very humid. We knew this was going to be tough, but it exceeded even our expectations. On the way in we went past what we are sure was a fatal accident, which had only just happened. A car travelling at approx 100-120kph had hit a scooter crossing the road. Gulp!

Bangkok is huge, a true megacity, & very hard to navigate in. If you leave a gap of any more than about a foot, someone else will barge in, I'm not kidding. A big, heavily loaded bike like the BM needs some space to work in, but we are just another scooter to everyone else. There were still a few marauding bands of people in utes & on the roadside who were still celebrating Songkran, & dumping water on passers by, which actually turned out to be a relief from the heat. There is a good system of motorways, but motorcycles are not allowed on them ( figure that one out!). We picked a hotel which was (supposed to be) close to the new airport, figuring that the airport would be well signposted. Not so. After becoming hopelessly lost, we hired a taxi, told him to go to the hotel, while we followed on the bikes. Two hours later, after the taxi became lost several times, we finally reached the hotel, just as smoke started to billow out from under the taxi. It had burned out its clutch! We paid the fare & said bad luck about wrecking your car, & bolted for the hotel.

Next day, we decided to clean the bikes. A simple request for a bucket was misinterpreted, & instead we ended up with five uniformed cleaning ladies from the hotel out in the car park cleaning the bikes!! Who were we to argue?

Our next task was to arrange to air freight the bikes to Nepal. We had to visit our chosen freight forwarder to sort the paperwork. Thailand does not use the Carnet system to control foreign vehicle entry, so we had to register the bikes as temporary imports, & the freight company wanted to set up some kind of dummy corporation to re-export them. Seems like a lot of buggerising around for something which should be easy, but we are getting used to this kind of beaurocracy. No wonder people aren't queuing up to do trips like this!!!

On the way up from Phuket, my bike was getting hard to start when hot, then spluttering & belching black smoke, so this was also the last opportunity to get it checked before we get to Tehran. So, we had to find the BMW dealership. We used the taxi trick again, & each time, the drivers got lost again! Anyway, they ran a diagnostic on the bike & it checked out ok. We think there was a problem in the fuel injection system, which was flooding it on startup & causing it to run rich, but it appears to have resolved itself, I very much hope!! Then we had to get the bikes out to the freight depot, where they had to be inspected by a Dangerous Goods certifier & made safe for the flight. (Tank empty, battery disconnected, terminals & leads taped up, etc.) before having timber crates made. At least we didn't have to take the front wheels off, since we were being charged on weight, not volume. So, we won't see the bikes again until Kathmandu. All this stuffing around ate into our itinerary, & we decided to cancel the trip to Cambodia, & instead, we moved to a hotel closer to the city, & became tourists for a few days. We really needed to relax, because it had all been hard graft up till now. We went to book a city tour by mini bus, but got a better deal thru the hotel. For $80 we got a uniformed chauffer & a Mercedes, so why not? So, here are some of the tourist photos I am prepared to post.

The Royal Palace, Bangkok

One of the Royal Barges


The Reclining Buddah

The Wat Arun (Temple of the Dawn)