BIKES AND TEMPLES

Well, wadda y'know, talk about lucky. There is an annual bike show in Chiang Mai, and yesterday was the day, and it was held just down the road from the hotel. There were bikes of all sizes, types and ages on display. Contrary to popular opinion, there are plenty of big bikes in Thailand, and plenty of good roads to ride them on. This aint Vietnam, where there are more scooters than blades of grass. In fact, there were some full-on outlaw bike gangs (Hells Angels, Bandidos, Diablos and more) represented, as well as vintage BMW's, lots of Harley cruisers, and then the just plain bizzare. Even various types of cars, including some I hadn't seen in years. You just never know what you are going to see in Thailand! Funny thing to see all the bikie gangs parked next to each other, shaking hands, drinking beer and checking out all the other bikes. They didn't look too intimidating to me. The biggest, baddest-assed SOB I saw was about 5ft 6in and about 90 lbs, and was buckling under the weight of his tattoos. Time for less talk and more pictures.

Some mint condition BMW's

750 Honda 4 engine, no suspension, no front brake, no mufflers, no mirrors, no indicators (and no engineer's certification on the frame, I'm guessing)

Da bad boys

Honda 350 scrambler, circa 1971, with a top box, using a real box!

A couple of customised scooters. Everything here has to make noise.

A Clockwork Orange mini

Outa my way, sonny!

Its amazing what you can put on the road here, where there don't seem to be any rules at all. Unlike our regulated to death environment, where you can't do anything because you might enjoy yourself, or worse still, you might hurt someone. This is what you get when universities pump out lawyers instead of useful people. You drown in a sea of bullshit. But I digress.

This a.m. I went  out walking in the old part of town before it got too hot. The Lonely Planet (usually a source of reliable info) told me a "must see" is the Wat Phra Singh, the most revered temple in town. Well, it was certainly infested with busloads of tourists who had clearly been told the same thing, but I reckon there are heaps more interesting Wats (temples) around, and I found plenty of them and had most of them to myself. I make no claims as to being able to understand what the heck is going on in any of them, but I enjoy the architecture, the timelessness, the calmness and the serenity. Walking through the manicured leafy gardens is quite refreshing and gives one an opportunity to reflect. There were a few well placed cue cards to help that process in the Wat Phra Singh, but I did prefer the other temples, one of which was about 700 years old.

So rotate your head.......... do I have to do everything?? Goddam computers.

BE YOUR CONFIDENT

"Be Your Confident. Smile with Your." That's what it said, emblazoned on the kid's tshirt at breakfast in the Amora Hotel in Chiang Mai this morning. No idea what it means! Aaah Thailand. The Land of Smiles, and mangled Engrish. I started to get the feel of the place as soon as I got to the airport in Bangkok. The hot, humid air hit me in the face like a straight left from Mike Tyson as I exited the plane. After a walk of over 1 km through the gigantic terminal, I located the Bangkok Airways desk to check in for my flight north. There was a guy on the desk serving a small group, so I got on the end of the line. Alongside him, there was another busy airline guy sitting behind a sign that said Closed. No point waiting there, I thought. Wrong! A sizeable group of Aussie bogans walked right up to the guy and he started processing their boarding arrangements immediately. Maybe he was intimidated, I don't know. What's more, he had nearly finished processing this mob while my guy was still stuffing around. Closed obviously means Open for Business around here, and I'll pick the wrong queue every time. Through Immigration easily and into the domestic terminal. I quickly located the eating area for another green chicken curry in an exact replay of what I did last year. And it was every bit as good as it was last time. Things soon took a turn for the worse however  when I fed my credit card into an ATM to get some folding, and it didn't come out again. It took 30 minutes to sort that out while I was seriously running out of time to make the flight. All for nought, as it turned out, because the plane was late arriving and the flight was delayed, fortunately for me in this case.

Not my day really. After getting up at 3 am to get to the airport at home, the flight out of Sydney was delayed by a lazy two hours due to congestion, and the place was a zoo. Anyway it was a long day, I was up for just over 25 hours before I got to hit the sack again. But I was pleased to see Kay and Noah from Big Bike Tours, both at the airport waiting to collect me. We greeted each other like long lost family and caught up with what had happened in our respective lives over the last 12 months. I dropped my bags in my room, and not wanting to appear unsociable, thought it would be a good idea to have a coldie with the guys. Next minute all three of us (and me helmetless) are on a tiny little scooter heading through the warm, balmy night air for their local bike haunt, an open air bar in the backstreets of a very non touristy part of town.  All sorts of bikes, mostly big, dotted the scene, live music, meat grilling, cold beer and bikers doing what bikers do everywhere, lying to each other. I was introduced to a big bunch of their mates, and I was treated like an esteemed guest, I even got bowed at a couple of times. Yep, I'm back in Thailand! But I declined Noah's offer of a bowl of blood soup just like the one he was tucking into. It looked as gruesome as it sounds. There are limits, you know. After a gallon or two of beer, I got a tuk tuk back to the hotel - actually, the bar manager sent a junior lackey out on a scooter to find a tuk tuk for me, and you don't get service like that where I live - and man oh man, was I glad to see a pillow.

Right, we're up to speed. A couple of days to acclimatise, have a look around, meet the rest of the group, sort the paperwork out then we are out of here on Monday morning. As I expected, its warm here, the forecast is for 37-40 degrees, but Kay reckons it should be cooler in Laos. Again, the air is full of smoke from the burning rice stubble in the paddy fields, just as it was last year. That is a bit of a downer, but hardly a surprise. The word is that we hit Highway 1148 on day 1. Its a great ride, one of the highlights of last years trip, but then I had about 800 km of local riding under the belt by the time we got to that fabulous stretch last year. Am I ready for it again? I haven't done too much riding lately, so I hope I'm up to it, but I better not succumb to "first day fever" and get sucked in too deep when the pace quickens. Nevertheless, I will BE MY CONFIDENT, like the kid's tshirt said.

PS. One thing I did find out is that motorcycles are no longer allowed in the Khao Yai National Park which we rode through last year, with some trepidation I might add. Apparently the noise can upset the elephants, and our bikes were particularly noisy. I was a bit apprehensive at the time and hoped that we didn't run into any prickly pachyderms on or near the road. Recently a carload of tourists was not so lucky. If you haven't already seen it, click on this link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYHcMc748Uc

Hilarious when it happens to somebody else, isn't it?

ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE MEETS JIHADISM

Hello once again readers, fellow adventurers and armchair travelers. After lying dormant for about a year blogwise, I have dusted off the old keyboard and decided to get back to work, ie traveling, observing and writing about it for posterity. Let me say up front that rumors of my demise since last April have been greatly exaggerated. Oh sure I've been out on the bike, even done a few trips interstate, and as per usual I enjoy every minute when I'm out riding. But for most of 2014, I have been busy being a homebody, content to grow vegetables, watch the footy and follow the exploits of  friends like Chris Phillips, riding across the vast steppes of Russia and Mongolia, from the safety of my lounge room. I guess ever since my proposed 16,000 km trip from Cairo to Cape Town with Compass Expeditions, scheduled for late 2014, was cancelled due to security concerns in several African countries thanks to radical islam, I have been a bit listless. I even sold my KLR 650 which I had all prepped for the trip, and that was quite a downer. Yet ironically, one of the main problems with staying home in safety and watching television is that you are likely to  become even more depressed, and pretty soon jump to the conclusion that the whole world is rapidly turning to shit, what with the relentless march of ISIS and all the other murderous islamic nut cases killing innocent people for no good reason here, there and every bloody where. So I'm pretty dark about what radical islam is doing for us. Note that I said radical islam. I have nothing against Islam per se, and I have ridden in several islamic countries and received nothing but unconditional hospitality. People can worship the sun if they like, I don't care, just extend me the same courtesy.

That said, its as good a subject as any for getting back into my stride blogwise, a bit like pre-season training for bloggers. You know what? Here's something I'm really getting sick of hearing. "God is Great!", usually followed by an explosion or the plop of a severed head hitting the floor. Think about that. God is great. Yeah, well so was Gatsby, and so are Vili's pies and pasties, and so is Port Power, but you don't see me beheading vegetarians and Crows supporters to prove it, nor to appease any deity. If God is great, surely he can do his own killing. What I want to know is this. Where are the defenders of the so called "religion of peace", the assumed vast majority of ordinary folk, the religious and community leaders and the government spokespeople, here and around the world, who represent the religion as it is alleged to be? Where is the groundswell of condemnation from those who should be outraged that their religion and their culture have been hijacked by the loons and taken straight back to the year 700 AD? Good to see them standing up for what they believe. The spineless bastards. Or maybe they think its all ok. Either way, the silence is deafening, and that should concern a lot more people than just me.

Normal people must never let the crackpots and evil doers think they have a chance of winning. I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who said "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."  I don't know about you, but if my house was overrun by cockroaches, I would definitely not: (a) Ignore them and hope they went away, (b) Try to reason with them, nor (c) Try to see the world from a cockroach's point of view. I'd call in the pest exterminators while I still had a house worth living in. I know what a cockroach is, and the vermin don't get to call the shots. Not yet, but time's a wasting, people. But realistically, I guess its cheaper to let the muslims kill each other and behead the occasional unlucky westerner, or lose the odd airliner or building than it is to go at them all out. However, its good to see the Australian government has a good grip on the jihadist terror threat situation though. We're building more submarines! Just wait till we get those babies in 2035. Oh, and its illegal to insult anybody, or hurt their feelings. Feel safer now?

What's all this blah doing in a motorcycle blog anyway? Hang on, I'm getting to that. There was a time when the only audience for my astute identification of the world's more serious problems was the poor unfortunate sod on the adjacent bar stool, but thanks to the Internet, I can now go global! (And I can bang on about whatever the hell I like too, its just terrific). So anyway, it occurred to me that I'm well overdue for a new adventure, as much just to get out there and exercise my own essential liberty as a paid up, card carrying infidel as for any other reason. But if I needed another reason, it would be to escape from Adelaide in what has become known as Mad March. Where we get all our culture for the year - good and bad - delivered in one insane month. Then we don't have to bother with any culture again until the same time next year. Very popular with everybody except the people who live here. But what to do? Where to go?

Then out of the blue, I get an email from Kay at Big Bike Tours informing me that all the crew who did the trip around northern Thailand last year have signed up to do an adventure ride into Laos this year. All except me, that is. Hmmm. Yeah well nobody calls me chicken, so I signed up for a re-run. And as luck would have it, it will be in March. I guess I'm just a motorcycle jihadist. A not so holy road warrior who wants to conquer even more roads, just because they are there. Maybe that should be unholy, which is the way I prefer my roads. And besides, anywhere with good - yet dirt cheap - beer presses all my buttons. As I recall, in Laos all you need to be able to say is "Beer Lao !!" with a certain authority in your voice, and you're in business. If you notice your lights flicker a bit over the next couple of weeks, relax, that will just be the beer vendors of Laos stacking their fridges. Suck on that, ISIS. Or whatever acronym you've changed your name into in the last five minutes. Scumbags like you don't decide when and how I have my fun, so up yours. (F-U-N, an English word that has no equivalent in any squiggly language - but in the present context, a close approximation might be.....let's just say that being an animal handler doesn't necessarily mean you work in a circus.) Anyway readers, enough about all that stuff, its time for some much more agreeable Buddhist tolerance. Some Zen to counteract my aggressive motorcycle jihadist tendencies, if you will. My personal challenge will be to moderate my own intolerance and lessen my attachment to material things (excluding motorcycles, oh and beer). And I will abandon Adelaide to the infuriating chaos that is Mad March. I may or may not succeed, but as usual, I will keep striving for my own contentment in the face of all that gets right up my nose, I promise. Seeking enlightenment surely generates better karma than any kind of conquest anyway. So here we go again !!

The itinerary this time has a little overlap with last year's ride. We start in Chiang Mai once more, and go straight onto Highway 1148 again (woo hoo!!), finishing up in Nan again. This stretch is worth the money just on its own, the rest of the trip is just a bonus as far as I'm concerned. Then over the border into Laos as far as Xayaboury, down through Luang Prabang, Vang Vieng, the Lao capital of Vientiane then back into Thailand to Chiang Khan. We then revisit Khao Kho, onto Uttaradit, then back to Chiang Mai. Ten days of riding, covering some 2,200 km. There are some tricky bits, the first being that in Laos, traffic drives on the right, so we have to switch sides for a while. My experience has been that while I have covered plenty of distance on the "other" side, it takes a while to get used to it, and I find that if you have to switch from one side to the other, then back again, it can be quite dangerous. One really has to concentrate, and maintain a high level of situational awareness, which can be very draining. I expect that like last year, it will be hot, it will be smoky from the burning of the rice crop stubble, and again, we will coincide to some extent with good old Songkran, so we can expect to get very wet and to be dodging even more loonies (but happy loonies) on the roads and footpaths. Don't know about you, but I can't wait. I leave on 13th of March. Until then, think Zen- I am already. I have awoken. I am the bike, the bike is me, we are one and the same, we belong, nothing else matters.

PATTAYA - HEAVEN OR HELL?

Well, there I was, 11 am on a Sunday morning, sitting in a bar in some sleazy alley in Pattaya. OK, so it was across the street from my hotel and I couldn't be stuffed walking any further because its too bloody hot. This is not something I would normally be doing at that time. But I was only nursing a relatively harmless can of Coke Zero, unlike most others around who were still hard at it from the night before. And my hotel room does have to get cleaned sometime. Anyway, on the three giant screen TV's, there was good old AC/DC, all hot'n'sweaty, belting out Highway to Hell at a volume that was setting off car alarms. Go Angus, and take that you Euro wusses! That's classic Oz Rock, that is. Then I thought, well, that's probably a pretty appropriate description of Pattaya generally. Highway to Hell. No speed limits and toll free-perhaps-until you actually get there.

In fact I did already opine to some of you that one gets an uneasy feeling around here that pretty soon, God will lose patience with all the sinning going on in this town to the point where he will wreak his divine vengeance upon it, and smite it from existence in a pillar of righteous fire. You know what, yesterday morning there was a thunderstorm here that convinced me that was exactly what was happening! Holy shit it was terrifying, I can't recall a louder one. But it turned out to be a false alarm, vis a vis Armageddon. Just a routine meteorological event, but highly memorable all the same.

Blind Freddy could tell you that Pattaya is the world's largest knock shop. Whatever your particular bent, you can get it here. Its the mega-mall of carnal desire, normal, abnormal and just plain freaked right out, and let me tell you, I've seen freaky over the last 40 years. Probably the crassest part is called Walking Street, down near the beach, which just goes off like a bomb every night. Freak central, with busloads of unsuspecting and soon-to-be traumatised tourists dumped there just so they can say they've been there. I reckon that's just a distraction. The less spectacular but more insidious underbelly of the place is right next to where I'm staying. You can't say Big Bike Tours doesn't look after their customers!

Anyway, I'm not going to elaborate too much, call me if you want the details. Nothing I can say or do is going to change anything here, and I certainly have no right to occupy the moral high ground, (Hell, I've just had so much oil rubbed into my skin I feel like a Drizabone raincoat--but I do look years younger!) but the truth is that this town is all about sex for sale on an industrial scale, and that, as always, some people are making a heap of money from it at the expense of a lot of others. Ok, nothing new about that, and you can argue over the morality or even the necessity and practicality of it all till you're blue in the face. But I think that underneath all the partying-and there is no shortage of punters wanting to play-Pattaya is not really Fantasyland, the happiest kingdom of them all. I actually think it's a sad place. If people are willing participants, ok fine, that's their business, but I do get the feeling that a lot of people who work here have no choice but to do what they do. And yet even that is unbelievably well disguised most of the time, such is the enigma that is Thailand. I guess if you see and do the same thing all the time, then that is by definition, normal. And then you just try to be as positive as you can. The Buddhists' high level of tolerance and acceptance probably helps, though I'm not sure the Buddha would actually approve. If he does, I might consider switching. I reckon the Christian God might be taking notes though. And of course Allah would definitely be outraged, but apparently it doesn't take much to upset him, and this is not in his electorate anyway. Just as well, because you would find Lord Lucan and Jimmy Hoffa having a beer together before you found a virgin around here.

Moving right along, the annual week of madness that is Songkran (Thai New Year) has just erupted on the streets of Pattaya. Have a look at my earlier blog entry for Songkran in Phuket in 2008 for the squelchy and saturated details. Suffice to say it is in fact impossible to walk down the street without getting (at least) soaking wet. I don't begrudge the Thai kids a bit of fun, they really love it. But inevitably of course, there are squillions of idiot tourists -mostly British lager louts in this area (ie tattooed boofheads in shorts and singlets) -who want to get right into it, and are armed with humungous water cannons and bags of coloured flour to prove it. Well, I suppose a Pom having a wash is a good thing. I carefully timed this trip to avoid most of Songkran, but a day or two overlap was necessary. So, basically I'm a refugee in the hotel until I can sneak out for a feed later tonight, and hopefully I can dry my stuff before heading up to Bangkok tomorrow afternoon for my flight home tomorrow (Monday) night. But there's always a few people on the ball. This year's big seller on the streets is a waterproof pouch that you can sling around your neck to keep your important documents safe and dry.

Did I mention the food?? Sure, I did! That's one thing I will seriously miss when I leave Thailand this time. Half the things I've eaten on this trip I've never even seen before, and the textures and taste combinations are beyond mere words. I'll have some work to do when I get back to replicate this fantastic gastronomic experience. Till next time, thanks for coming. Did I really say that?

NAN TO PATTAYA

This ride is becoming a bit of a blur. It also points out to me how hard it must be to run a bike tour that pleases everybody. While the small group size allowed everybody to get to know one another, and it was in fact a sports bike oriented group, anything that wasn't directly connected to screaming through the twisties or chugging beer as soon as you get to the next hotel appeared to me to be dismissed with contempt. The organisers had put together what I thought was a good balance of great riding and scenery, good accommodation with sensational food and interesting cultural features worthy of some consideration. I would have liked to have spent a bit more time soaking up the culture, getting the feel of the countryside and interacting with the locals than I got. The itinerary was frequently changed at the last minute in as much as numerous side trips or visits of interest were dropped or at least cut short because of some majority declaration of disinterest. And how you can book on a tour that runs from Chiang Mai to Pattaya, then complain because it goes to Pattaya, and necessitates some highway riding to get there within the allocated time frame is, frankly, beyond my comprehension.

This did not happen on any of the Compass Expeditions trips I have done. So maybe I was on the wrong tour, I just don't know. I guess adventure riders pace themselves and understand that each day is an achievement, while sports bikers just want an adrenaline hit. Right, so that's my little gripe. But I'm happy that I got to Pattaya in one piece, without crashing or dropping the bike and without getting crook after probably taking a few risks, both on the road and at chow time. I now have a few days to relax.

Now, back to the ride. From Nan, where we stayed in a resort that looked more like it should have been in Africa than Thailand, we headed to Sukhothai via the Sirikit Dam and had an interesting ferry crossing along the way. Sukhothai is one of Thailand's ancient capitals, and it's Historical Park is World Heritage listed. Dating from around 1200AD, its stone pillars and Wats (temples) are reminiscent of Cambodia's Ankor Wat, and are in themselves quite splendid in their scale and setting. Time for some photos.

Round adobe huts with thatched roofs in Nan.

A very basic ferry with no propulsion at all.

It gets towed (slowly) by this guy in a punt with an outboard and long shafted prop.

World Heritage Listed Sukhothai Historical Park

From here, we moved on to Khao Kho, which is known as Little Switzerland. Bit of a stretch, I thought, but an elevated area with pleasant scenery and a year round mild climate. Two things of interest here. First, a memorial park dedicated to the Thai military who fought off a serious attempt at overthrow by the Thai Communist Party backed by China between 1965 and 1984. And by the look of some of the damaged equipment, it was the real thing.

The other point of interest is the hotel we stayed in, and the unreal collection of motorcycles belonging to the owner.  In two purpose built display areas, this guy has a heap of Harleys, including an outrageous chopper, a K1600GT Sport, a Can-Am Spider, a 1200GSA, a Goldwing F6B, several Vespa Scooters, a pile of other Jap stuff, and several old BMWs undergoing restoration. Oh, and one of those 1950's silver bullet Desi and Lucy caravans, fully kitted out. And what does this guy do for a living, apart from running a not so flash hotel? He is the retired Chief of Police for the region. Hmmmm. 2+2 = 4 would be my conclusion.

From Khao Kho, we headed to Khao Yai (confusing, isn't it?) Until I found out Khao means Mountain in Thai. Here is the first gazetted of Thailand's numerous National Parks, about  2000 sq kms and home to lots of wildlife, including tigers, buffalo, monkeys and elephants, and numerous smaller animals and birds. I did see an elephant and a few monkeys, and thankfully, no tigers. And the Park is also the site of the waterfall used in the movie The Beach, starring Leonardo Decaprio. Even though in the movie, it was supposed to be on an island somewhere off the coast, not in the middle of the bloody country. Poetic licence I guess.

And from there, as noted above, it was a bit of a bunfight from that point on as we headed to Pattaya on the more major roads and National Highways. And as I recall my previous visit to Thailand, where we noted that within about 160 km of Bangkok, the traffic starts to build up rapidly, and the jockeying for supremacy really gets going. No different this time. Once again, it was bloody hot, particularly when the traffic stops, or while lane splitting to get to the front of the line. I filled my Camelback twice, drank another couple of litres on top of that, I sweated like an absolute pig and was completely knackered from the heat and concentration when I got here. I had to take some electrolyte replacement and stand in the shower for half an hour to get my core temperature down. And once again, my riding gear is absolutely putrid. It sure gets a workout. I dumped a pair of gloves a few days ago, and right now, my riding pants are soaking in the tub, and I think I'll leave my boots and helmet here. They owe me nothing, and it will be easier to pack without them.

I may or may not have anything to add regarding Pattaya itself. I'm here for 5 nights which may be way too much or way too little, depending on one's point of view. Watch this space.


 

HIGHWAY 1148

Apparently this particular stretch of bitumen in Thailand's north east is rated in the top ten motorcycle roads in the world. I guess such claims are usually pretty spurious, ie says who? what kind of road? what does "best" mean anyway? etc. Tell you what, if you like fast sweeping bends, fast climbs, even faster descents, the odd switchback, hardly any other traffic and about 100 km of winding bitumen as smooth as a baby's bum, you might want to look into it. And the scream from the Arrow exhaust at 11,000 rpm just put the icing on the cake.

I'm no Valentino Rossi, but just check out my back tyre after one of the most exhilarating rides I've ever had. Say no more.




YEAH, BABY !!

 

BLESSED ARE THE BIG NOSES..........

The Thai word for westerners is "falang", which means long or big nose. A rather unflattering term, but probably an interesting observation about what they see as our most prominent and overt feature. Well, if you dish it out, you have to be able to cop it back, so I say fair enough. I really do like the Thai culture though. It is built on a solid foundation of Buddhist  tolerance and respect, as well as lack of ego. Sure, this doesn't apply to everyone, and they have some of the same problems we all do, but we could learn a lot from them.

Well, I was pretty much right. It is fast, seriously fast. Faster than I want to go really. However, as the entire country seems to be covered in really heavy smoke, its not like I'm missing out on seeing anything. That is to say, if I was going slower, I would not have seen any more. So I have been concentrating on riding, not looking at panoramic vistas. We have a small group, 2 Aussies, 1 American and me, with a ride leader and support vehicle driver alternating these duties. The routes chosen are picked primarily on how many bends they have, so this is very much a sportsbike type tour. We have covered a lot of distance without making much progress, if I can put it that way. Less adventure, more speed, but a change is a good thing.

Get this, my bike is fitted with a siren and a set of alternating blue and red police flashing lights!! Only in Thailand. Handy things to have, and naturally I have been having heaps of fun with them, mostly at the expense of unsuspecting road users. The bike itself has a short underslung exhaust, with an Arrow muffler, and it doesn't muffle much at all really. The bike has a punchy exhaust note anyway, but the Arrow gives it a nice loud bark, and it is fun to ride, if a little uncomfortable for a guy my height with its low seat. See photos below.

We have been riding for 4 days, basically in a circle. First we headed south from Chiang Mai, then west to the Burmese border, and followed it up to the Golden Triangle region where Burma, Thailand and Laos meet. We have had a boat ride across the Mekong into Laos for some local shopping. We then headed south along the Laotian border on Hwy 1148 to Nan, which is due west of Chaing Mai. Today is a rest day in Nan, so I have time to catch up on things like laundry and blogging. From time to time we cross paths with mass tourism, but most of the time we are on backroads, so I'm happy getting into places where few others go. Our accommodation is very good, and the food is sensational. We are almost totally eating local, and I've only blown my head off with chillie just the once (and I like it hot!). I try not to think too hard about things like kitchen hygiene, que sera, sera, but so far so good.

Generally the roads have been good, although the backroads are frequently narrow and bumpy, often with patches of gravel, so one does need to be on the ball. Traffic has been quite manageable, with the odd scary moment, but it all seems to flow with no fuss, and no aggro either. The Thais seem quite unconcerned about such minor matters as they go about their business.

 

 

GOTTA GET A SET OF THESE !!