thai travel piece

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Roads to Ruin

A slow sashay from Korat to Chiang Mai, two-up on a step-thru!

Getting the girlfriend's step-thru from Korat to Chiang Mai, about 500
miles, just about covered by any excuse for a ride... the Yamaha a
machine I'd reluctantly piloted for short trips and treated with a
certain amount of disdain, which included going the wrong way through
the box (it was four down for up and clutchless). Top speed about 75mph
but 60mph more realistic as the rear inner-tube tended to explode when
subjected to excessive speed, not to mention the girlfriend throwing a
fit every time I wound the OHC thumper up to 70mph.

Built to accommodate whole Thai families rather than a mere couple of
lost souls with a combined mass of 260lbs, the Yam was actually quite
spacious and could reasonably accommodate my 5'10" height. The seat,
though, was definitely designed for short haul trips, half an hour
enough to get my backside complaining. A new seat the obvious solution,
a few shops in Korat that would rework the existing item into a more
supportive design but there was no time for that. That's how I ended up
taping a folded towel atop the existing saddle, much to the amusement
of the locals.

Never a fan of the basic step-thru design, although at least it sported
seventeen inch wheels rather than the silly little things found on
scooters, I am at least appreciative of the storage capacity between
seat and down-tube, although the idiot who designed the seat so it
hinges forward needs a good kicking - as in having to remove my
carefully bungee-corded bag every time the bike needed fuel.
Nevertheless, the Yam benefited from carrying its luggage near its
centre of gravity and didn't even seem to mind another pile of junk
thrown in the cute front shopping basket, dearie (I can see all the
ancient mariners out there mouths agape at the state I've come to, but
my nights are much more interesting than the bike, so like I give a
****...)

The cost of fuel for the trip turned out to be dead on six quid (at 40p
a litre) - or around 125mpg - even throwing in a hotel stop-over at the
halfway mark for a fiver, it worked out cheaper than taking any of the
available public transport options, though not easier! A new chain and
sprocket set fitted before departure at the ludicrously cheap cost of
five quid (including labour) and for the first time in its existence,
the tyre pressures were set by an actual gauge rather than some macho
youth wielding an air-hose. The mileometer read 15,600 miles (actually
nearly dead on 25000 kilometres) which probably explained the totally
clapped out, almost seized solid chain.

I woke up after a night of fitful sleep, feeling like opting out and
going on the bus. But once I actually bounced out of bed into a cold
water shower, I though f..k it, a good a way to go out as any - mowed
down by mad, amphetamine crazed, lorry drivers in the midst of a
tropical storm; Bangkok, a couple of hundred miles south, being lashed
by the edge of a typhoon as we were leaving Korat. I'd promised the
babe a leisurely saunter up north, with the odd bout of sightseeing and
plenty of food stops. But having departed three hours later than
planned and being a proper biker at heart, such sanity was soon
jettisoned in favour of a 65-70mph cruise through the Korat heartland
in the general direction of Chaiyapoon as that particular road artery
began just next to where we were staying.

Most major roads leading into Bangkok are hell on earth, total
death-zones for a small motorcycle, but once away from the industrial
heartland, the highways are generally well maintained and not too busy
with cages. In fact, most highways have a half lane to the left which
is just for motorcycles - which completely disappears when the road
narrows to accommodate a bridge; potentially lethal in the night. Throw
in blue skies, about thirty degrees C mitigated by our self produced
gale, and I was soon into the buzz of riding a bike. Hardly any cars
and all the plod sensibly asleep in their air-conditioned roadside
huts. Mostly countryside dotted with small towns that slowed us down a
bit.

About fifty miles, and an hour, down the road, I pulled over for some
bum relief, buy some gas (no idea how frequent were the stations) and
to check the map to see where we were supposed to turn off. It was at
this point I discovered that I'd thoughtlessly brought along a map of
Bangkok rather than of Thailand - bloody useful, that, and got the babe
going, doubtless fearful of ending up in Laos or somewhere. I knew that
even if we missed the turning, we could still turn left at Chaiyapoon
instead, at the price of extending the journey by about twenty miles or
so. No great hassle I laughingly reassured she-who-must-be-obeyed, who
muttered something about advanced senility setting in. The gas boy
found the towel and the need to dismantle my luggage hilarious,
especially as it needed less than half a gallon of fuel. Better safe
than sorry, I didn't fancy pushing the bike in the late morning heat.

The Yamaha generally comported itself quite well, although the angle of
the handlebars in relation to my body caused a minor soreness in my
right wrist; clutchless, it was easy enough to relieve any tension in
the other hand and if I was doing this as a regular chore I would opt
for a cruise control (as ridiculous as that sounds on such a slow bike)
and might even be tempted to bodge one on myself. I could just imagine
myself zooming across the Thai landscape with both hands free to give
the locals a regal wave. Constant cruising did churn up a lot of wind
noise, allowing cars to creep alongside without any aural warning; the
right-hand mirror not much use at speed. Even flat out, stability was
oddly good, given the rather wimpy front forks - though thankfully not
those godawful trailing link things Honda C90's used to sprout - almost
worn out tyres and the way it would sometimes amble off to the left on
take-off. With my luggage giving me something to grip with my knees, as
per a proper motorcycle, I even found I could fling the thing around
the odd patch of pot-holes.

But the seat, even with the added padding from the towel, was getting
to me as the first hundred miles were clocked up. Incidentally, the
turn off was well indicated and even a drunken fool couldn't have taken
the wrong route. I'd had a quick five minute stop in the middle of
nowhere after the woman started wriggling around. She also complaining
about a stiff neck - she likes to peer around my shoulder, convinced
that I am going to throw the Yam down some deep crater or mow down an
innocent pedestrian (too expensive but I do play chicken with stray
dogs, you have to face them down...).

By the time we rolled into a minor town, clueless as to which turning
to take to fast exit the place, we were both in a little pain. It took
a few seconds for my joints to creak back into place whilst my
erstwhile passenger did a passable imitation of a John Wayne walk as
she shuffled off to the toilet; how to age a babe by ten years in one
easy lesson. In such circumstances there's only one thing to do, buy
some food; Thais love to eat! The restaurant looked a bit dirty to my
taste so an ice cold bottle of Vitamilk (soya milk) sufficed; apart
from two cups of coffee for breakfast the first thing I'd had all day.
Whilst the lady was drowning her sorrows with a couple of plates of
Thai food, I ambled off around the town in search of a book shop. 30
baht sufficed for a map of Thailand; the print was so small I couldn't
read the road numbers but the babe could, much to her amusement; god
knows how I will be treated when I relive my second childhood with a
woman thirty years my junior rather than a mere twenty. Be fun to find
out, though.

So far we'd been lucky - good roads, minimal traffic and not a cloud in
the sky. I should've known better, having previously experienced the
joys of sun exposure whilst ambling along atop a motorcycle in the Thai
countryside. I had factor 40 suncream which I religiously applied to my
nose but not having a lot left I was a bit parsimonious on the rest of
my face; my forehead already bright red and feeling painful; whilst the
back of my hands looked almost diseased - too hot for gloves but I did
run to some heavy-duty boots, worn as a matter of course to fend off
rabid dogs and mad tourists both, and a denim jacket to keep the sun
off my neck and arms.

Loaded up with more fuel, though there was no need to be religious
about it as there were plenty of stations, ambled off into the
afternoon heat under strict instructions to keep the speed down as she
was absolutely convinced that the tyres would explode when subjected to
the combination of forty degrees of heat and high speed. Let's just say
that the back tyre was too hot to touch after a fast fifty miles (and
I'd noticed that the spoked wheels didn't have any tape inside the rims
when we'd had past punctures!).

Unfortunately, keeping the speed under 60mph meant that the self
produced gale was of insufficient proportions to keep me cool and my
right hand kept opening her up a little - after all, this was Thailand
where you're supposed to live for the moment rather than worry about
the future - and occasionally blasting along at all of 75mph over the
flat landscape, the motor thrumming away contentedly, until the
passenger threw a wobbly and started digging me in the ribs. It has to
be said that the miles (it's all kilo's in Thailand but I think in
miles, so there) clicked off a hell of a lot faster at 70mph than they
did at 60mph, a dynamic dislocation that offered no sane resolution.

All through this journey I thought in 50 mile segments - it made no
sense to tick off distance done in the context of more than 250 miles;
okay, give me a large, comfortable cruiser and I could get my mind
around it. But fifty miles was something simply achievable on a
step-thru and easy to feel accomplishment as each ten miles was
completed, trying to time it in under ten minutes, Sounds easy but
there were often towns slowing us down, as well as the odd agricultural
vehicle meandering all over the shop, and the odd five minute stop for
bum relief. That said, there was plenty of good, sweeping tarmac that
would've been a blast on a 100mph motorcycle but too dangerous to go
faster than that; never quite sure what the radical shadows cast by the
trees might hide - in Korat they seemed to take a real delight in
aligning the road humps to slow traffic so that they looked almost
identical to shadows cast by the trees - one of the reasons the babe
was a bit edgy about my eyesight as I wouldn't notice them to the last
possible moment; though it has to be said I never had a dodgy moment on
this country trip.

Riding through the Thai countryside, mostly flat but verdant
nevertheless, gave an impression of beauty and relaxation but anyone
who's stayed in somewhere like Petchabun - which for complex reasons I
now had no intention of stopping in - will know it's really
super-heated, mosquito infested swampland given a bare coating of
civilization that dissipates as soon as the sun sets. Mad dogs, crazed
locals and deep rooted nastiness the least of it. But zooming along on
the Yam, at once a floating part of the scenery and equally (and
thankfully) disparate from it, was a kind of buzz even if the highway
was a touch on the big and busy side. Three years since I'd last been
in that dismal zone and a huge amount of infrastructure had gone down;
previously small ramshackle towns blooming into minor cities and well
hidden side turnings opening up to dual carriagway type roads leading
to other cities. Mind, they'll need to cut a hell of a lot of rice to
pay for it all! Petchabun famed for the quality of its chicken but the
bird flu epidemic seems to have put all the highway stalls out of
business, much to the disgruntlement of my stomach. More gas and
Vitamilk and bum respite.

It was a relief to turn off on to highway 225, which brought us back
sharply into the real countryside. There is no direct, straight line,
route from Korat to Phinsanulok, have to hop, skip and jump along major
and minor highways to do it in the shortest distance. If you have a
Merc it's probably faster just to keep to the main highways and make up
the extra distance in speed.

The babe kept muttering it was 800 kilo's to Chiang Mai and we were
still a long way off, almost having a fit when some roadside vendor
told her it was 500 kilo's from our halfway stop in Phinsanulok rather
than the 360 kilo's I'd guessed. As it turned out, I was right and we'd
done more than half the distance in the first day. Those last thirty
miles were the worst, my bum was in bitter complaint mode and my head
was being done in by a fierce sun straight out of a nuclear explosion
that was shining directly in my eyes. And all the locals were out and
about in their cages, finally hitting on heavy traffic as we headed for
the city centre as half the people in the town finished work for the
day. It would've been easy to hit something as my concentration was a
bit shot; decades of biking got me through on sheer survival instincts
even when I was half blinded by the sun - stupidly, I complained about
the sun to the babe and the gods got their revenge the next day. The
first hotel we spotted (well disguised with no English signs), we
rolled on in there, creaked ourselves off the bike and, I at least,
felt pretty high, if a bit bum sore, at surviving so far.

The first half of the trip had taken eight hours and I was determined
to do better on the second half; hard going to get the babe to grasp
the basic physics of the less time in the saddle, the less sore your
arse gets! There wasn't a touch of blue in the sky, just dark grey, as
we exited the hotel at 6.30am, dead on schedule for once. Wasn't
actually raining but the lack of cloud movement meant I had no idea if
we were riding into or away from heavy rain. In theory it was chasing
up from the south but it was also the beginning of the rainy season and
could come in any which way. Couldn't say it was cold but it was
definitely cool, allowing me to wind the Yamaha up to 70-75mph,
determined to do a fast first hundred miles that would allow for a
saner amble later, especially if the weather got to us. More than half
the journey ahead would be up and down some wild old mountain roads as
we gradually ascended to the northern city of Chiang Mai. Basically,
stick the bike on Route 11 and stay with it until we hit our target,
although, just to confuse innocent foreigners, there were a couple of
times when the road numbers changed for a short distance as it skirted
large cities.

Pushed the Yamaha to its maximum for an hour and half, great roads with
not a lot of traffic at that time of day. The babe insisted on
breakfast, some kind of noodle nonsense that would make me throw up if
I ever indulged. The next stage of the journey, all hardcore curves and
hills... some serious muscle went into wrestling a road out of the
mountains on Route 11, an absolute determination to delineate the
sovereignty of the Thai nation from south to north stamped on the route
as it wound its way up and down, around and around, solid rock. Twenty,
thirty mile stretches when if you had something as simple as a puncture
you were seriously f..ked - it was at this point in the journey - all
ancient mariners out there please be seated before you fall over in
sheer astonishment - that I recalled the carefully collected but rarely
used toolkit was sitting in a box in what passed for my office but
would normally be classed as a spare bedroom! Clever Trevor!

This winding, descending and ascending route, swept by rain and
bordered by wild vegetation hiding all kinds of nastiness, also
nurtured that most fantastical of beasts - bloody great lorries that
pulled massive trailers loaded up to unreal heights straight out of
hell. Up some of the hills they barely moved, appearing as if
gravitational forces were about to flip them backwards! Their drivers
were renown for 24 hour shifts, fed on heightened awareness thanks to
the twin demons of rice whisky and readily available amphetamines.
These chaps, when sane, tended to drive within a millimetre of the
white line that divided the left lane from the metre or so wide far
left lane that was alloted to motorcycles - and it was kind of surreal
to sneak up on their bumpers, apply maximum acceleration for the
unlikely length of their vehicles and hope - bloody pray - that none of
the twitchiness resultant from their various and multiple addictions
would go down just at the moment when you were sweeping past. There was
nothing but death and destruction if you ran out of luck at that
particular moment in time - either thrown half a mile down a valley or
crushed against a metre or two high concrete embankment. The babe
tended to clamp her body all the way around me in total fright at such
moments but we somehow ran with our combined luck and survived the day.

The roads were wet but not awash; mostly the cagers had their
windscreen wipers off - I kept clocking the oncoming vehicles for signs
that we were heading into a disaster area. Our luck mostly held. 60mph
was about right, enough air velocity to keep the rain off but not so
fast that if things turned evil I couldn't used the brakes to pull out
of danger - the air whipped the rain off my trousers and actually kept
me dry; weird but wonderful: the babe ended up with soaked jeans from
inadequate rear mudguarding. A larger motorcycle, at this point in
time, would've been a waste of space.

The gods tried us a little with a taste of a tropical storm, the kind
of rain that soaks you in seconds - before I could even think about
pulling off the road my trousers were water-logged and I thought, sod
it, slow down to 40mph but ride on through it, even though I couldn't
really suss the texture of the concrete road surface submerged beneath
the blackness of a god-made river. The grey sky gave no hint if we were
running from or into the storm but five minutes later, as we ascended
through sweeping curves, the rain was back to its previous level and I
maxed out the Yamaha to burn the water off my person. Not once - not
once, mind - did the Yam, on worn out Thai-lop tyres, even give a hint
of a twitch or slide and I really don't understand why! But I ain't
complaining.

I'd adapted to the Yam's ways by taking off in second gear (even
two-up, the slight lack of acceleration more than made up by the
omission of one gear change) and getting it into fourth as quickly as
possible; the only gear in which it normally felt happy. However, some
of the vertical ascents really threw the dynamics of the little thumper
engine - at one point it was doing 40mph in top gear and when I went to
open the throttle a touch more I'd found it was already fully open! On
the flat and up minor hills it would pull 65mph with the throttle
barely open. Through those wild hills, less than half a dozen times,
I'd actually had to downchange to third gear to hold 50mph and once or
twice I thought I might actually have to rev it out in second gear but
we got to the top of the hill before it became necessary. Give the
Yamaha the benefit of the doubt, throw in the scarcity of oxygen as we
ascended to ever greater heights, and give the little thumper the
thumbs up, It would surely be churlish to do anything else.

Deep into the ride it occurred to me that gas stations were becoming
rare sights. The Yam's fuel gauge was pessimistic, even dead agaisnt
the stop, ten miles were left - and the milestones said there was a
town 30 miles ahead. It was a fine calculation whether we would hit the
rare bit of civilization before the fuel ran out. Usually, when there
were no gas stations, small shops sold petrol by the litre bottle but I
had yet to see any evidence of that in this particular province! I knew
that Lampang was totally modern in its surfeit of gas stations but
there wasn't enough fuel to get there! So as wove down into a valley, I
thought about turning off the main highway to follow the road into a
minor town to search for fuel but such digressions went against the
grain; running against whatever luck you were granted. Five miles later
we rolled into a little town on the main road with the only shop
selling fuel out of the bottle for many miles around, and fed the
frugal Yamaha some much needed red juice. The babe, always a reluctant
passenger, was however full of herself in telling how far we'd come so
far (and every phone conversation for the next week or two began with
the retelling of the motorcycle adventure). Smiles all round.

At some point the disdain (for step-thru's) dissipated - I was, after
all, still alive - even if my arse wasn't! There was something a little
surreal about this reluctant journey though not without some relief as
we finally exited the mountains and rolled on down towards the
modernity of Lampang city, where a food stop soon restored our energy.
The last part of the journey a fast troll along major roads only
notable for the bum-ache that set in some fifty kilo's from our
destination. We had beaten the weather, rolled with the step-thru's
mannerisms and limitations, and reached our base in one piece; the
Yamaha still in fine fettle! And the second half of the trip had taken
less than five hours...

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