Thailand Mae Hong Son loop.
Ok, so after the Munnar bike trip, I was sure I wont do bike trips for a long time but seems like one month was too long for me, and with Chinese New Year around the corner, it was the right time for another trip. I knew I was going when my friend showed me all the bikes this rental called POP riders had for rent. I booked a Kawasaki Versys 650, 150cc upgrade from the 500cc bullets I rode during the Munnar trip.
For this trip, we did some paranoid planning. This has produced a wonderful map with attractions and other stuff well documented for anyone who wants to do this same trip. you can see this map below, and I will continue to add more locations and details to the map. We were not able to make to all the spots on this map, mainly because of our time constraint, but nevertheless we tried to make it to most of it.
For this trip, we did some paranoid planning. This has produced a wonderful map with attractions and other stuff well documented for anyone who wants to do this same trip. you can see this map below, and I will continue to add more locations and details to the map. We were not able to make to all the spots on this map, mainly because of our time constraint, but nevertheless we tried to make it to most of it.
Our first stop was Bangkok, we flew in directly from Changi , Singapore. We had two nights in BKK, including the night we flew in. We stayed at Khao San road, which is closer to the old town, but is a very happening street. We stayed right on the street as in I open my window and boom its a party down there - I hope I don't have to say I couldn't sleep for two nights due to the blaring music. On this road there are many joints where you can get drunk and frolic around. Its a lot like many of the party streets you see around the world say pub street in Cambodia. I liked it slightly better here, simply because the crowd was quite awesome, and I had a good time. The street sells everything from food and booze to arts, crafts t shirts to fried insects and my personal favorite - laughing gas. This was a new thing for me. I have never tried laughing gas before. You get them in balloons and you fill your lungs with the gas real fast. This gets you high real quick and you can feel the high shooting up in less than a minute. I have no idea how it works, but I tried 4 or 5 shots and was getting drinks in between, and I remember the last one one got my head baked. For me the feel was like melting away, and you become this one point of high. It goes away in about 2 minutes, and the ride down is also sort of fun!
From Bangkok we flew to Chiang Mai, where we would get our bikes. Being a very touristy place, getting taxis and all are pretty easy. Just make sure you get out with buffer time, because the Bangkok traffic can sometimes go into deadlocks. In Chiang Mai, we had booked bikes from Pop Rider and they have the biggest fleet of rental bikes in North Thailand. Its a sight worth it for any bike enthusiast - rows and rows of ADV bikes, off-roaders KTM dirt bikes, cruisers, to small displacement scooters all stacked up like sardines! We had initially agreed to pay a deposit for the bike, but then I decided to keep my passport and to keep the money. I got a Kawasaki Versys for myself. We also took one Yamaha Bolt and a Forza scooter, This was my first time on 650 cc. I must say I fell in love with this bike from day one. This was the closest to a proper ADV bike I have ridden, and it felt amazing! I was wondering how the extra hp would handle, the biggest I had being the duke 390 at 43 hp. But the 60 hp on this bike is so well tamed and under control, I have never felt this confident on any other bike! I must reiterate that this is no exaggeration of me somewhat liking a bike. If I would skip lunch to save for a bike this would be it ( I'm being realistic here since the Versys 650 is around 6.5 lacs on road Mumbai) A duke is a duke is a duke, but hell, long distance touring is just not the duke's niche! I will definitely write about all the bikes that I have taken out for ride soon.
I havent completed this page yet :P ....