First rides and impressions outside of Bangkok; central and west Thailand

On the way out of Bangkok our first stop was a big Honda shop which we saw on the side of the street and reminded us of our broken speedometer cable. Immediately 3 guys were surrounding us, observing and discussing while Sascha tried to explain what we need. In the meantime another boy came to me and gave me a big bottle of cool water with a big smile – what a nice service. After it was clear what we need one of the guys left on his scooter and came back after 10 min with a cable… unfortunately too long. So he left again. The second one was fitting, hurray! The cost was 150 THB (not even 4 €). Happy we continued getting out of the city.

In Kanchanaburi next to the Kwai River we spend our first night in a raft (room on the river) watching the moonlight and the jumping fish after a nice curry from the street. Restless and excited to see more we left the next morning to Sanklaburi, a dead end street because of the border to Burma (Myanmar) with plenty of villages and their kitchen streets along the road. Up in the mountains we found a place to stay with a view over the lake and had some nice small tours on the bike around the area. Of cause we had a look at the border (which was more or less unspectacular as we did not tried to cross it ;-)) We met a group of Thai-Biker who went out for a weekend trip and had some nice chats with them as one of them studied in Germany – we were meeting them again and again on the road.

When we left we decided to go through the National Park as we saw there could be a ferry to cross the lake. We followed a nice small road which turned dirt road after a while climbing up the hills and going through the jungle in the end. A bit scary as we did not now what animals they have there around. We heard later on that they have Leopards and some other things… We had some stops there and every sound in  the bush let us …. ;) When we arrived at the ferry stop cars were already cuing up for the ferry in the middle of nowhere! Lucky we just could fit the bike in a small corner. We hopped on the ferry and crossed the lake. Following a great curvy mountain road finally we arrived again in Kanchanaburi. But back to the road through the mountains for a second. There was fire everywhere in that forest, anyway there is fire around us most of the time, either they burn the sugar fields down after harvesting or the forest is just burning somewhere. It doesn’t bother the Thais so why it should bother us at the moment – except for the smell of fire surrounding us.

For the next segment we decided to go for a longer distance direction north, to Sukhotai which is about 450 km north. The sky was grey when we started and we were quite happy about it as it not that hot. Nevertheless our bumps were hurting after a short time already and we had to make some more small stops before we reached a small nice guesthouse in Sukhotai. Time to relax and recap a bit and we negotiated a good price for a very big, nice and clean fan room for the next two days. We like the spirit here around, street markets, night markets, and street kitchens and not to forget the old Sukhotai, 12km away which we could enter and explore with our motorbike. We drove around the ruins and reconstructed temples of this town which is considered as the first independent Thai kingdom.

Today Sascha did some maintenance work at the bike: screws just getting loose because of the vibrations all the time. Our Voltmeter showed that the battery was charged with only 12.1V instead of 14.4… Yeah right the vibrations … Actually he didn’t screw the battery screws tied enough when we got the bike out of the airport in Bangkok… So he had to do it again properly… “I said Vibrations!” “Yeahhh right!”

Tomorrow we will go west once more following the border line of Burma on the way direction Chiang Mai… It is supposed to be a narrow winding road with not much traffic or people around and we are already excited!