Some Mothers Do Have Em'

From Pai we completed the Mae Hong Son Loop. I'm not really very good at describing roads, all that I can say is that it was like a 1000km racetrack. My tyres were once again rounded when we completed it. The last night of the loop we stopped in a very nice guesthouse next to a river. There was limited parking space so I was forced to park in a bush. The next morning I had a small colony of giant red ants who had decided to make my radiator home.

We nipped back to Chiang Mai for one night so that we could plan our next step. We both wanted to spend Christmas somewhere nice, and since Carlos didn't have much time, yet still wanted to visit Laos and Cambodia, we decided to try to get to a beach in Southern Cambodia.

We set off East towards one of the border crossings with Laos through some fantastic mountain scenery down some very good small roads. Even the worse roads in Thailand are better than the best roads in India. They were only bad because they were being made into new roads and had a perfectly flat loose gravel covering. Feeling confident, I managed to drift a couple of times.

As it was getting dark we were in the middle of nowhere. Something flew out of a bush and hit me on my knee. I think it was a bird or a bat. We soon found a small town. There were no hotels but a grass common ground in front of a temple with a very randy dog where I asked a monk whether it would be ok to camp. It was, and we rode a couple of hundred metres to a restaurant to find some food. Since no one spoke English, and my Thai is limited to 'hello', 'thankyou', 'chicken' and 'pad thai', we had little choice in what was given to us - it turned out to be some rather nice instant noodles with fresh chicken and bok choy - delicious.

Afterwards we set off back the 200 metres to our camping ground. For some reason, Carlos decided to instigate colonial rules and rode on the wrong side of the road - to date he still doesn't know why. The oncoming truck that he collided with didn't agree. Thankfully they were not going too fast. Damage to the truck included a rather nice dent in the middle of the bumper. Carlos' mudguard was destroyed and his forks were twisted. We also found later that one of his brake disks seems to be a little out. The problem now was how to handle the tiny angry wife of the truck driver. Since we did not have insurance (3rd Party Insurance is mandatory in Thailand, but no one will insure a non Thai registered bike - Catch 22!) we could either bluff it using our European cover, or pay up. Lots of people turned up to watch this spectacle and the word 'Fallang' was mentioned many times. Thankfully a lady who spoke very good english was amongst them who informed us that they wanted 150,000 Baht for the damage. This equated to about 3000Euros. Yikes! After much further converstation it turned out there had been an error in translation and the sum was 15,000 Baht - 300 Euros, Better. I leant Carlos some money meaning he could avoid being lynched or a having to spend night in a police cell. I drafted up a piece of paper saying that the damage had been paid for and the matter was now closed and had both parties and a witness sign it - I felt like a UN amabassador.

We pushed Carlos' bike to the temple grounds and set to work making it roadworthy. After a good nights sleep, punctuated by various dog fights, we finished the work and could set off. We soon reached the Mekong and found two border crossings into Laos we weren't expecting. One was a brand new bridge not listed in Lonely Planet, the other was just a shallow river crossing. On the Thai side people sat in small shops selling every convenience imaginable. On the Laos side a woman washed her families underpants in the river.

The Unofficial road in Laos.

Whilst passing through a small village further down the road, I spotted a rather nice looking convenience shop and knowing how much Carlos likes to hang around drinking cola and smoking, decided to have a puncture on my front tyre. I repaired it in record time and once again we set off.

A little further down the road and at approximately 80kph and the master link on my chain decided it had had enough. The first I knew of this was when my engine cut and everything suddenly went silent... I knew what had happened and expected to slowly drift to a stop, instead things got interesting rather quickly. The chain locked up my back wheel and I came to a rather abrupt, yet stylish sideways skidding stop. Amazingly I had managed to stay upright so I turned to grin at Carlos. We dismounted to inspect the damage. Indeed the master link had dissapeared and a short search yielded no result so we made the decision to tow my bike with Carlos' about 1km back down the road to find a mechanic. My front tyre had also sprung another leak to make things interesting - I think the chain might have flicked forwards to do that.

The other way to stop whilst doing 80kph.

At the mechanics and they immediately knew what to do, cutting a link out and using one of the existing pins to fix the chain, only problem now was that it was too tight, so we ground the slot on the swing arm to allow the wheel to sit further forwards. Problem solved. I also got them to properly patch my tyres since I had had enough for one day. Total cost of work, about 4 Euros.

Once again we tried our luck at getting to the Laos border and made it to Nong Kai shortly after dark, a town seemingly exclusively populated with prostitutes and old Germans. We would head across the border the next day.

I am now in Laos and can't be bothered typing up much more so will update with further details of my adventures at a later date.