I've got a bike and the perils of hotel swimming pools

Kwans family ( Ad on left, Kwan mother next to him)

I’ve got a bike, I’ve got a bike, I’ve got a bike

To be honest I hadn’t even thought about giving her a name until she arrived at the hotel, I’m open to suggestions and I’ll make a choice in the next couple of days. To assist the basic facts are she is a 2001 Yamaha XVS1100 Dragstar (please no Danny la Rue suggestions) the reg no is:
มนต 111

Which is probably not much help, the letters are a bit tricky the first two are easy they are the Thai equivalent of ‘M’ & ‘N’ and they are low class consonants. The third is a little tricky as it has no English equivalent but is somewhere between a ‘D’ and a ‘T’ and is a middle class consonant for those of you taking notes.
The acquisition was a bit of a pavlova, it is easy to forget what it is like trying to do business in Thailand (or Asia for that matter). I have developed the knack of laughing when absurdities get to you, you tend to get some odd looks but it is a 100% better than losing it which just throws them. Another trick is to pick up on coded messages. The telephone call on Monday from the bike shop was "Your bike is ready, when can you come and pick it up?" translates to "Bring all your money with you and we’ll see what we can do", and then followed up by the kicker "There’s no problem" translate "You can’t miss it".
To be fair to the bike shop owners, there was no mischief involved and they did go out of their way to make sure I was united with my bike the same day that money changed hands.
The day started OK I was in a quandary as weather to wear my motorcycle boots or not, it’s going to be pretty hot and I had no idea what the day was going to bring. I would emphasise that a lot of problems are caused by language difficulties and not being too sure what is going on, I would stress it is their country and their language, I am the outsider. A 9:30 meeting with Ad who was going with me to make sure everything went smoothly. We then went to his bank to draw up the bank cheque (or bank draft as they are known in Blighty) and then off to the motorcycle shop. The bike was there, serviced and with the rack fitted, they had done a good job although the sub plate had been bent getting it on which would need a bit of retro work. I took it out for a spin just to give it the once over whilst Ad went through the paperwork with the shop owner. Paperwork is a favourite here, they like their receipts and chits and forms. I thought there were far too many for the simple purchase of a vehicle. It was at this point it was announced that now they have to take motorcycle to Transport department in Mo chit to get a roadworthy test, tax and to get green book changed over into my name, Hopefully the bike will be ready tomorrow. This is when you laugh. Again the coded message was, "The bike is ready when can you pick it up?" To an outside observer who doesn’t have a hope in hell of keeping up with conversation, even the simplest transaction seems to require an inordinate amount of heated debate and a lot of gesticulation. It is never angry but heated and often lengthy. After what seemed like an eternity Ad told me that the shop will take the bike to the Transport Department and push it through the system in about an hour and a half. Ad and myself would get a taxi there and wait for the call from their man when the bike was ready. Seemed like a plan. So we hopped into a taxi and made our way to the Transport Department. I didn’t know what to expect, the events of the day weren’t turning the way they should have any way. I should have realised that this was a place where all the Bangkok traffic goes to be practice congestion, a seething mass of humanity and wheels. Anyhow It gave us a chance to grab a bite to eat, I was started to heat up quite badly, and really regretting wearing the bike boots. The place also doubled as some sort of government training facility (in case they didn’t think it was crowded enough) and we went into a canteen which was the home to flight school and was packed with uniformed young men and women. So we whiled away a couple of hours there before Ad decided to call the bike shop to see what the go was. The telephone conversation that followed was a little unexpected. The bike shop had decided to take the bike to another ministry building in Bang Na. To give you an idea of the geography Mo Chit and Bang Na are at opposite ends of the one of the sky train lines, in London Underground parlance it is Braintree and Gatwick, Melbourne Connex it is Broadmeadows and Frankston. What an earth he was doing there I will never know and what the hell were we doing sitting in the canteen in the transport department looking at uniformed young girls for over 2 hours. Anyway shop says I should go back to hotel and he would drop the bike off later. So bit of a walk to Mo Chit sky train station, looked like another downpour was on its way because it was getting even muggier than it usually is and my feet snugly inside my bike boots were starting to complain.
I was back in the hotel by 2:30, boots off and discovered I now have very tiny feet. The bike turned up just after 4:00, I heard it arrive. As the hotel is located in central Bangkok and rush hour had started it was not the best time to take it for a spin. I took it out at about 7:00 it was still chockers, I was trying to find the way to Narai hotel where I was going for lunch with Kwan’s friends the next day, also where my friend Michael was staying. The traffic was as hairy as I expected no worse or better. You have to keep your wits about you and to be honest I would have liked a bit of a more friendly environment to get used to a new bike. Concentrating on riding and traffic made it difficult to navigate and as the major turn I wanted to take was closed this threw my plan completely. Managed to negotiate a return route through the university and got back to the hotel in one piece, no problems. So I’ve had my first experience of riding a bike through Bangkok traffic and looking forward to heading north next week. As I understand it before I can get insurance for the bike I have to wait for the green book to be in my name, this takes a couple of days apparently, however anything is possible, I could in Bangkok for a few more days yet.

The perils of hotel swimming pools.

Just a quick blog today to relate an event which took place on the last morning I was at the Bangkok Asia Hotel. I was joined in my regular morning swim by three gentlemen of unknown ethnic persuasion. After I finished my swim I got chatting, turns out they are Iranian business men. Any hoo, I did my cool down laps and got and got into the hot tub for a few minutes. The three Iranians were unaware that there was a hot tub near the pool, it is slightly obscured from view there was some exited chatter and the next thing I knew they joined me in the somewhat small hot tub, no problem there, they seemed a friendly bunch. The chatter continued between them for a few minutes, then the guy who I talked to earlier, who seemed to be the only one with any command of English turned to me and said, "My friend thinks you have a beautiful body". Now I’ve been around a bit and I have travelled, I have had mainly good experiences but the scary ones include being robbed outside my hotel in New Orleans and a Hells Angel grabbing me by the throat because he thought I’d taken pictures of his ‘colours’. But that morning was the first time I had experienced real terror.

It’s been an interesting couple days, firstly and most importantly, I have a bike. Yet another 2001 Yam 1100 Dragstar, the third I looked at. I met Terry (the guy from Asiabike.com) on Wednesday evening and he took me to a bike shop near his home in Lat Prao in the north of the city. This meant a journey which involved both the BTS (Skytrain) and the MRT (Underground). The MRT has just been open 4 years, I don’t know why but when Kwan told me about it ( and she said it was very good ) I had mental images in my head of a mixture of the squalidness of the London underground and carriages stuffed to bursting point. Of course it was nothing like the sort, It is almost identical to its counterpart above ground, except the concourses are if anything bigger. The trains are regular, they are quick clean and efficient. The other thing I realised which applies to both the BTS & MRT is no scardy weirdo’s which is always part of the London Underground experience.

Anyhoo, Terry met me at the Lat Prao MRT station we both hopped on to his step-through and made off on the 20 minute journey to the bike shop. The conversation which followed got more and more freaky as we wobbled out into the maelstrom of traffic. In a round about way of ‘Where you from?’ ‘What you doing in Thailand?’ It transpires that Terry used to own a house in Peterborough UK,, 20 Percival Street to be precise. The reason this is freaky, I used to own 25 Percival Street, virtually opposite, we missed each other by about six years or by the sound of it but just plane freaky.

Arrived at the bike shop which to be honest by western standards was a bit squalid, a bit clutered and with the overall charcoal coloured effect you get when you never clean your garage. However I have seen bike workshops in both Malayasia and Thailand resemble the top of barrel of tar , so this one was pretty good. I’d actually come to have look at look at a Honda 600 steed which are quite popular in Thailand but we found out that he had a 2001 Dragstar for sale as well. I took the Steed out first, it was OK but with a very spongy front end, I suppose you are always going to get that feeling after riding a Duc and then stepping onto what is a factory low rider, but it did feel excessive. Then I took the Dragstar out, I’d never ridden a toe and heel and running boards bike before and Bangkok traffic is being thrown in the deep end, however I thought it was easier to handle than the Steed. And no problems with the heel and toe. I am not going to go into the Harley Clone/ Poor Man’s Harley debate now, that could go on all-night and to be honest I was just after a bike which is fit for the task. Low to the ground, capable of carrying all my stuff and comfortable to do a few K’s on. Either would have done but I was sold on the Dragstar. He was even going to make me a rack for the top box at a bit of an extra cost. Anyway price agreed, the next blog should have me on the road.

I am switching hotels on Tuesday, Ad has recommended the Hotel Florida (why isn’t it Hotel California, great opportunity missed there) which is right next to the next Sky train station along out from Siam Central. It’s about half the price but no swimming pool. I still can’t get over the uneasy feeling I get at the Asia Bangkok, OK there’s the Elvis in the bar three times a week which is just odd, they have even taken to advertising his presence with a repeating video on a large LCD next to the bar. The footage they have used is the actual Elvis doing his Las Vegas thing, now there false advertising and there’s false advertising. I think my main problem is the other guests, I’m not saying they are bad and certainly well behaved, but it would be considered an exclusive hotel if you were booking a holiday through a travel agent it has certainly got far too many golf references for my liking ( Golf and Elvis what are these people thinking ?) But striking up conversations with them is impossible. The only people I speak to who I meet in the pool at 7:00 AM every morning are a French couple who are in their 70’s or could even be their 80’s and are disgustingly healthy. They don’t speak much English (no comment required) but do speak a smattering of Thai, so our common language is Thai. This is worth it just to see the expression on the staff faces, a mixture of bemusement , incredulity and deep suspicion.

The other good news is my parcel has turned up, 12 days to get here but I was just wondering out of the hotel to grab some breakfast and I saw it strapped precariously to a step-through, so I am re united with my boots , gloves and other odd items such as the presents for Kwan’s friends and family.

Anyhow's, next blog should have me on the road

Keep upright.

A horse, a horse, my convienantly located hotel for a horse

I’m at day 8 now, I knew getting hold of a suitable bike would not be straight forward so I am not too stressed about being bike less after 8 days. Problem being larger bikes are few and far between in Thailand with the added complication that to travel to a different country the bike must be registered (or with a green book as it is called here). Most of the larger bikes have been imported directly from Japan and are not registered, this does not necessarily mean that they have been stolen it is just larger bikes particularly European and American bikes are very expensive to register between Bht 75,000 and Bht 100,000 ( about AUD 2,500 and AUD 3,000 ) a significant cost to the bike. The registration process takes between 4 and 6 weeks which would put a severe dent into my schedule.
The legalities are a little vague I understand that it is illegal to have an unregistered vehicle and if you are stopped by plod you are up for a Bht 300 fine , about AUD 10 ( cheaper out of the city ), oddly you can only be stopped and fined once a day. So by my reckoning you would have to be stopped no less than 250 times to make it worthwhile getting the bike registered.
I would be able to ride the bike in Thailand and have to cough up Bht 300 every time I’m stopped but will not be able to leave the country. Needless to say the registration here is no resemblance to the rego we have in Australia (or tax in the UK) it is a one off thing which lasts the entire life of the bike and does not cost anything (as far as I know) to transfer. It sounds like the non registration fine is just another way of swelling the coffers of the local government which I think is corrupt and disgraceful and I’m glad that we don’t allow anything like that in a civilised country like Australia.
The quest for a bike has not gone well, I had a trip out to Saphaphon, a half hour taxi ride, last Wednesday to a shop called Red Baron Motorcycles, as I understand the largest large motorcycle dealer in Thailand. There were about 10 biggish bikes there including a 2001 Yamaha XVS1100 Dragstar which looked promising. With green book and in pretty good nick, low k’s (although I understand ‘clocking’ is a common practice). I started it up and gave it a good once over and it looked pretty sound, a bit pricy at Bht320,000 but I was expecting that and there should be room for negotiation. The guy I spoke to at the shop didn’t speak much English but I managed to get the name of the sales manager who would be in the next day and he spoke pretty good English. So happy with the fact I might have found the bike at the first shot I travelled back to the hotel to put feelers out for getting a rack (I’ve been told virtually impossible in Thailand). I Rang the sales manager the next day and was disappointed to find out the bike was not for sale, It was owned by someone else who had brought it in for a service. Disappointment turned to shock when you have to wonder what sort of shop it is where you take your bike in for a service only to have the shop try to sell it. It’s a bit more complicated than that, the bike had been there for some time and the sales manager is convinced the owner wants to sell it, but has not been able to get hold of them.
After another internet search I have managed to find a contact called Terry who runs an operation called Asiabike.com, a fellow pom who appears to be a kind of link man between buyers and sellers of serious bikes and gets a commission from the seller. I haven’t met him yet, I am meeting him tomorrow night at one of the MTS (Mass transit system – Bangkok underground) and we are going to look at two 600 cc Honda Shadows.
He did explain that the purchasing of a bike in Thailand is full of pitfalls which comes as no surprise. If there is money sloshing round, there are hands out to grab it.
I did go and have a look at three bike shops on Sunday ( thinking they would be open ) they are located side by side in an area of the city called RCA ( Royal City Avenue ) apparently a major nightlife area, but completely dead on a Sunday avo. There were two Harley shops and one Ducati shop. The Ducati shop had a 996 in the window and about 3 old classics, I couldn’t make out what they were, the Harley shops had about 8 bikes between them, not an extensive collection. Ducati’s are rare and expensive and just not practical for the trip, I did see a Ducati Monster on the road very near the MTS station, the first Duc I’ve seen here. I wasn’t planning to go over to the dark side by buying a Harley, however according to Terry a Harley Sportster it might be the way to go, especially if I want something already registered and are priced in the same sort of region as the Dragstar and I would hazard a guess at being easier to sell. Anyway, my trip is stalled for the moment until I can get a bike sorted hence the multitude of blogging material.
I’m still at the same hotel and contemplating moving somewhere a little cheaper but I have got into the routine of going for a swim at 7:00 AM, the only time the pool is empty and it’s doing me a lot of good. Ad has recommended another hotel which is almost ½ price and connects to the BTS (Sky train) but does not have a pool. As I said before the hotel is OK, the room is nice and it is a great location but it has an uncomfortable feel about it, the staff are a bit up themselves (apart from the cleaners who are very friendly) it is very touristy and there’s a bloody Elvis impersonator in the Bar three times a week. Yes a Thai Elvis, it is either a syrup or he has to spend the entire day travelling round with that ridiculous barnet. The other good news is the parcel I posted to myself to avoid a horrendous excess luggage charge on the plane has been lost, so there goes my boots and all the presents I was bringing for Kwan’s friends and family. It was insured and I have tried to ring Australia post, my call was valued but not valued enough to be answered.
This morning I went shopping down Silom Road to Robinson shopping centre, I don’t do much shopping, I have just about all I need and I can’t carry a great deal on the bike but I was after a plastic plate and a knife of all things. My Swiss army knife was with my boots so that’s in a temporal vortex somewhere. It has been such a long time since I have been doing the ‘living in a hotel’ thing I forgot that there are a few minor things that are an inconvenience. The street food here is great and there is a whole plethora of interesting fruits easily and cheaply available, my favourite being Rambutan or (Ngor – with a rising tone in Thai) which are virtually unheard of in Australia and if you can find them they are expensive and not very fresh. There is a street vendor just outside the hotel with a barrow full of them. She complains every time because I only buy ½ kilo. Anyway, limited resources of the hotel room not having a plate or a knife to cut them a shopping trip to Silom road and the supermarket in the basement of the Robinson department store.
I was also on the look for a new Bangkok map; the one I have is a bit old now and is ripped so I thought I’d invest in a new one. The old map had the BTS and MTS lines on them but not the stations; the reasoning behind not putting this information on a map just defies logic. I managed to get hold of a new map which has the stations marked on but not their names.
I did manage to find a shop which sells maps (maps are quite a mysterious concept to Thai’s) although it was interesting finding it. The Thai word for map is pantii, so I asked the shopping centre that I was looking to buy pantii, the result is almost too “carryonesque” to be believed.
Oooh!!! Matron !!!

Keep upright.

The Thai Language

My attempt at the study of lingiustix, Noam Chomsky eat your heart out.

Apologies to my Thai friends who maybe reading this, they already know all of this a lot better than I do and would probably disagree with my interpretation. Also, first up a confession. Being an engineer by profession, I’m at home with numbers and science, when it comes to languages and arts I’m not in the fast lane. This is a handicap to such an extent I have taken to the concept of calling people by numbers because I can’t remember their names ( Hi to 17 ), What started out to be a joke actually works, also you can always refer to the old saying "would you trust an engineer who could spell ?".
I accepted the fact that when I started learning Thai that at some point I would have the feeling of "well that’s just plain stupid", it is like that when learning any foreign language and anybody who has struggled with the Germanic dem, ders and das’s or with most European languages the concept of a female post office whilst a chemist is male will attest to this fact. Also the English language can hang its head in shame with some of its absurdities which are so ingrained in our cognitive abilities we just don’t see it. A good example of this happened a few days ago, I was having lunch at Kwan’s mothers house with her mother and brother and we were arranging a dinner with the whole family and I said it was good to ‘keep in touch’, we all know what the phrase ‘keep in touch’ means but if you break it down into its individual words, anybody coming across the phrase for the first time is going to be a tad confused as no words in the phrase actually convey what it actually means. The best approach I have found is "Yes it is stupid, but that’s the way it is, get on with it"
Any way back to the Thai language, in trying to give a fair and balanced critique I’ll start with what I would consider the plus’s, explain the major differences and then run through some of the gripes and plain absurdities.
Thai has some remarkably good ideas such as phonetic spelling (always a favourite with engineers), no tenses, no genders, no definite articles and no upper or lower cases. The principal difference with Thai is that it is tonal, similar to Mandarin and the tone of the word does have a direct bearing on its meaning. There can be up to five tones for each word which are common (i.e.: no tone), high, low, rising and falling, and it is very important to get it right. The most frustrating thing about trying to speak Thai is if you do not pronounce it correctly you will not be understood. I thought they were joking at first but they don’t two words which sound identical to our ears is very different to Thai ears. Because of this, the Thai’s have an extensive alphabet which consists of 44 consonants and 32 vowels and 4 letters which have the audacity to be somewhere between the two. On top of this there are a multitude of additional symbols and marks which are added to make sure the word is pronounced correct. Speaking from a particularly English point of view, we are blessed by the fact our language is not full of tone marks, umlauts and other linguistic furniture.
Another important mention of the use of polite particles which do not have any equivalent in European languages and are gender specific, I lied about not being any genders in Thai language, the difference being that they are only used personally. The word for ‘I’ is Pom (with a rising tone) for male and ‘Di-Chan or Chan’ for female. Oddly there is no gender distinction for he or she, they are both Kao hence when you here a Thai person talking English they will often get them mixed up. The polite particle are Krup for a male and Ka for a female and can follow just about every sentence or statement, the more polite particles you use the more polite you are talking.
Rule one when learning Thai you must learn the Thai alphabet because of its phonetic nature if you can read the word you can pronounce the word. Hence the need for 32 vowels to make sure that all the vowels sounds have their own identity. The problem with English is that there are not enough. For example take the words wind and wind, look again, not the same word, wind as in movement of air and wind as what we used to do with old fashioned clocks and watches (a fact I noticed from the lyrics of stairway to heaven on Led Zep 4, take away the guitar solo and wind and wind appear very close together on the lyric sheet.)
So Thai language good in the fact they have recognised the fact there should be more than 5 vowels. Thai language bad in how they go about displaying them. A vowel can appear in one of 4 places either in front, after, above or below the constant it is linked to to make the syllable. Which is odd but not annoying, the annoying thing is what they look like. In the Thai alphabet a lot of consonants and vowels look so similar it is neigh impossible to tell the apart. One vowel in particular which does not have an English equivalent (or any other language I know of for that matter) and represents the sound you make when you step in something disgusting (directly quoted from one of my Thai language book). It is so similar in appearance to the letter for ‘ii’ that you have to use another letter after it to distinguish it. Now that is just plain stupid.
Second problem, the Thai alphabet consists of 44 consonants which are broken down into low class, middle class and high class. Nothing to do with marketing demographics just another mechanism to work with the tonal rules. But there are up to three constants for each sound. They have dropped two of them a few years ago; the reason for this, according to my Thai teacher is because the introduction of the Imperial typewriter and the need to develop a mechanism designed for the English Alphabet having to be adapted for Thai alphabet. It was too much of a headache to try to build extra keys into the typewriter therefore two of them had to go, this was a missed opportunity to get rid of the other redundant letters and make us all a bit happier. It’s a good story and I admit to not going through the sums to see it is at least feasible, add all the vowels and consonants together, take away the punctuation marks ( Thai does not have any ) and you should end up with the same number.
Some of the Thai letters are distinguished by being taller than ‘the line’, this is fine in principle but also remember that some vowels appear above the letter and hence there is a clash of the vowel and the letter. This is further complicated by the possible usage of tone or other marks which appear above the letter. It starts to get pretty crowded up there and the whole thing starts stacking up like a game of snakes and ladders. Contributing to these problems some of the tone marks and symbols are much smaller than the letters so if the font is small those of use with aging eyes have real difficulty seeing them, I have taken to using a magnifying glass to see them in my English-Thai dictionary.
Possibly the most annoying thing about the reading & writing of Thai is there are no gaps between the words, so a sentence is a continuous stream of letters. The history of this, according to my Thai teacher is the fact that the early days of Thai script was carved from stone and not written on paper or papyrus. Of course the real estate on stone is very scarce and hence vowels appear both above and below the consonant and the resistance to use punctuation marks, therefore the only way to distinguish between sentences is to leave a gap. This does makes sense, but you would have thought with the advent of pen and paper and the arrival of foreign (European) lexicons you would have thought that some bright spark would think "hey these full stops are a good idea, then we can put spaces between the words", but this absurd practice has been maintained well into the computer age.
On the plus side the Thai language has a distinct reluctance to make up a new word when a reworking of an existing word or combination of existing words will do. For example the word for toilet is hong nam, nam is the word for water and is reused extensively, hong is room, toilet therefoe ‘ room water’, the word for eye is dtat therefore ‘tear’ is nam dtat, it is that simple. (note there are tonal rules for these words there is just no practical way of displaying them on an English keyboard).
In terms of the order of words in a sentence there are some peculiarities, oddly the general rule is similar to English (adjective-verb- subject etc.) So in many cases the construction of the sentences is quite easy, however it completely changes when it comes to questions and their answers, the Thai language not having a specific words for yes or no (freaky !!). It is a system I am still struggling with but the general rule is a question is asked which includes a question particle and a positive or negative confirmation is requested from the questionee. In many cases the polite particle ( krup for male, ka for female) suffices if it is the right type of question but possibly the best way to describe is that at the end of each question the questioner asks "is that so ?" to which the questionee replies either "that is so" or "that is not so".
This is just a brief apprise of what I have learnt so far about the Thai language, clearly there is a multitude of other interesting and surprising points such as Thai is based on Sanskrit and therefore predates English by about a millennium, also the word for expert of some who is skilled is nak, I have pondered whether this could have been the origin of the slang word of ‘knack’.
I hope this diatribe has been enlightening for you, my attempts to learn such an alien language in the last year or so has been an interesting and fulfilling journey, I have attempted, with little success, in learning French & German in my time and I have found Thai much much harder. It has really been a step back to fundamental sounds and how they can re created in some form of lexicon. This is why you will often see Thai nouns such as place names translated into English differently, there is no right or wrong way to do this, they just make up the best estimation of the letters that will produce that particular sounds.
The Thais certainly appreciate the fact that a furongse has gone to the trouble to learn their language and after a week in Bangkok I am think I am starting to get the hang of it, I look forward to your comments with interest and I am happy to take the complaints from fluent Thai speakers on the chin.
Keep upright.

Day 2

Day two.....

Crew restless, it has been three days since we saw the three scribed marks of Arny Schnuessun.......

Wait a minute that’s someone else’s blog.

Truth is I reckon I’ll be doing a few of these until I get my wheels as there a lot of gaps in between doing things and trying to acclimatise to the heat and humidity so I am enjoying the air-conditioned comforts of the hotel. once I'm on the road and out in whoop whoop I'm sure the blogs will decrease in frequency.

It’s been a pretty good day as I have crossed the first major hurdle of obtaining a certificate of residency to purchase a vehicle. This meant a trip to the Australian Embassy on Sathon Road. It gave me a chance to practice my Thai and I have made a discovery about Thai navigation. Kwan was a hopeless navigator, even after passing her driving test and building up enough road craft to handle driving in most situations she was still unable to drive to the Asian market in Springvale because she could not navigate the way. I thought this was just one of Kwan’s quirks but after asking several people for directions to the Sky train station (Big concrete thing that is about 20 meters in the air), or the Robinson shopping mall (a very shopping centre on one Bangkok’s major roads) two landmarks you would think most locals would know instantly. But no it’s all black magic. OK I’m probably being a bit unfair, but by today’s experience the Thai’s make the navigational skills of your average Irishman look like Tonto. The Australian Embassy is quite an experience, the security is unreal. As with everywhere in Thailand security guards have bred like rabbits. After being checked in through a reinforced steel door, having my bag removed I was let through to the second checkpoint. To cut a long storey short there are no less than four security checkpoints and I counted no less than 20 security guards before I could be let into the consular section where I took my numbered ticket and sat in a queue of one for about 30 mins. No kidding I was the only one there.I have to have a certificate of residency, which turns out to be just a stat dec with a signature and a stamp, to purchase a vehicle in Thailand. I made the decision to buy a bike here rather than the other two options which are shipping my own bike or hiring a bike. Shipping my own bike would probably work out the cheapest option but as soon as you start looking into the details the logistics are fraught with problems. Transport from Erawan to the docs in a crate is a minor headache compared to the transportation problems and the acquisition of a fork lift at the other end. Then there’s storage of the crate until the return and fumigation of the crate. Also I was not keen to undertake the journey on the Duc as it is possible the most impractical machine for this type of trip. My investigation for hiring a bike also drew a blank, you can hire large motorcycles in places like Pattaya, Phucket and Chang Mai, but they not too keen on you taking them out of the city, they also like to have your passport as security. Both these issues make the travelling to different countries a tad difficult. So I plumped for the purchase of a relatively new Harley clone. I must admit not the favoured vehicle to do it on but probably the most practice, considering the stuff I have to carry and the short legs. Tomorrow is a public holiday here, it’s one of Buddha’s days (appears to have twice as many birthdays as the queen); I am meeting Kwan’s Mother and Brother at the temple where we had Kwan’s funeral. I’m sure it will be very emotional, but at least we will be there to support each other.I have set aside Friday to go and have a look at some bikes, Ad (Kwan’s brother) said he will take some annual leave and come with me, he is a very helpful chap but I wouldn’t want to eat into his well earnt holiday. I said I wait until I have found something I like and then get him to go with me to the bike shop so I pay Thai price not Furongse price.

Message ends.

My first blog

Hi all
This is my first venture into the blogosphere, although I have been aware of the concept for a number of years, I now have the excuse to actually contribute something to the vast malaise of useful, topical and insightful information that inhabits the ether. (That is irony by the way; I hope you are keeping up). As most of you who know me well enough are aware I am just about to embark on a little excursion around a good slice of South East Asia and taking in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. The mode of transport will be a motorbike as soon as I can source one in Bangkok.
It is 4:00 PM on the 14th July and I am sitting in the lounge room of my good friends Handle & Rebekah in Caulfield, Melbourne. They will be taking me to the airport later this evening and I will be taking an overnight flight to Bangkok with Thai airways. Ad, Kwan’s brother will be meeting me at the new Suvanibugh airport in Bangkok at about 7:00AM tomorrow and then taking me to the Asia Hotel Bangkok in the middle of Bangkok. Admittedly it is a bit of a luxury and I will be lowering my standard of hotel in the following weeks but it is a nice hotel for me to find my feet for a couple of days and has all the facilities you’d expect from a 4 star hotel at around $50 per night. The real good thing about the Asia hotel is that the foyer connects straight onto the Ratchathewi Skytrain station and for the princely sum of 40 baht (about $1.10) one stop down is Siam Central where the Siam Paragon is located. Siam Paragon is a new shopping/entertainment complex which is roughly twice the size of Chadstone. For those of you Melbournites who are familiar with the size of Chadstone will appreciate the size of the place. The ground floor is entirely food so not only can you get real good Thai food but just about anything else including French, Italian, Mexican Japanese etc etc. Not that this is anything particularly I’m looking for but it is a source of decent coffee which is high on my priority.
I could have stayed at the condo with Ad which is OK but it is quite a way out of the city and I will be needing to visit bike shops which are located closer to the city centre. I have taken the trouble to learn a bit of Thai but after about 20 lessons I reckon I can just about order soup and get a hotel room. I’m sure I will be whittling on about the Thai language in future blogs needless to say it has been a fascinating thing to learn but is a very difficult language to learn for a furongse (westerner). Language note: all westerners are referred to as furongse which means “Frenchman” thus confirming the fact that the Thai’s although having a pleasant and genial disposition have a cruel and sadistic sense of humour.
Well I reckon that’s about enough for my first blog in the next exiting instalment I will be going through the process of buying a bike and getting it on the road. Yes it is going to be fraught with red tape and bureaucracy and it will not be straight forward, however if you can stay awake long enough it will be a coverage of someone actually going through the process and not just talking as though they have. Case in point, the one item I do not yet posses is GPS system which has been a comical search over the last few weeks. After looking at a couple of units in Hardly Normal and Dick Smiths if you ask the question “Can you download maps for Thailand, Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia ?” the answer is always “Yes, go to the website and download the maps”. This is not true. The one thing I have discovered is that the manufactures of the GPS systems such as Tom Tom, Navman, Mio etc. Do not like you phoning them up and asking awkward questions such as “Do you have maps for SE Asia ?” The net result is I am waiting to see what’s availability in Thailand before I purchase. The Mio customer service assured me I will not be able to get maps for Thailand even though Mio do have a Thai website www.mio.co.th which states that you can get maps for Thailand. So who do you believe ?
Obviously this is not just an adventure but also a personal journey. After the tragedy of loosing Kwan last year (13 months now) and the process of the funeral etc. I did gain more of an affinity with the Thai people and culture. They do think very different than westerners and have a different perspective than we do. As with everything in life, it is not all good and there are many aspects that us westerners would find difficult to deal with, but generally they are a charming and friendly people who honour guests with hospitality you would find hard to match in the west. Their calmness and patience especially in the ”in your face” nature of the Bangkok lifestyle is a credit to their culture and I believe we could all learn something from this.
I am happy to receive feedback on my blog. I hope to make it at the very least slightly entertaining and hopefully I can give some thought provoking insights into the wonderful world around us.
I will welcome comments such as “Can’t you find anything better to do ?” or “Is Ewan McGregor and the other non famous one with you?”
Glom Tiang Yaai is the closest I can get to in Thai for “Long way round”.

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