Chiang Mai to Nong Khai

To fill my time before Christmas I embark upon the first of a number of motorbike trips which are made utilising various hired bikes of dubious condition. For my first trip I set my sights on Nong Khai and the nearby Laos city of Vientiane.

I depart Chiang Mai and travel via the back roads to Lamphun. I am astride a 400cc Honda, the first motorbike I have ridden in nearly two decades, and slowly coming to grips with the bike and enjoying the gradual return of half forgotten skills.

After Lamphun I join one of the many multilane concrete surfaced superhighways which crisscross Thailand.

This leads me over a range of mountains, twisting and turning as it goes, and begins to reveal a few drawbacks with the bike, in particular its tendency to refuse to lean, and, when it can be persuaded to do so, its tendency to unexpectedly pop itself back to an upright position due to the uneven wear of the tyres. This bike has probably only ever been ridden around Chiang Mai by tourists and the tyre centres are well worn but the sidewall tread is still virginal. This makes cornering treacherous.

At Lampang I break for lunch and listen to some live music before continuing. After a good four hours ride I find myself in Uttaradit. It is beginning to grow dark and I panic a little as I am unable to locate a place to stay. I can find no-one who speaks English but eventually using pidgin Thai, my Thai English dictionary and various gestures, I persuade a young guy to act as guide and lead me to a hotel.

The place he takes me to turns out to be extremely cheap but quite flash and after my first day on a bike since I was in my teens I decide to rest up for an extra day to give myself a chance to get over a slight head cold and build up some energy again.

I find that although my estimates of distances and travel times have been good I have completely underestimated the physical drain of the long rides. Also my butt hurts from the hours on a hard seat on bumpy roads with a brand new and especially hellish kind of pain. I'm still coming to grips with the bike and having trouble with down changes (this turns out to be a poorly adjusted clutch but more on this later).