Indonesia (Nusa Tengara) and Timor Leste

After our luxurious break in Bali we reluctantly packed the bike again and left for the island of Lombok in search of more adventure.

Click here to see Lisa and friend

The four hour ferry crossing became a seven hour one as, when the boat arrived in Lombok’s little port there were still two ferries unloading. Our boat waited in the bay for three hours while all the trucks on board revved their engines and honked their horns, ready to go, even though the boat wasn’t docked.

By this time it was dark but we decided to risk riding for half an hour up to the town of Senggigi. Not a good idea on roads we didn’t know but luckily and surprisingly they were in excellent condition and we didn’t have much more than goats running into our path in the moonless night. We found a good cheap guesthouse and the owner cooked us a big snapper with rice and salad for dinner.

click here for another image

The next morning we headed up to the north of the island, passing some incredibly beautiful beaches on the way. We arrived at the small town of Bangsal where little boats wait to take people out to the Gili islands, only 30 minutes away. Our guidebook describes this town as ‘the armpit of Indonesia’ as the locals hassle, lie and try to cheat tourists out of money while their children beg and try to pickpocket them. Rich felt little hands touching his while he stood there with his hands firmly in his pockets. We spent an age trying to get a good price for a boat and were relieved to finally depart.

click here to see sunrise

The three tiny islands forming the Gilis are beautiful, specks of white sand floating in the clear turquoise waters. We spent two nights on Gili Meno, eating fresh fish and snorkeling with huge turtles. It takes an hour, at a very relaxed pace to walk around the island, there are no vehicles as there is only a narrow sand road ringing the island on which little ponies pull carts, people and their luggage. The island is dry and water has to be shipped in from Lombok so we purchased 30 litre buckets of it to shower with after our swimming. There’s boats running daily to the mainland but the supplies are basic and there were few tourists so we really felt like we’d got away from it all and were relaxing. Again. We seem to be getting good at it.

Continuing our ride around the north of Lombok we stopped for a night at a quiet guesthouse right at the foot of Mt Rinjani, watching the volcanic landscape change colour, first in the sunset and then with the next mornings sunrise. We’ve overheard lots of tourists saying the two day, one night climb up this volcano was the best thing they did in Indonesia as it has a beautiful turquoise lake and hot pools inside the crater. Alas, no time for us to engage in such strenuous activities, the clock is ticking on our visa and we need to head east again.

click here to see Gunung Rinjani sunrise

Morning time we wound down out of the hills to the port for the 90 minute crossing to the island of Sumbawa. We were surprised to find Sumbawa has a far more arid landscape than Lombok, it’s hotter and drier and the communities seem poorer. There’s a lot of salt farming and the brown landscape is dotted with big mounds of the coarse grains.

click here to see roof detail

Most tourists transit Sumbawa on a grueling overnight minibus, getting to see almost nothing of the hilly island, its coastline of shallow water, mangroves, fish farms and fishing villages. The Lonely Planet is short on sites for the tourist but we did take a bumpy little road down to Lakey Beach at Hu’u on the south coast. We found 30 or so surfers enjoying the reef break here and we stayed a couple of nights relaxing on the white sand beach, eating huge fish and sleeping in each morning.

click here to see what 6 people ate for lunch and dinner

Some Aussies lent us their snorkeling gear saying it was the best snorkeling they’d ever done but also offered us their spear guns as there are lots of big sharks and they’d had to give one a little jab when it came too close. We got in the water and swam around a bit but wimped out going outside the reef as we’d timed our swim for dusk, feeding time – just a little too late to make us feel easy about it.

We had a very hot days ride to the basic little town of Sape on the east coast, where the ferry leaves for the island of Flores. Tiny horses decorated with bright coloured pom poms and tassles pull little carts laden high with people and produce to and from the wharf.

click here to see Dokar

Ferries plying the waters between the various Indonesian islands change schedule frequently and its difficult to get any accurate information on sailing times without actually being there. The departure time we’d expected had changed and we had to wait a whole 24 hours here in a hot guesthouse across from the briny seashore. In the evening we wandered amongst the colourful wooden houses set on stilts on the muddy mangroved shoreline. The locals came out on their verandahs to look at us looking at them and babies were produced for us to photograph. We became pied pipers with giggling village children following us as we wandered and watched local workmen craft big wooden boats set on the mud next to their homes.

click here to see Lisa and friends

Finally we were on our way to Flores. The 4pm crossing left at 7pm as overloaded trucks attempted to roll on to the ferry, found they were too high and had to be unloaded. By then the boat was filling up with chickens, goats, sacks of vegetables and human livestock. By the time we left I was ready to be there, having sat in an open sided but hot floating metal container with no breeze for 3 hours. By 10ish most people had stopped smoking and the TV was turned down so we each stretched out along a set of 5 moulded and very hard fiberglass seats to try to sleep. I’ve seen so many people sleeping on these before that I thought they couldn’t be that bad, but they are and by the time the boat arrived at 3am we were bruised, sore, sleepy and a little grumpy. We woke 2 guesthouse owners to hear they were full for the night then rode up to find a room at a lovely guesthouse on the hill with incredible views overlooking Labuanbajo’s quiet bay.

From Labuanbajo we hired a little boat to take us out to stay overnight on the island of Rinca which, like its neighbour Komodo, is the home of dragons. Our captain was a real old salt who knew the swirling seas of Komodo National Park well and Rich and I were thrilled to be on the still water. We watched dolphins jumping as we sipped weak tea and took photos of each other and all the little picture postcard islands we passed.

click here for another image

I was rather nervous of being around the Komodo dragons having seen how ferocious they are from television documentaries. They are giant monitor lizards that seem sedentary but can run at 18 km/hour, they have huge, strong bodies and rise up onto their hind legs to fight.

Pulling into a little bay we could see huge and magnificent mangroves and little monkeys playing on the muddy shore and looking down in the clear water we saw tiny coloured fish playing with the anchor moorings and jetty pilings. My peace was disturbed when someone announced there was a dragon at the end of the jetty which we virtually had to walk over to get to the park camp. Fortunately it appeared to be sleeping but I was pretty nervous on the five minute walk with our captain across the dry salty land. We were amused to read a sign telling us any visitors holding a National Park entry ticket were insured under some obscure local life insurance policy – not dreadfully reassuring for the already nervous.

click here to see confidence inspiring sign

Dragons surrounded the camp, sleeping under buildings and trees. We paid our Park entry fees then were shown our room, led by a ranger carrying a long stick, forked at one end which you are supposed to use to pin over the neck of any attacking dragon. They are so fast and so strong I doubted my ability to be able to defend myself but soon adopted the stick carrying approach for my own peace of mind. We sat talking to some student rangers then were alerted to some disturbance over by the toilet block, running and yelling. We raced over to see that a deer, which had come in to have a drink in the pool of water next to the toilet block, had been caught in the teeth of a dragon. These teeth are rather tiny but razor sharp and they clamp their victims in their strong jaws. There is no antidote for 3 of the bacteria living in their saliva so prey which get away from an attack with only a small wound will usually die anyway.

click here for another gory image

This deer wasn’t going to get away though. Its leg was firmly clamped in the dragon’s jaws and 3 others were circling – within minutes there were about 15 dragons around. The deer was pulled to its knees, then as dragons climbed all over it, it fell to its side, being devoured. It wasn’t until it’s warm, pumping heart was ripped out of its body that we saw life fade from its eyes.

The rangers here are surprisingly unconcerned around the dragons, even walking within a couple of meters of them but after seeing this feast we continued to be wary. We made sure we drank less than usual in the afternoon so we didn’t have to get up in the night and kept our room door closed as they can climb stairs. Rangers find them in the kitchen, toilet and offices if doors are left open.

click here to see what lurks in the toilet

Aside from the dragons, lots of people come to Komodo National Park for its fantastic diving. We don’t dive but love snorkeling so on our way back to Labuanbajo, we stopped at a tiny, deserted island and spent a couple of hours going wow at the amazing coloured coral, fish and strange sea creatures. This is the best snorkeling we’ve ever done and we got out of the water completely buzzing from the experience.

We rode east into the centre of Flores, over windy roads with cicadas screaming from lush jungle, past green rice paddies, banana plantations, coffee plants blooming with tiny sweet white flowers, coconut palms, cloves, corn, mango, avocado and tamarind but also down through some dry rain deprived valleys. Everywhere the universal smile and wave kept us going through the long hot days.

click here to see Ikat vendors

We visited several traditional villages; where people retain strong animist beliefs and worship totems to their ancestors. We passed many volcanoes standing magnificent against the blue sky. Our search for pump petrol and internet cafes grows increasingly desperate the further from Bali we go but we settle for fillups from 1litre plastic bottles sold from shop fronts and hideously slow and expensive connections found, if we are lucky one or two per island.

click here to see fuel stop

We arrive late in the evening at Moni, the village set at the base of Mt Kelimutu. The pick of the accommodation is gone so we get the cheapest rooms in town, like a homestay which doubles as an old folks home and a knocking shop rolled into one. Despite the thin walls we manage to wake at 5am with our alarm in order to get up and see the sunrise over Mt Kelimutu. We look out the window and seeing that its still pitch black and that its only a 13km ride up the hill, we decide we can have a 15 minute sleep in. Of course by the time we get half way up the very windy hill with its very bad roads the sun is on its way up and the clouds are turning a beautiful pink and orange hue. By the time we park the bike and walk the last 100m up to the crater rim the bright sun is glaring back at us and as with Mt Bromo we are just 15 minutes too late which is a silly move if you’ve made the effort to get up and see a sunrise. Mt Kelimutu has 3 lakes set down within its crater, one a bright turquoise, another coffee coloured and a third a deep reddish black. We waited for the sun to show off the colour of the lakes before descending past vendors selling the local ikat weaving and farmers in the rice fields.

click here to see Ikat at Kelimutu

Continuing east, we spent a couple of nights relaxing, being the only guests at the very simple Sunset Cottages at a lovely beach just short of the eastern end of Flores. We were their first guests for three weeks as a nearby volcano had been erupting, covering the beach in ash and keeping tourists well away.

click here to see traffic

We rode on to catch our ferry to Timor and after fighting hoards of queue jumpers we managed to buy a ticket and get on the boat. We were apparently late on despite arriving 2 hours before departure and the entire vehicle level of the boat was already full. We battled to get baskets of bananas and chickens and old women lying on woven mats to move so that we could tie the bike down.

click here to see vehicle deck

This, our last Indonesian boat crossing was definitely our worst – leave at 2pm and arrive the next morning at 6am. We managed to get two seats near the front next to the television set, a very big speaker and a group of nuns – at least they wouldn’t be blowing cigarette smoke at us all the way. When the ticket inspector came to check our tickets we enquired about upgrading. He suggested we go upstairs to the crew deck for the trip so we took up his offer and got to spend it on the open air deck alone. The moon was full and there was a cool breeze so we had a peaceful time and managed to lie down and get some sleep.

click here to see sunset

We’d planned to spend a few days exploring Timor but there are few tourist attractions and food and accommodation is generally more expensive for poorer quality than the rest of Indonesia. We’ve seen some interesting Timorese crafts in Bali and other places - weaving, wooden carving and statues but as there is so little tourism in Timor its really difficult to find shops to view this.

We did pass some interesting houses, beehive shaped and made from straw with doors no more than a meter high. Apparently the government has deemed these unfit for living in and has built newer concrete homes for the residents but they claim the new houses are too big and cold so continue to use their traditional homes.

click here to see more Ikat vendors

Our last night in Indonesia was spent at the border town of Atambua, which has had a rather violent past. Many of the militias that wreaked havoc on Timor Leste (East Timor) crossed the border when the UN arrived and were encamped around Atambua. There is still a very sizable military presence in town and we were apprehensive about the reception we would receive. This was soon dispelled as we found everything very calm and people friendly although there is definitely no love lost with their neighbour Timor Leste.

We want to go to Australia but there is no shipping from this far east in Indonesia, it could have only been done from Java or Bali which we left behind weeks ago. Our only option is to go to Timor Leste and send the bike on Perkins twice weekly container ship from Dili to Darwin. Crossing to Timor Leste involved tighter security than we’d been used to for a while with lots of police and UN guards monitoring the border.

We entered Timor Leste and followed the road north along the coast to the capital, Dili through some desolate villages where subsistence salt farmers evaporate water to leave salt by lighting fires with wood cut from trees they don’t own.

click here to see saltworks

Like so many places in the world, there is a big deforestation problem here and the dry sandy soil washes away in the wet season. Indonesians had warned us how bad the Timor Leste roads were but they were no different from those in their country. We were overtaken by lots of big 4WD’s racing back to the capital – all with UN or other aid agency emblems emblazoned across their sides. Timor Leste has never had much of a tourist infrastructure and we passed some really beautiful beaches that we would have loved to spend some time at, had there been accommodation for us.

view down the coastline

Instead we made for Dili, where the UN and the US dollar have ensured prices have soared well above what the locals can afford and was even expensive on our budget. The boom industry for the locals has been providing accommodation for the aid workers and prices are steep, starting at around US$40 for a small room converted from an old shipping container. There is one $5/night guesthouse which is always full but we headed for a family home which rents rooms to people and operates on a word of mouth basis. Despite the daily power cuts it was a quiet haven where we could cook, organise our shipping and clean the bike. Dili is a small, flat, dry town and every street has at least one, but usually many devastated buildings. The violence in 1999 that left the country totally paralysed has left a longer legacy in these concrete skeletons many with weeds growing out through their bare windows. They will eventually be destroyed or like others, renovated for aid offices but in the meantime they sit empty and quiet, a reminder of the recent troubled past.

click here to see fish monger

On the Friday we made arrangements with Perkins agents to send the bike on the Tuesday crossing to Darwin. That left us the weekend to clean it sufficiently to comply with Australia’s strict quarantine regulations – no dirt, no bugs and no seeds to enter the country. Our friends had spent a week cleaning their bikes so we didn’t have a lot of time. I started by washing our backpacks that were minging with road grease and dirt, our boots, our wet weather gear, the bike rags, the tools, the bungies and webbing tie downs. Everything was dirty and greasy and it all had to be cleaned. Meanwhile Rich had come down with a fever and was making slow progress on the bike. By the end of Saturday he’d slowed to a standstill with aching muscles and nausea. We suspected malaria so visited a doctor but the blood tests came back negative, thank goodness. By Monday night we’d visited 2 car wash yards giving the bike a power clean each time and finally it had to go, clean enough or not. Rich rode it into a container, strapped it down, paid our money and we left, hoping it would be sent the next day.

click here to see Timor Leste parliment

Meanwhile we had applied for Indonesian visas again as Air North have a monopoly on flights to Darwin and unsurprisingly they aren’t cheap. Merpati fly from Kupang in West Timor for US$100 cheaper per ticket. So we got our visas and braved a long minibus ride back through the countryside we’d just covered. It took 12 hours and fortunately the minibus was comfortable and airconditioned and Rich finally got to look around and see the scenery properly. We spent a couple of nights in Kupang eating seafood again before hopping on a little 30 seater plane for the hour and a half crossing to Australia.

click here to another image

After many miles and many adventures we have finally completed our crossing of Asia. Only one more country to cross before we finally reach New Zealand and the end of our journey.

Indonesia - Sumatra, Java and Bali

With it’s steaming jungles, smoking volcanoes and pounding surf Indonesia is a land for adventure. Our first adventure was getting the bike over here.

click here and see the bustling port we shipped from

We had left B.O.B. (Brutish.Obsolete.Behemoth) in Malaysia with a shipping agent north of Melaka and had caught a passenger ferry across from Melaka to Dumai in Sumatra. The shipping agents operated out of a ramshackle port-a-cabin sitting beside a brown river from where small wooden boats ship onions to Sumatra. They assured us they had shipped several other bikes a few years ago but the whole setup had a third world casualness which was less than confidence inspiring especially knowing it had to be craned on and off as there was no ramp. I was relieved to pick the bike up off the dock the following morning none the worse for it’s sea voyage. After a couple of hours clearing customs, declining a customs officer’s request for a gift and getting a travel permit from the police we were back on the road.

The first thing we noticed was the traffic was less orderly than what we had become used to in Thailand and Malaysia. We are back on roads where might is right and the bus is king. Frequently on-coming vehicles pull out to overtake and we are expected to get out of their way and preferably off the road, but my furiously flashing headlights, Lisa’s waving arms and the highly unusual sight of our behemoth usually cause them to pull back into line.

Our first days ride left us feeling rather hot and harassed after crossing the low-lying plains so it was a relief to wind up into the cooler foothills of the mountain chain that runs the length of Sumatra. Rounding a corner I noticed a very neglected looking monument – a concrete sphere that in better days must have been a globe. The Equator.

click here to see equator monument

A bit over a years travel and we have finally reached the Southern Hemisphere. We celebrated with a mouthful of water each and amused the locals by taking photos of each other and the bike in front of the cruddy monument.

We spent several days checking out the area around Bukittinggi whose Minangkabau people have their own special customs and architecture. We were lucky enough to be invited to a Minangkabau wedding that had enough tinsel and glitz to rival any Indian wedding.

click here for wedding photos

We went for a hike into the jungle to see the rare Rafflesia flower – the largest flower in the world that can reach up to 80cm in diameter but only blooms for about 1 week each year.

click here to see Minangkabau archetecture

Heading south down the mountain chain we had an awesome ride with stunning vistas of terraced rice paddies, passing crops of cabbages and onions and numerous volcanoes. We saw cinnamon trees and their harvesters carrying huge bundles of the sweet bark on their backs. Their homes were some of the simplest we have seen on our travels and they earn only 50 cents for each kilo of cinnamon – a tree they can only harvest every 8 years.

click here to see cinaamon drying

We ended up staying amongst tea plantations on the slopes of Gunung Kerinci, Sumatra’s largest volcano which spires to a height of 3805 meters. Here we spent time walking amongst the tea plantations, joking with the tea pickers and checking out some 2000 year old megalithic stone carvings.

click here for another image

The roads winding south through the hills were slow going but as we headed across to the west coast through the dense jungle of Kerinci Seblat National Park they degenerated to a hill climb. Rounding a steep corner on the gravel road that passed for a national highway we found our path blocked by two trucks abreast wheel-spinning, struggling to climb out of the holes they were digging themselves into. We left them behind and enjoyed slowly winding our way down through the jungle passing wild monkeys and more snakes on the road.

We spent several more days riding south following the coast with its huge waves crashing on the black sand shores that made the water too dangerous for us to swim. Then we headed back through the mountains stopping to check out some 3000 year old megalithic statues dotted amongst fields of onions, carrots, rice and coffee. Little is known of the civilisaton that carved them but they include shapes of squatting men with comical faces, a man wrestling a beast and the remains of their small houses, just thick slabs of stone forming a basic shelter.

click here to see Lisa in rubber

We spent just under 2 weeks in Sumatra and were the only tourists in many places we visited. It’s a big island with many attractions but tourism seems to be centered in just a couple of areas. What we really noticed though was the smoke everywhere, from entire hillsides being burnt by slash and burn farmers to small piles of dry grass or plastic, people were in pyrotechnic mode. It made Lisa quite nauseous a lot of the time as there was so much smoke in the atmosphere and it also severely affected the visibility everywhere we went.

We arrived in Java on the 16th August, the eve of Indonesia’s Independence Day and stayed at what we thought would be a quiet beach – ideal after the ferry crossing from Sumatra and a long days ride. The beach was positively heaving and it appeared that half of Jakarta’s population was taking the opportunity for a break at the seaside. The up-side of the celebrations was passing through villages staging their own festivities which often involved a group of very muddy blokes trying to get up an equally muddy pole with prizes in a basket 10 meters up it. Any time the ensuing human pyramid got close to their goal a bucket of water would be thrown at them and they would all come sliding down. As soon as we stopped for a photo the crowd would stop watching and turn to cheer us past.

click here to see fuel stop

Indonesia has the world’s 5th largest population and 60% of them (120 million) live on the island of Java, roughly 8% of the land mass of Indonesia. Consequently there is a ludicrous amount of traffic vying for a very limited amount of space on narrow two-lane roads. Further, as most of the cities do not have a by-pass we spent much of our time weaving through dense traffic trying to get the better of the buses and would generally finish our days with faces blackened from disgusting amounts of diesel smoke. We think the traffic pollution in West Java is the worst we’ve encountered yet, worse even than India. The roads are inadequate for the amount of traffic leading to much dangerous overtaking but Indian roads are still the craziest.

click here to see Indonesian bikers

Cut down scooters seem to be all the rage.

Away from the madness of the main roads Java has some great beauty spots. We spent a couple of days relaxing at an idyllic beach on the south coast, pigging out on cheap seafood and watching the locals surf before heading up to the Dieng Plateau.

The Dieng Plateau is an area with plenty of geothermal activity – bubbling mudpools, steaming turquoise lakes, more smoking volcanoes and some ancient Hindu temples. We were lucky enough to be there for the start of a week long festival. Lots of friendly welcoming people letting their hair down and watching the local dance troupes – groups of young blokes or girls wearing shades and white gloves doing Michael Jackson style dance routines. Unfortunately we missed the day the young dreadlocked children had their hair cut.

click here to see festival goers

The old Hindu temples up on the Dieng Plateau did not impress us having seen so many in India, but the Buddhist temple of Borobudur a couple of hours ride further east blew us away.

click here for view of Mt Merapi from Borobudur

Borobudur was built approximately 1200 years ago and was abandoned soon after completion when Islam became prominent and as power and the population shifted to East Java. It lay forgotten under layers of volcanic ash until the 20th century when first the Dutch and later the Indonesian governments tackled the mammoth task of restoring it to its former glory. US$25 million was spent in the second restoration effort – a fortune in a country where most people earn only US$30 a month. We have seen plenty of temple complexes as we have crossed Asia and have grown rather blasé about them but Borobudur is exceptional and we happily spent the morning wandering around the site taking silly amounts of photos.

click here to see Lisa at Borobudur

We stayed several days in the historic cities of Yogyakarta and Solo, visiting a Sultans Palace, batik factories and silversmith villages, seeing shadow puppet and gamelan performances and a classical Javan ballet depicting events from the famous Hindu epic, the Ramayana.

click here to see Lisa and friend

In East Java, Mounts Bromo, Kursi and Batok all rise from the vast crater, 10km across, of Mount Tengger. Watching the sunrise over this supernatural landscape with Mount Semeru (3676m) in the background has been, for me, one of the most evocative sights of our journey.

click here for view across Tengger caldera

We trekked down into Mt Tenggers crater and across the sand sea picking our way through volcanic rocks recently and violently ejected before climbing the cone of Bromo. The sight that greeted us was both fascinating and disconcerting. Billowing clouds of sulphuric smoke rising from a rent in the floor of the crater several hundred meters below us.

Click here to see Lisa on the edge

B.O.B. (Bloody ‘Orrible Bike) decided to play up on us when we arrived at Bromo dropping large amounts of oil when we parked up and when I hit the starter button nothing happened! After spending hours trying to sort out what was up I found it was nothing worse than dirt and crud building up behind the starter button from all the miles we have covered and the Scottoiler (the chain oiler on the bike) turned up far too high.

After Bromo we rode across to the Ijen Plateau and stayed at a coffee plantation amongst the volcanic peaks that comprise the eastern extremity of Java. We’ve drunk gallons of Indonesian coffee in the last month so it was interesting to tour the fields and factory and see the workers picking, sorting, drying, and packing the Arabica beans.

click here to see us crushing coffee

Many Indonesian families have one or two coffee plants of their own and their approach to crushing the beans is more primitive than the plantations – drying beans on the roadside then placing them on the road to be crushed by the passing traffic.

Its only a 30 minute ferry crossing from Java to Bali but a rough stretch of water and the boat had a bit of a roll. I hadn’t tied the bike down and at one stage it fell against the adjoining vehicle thankfully not damaging that but snapping Lisa’s footpeg and bending the side stand. We were able to get these fixed very cheaply but I’ll be tying the bike down for future crossings.

Bali is such a contrast to Java. Everywhere we turn there are Hindu temples and local people in traditional dress on their way to ceremonies. There are also thousands of tourists.

click here to see temple procession

We stayed our first night at Medewi, a surfers hang out in the west of Bali far from the mass tourism of Kuta, but even here we encountered many more tourists than we’ve become used to. We then rode up north to the beaches of Lovina, inland to the cultural tourist hotspot of Ubud smelling cloves drying by the roadside as we went and then into the thick of it just up the beach from Kuta.

click here to see Legong dancers

Here we have met my parents again on their return from the UK to NZ and now we are spending 5 hedonistic days relaxing around the swimming pool, spending some quality time catching up and behaving like normal tourists. Lisa and Mum have been enjoying the shopping while Dad and I have enjoyed a few cold ones at the poolside.

click here to see the Parkinsons

Lisa and Richard are on holiday.

Malaysia and Singapore

This month we celebrate one year on the road, 37,000 miles traveled and 20 countries visited.

click here to see temple roof detail

We crossed into Malaysia on a late Friday afternoon and the road changed from a busy Thai two lane road to a well surfaced 6 lane motorway that rapidly carried us south. It came as a pleasant surprise to find Malaysia has their priorities right and allow motorcycles to travel for free on their toll motorway, unlike Thailand where we were not allowed to use them at all.

The downside of this motorway travel is that it whisked us through beautiful countryside and sped us past interesting looking towns without us being able to stop and enjoy them. It did however enable us to get to the island of Penang on our first evening in the country although we broke our golden rule of not travelling night.

We crossed the very long bridge from the mainland (our guidebook says 13.5 kilometers but we reckon about 9) during rush hour traffic. Cars moved over to create a motorbike lane on the left side that we were too wide for so we crawled with the cars. Our first impressions of Penang were not the best; very busy streets in Georgetown, scanky hotels and rats the size of family pets frequently seen in the gutters, even in broad daylight. A further look around the island revealed some of the treasures on offer, snakes that hang out in a temple, hundreds of butterflies, some beautiful beaches as well as the gorgeous Indian, Chinese and British colonial architecture in Georgetown.

Click here to see Lisa


Everyone had raved to us about Malaysian food and particularly that in Penang but Chinese has never been our favorite and after 3 months in India we still can’t bring ourselves to go to an Indian restaurant even though it was 5 months ago that we were there. So instead we treated ourselves to the very colonial English lunch of tiffen at the Eastern and Oriental hotel, a beautiful old building built by the Sarkies brothers in 1884 before they built Raffles hotel in Singapore and also ate dim sum with the locals.

click here to see the Brit pub we found in the hills

Leaving Penang we headed south along the motorway then east up a sinuous new road into the hills leading to the Cameron Highlands. These cool, rolling hills are covered in vibrant green tea plantations and colourful fruit, vegetable and flower gardens and we passed roadside stalls selling roses, chrysanthemums, cabbages and strawberries. We toured a tea plantation and savoured some of their specialty teas and scones.

click here to see Orang asli fella on Lake Chini

Further, south east over the hills to the Taman Negara National Park, which is said to be the oldest standing forest in the world at over 130 million years. This is home to birds, snakes, huge spiders, lizards, tapir, deer, monkeys, rhinos, elephants, leopards, tigers, a silly amount of insects and of course trees.
We loved it here, walking on a rope bridge 60 meters above the forest floor amongst the canopy of some very big trees.

click here to see hornbill

We hired a canoe and paddled across a pink and white lily covered lake to visit an aboriginal tribe where we tried our hand at blowpipes. These very long, hand carved, wooden pipes are used by the village men to hunt their food with poison darts.

click here to see Rich in action with blowpipe

We continued across to the east coast to stay a few nights at Cherating Beach where a very long stretch of white sand forms a beautiful, pinetree lined bay. Very few foreign tourists make it here, preferring to go out to nearby islands so the beach was very quiet.

click here to see ladies picnicing at the beach

When we pulled into our guesthouse we were amused to find we could hardly find a parking spot. The parking area was full with about 35 big bikes, a sight we’d not seen for many a while. A group of Singapore bikers had ridden up Friday night (starting at 11pm – arriving at 8am Saturday morning) and were here for the weekend. They were a friendly bunch and curious to hear where we’d come from. Yet again we found ourselves having to explain that the vast majority of roads between England and NZ are sealed if a tad uneven on occasion. That the TDM is a perfect bike for the trip and no you don’t need a dirt bike as they are only really suitable for those with an iron butt.

click here to see our beachfront guesthouse

We were lucky on our last night to be taken to see a big Green turtle laying her eggs on the beach. They lay on a stretch strictly controlled by rangers at nights as all eggs laid are removed after being laid and hatch within a cage to stop poaching.

A guide came to our room around 10pm and whisked us off to the turtle sanctuary. There we waited in a group with about 2 dozen Malaysian tourists until the park ranger lead us to where this huge turtle had dug a pit in the sand and was laying her eggs. The ranger asked everyone to stand in a semi-circle behind the turtle and not to shine torches or use flash photography. We were pretty horrified when flashes started popping off, everyone started yelling excitedly to each other, pushing, shoving, falling in the egg pit and taking it in turns to pat the turtle while she laid her eggs! It amazed us that the turtles keep returning to this beach after what appeared such a traumatic experience but we were told that ‘apparently’ they don’t mind it.

click here to see what was lurking in our pond

We were then each allowed to release a baby that had hatched that day into the sea. This was pretty cool despite knowing that very few of them survive to return to the same beach and lay their eggs.

click here to see us releasing baby turtles

We spent a couple of days heading south to Jahor Bharu, Malaysia’s border town to Singapore. We left the bike in our hotel garage carpark while we went over to Singapore to meet Richard’s folks for 5 nights of fun. The hotelier warned us that the bike was left at our own risk as 2 or 3 times in the past couple of years they’d had 6 foot of water fill the basement when there was very heavy rain that the street drains couldn’t cope with. We were only slightly concerned at this prospect (it doesn’t rain on our holiday) but accepted the risk rather than ride over to Singapore. Several other overlanders have advised us its easier to park up in J.B. than deal with the beuracracy and expense of riding into Singapore.

Wearing our backpacks made us realise how much the bike has to carry and how much easier we have it than backpackers. We looked like something the cat dragged in with our backpacks covered in mud and road grease as we checked into a very fancy room at a gorgeous Singapore hotel but they let us in regardless.

We shopped, wined and dined ourselves through the next few days but mostly spent some quality time with Elaine and Geoff who we haven’t seen for a couple of years. Singapore has a beautiful city centre with a mix of modern high-rises and charming colonial architecture, clean wide streets and polite non-polluting traffic, a stark contrast to the rest of Asia we’ve visited.

click here to see where we found the best food

Singapore is the place for cheap bike parts in South East Asia and Rich purchased a new rear tyre which we’ve decided to carry a while rather than import one into Indonesia when we need it in a few thousand miles. Like Malaysia, it is also excellent for women’s shoes and clothes so I had to balance the bags otherwise the bike would tip over, right?

We celebrated our anniversary of one year on the road in style. High Tea at Raffles Hotel with Elaine and Geoff. Very civilized and a complete contrast to what we’ve been through over the past year.

click here to see Singapore river

All too soon our sojourn in Singapore drew to an end and we returned to Johor Bharu to collect the bike and continue our travels.

click here to see Melaka town square

We rode up the coast to Melaka, a trading port with a wealth of history having been controlled at various stages by sultans, the Portuguese, Dutch, English and Japanese before Malaysia gained its independence in 1957. We spent a couple of days here checking out the town, its Portuguese egg tarts and dim sum and its range of architecture that matches its history and arranged shipping the bike across to Indonesia. Melaka has a fascinating Chinatown where we stumbled across a shop whose family has for many generations made shoes for women with bound feet. They claim to be the only shop left in the world still making them and they have a woman with bound feet, now in her nineties who is a loyal customer.

click here to see sticky riceballs

There are no vehicle ferries crossing the Straits of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia so we had to find a shipping agent for the bike. We had the names of a couple that other people have used in the past but could not locate their offices anywhere. It transpired that a year or so ago the local authorities moved all cargo shipping up the coast as an active port was not part of their tourist vision for Melaka. We rode north and spent a couple of hours being pointed in various directions from would be helpful locals and eventually found an old blue container that serves as the offices for Jalinan Muara sitting on a piece of wasteland next to the river. We were able to book a place on an onion boat in a few days time but first needed to go to Kuala Lumpur for our Indonesian visas.

Indonesia grants a one month visa at the border but for longer you must apply at one of the selected consulates that can grant up to 2 months. For us to island hop through to East Timor it was vital that we get more than one month. We didn’t want to go to KL, another dirty big city but were forced to, spending far more than we wanted on accommodation so that we could get safe parking for the bike. Actually it wasn’t all bad, we did a little sight seeing and took advantage of cheap pirate goods in China town.

click here to see modern KL architecture

We were declined our request for a 3 month visa but they gave us 2 months and we were off, heading south to leave the bike to the onion boat and us to board a passenger ferry.

Thailand - again

click here for another image

It gets boring saying it but our return back into Thailand from Laos was through yet another hassle free border. We crossed the border near Vientiane and clocked up 350 miles through some lovely countryside to reach Sukhothai by late afternoon. For about 50 miles we had giant creatures threatening to jump out at us from the roadside which kept us well amused; beautifully kept topiaries of elephants, giraffes, rhinoceros, camels, dolphins and people dancing on giant toadstools.

click here for another image

Then miles of rolling forest clad hills, waterfalls, brown snaking rivers and fields of rice and corn. Hardly any foreigners around this area of Thailand but some great national parks to explore that seem ripe for tourism.

click here for another image

We spent a day looking at the beautiful ruins of Sukhothai, an ancient moated city that was prominent from the mid 13th to the late 14th centuries. It has some beautifully preserved Buddha images in ruined temples all set in a huge well-kept historical park. We stayed at a lovely guesthouse here set amongst the fields on the outskirts of Sukhothai in a lovely Thai style wooden bungalow with a surrounding balcony and big sloping overhanging eaves. We drifted to sleep to croaking frogs and chirping cicadas outside our windows.

click here to see our guest house

We left here, travelling north to Si Satchanalai, another ruined city from the same period as Sukhothai, quite eerie in its isolation as its far less visited and has more unkempt grounds than its more famous neighbour.

We ended the day in the city of Lampang which we used as a base for visiting the nearby Elephant Conservation Center. Elephants in Thailand were predominately kept as working beasts but with the decline in logging and machinery replacing them in the fields their owners are forced to find alternative ways for them to earn their keep. Of course it would be preferable for them to be living wild but with a declining natural habitat and poaching this is not always possible. So elephants are now largely used for tourism and we saw a show, elephants displaying skills used in the logging trade and also playing musical instruments and painting.

click here to see elephant painting

Far more interesting for us was the elephant hospital on the same grounds where we saw some distressing cases of sick elephants. To list a few injuries, a 2 year old paralysed after it had fallen down a bank, a chopped off trunk, victims of land mines on the Burmese border and forest fire burns. The vets here are doing some amazing work reviving some pretty sad cases, as being Buddhist they don’t like to put any animal down. We were lucky to see lots of babies including one 10 day old girl who was still very wrinkly and tottery on her feet.

click here to see elephant recovering from forest fire burns

Although we visited Chiang Mai and Pai when Mum was here, Rich was keen to take the road following the Burmese border through the mountains on the bike.

If you are a map nerd you may wonder why we crossed back from Laos at Vientiane instead of the more obvious northern border of Huay Xai. We had been warned that the road down to Huay Xai was particularly rough. Our friends Heidi and Bernd had previously come through on their 2 KTM’s and warned us that it was a full on day of dirt biking, hilly, wet clay, large boulders and that we may not make it on the TDM. The alternative is a two day river trip but that costs $100US to transport the bike so we gave that border a miss.

click here to see Lisa and friend

Instead we rode back up to Chiang Mai where we saw a fantastic cultural show involving classical and tribal music and dancing and the bike went to Joe’s Bike Team for some loving care; a new chain, rear brake pads and a new fork seal. We thought the chain would make it back to NZ with us as we’ve got an automatic chain lubricating system, a Scottoiler, which Rich thinks is brilliant but he’d done around 40,000 miles with the chain and it was getting too stretched. One fork stanchion had been badly scratched by a dodgy, overpriced London mechanic and now eats fork seals – an expensive, frustrating habit.

click here to see Pai river

On to the lovely town of Pai at the start of the Mae Hong Son loop. This route is a great stretch of road that winds through the forest, past waterfalls, thatched hut villages draped in mist, rice paddies and more or less follows the Mae Nam Moei river that separates Thailand from Burma.

At Mae Hong Son we visited the Karen ‘Long Neck’ and ‘Big Ears’ villages with the usual dodgy road in, lots of little river crossings over nice slimey, slippery concrete, getting wet feet at one and slipping over on the slime in another.

click here to see Padung kids

These are villages of Burmese refugees that the Thai government has given refuge to for the past 10 or so years. They survive financially by being a tourist attraction in their own right – we paid to visit, talk to them and take photos of them. Crass tourism but speaking to them they prefer the life they have here, earning money in this way to the persecuted life they led in Burma and it encourages them to keep their culture and look because we pay for it.

It’s only the females that participate in this body beautifying and for those families that choose to do so, they start around age 5. They ‘Long Necks’ told us their daughters start with about ½ kilo of brass coiled around their necks and each few years will increase it by another ½ kilo until they wear up to 6 kilos. Its unwound instead of being cut off and it lowers their shoulders rather than elongating the neck. They also wear coils around their knees, aluminum bangles and bizarrely plastic flowers in their hair. The ‘Big Ears’ village adjoining is similar in that daughters start wearing rings in their earholes around age 5 and these rings are gradually expanded as they get older.

click here to see our wet bike

At Mae Sot we crossed over the Burmese border for a day to the town of Myawadi, a typical dirty border town. The Burmese customs are happy to allow tourists a day visit in exchange for some Yankee dollars and we enjoyed looking at yet another style of Buddha in their temples and looking at the antique shops with some amazing things left over from the British occupation.

click here to see what is for sale in Burmese antique shops

Another day ride to Ayutthaya which is the more famous cousin of Sukhothai, being another ruined Siamese capital. It was the home of 33 kings, spanning 4 dynasties with sovereignty stretching to present day Burma, Laos and Cambodia. This kingdom ruled from the mid 1300s to 1767 when the Burmese conquered it. By this stage we had tired of looking at Buddha images and ruins but there is no denying the beauty of the remaining architecture.

click here to see school kids

Down to Bangkok to collect our new carnet (border document for the bike), sent from the RAC in England, as they expire after one year and we are approaching that time. Last minute shopping and finally we are heading south again for a new country.

We wanted some beach time before we left Thailand so stopped south of Bangkok at a little known, beautiful, tourist free, white sandy beach and enjoyed some peace and quiet and warm seas for a couple of days.

Want to know what we do at the beach? Click here

Further south to the opposite of that idyllic beach, we stopped at Krabi. Rich came here 10 years ago and remembers a gorgeous spot like that we had just left but we found what felt like the Majorca of Thailand, package tourist heaven, loud bars, neon lights, expensive resort accommodation and worst of all, McDonalds. We couldn’t believe it, but arriving at 6pm at night we had little option but to head for the furtherest beach we could find and get a cheap bungalow. The positive sides of coming to Krabi were the virtually empty beaches (everyone sat around their hotel pools) and a fantastic day snorkeling at a few of the beautiful islands off the coast. Unfortunately a lot of the coral was dead but we also found some pristine, clear waters with some beautiful coloured fish and incredible sea plants. I’ve not done a lot of snorkeling so was really blown away with the beauty of it but didn’t like being bitten by one particularly territorial baby pink and green stripped number. After 3 nips which weren’t particularly painful but which left red marks I made a mental note to avoid them in future.

click here for another image

So that’s it, in total seven and a half weeks in Thailand over 3 visits, 5 times to Bangkok, 2 mechanic visits and 3500 miles covered.

Time for a new country I reckon.

Laos PDR

Lovely Laos. ‘The Land of a Million Elephants’, or so they say. Personally, I saw two. It is however, at this time of year, the land of umpteen trillion butterflies which are very beautiful except when you have to constantly clean them off your visor.

click here to see the Lao roads

We’ve really enjoyed Laos. The country is stunningly beautiful -verdant jungle, misty mountains and spectacular waterfalls abound. The roads are great, or at least most of them are, there are also some mud-pits from hell during the rainy season which has definitely affected the route we have taken. Despite the dual purpose tyres a fully loaded TDM ain’t no dirt bike.

click here to see women fishing

Laos has the dubious distinction of being the most bombed country, ever. During the inaptly named Vietnam War more bombs were dropped on Laos than all the bombs dropped by all the combatants in World War II. The legacy of this is lots of UXO (unexploded ordinance) - an estimated 20% failed to explode and still lies scattered in the fields and forests. Sadly this still leads to hundreds of deaths each year 30 years after the war finished, but the bonus is that it provides a free source of scrap metal. We’ve seen bombs recycled in many inventive ways - used as everything from boats to flower-pots to fence posts.

Click here to see an explosive candleholder

Laos is a sparsely populated country - only 6 million people in an area slightly larger than Great Britain and still is for the most part covered in jungle and forests. This has led to some interesting road hazards. Twice now we have had 2 metre snakes burst out of the jungle just in front of us making for the safety of the bush on the other side of the road. We managed to avoid the brown one that tried this in front of us on a sealed road with some heavy braking, but sadly ran over the electric blue/back fella that tried this on a dirt road. I just saw him in time to lift my feet in the air, then had a few moments mad panic checking it was still on the road behind us (writhing in pain unfortunately) and not wrapped up somewhere in the bike.

click here to see a patriotic billboard

Despite my cunning planning before we started our voyage we’ve managed to arrive in Laos during the start of the rainy season - not a time I would normally choose for motorcycle touring. We have however been very fortunate with the rain - for the most part we have had lovely sunny days and the fact that there has been some rain around has meant the air is clear and cooler. We have often seen towering thunderheads looming ominously in the sky around us and have on occasion been treated to some spectacular lightening storms.

click here to see what the weather was like

Twice however, we have encountered the full force of the monsoon. In the space of a few minutes the sky turns really dark and then all hell breaks loose. The first time we were 5 kms short of our destination for the night when the skies opened and the rain came down so torrentially that we were soaked in seconds and had to find shelter in a petrol station forecourt as we couldn’t see more than 3 metres in front of us! The next time was just as we arrived in Vientiane. Thankfully we had just parked up but we still had to wait an hour before we could look for a hotel as the streets were swirling knee-deep in water.

click here for another image

For the most part Lao people are living in small villages leading a very simple life. We love the way most people, the children especially, smile and wave to us as we pass. Not all though. A few times we have seen children run and hide in the bushes or shelter behind their siblings when they catch sight of two alien looking beings on a demon bike.

click here to see rush hour in Pakse

The towns, especially the capital Vientiane, provide quite a contrast to this rural idyll. There is much beauty in the faded splendour of the old French colonial buildings, at least in the towns that weren’t bombed off the map during America’s secret war. The French also left their mark in the culinary sphere. Baguettes, pastries, strong Lao coffee for breakfast and the cheap French restaurants in Vientiane are a gastronomic delight. Not to belittle the Lao food, we have also really enjoyed their cuisine, but we haven’t had food like we found in Vientiane’s French restaurants since leaving Europe all those miles and months ago.

click here to see Tha Khaek


Those map-readers out there that want to know our route may be interested to know that we entered the country via the southern-most border with Thailand then worked our way north-west back up country - totally the opposite direction we should be taking to get to New Zealand!

click here to see a roadside village

We crossed in at Pakse, went down to the Cambodian border where the Mekong cascades in huge waterfalls and spent the night on tranquil Don Khong island. We then made a loop up through the lush, cool, coffee growing Bolaven Plateau staying by the scenic Tat Lo waterfall. It seems few of Laos tourists make it further than Vientiane and Luang Prabang so it was nice to have this to ourselves.

click here to see us at Khon Phapheng falls

From there it was a straight-forward blast up Route 13, the excellent road running the length of the country to Vientiane with one 2 day side excursion out towards the Vietnamese border and back along Route 8 through beautiful limestone mountains and dense jungle.

want to know what is happening to the forests? Click here

Then up to the north of the country where we found some of the best riding so far on our trip. Or at least I though so, Lisa started to suffer a bit of motion sickness from the constant cornering. The road out from Route 13 to Phonsavan is a riders dream - 100 miles of perfectly surfaced winding black top following ridgelines through scenic villages with smiling, waving children and a slalom through the cows, pigs and chickens that seem to spend most of their time on the road. I had a smile on my dial the whole way.

click here to check out the ride

We then spent a day checking out the enigmatic Plain of Jars and the surrounding area. Several meadows are covered in these huge stone jars - the largest weighing 6 tons - and no-one is quite sure who made them or what their purpose was. The most accepted theory is that they were some sort of sarcophagi, but that still doesn’t explain anything about the civilisation that left them or how they managed to move such huge blocks of stone the 180 kms from where they were quarried. The only other thing this civilisation appears to have left behind is a stone circle very similar to the ancient stone circles that dot the English countryside.

click here to see Lisa at the Plain of Jars

Leaving Phonsavan we did a loop north through dense jungle on a small undulating road then proceeded west on Route 1. Any notions we may have had that the country’s Route 1 would be a quality road were soon dispelled. After 20 km the pristine new tarmac gave way to a stony, potholed track with the occasional remnants of what had been a sealed road many years before. We bounced our way along this for another 30kms or so wondering if the road would improve or if we might find our progress blocked further ahead - we still had another 200kms to go to get back to good old Route 13 and Lisa was beginning to seriously question my sanity in choosing this route. Fortunately we met a couple of cyclists that informed us the road improved after the next village (they neglected to say how far after though) and that we only had to cross one small muddy patch - about 50 metres of axle deep goo and deep slimey puddles. Lisa went from being unimpressed to very unimpressed about the bike potentially getting stuck in this goop in the middle of nowhere.

Want to see a mudpit? Click here

After picking my line and laying down some branches over the most slippery part I gave it a crack and all was OK.

Another days ride along this back road took us to Nong Khiaw, a pleasant village in an idyllic setting on the banks on the Nam Ou river. We spent a day here relaxing and checking out the nearby caves that were used as the district headquarters for the Pathet Laos during the war, before riding down to Luang Prabang.

Click here to see a Lao petrol station

We loved Luang Prabang and probably stayed there longer than we needed to, it being a very laid back small city with lots of gorgeous old Wats and plenty of old French colonial buildings set on a spit of land between the Mekong River and the Nam Khan river.

We spent our time looking around the Wats, exploring the lovely shops and cafes, the nearby Pak Ou caves containing over 4500 Buddha statues and watching the sun go down from the banks of the Mekong. Very enjoyable. We treated ourselves to a massage at the Laos Red Cross and each gave them a pint of our blood.

click here to see Pak Ou caves

We rode down to Vang Vieng, a popular back-packer hangout with lots of caves in the surrounding mountains, but unfortunately the same mountains appear to be rain magnets and the day we spent there was too wet to do any exploring.

And now we are back in Vientiane. French restaurants and lively pubs to watch the All Blacks annihilate the English rugby side - another favourite pastime of ours. A little more sightseeing here and a last look around the shops for Lisa then we are back to Thailand to finally start making our way south, but not before one final detour back up north……

Thought our bike is carring a big load? Click here to see how bikes can be loaded

Thailand

click here to see Lisa, Merill and reclining Buddha

You can always trust your Mum! Many had promised to visit us on this journey but so far the only one to come through with the goodies was Mum. She flew out to meet us for 3 weeks in Thailand after we returned from Cambodia. This meant we spent most of that time using public transport (we couldn’t fit 3 on the bike like the locals manage to and Mum forgot to bring her rollerblades and tow-rope). We had a laugh and once again saved lots of money on fuel (these backpackers have it too cheap).

But first of all, I have to say, finally, after 10 months and 30,000 kilometres we learnt how to bribe a cop.

Coming back from Cambodia we somehow found our way on to the motorway into Bangkok. We knew we weren’t allowed on the Bangkok city motorways but weren’t sure about the rest of the country. There were no signs in English to say ‘go away’ and we got through the first toll booth, paying our 30 Baht and getting a receipt ticket. At the second toll booth they weren’t so friendly and summonsed a cop while we held up a long queue of Sunday afternoon traffic. A charming Frenchman and his Thai girlfriend stopped to help translate. The cop in his tight brown uniform approached with the compulsory shades and the knowing smile. We explained our innocence, his smile grew wider, the Frenchman said to pay even though there was no demand. The cop asked for our drivers license but didn’t look at it. He started writing in his ticket book and talking about his boss at the next exit and a 2000 Baht fine. The Frenchman slipped him some money - they had big, nervous smiles on their sweaty faces. The cop walked away, we slipped the Frenchman some money, said farewell and were off, attempting to find our way through the outskirts of Bangkok on a late Sunday afternoon.

click here to see Thai cops

While Bangkok is the modern world to us for my mother it was culture shock - street food, open drains, fetid canals, street sleepers, cockroaches in restaurants, noise and humidity.

click here to see ugly fellas

We spent a couple of days sightseeing Bangkoks finest before catching an overnight train to Chang Mai. It would have taken Rich 2 days to ride but only a night in the train and as we were only to be in the north a week we decided to park the bike in our Bangkok hotel. The train was fantastic, air conditioned, clean and with stewards to come around and make up the bed with crisp clean sheets; far superior to Indian trains.

click here to see the girls bamboo rafting

Chaing Mai is a bit of a tourist hangout and so is Pai, a delightful little town to the north near the Myanmar border. So we hung out, hired bicycles, visited caves and hill tribe people, did a Thai cooking course, bamboo rafting, elephant riding, ate weird food, shopped and relaxed.

elephant trekking - click here

We caught up with Bob, an American we met in London, who spends half his life in Chang Mai, keeping a TDM 850 & a new 900 there for riding in the hills. Tough life. He sorted Rich out with some much needed replacement gloves, the old gloves having disintegrated over the miles were (only just) held together with duct tape.

click here to see Lisa in Than Lod cave

We returned to Bangkok on the train but headed straight to Ko Chang, the second largest of the Thai islands, sitting in the Gulf of Thailand near the Cambodian border. This time the bike came too as, having been there before, we knew the roads were windy and steep with sharp hairpin curves - perfect for an unloaded bike.

click here to see the view

We had some gorgeous hot blue skied days, kayaking, walking, swimming and having Thai massage. We had other days with thundering heavens, when huge swollen black clouds came rolling in across the sea and the rain would hit our little beach bungalows with a full blast that warned us the monsoon was coming.

Mum and I hired a scooter for a laugh. I must have looked strange to the other westerners on scooters in their shorts, singlets and jandals while I was in full motorcycle riding gear. However many of them were sporting grazes and burns from falling off and we have a friend in England who tragically fell off a scooter in Thailand 2 years ago, hitting his head on the ground, wearing no helmet and who is severely brain damaged.

click here to see the flying Merill

It was Mums first time on a bike and it took her a bit of getting used to, Rich reckons he was lucky she didn’t T-bone us coming around a hairpin bend but she eventually got used to it and enjoyed the experience.

click here to see floating food stall

Back to Bangkok for that final shopping and we got rid of another 20kg of souvenirs to Mums luggage.
She returned to New Zealand and we set off for Laos. But that’s another story……

Thailand - Cambodia

We arrived in Thailand by air; not at all our usual style but we thought it was impossible to come overland from the Indian subcontinent to Thailand.

Firstly the crazy money China demands from those bringing in their own vehicle is prohibitive for us (around US$200 per day) and secondly, because Myanmar doesn’t allow travellers to transit across the country, or so we thought….

We have since learnt that a German couple we met in Goa HAVE made it through from India to Thailand via Myanmar in their Landrover after successfully petitioning the Myanmar Embassy in Delhi. It took them two months but they finally got permission and a visa to follow a specific pre-determined route. So we are a bit jealous.

The heat and humidity in Bangkok left us reeling for a few days on arrival as there was no gradual climatic change for us this time.

Click here to see river view of Bangkok

We’re surprised to see how much Bangkok has developed since we were last here. It’s a gleaming modern city of 9 million inhabitants with 6 lane expressways and orderly traffic. A stark contrast to the Indian sub-continent and we were sent into shock that people really were using their indicators then turning them off again.

We spent a few days playing tourist around town before we could pick up B.O.B. (Battered, Oily and Beastly) from the airport. I spent all morning with customs whilst paperwork was shunted around offices, but finally I was back on the road again trying to find my way around a busy city without much idea of where I was going. Nothing new there but at least no cows to try to avoid ...

We left the bike at Siam Superbikes, a shop and workshop owned by Peter Reid, a Kiwi ex-pat. The bike got treated to some much needed tyres, new fork seals fitted, a new camchain & tensioner, smaller front sprocket, carb cleaning and balancing and a replacement coil (a facial and manicure according to Lisa) and is a pleasure to ride again. Peter was great getting the work turned around in only a few days and the labour rate in this part of the world suits us.

Click here to see reclining Buddha

We caught up with other motorcycle travellers we had met in Kathmandu. Heidi and Bernd (www.welt-tour.com) were staying at the same guest house and we also met up with Mike Coan & Susan Ebers, an American couple travelling the world on a Yamaha GTS1000 but being far more sensible about it than us as they have taken 5 years so far (www.ttg-global.com).

So, a week after we flew into the country we were back on the road and heading for Cambodia.

We had an easy ride from Bangkok to the border and crossed into Cambodia at Poipet that afternoon, one of the quickest, easiest border crossings we have had yet.

Poipets raison d’๊tre is to fleece Thai gamblers. There are a string of flash casinos complete with affluent gamblers but also lots of very poor locals trying to scratch a living - quite a contrast.

Click here to see Poipet petrol station

Riding from Poipet through to Siem Reap was our first taste of Cambodian roads. The first 50km or so was on undulating tarmac where we had to watch out for the potholes, then at Sisophon the seal ended and we were on a well graded red dirt road. Great fun to ride but we wouldn’t want to be here when the monsoons hit.

click here to see Poipet - Siem Reap road

We arrived dirty, dusty and happy at Siem Reap, then spent several days using it as a base from which to explore the temples of Angkor.

Click here to see some of the huge sculptured faces at the Bayon

These temples are the premier tourist attraction in Cambodia and are justly popular with both foreigners and Cambodians alike. Unbeknown to us we had arrived during the middle of the Cambodian New Year celebrations and the temples were swarming with thousands of Cambodians enjoying the cultural heart and soul of their nation.

Click here for new year celebrations

Due to the crowds and the overwhelming heat reaching close to 40 each day we took our time, visiting in the mornings and late afternoon but hiding from the midday sun at our guesthouse.

Click here to see Lisa at Ta Phrom



Click here to see monks at Angkor Wat

The temples, built between the 9th and 14th centuries at the height of the Khmer civilisation, are pretty amazing and are a great place to explore by bike as they cover such a huge area. We’ve been enthralled by the exquisite bas-reliefs and the sublime beauty of the jungle slowly reclaiming the temples.

Click here to see bas-reliefs from Banteay Srei

Heidi and Bernd on their KTMs (www.welt-tour.com) caught up with us in Siem Reap, spent a couple of days at Angkor then went on ahead.

Most things in Cambodia are charged in US dollars so things get rounded up to the nearest dollar and it ends up being costly relative to other South East Asian countries.
As in many developing countries, foreigners here usually get charged a lot more for everything than locals, sometimes its obvious and at other times it’s the ‘try and charge the westerner as much as you think you can get away with thing’ which becomes frustrating after a while. This price difference was particularly apparent for Angkor where entry is free for locals but $20/day for foreigners.

Click here to see victims of land mines

Siem Reap is the country’s second city yet the road connecting it with the capital, Phnom Penh, also has large sections that are unpaved and must become hellish in the wet. Pre-monsoon though it’s well graded and no problem for the TDM, especially with the new dirt tyres.

We really liked Phnom Penh with its French colonial buildings, beautiful palaces and temples, great cafes stretching along the palm lined riverfront but most of all its good vibe. French baguettes, iced coffees, dragon fruit, pineapples and mangoes, barbequed squid and fish curries and of course the local Angkor beer.
Lisa couldn’t resist the cheap shopping at its many markets (7 handbags in 7 days) and my bag also gained a few extra kilos...

Click here to see a heavy load

Sadly Phnom Penh also contains some chilling reminders of the horror the country endured under the Khmer Rouge - mass graves and an infamous prison where 14,000 were tortured and killed. The country is still getting back on it’s feet after many years of civil war and it’s very sad to see so many amputees - innocent victims of land mines, many of which remain in the fields.

Click here to see inmates

The heat and humidity here during the hot season is pretty intense so it was with great pleasure that we rode down to Sihanoukville to hang out at the beach and chill for a few days. Our first taste of the Gulf of Thailand and it’s great. Lots of swimming, beach walks, great food, relaxing days and some spectacular electrical storms in the evenings.

Click here to see where we got our morning baguettes

We had left the best (or maybe the worst) ride until last. From Sihanoukville through to the border town Krong Koh Kong is only about 240 km but took us about 6 hours. For the first 90 km we backtracked up the road towards Phnom Penh, the best road in the country, and this took us just under an hour. The next 150 km was along a heavily corrugated dirt road, deeply rained rutted in places, through lush jungle with 4 river crossings. OK, so the river crossings were no drama as there were ferries to cross them all, but waiting for them slowed our progress and getting on and off them left no room for error.

Click here to see wonderful Cambodian roads

Once again a great days ride for me - just like dirt biking but with an extra 300kg. I’m sure Lisa would have been happier if the road had been sealed though.

Cambodia has had the most dirt roads of any country we have visited, but by no means the worst roads (at least during the dry season). We found far worse roads in India, Nepal and Pakistan. The TDM has proven itself up to the job of carrying the 2 of us and far too much luggage across some grotty roads thanks to the dual purpose tyres and the lower gearing we fitted in Bangkok.

Click here to see monks at Angkor

So now we are back in Thailand. Excellent roads, sensible traffic and everything geared up to make life easy for the tourist. All too soon I imagine Cambodia will also be like this. Best to visit now before it all becomes sanitised.