[YEAR 7!] Quit our jobs, sold our home, gone riding...

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Unlike Formula 1, there is no ship-to-shore communications between the teams and the riders. Pit boards are updated every lap to convey information. Unfortunately, Tom Sykes' pit board broadcasts a common theme: P2 = Second Position

The next day, we show up at Chang International Circuit and the place is hopping! Whereas we were one of the few bikes that showed up in the parking lot, now we have to thread our way past motorcycles, big and small, to find a spot to park. Wow! Motorcycle racing is popular in Thailand!

Bikes parked against the fence in front of the Yamaha pavilion

To beat the heat, Neda buys a beer from the company sponsoring the circuit. Because she's so thirsty, she chugs the whole thing! Neda is not really a big drinker, so I'm very impressed...

The air-conditioned trailers where the racers hang out between track outings. The only reason why nobody is stealing their leathers is because it's so freakin' hot out right now!!!

 

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Neda looks over the Honda pavilion. Now that we're Big Red riders, we could have totally parked here if we had known!

We are meeting up with a couple more motorcycle travelers today, Sheldon and Eva from Australia and Poland, as well as Wayne and Ohmmy from England and Thailand are here. We grab our seats beside them and start talking bikes.

Here's a picture of us! We're in the bottom right hand corner!

Hey there's a Malaysian rider in the Supersport race. This is Zulfahmi Khairuddin. He's wearing the national flag on his helmet. Malaysia Boleh!!!

While the crowd waits in between the lower-tier support races, a stunt rider comes out on track to entertain us

He wrings his bike so hard, in the end it's leaking fluid from the bottom.

This picture is pretty representative of my experience on this trip: My R1200GS leaking drive shaft oil everywhere with me in the air, falling off the bike...

 

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Sheldon scored us some pit passes!

It's been so long since we've done a pit walk. We used to get pit passes for MotoGP all the time. That was when the funds were a lot freer...

I've always been a bigger fan of the Ducati Superbikes over their MotoGP counterparts. These Panigales look and sound sweet!

And then this happened...!

Nicky Hayden was in the pits signing autographs! I knew we weren't going to be carrying any signed posters with us all over the world, so I just asked for a quick picture. COOL!

Unfortunately a few minutes before, Michael van der Mark was also at the same table. But as soon as Nicky came out, everyone started pushing and jostling to get a picture with him, and poor Michael was forced out of the table by Hayden fans.

I felt so bad for him, he's doing so well this year. He's even qualified on pole position this weekend, but he's been so overlooked now that he's sharing a garage with the MotoGP champion. I wanted to get a picture with him as well, but he bailed as soon as the Nicky Hayden fans rushed the table.

 

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We take our seats and wait for the big race to start

The reigning world champion, Jonathan Rea, preparing for Race 1 in Thailand

Nicky Hayden on the third row on the grid. He's going to need some time to get used to racing Superbikes coming from the power and grip of MotoGP bike

The red lights go out, and twenty-five superbikes jump off the line and hurtle towards the first turn! It sounds like a billion bees buzzing in the air.

After a couple of eventful laps, it's a familiar sight. Tom Sykes takes the early lead with JRay close behind him stalking him

This is how it's played out the whole of last year. Sykes in front early, JRay biding his time until few laps before the end where he pounces on and takes over to win the race. Will this time be different?

 

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Oh yeah, this reminds me of our trip too. Me on the ground and Neda rushing over to help me get my bike back up again...

Speaking of which, I look over towards Neda but she's nowhere to be found. A few laps later, she returns to her seat, a bit paler in the face. It turns out that she drunk that Chang beer a bit too fast earlier and felt nauseous because of it. She almost threw up the washroom... But enough about Neda... Back to the race!

Lap by lap, Jonathan Rea paces Tom Sykes. You can tell how comfortable a racer is by how tight his lines are and how much his bike is moving underneath him. I think Tom Sykes has once again mismanaged his pace and his tires are going away from him. Rea is looking way more comfortable than his team mate and it's only a matter of time before...

History repeats itself. The world champion passes his team mate...

... and goes on to win the race! But by only half a second though...

And good for Michael van der Mark, he came third!

Our fourth salesguy in the office, Nicky Hayden, finished in 8th. But this is not bad considering it's his second weekend on this new and unfamiliar bike. I think he's going to go on to do good things later on this season.

 

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So awesome getting to see some live motorcycle racing again!

And in the evening, our AirBnB hosts invite the whole motorcycle gang out for a dinner at the local Korean BBQ restaurant

 

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Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/291.html

We had a great weekend in Buriram watching the races and being shown around the city by our AirBnB hosts, Jinny and Pea Jim. But now it's time to hit the road again. Our route today takes us further south into Thailand.

On the road by 7AM to beat the heat

Jinny and Pea Jim told us about some fantastic ruins just south of Buriram, so we head down there.

Some monks also had the same idea

To get to the Prasat Hin Phanom Rung temple, you have to walk down a 160m processional walkway.
Quite the buildup watching the temple get bigger and bigger as you get closer.

Phanom Rung is a Khmer temple built in the 10th century. With its Hindu shrines dedicated to Shiva, it looked very different from the Buddhist temples that we saw in the north. It reminded me that the geo-political borders on the world map are both arbitrary and temporary and these Cambodian temples in Thailand are a great example of that. There are only five Khmer temples in Thailand and we've seen two of them already!

 

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Phanom Rung sits on the summit of an extinct volcano

Maybe I'm getting tired of all the lotus blossom temples in Thailand, but Phanom Rung was a great change and a seriously impressive complex. I'm looking forward to seeing the larger Khmer temples in Cambodia, like Angkor Watt. However, by the time we arrived, the temperatures had already started to rise and the grounds were so extensive we had to find shade several times to escape the heat. And yet, we saw monks walking around with woolen caps!

Beautiful dragon motifs

Even the temple dogs were hogging all the shade at Phanom Rung to escape the heat

A bunch of school kids on a field trip. Some of them were wearing jackets. *SMH*

 

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Water lilies on the temple grounds

 

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Tons of bats inside the temple! Stuck to the wall ready to fly out at you and get stuck in your hair!

Monks checking out the view. Pretty Phehom-enal, isn't it?

After a couple of hours at Phenom Rung, we walked back to our motorcycles. We should have parked under some shade because the seats were blisteringly hot from the overhead sun. On our BMWs, there's a game we like to play called, "Hey, who turned on my heated grips?" when the bikes are parked. Actually, it's only me who likes to play that game. When I touched the grips on the CRFs, I thought Neda was getting me back. Then I remembered. We don't have heated grips on the CRFs.

So hot out here....!

 

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There's not a lot of good motorcycling in the province of Issan. It's flat and the roads go through either urban sprawl or uninteresting farmland. However as we near the Cambodian border, we hit the Ta Phraya National Park.

It's like an oasis of greenery and we soak it up

But it's short-lived and we find ourselves back on the boring highway again, headed westwards

We are stopping for gas so often. I hate the teeny tiny tanks on these CRFs!

There are some curious habits that the Thai drivers have when they're parked at gas stations. We see them lift up their hoods when they're stopped, presumably to cool the engines faster? Does that really work? Also, when they're parked for a long time, they lift their windshield wipers off the glass. I've read that it stops the rubber from sticking to the glass or warping because it's so hot. Kind of like what Canadians do in the wintertime for the exact opposite reason! 555!

 

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At another gas stop we stop and chat to these two farang bikers!

We saw these guys as we were heading into Bangkok, we were all riding in formation at one point and then we all turned into the same gas station to fill up. Neda and I sat down to have a drink under the shade to cool down and I saw the tall guy looking over at us, so I walked over to say hi.

It turns out they recognized us from the WSBK races on the weekend! They were Turkish and their English wasn't very good, but we were still able to communicate a little bit. The taller guy has been touring around Thailand for a few weeks on his CBR250, and the shorter guy was his friend visiting from Turkey. They were so open and super friendly. When I told them about our trip, the taller guy beamed and told me that was his dream, just to live on his bike all the time. Then he hugged me in joy. That was funny. Two grown, sweaty men celebrating motorcycle freedom in a gas station in rural Thailand!

The tall guy was very proud of his friend who was visiting him. He bragged that the shorter guy was very rich and owned several race bikes that he took out on the track. Then we started talking about racing and I asked them if they were cheering for Kenan Sofuoglu, the Turkish rider in the lower World Supersport class.

Their eyes bugged: "You know about Kenan Sofuoglu? He is #1! Kenan Sofuoglu!"

I replied, "Yes, Kenan Superglue!" His last name rhymes with Superglue so people call him that. They looked at me with confusion and corrected me: "Kenan Sofuoglu". I guess people in Turkey don't call him "Superglue"...

The shorter guy took out his smartphone and showed me a picture of him and Kenan taken at some black-tie event. "Kenan is very nice. Very nice man".

I smiled and said, "Maybe he is a nice guy off the track, but on the track he's not very nice..." Superglue has a bad reputation for unsportsman-like behaviour when racing.

When I said that, both Turkish men grew silent and glared at me. Uh oh... Then a couple of seconds later they both broke out in huge laughs and clapped me on the back. "Yes, Kenan not so nice on the track!!! That's why he's #1! HAHAHA!!!"

*Phew*

These guys were so nice and friendly. If they're representative of all Turkish people, I can't wait to visit Turkey! They were headed for the beaches in Pattaya, so after another round of sweaty man-hugs (haha, so awesome!), we wished each other well and continued on our separate ways.

Looking back, the Phenom Rung temples were nice and all, but what stuck out in my mind for the day was chatting to these two enthusiastic Turkish bikers.

Battling the terrible congestion in Bangkok. But not for our bikes!

It's so nice to have tiny motorcycles. We weaved in and out of stopped traffic as if it was a metal labyrinthe of cars and trucks. I may have smacked a couple of SUV mirrors while doing so... Oh well.

We parked our bikes and grabbed our stuff off of them and hailed a taxi to Bangkok International Airport. Our trip is going to take yet another tangent...

 

[acg]

Gene, you have a great wit and sense of humor. Keep the posts coming!

 

[lightcycle]

Thanks, appreciate the encouragement!

 

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Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/292.html

It was bound to happen. After 18 years together, 12 years married and almost 4 years on the road joined at the hip for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week...

Neda and I hardly talk to each other any more.

At least not in any language that resembles English! There's lots of of communication. How can you not, when there are border crossings, accommodations, groceries, laundromats to seek out in new and foreign places. How can you not convey to each other the wonder, the beauty... and yes, even the frustrations of roaming the earth, free-form style on motorcycles?

But in all that time, we've developed a kind of marital shorthand between us, which involves dropping pronouns (and a lot of nouns and verbs as well), using made up words, which in our case is a mix of Croatian, Spanish and half-made up words. Sometimes I grunt and wave my hands. No, not sometimes. I actually do that a lot. It's like we're little kids that have our own secret language that nobody else eavesdropping would understand.

We even complete each other's sentences, or just leave out the second half, trailing off after the first few words - relying mainly on telepathy. Which works most of the time. And when it doesn't... Well, that's how the fight started, your honour...

Sure, we can fake speaking English when we're out for the evening with other people. But at the end of the night, our minds and tongues relax and we revert back into the gibberish-spouting infants that we really are.

It's gotten even worse in Thailand. For the last four months we don't even put our English-speaking skills to use in public anymore. Instead we speak the simplified, pigeon English so the locals can understand us, and we pepper it with the only two Thai phrases we know:

"Sawatdee khrap. Pad Thai. One. Kob khun khrap."

So it's with a mixture of anticipation and dread that we're going to spend a couple of weeks with our friends from Canada who are flying in to Thailand to visit us!

Can we pretend to be literate human beings for that long? On top of this, Neda also reminds me that we have to watch our behaviour, and not do the things that we normally do when we're only in each other's company. For me, that's making sure I wear pants inside the house.

OMG, so much pressure not to screw up!

We're going to visit the Islands!

Ordinarily, we would have ridden anywhere in Thailand to meet up with Anton and Mel. But because we had to be in Buriram for the motorcycle race last weekend, it didn't give us enough time to ride all the way down to the islands, where we were planning to meet up.

We greeted our friends at Bangkok International. It was so good to see familiar faces again! But I warned them almost immediately, "English not good. No speak good. No practice. So sorry, okay?"

Anton smirked and replied, "Dude, I'm Tamil. I speak Immigrant real good".

I grunted in relief and waved my hands a little bit. And then I looked down. I'm wearing pants. The trip is going very well so far.

Getting all Namaste in the lobby of our very swanky resort/hotel

It's a short one hour flight from Bangkok to Koh Samui, but when we stepped out of the airplane, we were greeted with a warm, pleasant island breeze. It's the same temperature as Bangkok, but because of the constant airflow, there's very little humidity and it's so comfortable. The air is a lot less hazy than Northern Thailand as well. So nice to have escaped the clutches of the Burning Season.