Anybody ever do any riding (or driving) in Thailand? I just got back from my second vacation there... spent 3 weeks in various parts of the country. Apparently it's not legal to sell or manufacture any motorbike larger than 125cc, although it is ok to import them. As a result, the country is packed with little Honda and Suzuki scooters, but very few actual motorcycles.
In my 2nd week of vacation, I stayed on the resort island of Koh Samui, on the Pacific side. There, I rented a 125cc scooter to get used to riding on the left side of the road.
My 3rd week I was on the island of Phuket, on the Indian Ocean side (one of the places that was hard hit by the tsunami in December of 2004). For the first few days I had a Honda Phantom 250 single cylinder cruiser, but for the last couple of days I rented a Hayabusa.
What a difference from Arizona!!! I'm used to long, straight, multi-lane freeways with long sight distances. It took some getting used to to ride on narrow, curvy switchback roads climbing up and down mountains. There are almost NO straight stretches of road whatsoever, and you're almost always headed either uphill or downhill, so I hardly ever got the thing past 3rd gear.
Still, it was fun being the only vehicle on the road that could rapidly accelarate UP 12-14% grades.
The bike was a 2000 with about 30,000 miles on it, and it had been ragged on pretty hard. Every time I pulled in the clutch and coasted, I got a sharp "KNOCK, KNOCK" from the gear case, and even though the chain tension was good, it had a horrible tip-in/tip-out jerk when you would go to or from closed throttle.
Probably the coolest thing about Thailand, no matter what you're riding, is seeing all the chicks in short skirts and high heels riding motorbikes. Here's a picture from my bike sitting at a stoplight. (Oh, yeah, and you'd FLIP OUT to see some lady riding around with her 2-3 year old kid on the seat behind her, just wearing flip-flops and no helmet, and holding on... definitely a different culture over there!)
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In my 2nd week of vacation, I stayed on the resort island of Koh Samui, on the Pacific side. There, I rented a 125cc scooter to get used to riding on the left side of the road.
My 3rd week I was on the island of Phuket, on the Indian Ocean side (one of the places that was hard hit by the tsunami in December of 2004). For the first few days I had a Honda Phantom 250 single cylinder cruiser, but for the last couple of days I rented a Hayabusa.
What a difference from Arizona!!! I'm used to long, straight, multi-lane freeways with long sight distances. It took some getting used to to ride on narrow, curvy switchback roads climbing up and down mountains. There are almost NO straight stretches of road whatsoever, and you're almost always headed either uphill or downhill, so I hardly ever got the thing past 3rd gear.
Still, it was fun being the only vehicle on the road that could rapidly accelarate UP 12-14% grades.
The bike was a 2000 with about 30,000 miles on it, and it had been ragged on pretty hard. Every time I pulled in the clutch and coasted, I got a sharp "KNOCK, KNOCK" from the gear case, and even though the chain tension was good, it had a horrible tip-in/tip-out jerk when you would go to or from closed throttle.
Probably the coolest thing about Thailand, no matter what you're riding, is seeing all the chicks in short skirts and high heels riding motorbikes. Here's a picture from my bike sitting at a stoplight. (Oh, yeah, and you'd FLIP OUT to see some lady riding around with her 2-3 year old kid on the seat behind her, just wearing flip-flops and no helmet, and holding on... definitely a different culture over there!)
<!--EDIT|mzbk2l
Reason for Edit: None given...|1154511620 -->
, and no I didn't ride #####. Riding in Tailand is like riding Deals Gap but stretched twice as long.
