2 Days, 430 kms

Our Thai/SA family have gone back to Wales and its time for us to leave Khon Kaen. We need to be in Bangkok by Monday 13th Feb for B’s all important Hearing Aid appointment and then in Phuket by February 21st to meet up with one of our darling 10 grandchildren and his parents who are joining us for some winter sun.

We leave Khon Kaen early and do the 6 hour ride West to Nakhon Sawan, 400 kms, straight through the middle of Thailand. The vegetation is very dry, the rice paddies are being burnt as part of their regeneration and clearing, the sky is filled with smoke and we both have burning in our throats. Halfway through the journey we drop downhill into a greener plateau where sugar cane is the favoured harvest. The huge articulated trucks grind their way extraordinarily slowly and carefully downhill round all the hairpin bends. One of them has spilled his load and there are patches of squashed sugar cane and resultant juices all over the road. A little monkey is enjoying the rewards of this spillage and leaps between the traffic to loot some stalks. We get the timing right on the bends and overtake. Google directs us to a smart, clean within-budget hotel in Nakhon Sawan, where we are offered a room on the 1st Floor. “Anything on the ground floor?” The receptionist looks at us blankly and lead us to a lovely room on what we call the ground floor, but to the Thais it’s the 1st floor.

Thankfully the bike is parked right outside, so not too far to lug the panniers inside. We have re-arranged the packing now so that all the necessary night stuff ( toothbrush and electronics) are in the back panniers for quick release. The front panniers hold clean clothes but as we wash underwear every night, the outer ware can stay unwashed for a few days, and the front panniers with fresh clothes can stay on the bike. The back box, which we bought and mounted in KK, holds our new lovely soft Tesco pillows, which we don’t need every night. Unpacking is now reduced to just the back panniers. We walk into town to eat, finding a ‘steakhouse’ which serves plastic burgers and freezer chips. We think we love rice and pork/chicken more. Shower and bed. Our map book is in shreds, and also 11 years old, and the large map fold-out sheet is not much better. We decide to try a new tactic. Using google maps, we enlarge and enlarge until we can see a road over the mountains which is indicated as a track on our maps, then ‘pin’ a location and push direction. We picked out the road on the paper map, the 4041, from our visit in 2006 and tried to find it again on the smartphone.

In 2006, the 4041 had been under construction and was a thrilling experience on the original Tiger. We were looking forward to a trip down memory lane and as we want to get to the 3 Pagodas Pass, this appears to be a short cut across the many mountains and large dam blocking our way. From Nakhon Sawan it’s 150kms to the T-Junction where the 4041 intersects the main road to Nong Prue. It’s 150 kms of pleasure riding. Through backroads, small jungle roads, steep curvy roads, past rice paddies where we see hundreds of white egrets and even bigger black-tipped winged birds roosting in trees. We stop and sample some ground nuts (peanut/monkey nut) that are being freshly plucked off their plants. At the top of one pass we whiz past Two riders on big bikes who are looking at a map. It’s rather a remote area and at the bottom of the hill, our conscience pricks and we turn around, ride up the hill and ask “ Are you lost?” We spend the next hour having a lovely chat about bikes and routes and adventure travelling. One guy is a Frenchman, living in New Zealand, but sailing from Port to Port, now anchored in Langkawi, Malaysia. The other guy is from the UK, living in Hawaii. We are South Africans living in France. People on the move! They are riding bikes that they purchased in Malaysia. The bikes are made in Malaysia, branded KTNS, 250 cc, single cylinder, water-cooled, aluminium back and side boxes, elevated pillion seat, single front and rear disc brake, 175 kg, GS650BMW look-alike. Interesting bike. By late afternoon we arrive at Nong Prue, and after indicating sleeping hands and snoring to a few stunned people we are directed to a fabulous little hideaway, where the lady-owner goes out of her way to welcome us. B is still coughing so she shows us what to buy at the pharmacy, a special Thai herbal cough medicine. Her staff lead us on their motorcycle to a steak house where we enjoy real steak and chips, while the restaurant receptionist rides off to buy the cough muti (medicine). The little garden has a swing seat and free tea/coffee and is decorated with happy concrete ornaments.

With my morning coffee at 5h30 I take some sunrise shots over the paddie fields. We ride 30 kms back up the road from Nong Prue to the T-Junction and the 4041. It’s now tarmac and takes us over the mountain towards one of the dams we need to cross. There is no other traffic. At the top, we stop for a coca cola and biscuit break, when a biker pulls upon a Suzuki V-strom. He is the only traffic we have seen for 2 hours. When he takes off his helmet and balaclava we see that he is Thai, but speaks perfect English, a mechanical engineer from Bangkok out for a day of exploring. We team up and carry on down the glorious curvy road, from an altitude of 900 metres with views stretching forever, then follow our Thai escort onto an unknown dirt track leading to a ferry across the dam. We need to wait a few minutes and he orders some noodles soup from the one and only stall. With a personal Thai guide, we are happy to be so remote, even google maps cannot get a signal. It’s perfect. The ferry arrives and we enjoy the relaxed 30 minute putt-putt across the lake. The driver enjoys it so much he falls asleep, one foot locked on the steering wheel, straight ahead, automatic pilot. Perhaps he relies on his passengers to wake him up when shore approaches? On the other side we part with our Thai friend, his bike is bigger and he needs to get home, so standing up trail-riding style he bounces off into the dusty distance. We follow sedately and discover that our new replacement shock absorbers have difficulty handling the dirt road. It’s a very bumpy 50 kms to the tar intersection on the 323.

The 323 is the one and only main road from Kanchanaburi (Bridge over River Kwai ‘fame’) to the Burma border at the 3 Pagodas Pass. We ride the 100kms up to Sangkhla Buri, where we find a hotel that looks OK, but turned out to be rather grotty. We pitch our back-up mosquito tent on the bed after spraying the room with Baygon.