Thailand: the great unveiling

Bangkok, Thailand Arrival

Well, my Friends, it is time for the great reveal, after what was a monstrous and chaotic week. I’m trying to formulate how to write this, when Bob Dylan reaches out for a little inspiration  

“Come gather 'round people

Wherever you roam

And admit that the waters

Around you have grown

And accept it that soon

You'll be drenched to the bone

If your time to you is worth savin'

And you better start swimmin'

Or you'll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin' “

And I think that chorus sums up the week nicely.

Those that are regular readers of my humble rants will know that I’ve promised an adventure of epic proportions. After my Larapinta Trail adventures with Irish & Big J who Inspired me to push myself to previously unknown boundaries. Well, I figured I best keep that momentum up.

 So, after some soul searching and being deliberately vague about my direction, I found myself living the dream about 5500km away from the Wilds of the Northern Territory, only to replace it with the wilds of a concrete Jungle. My concrete Jungle at present is Bangkok, Thailand.  I do not believe, even if I tried too, I could have found myself in such vastly differing places. Larapinta Trail verses Bangkok it is like chalk and cheese, but interstellar cheese from a different galaxy.  But it happened so I’ll talk more about Bangkok in a follow up Blog because this place is a crazy adventure.

Breakfast Meet with ‘Red’ an angry Texan with a zest for adventure

However as promised, my purpose today is to share with you the next epic adventure of Mr meanderthal and company but a little background first.
 For this adventure, I have teamed up with a slightly deranged friend that I met many years ago at Remote Area Dive. You know the old saying.” Birds of a feather Flock together”. Introducing Veron, here in known as ‘Red’ on account of the colour of his face goes when his angry Texan demeanour is not fed coffee or hard liquor in a timely manner.
 Red, well he’s the typical stereotypical Texan with a twist, a funny fucker and all-round decent guy. Having recently survived a little duel with the Grim reaper as he battled with COVID.  He was that sick that his treating medical team literally advised him to get his affairs in order because there was a strong chance, he was not going to make it out the other side. It took him that piece of grave news for him to finalise realise life really isn’t unlimiting, tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, and that time is precious, to cut a long story short ‘Red’ came out the other side post COVID full of piss and vinegar and a new zest on life which has inspired him to meander and live the dream.

Kaos

As we team up and are about to embark on this adventure I can’t but help think that the old saying ‘with age comes wisdom’ will need to be debated and ultimately rebuked as wildly inaccurate when t's applied with a pair of middle-aged men concocting crazy ideas over messenger of their own volution.

Bangkok is a little like this wiring, crazing, convoluted and without regard

Now I can already hear the groans from here as your about to read this. But as a result of soul searching, internet chats and long hours on the trail I came up with an idea that I wanted to really step it up and go to some far-flung places and that the foot falcon mode of transport was not really going to cut the mustard and would be somewhat a little limiting.  
My solution to this quagmire is a Honda CRF300 Rally bike (or similar), Yes, I know I haven’t ridden an adventure motorcycle in ooooh I don’t know maybe 30 years or so. Yes, I know I have no idea about adventure motorbike riding. But when has that stopped me before, so I thought fuck it I’ll give it a crack how hard it can be? Second thought that came to me at an equally blindingly fast pace, was hang on how the fuck am I going to do this? Then enter my best thought ever let’s get some training for this bad boy.  Thinking logically, which is a rare moment for me, I concluded that there must be a course somewhere for this kind of thing. So, on a lonely Sunday afternoon in the Wilds of NT with agonisingly slow internet in Willowra,  Google and I went on my best internet date ever! A simple search morphed into an epic off road adventure that spanned continents and blew my mind.

That my friends is how I found myself to be in Thailand, about to fly to Chaing Mai tomorrow to undertake a three-week impromptu off road ‘training course riding through the jungles (real ones not concrete ones) with HiVolt  mototours and a wayward angry Texan named Red.  Hold onto your hats, sit back and enjoy the ride. the best is yet to come

chicken of course ….. yeah, ok mate sure it is