:kboom:kboom:kboom
I guess since I'm now decidedly sticking around in South-East-Asia, time to stop feeling sorry for myself for living in Singapore and not having a bike and spend some time socialising with like-minded fellas
To start in the stone age, moving to Australia in 2008 changed a few things which made me end up here. I got hooked with MC touring again, spent the next 3 years riding the continent, consuming 4 bikes (1 totalled in total, 2 sold, 1 stolen), about 15 pairs of tires and a bit over 100.000km worth of unleaded.
I was on my last lap of OZ before leaving for good when Ian (The Bigfella) was looking for some people to join him for the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos on rented bikes. It didn't take more than a couple of emails to decide to ride up instead through Timor-Leste, Indonesia, Malaysia and so on. Which we did...well, sort of. We split up at some point but we both ended up here and that's what matters.
I was planning (in an ad hoc way, using the 1:10,000,000 school map bought in Kupang) to head all the way back to Hungary, but the DR650 was about dead after 75.000km of abuse on the clock, needed a new gearbox...
But more importantly I felt that even slow travel doesn't make this area justice, so I should stick around for more. I think I got the fever.
So I reluctantly sent out two job applications and it was nearing the end of a year on the bike when I got the job in Singapore (all negotiated from a small restaurant on the road on Skype near the Cambodian border...where else). I headed for my last month of Laos, where after a wonderful experience celebrating Pee Mai fell in love with a Thai girl also traveling there and ended up back in Thailand. Not an optimal sequence of events, but no complaints and it fitted the previous year of no-plan drifting just fine. (And I get to work on a few more Hollywood movies in the process and making some money to spend later on bikes.)
But the feared moment of goodbye has come on a late morning with a signed contract looming and I rode for an eternity on a lean diet of M150 waiting for the day counter to click into 4 digits with couple of dozen sai sin flapping in the wind making me cry a few times under the visor. After a long day of dodging pot holes and SUVs and near-missing a buffalo in the darkness of pouring rain, I've parked my moto in Phnom Penh on that night exactly the day I've left from Sydney. Then it got stolen.
The good news (for me, not for you
) is that I'm moving to Chiang Mai in just 5 months and planning to stay for quite some time.
See you somewhere on the road or in the pub (I prefer the road)! :RO
cheers,
Andras
https://www.facebook.com/lost.for.no.reason
I guess since I'm now decidedly sticking around in South-East-Asia, time to stop feeling sorry for myself for living in Singapore and not having a bike and spend some time socialising with like-minded fellas
To start in the stone age, moving to Australia in 2008 changed a few things which made me end up here. I got hooked with MC touring again, spent the next 3 years riding the continent, consuming 4 bikes (1 totalled in total, 2 sold, 1 stolen), about 15 pairs of tires and a bit over 100.000km worth of unleaded.
I was on my last lap of OZ before leaving for good when Ian (The Bigfella) was looking for some people to join him for the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos on rented bikes. It didn't take more than a couple of emails to decide to ride up instead through Timor-Leste, Indonesia, Malaysia and so on. Which we did...well, sort of. We split up at some point but we both ended up here and that's what matters.
I was planning (in an ad hoc way, using the 1:10,000,000 school map bought in Kupang) to head all the way back to Hungary, but the DR650 was about dead after 75.000km of abuse on the clock, needed a new gearbox...
But more importantly I felt that even slow travel doesn't make this area justice, so I should stick around for more. I think I got the fever.
So I reluctantly sent out two job applications and it was nearing the end of a year on the bike when I got the job in Singapore (all negotiated from a small restaurant on the road on Skype near the Cambodian border...where else). I headed for my last month of Laos, where after a wonderful experience celebrating Pee Mai fell in love with a Thai girl also traveling there and ended up back in Thailand. Not an optimal sequence of events, but no complaints and it fitted the previous year of no-plan drifting just fine. (And I get to work on a few more Hollywood movies in the process and making some money to spend later on bikes.)
But the feared moment of goodbye has come on a late morning with a signed contract looming and I rode for an eternity on a lean diet of M150 waiting for the day counter to click into 4 digits with couple of dozen sai sin flapping in the wind making me cry a few times under the visor. After a long day of dodging pot holes and SUVs and near-missing a buffalo in the darkness of pouring rain, I've parked my moto in Phnom Penh on that night exactly the day I've left from Sydney. Then it got stolen.
The good news (for me, not for you
) is that I'm moving to Chiang Mai in just 5 months and planning to stay for quite some time.See you somewhere on the road or in the pub (I prefer the road)! :RO
cheers,
Andras
https://www.facebook.com/lost.for.no.reason
