Chiang Mai trip & new bike

So I've been looking for a good deal on this bike all year. Missed an opportunity a few months back, but last Monday I saw a 2009 Kawasaki D-Tracker 250 for 100,000BHT (~3000USD) with only 1300 KMs on the odo. These things are 150K new, so saving 33%; I had to snatch it up. It was located in North Thailand, Chiang Mai, 740KMs (500 miles) away. My friend Jay wanted a road trip on his 2 week old Ninja 250 so he came along. We went to the train station in BKK, and he loaded up his bike on the train for $20. We split a first class cabin, a ticket is $35 each for the one way trip. The train left at 6:30PM and got in around 8AM. It would be a lot faster but it must have stopped at 15 other train stations along the way. It's comedy the various noises a shitty old train makes as it moves along. It was impossible to sleep more than an hour before some crazy noises or bumps would wake me up. I actually laughed trying to sleep because it felt like they purposefully put noise making machines under the train. It was hard to get clear pics while the train was moving. Got a decent breakfast on the train for $6 too. Jay told me they literally had guys lift his Ninja off the train. Chiang Mai is the 2nd largest city in Thailand and why they don't have a ramp at the train station is a mystery. Oh yeah, these people are a bunch of idiots.

So the guy selling the bike was Andrew from the UK and he was kind enough to pick me up. He'd been living here for 10 years and the bike is too tall for him. After taking it for a spin and looking it over, I paid the man and we went to get the paperwork done. I decided to keep the Chaing Mai license plate so I can pretend to be a lost tourist in BKK when I get pulled over. Smooth transaction at the DMV, 30 minutes and $20 to do the transfer.

So now that we both had bikes, we rolled into town to find a hotel. We got rooms for $35 a night right in downtown. We got some great German food for dinner and then hit the bars. The town was dead, all the past redshirt activity really killed tourism here. Seriously I saw maybe only 200 tourists the 3 days I was there.

The next day, I wanted to check out the Kawasaki dealer. Turns out its a franchise so they sold a lot of aftermarket parts in addition to the bikes. My friend got a carbon Yoshimura pipe and some frame sliders put on and I got an aluminum TwoBros muffler. Twice the cost as usual but I wanted the extra power for the long ride home.

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So after the bikes were modded, we rode up the local mountain road to Wat (temple) Doi Suthep. The ride up was very smooth and twisty, much like Boulder Canyon Road or Glendora Mountain Road. My GoPro's memory card ran out so I don't have any video of fast riding. Here's a vid of us leaving the temple, but its lame and the sound cuts out for some unknown reason.

This new muffler is the loudest and most obnoxious thing I've ever heard, around 110db where the stock pipe was 86db. I have since ordered a silencer insert. I started to ride with my foot down like the MX guys do, different than the sportbike thing, but just as fun. The wat is on top of a mountain so it had some stairs, but once up top, there were great views of the city.

I was surprised to see a handicap ramp but notice how steep it is and they put two bends in it. Oh well at least they're trying.

After 2 nights in town we started the ride back home. I didn't know what it would be like in between the 2 cities so I brought extra innertubes, tools, gastank, and survival gear. So the bike had some 75 pounds of extra junk on board but I just stiffened up the suspension and it wasn't really noticable. I managed to max out the bike at 142KMH (88mph), it was very stable where my scooter only likes to go 110KMH. The ride out of town was like riding in Western PA, smooth concrete highways and 2 hilly sections, but nothing difficult. At night and the first rain we were taking it easy and I saw a 3 foot long monitor lizard run in front of me. I made a gesture and rode on, but Jay split it in two. It was too late and wet to avoid so he just rode over it. Unfortunately he didn't tell me till later, I would have loved pics of that. After being on the road for 7 hours I called it a night and got a motel. Jay kept going and rode all the way back in a total of 12 hours. The next afternoon I rolled into BKK and managed to see this cool mountain range on the way. My new muffler is so crazy it melted my turn signal, sidebags, and fender. No matter since I'm going to mod the hell out of this bike anyway.

The night I got back I went to a party and they had these FHM magazine girls but I was so tired I left at 10PM and passed out.

Planted nano freshwater fishtank

I'm not allowed to have any fish or pets in my apartment but I caved in and got a 5 gallon (~1 cubic foot) fishtank anyways since its small enough to hide. Too small for saltwater; so I decided to go with a planted freshwater and stuff it full of shrimp and small fish. The tank is cheaper here, ~$70 with the hood, light, and filter but everything else like the dirt, plants, fish, food, etc is about the same as in the US. I probably dropped $200 in all but it was well worth it. Hopefully by the end of the year all the plants will be grown in and it will look like a jungle.

You may ask what that lead weight is doing? Its keeping that moss ball tied to the deadwood. I'm hoping the moss will spread and cover the twig and end up looking like an underwater tree. I had to use toothpicks to keep some plants from floating away as they have no roots yet. I just zone out and watch the tiny shrimp and fish do what they do.

Redshirt aftermath

Well I got out to the Siam area of BKK where a lot of the junk happened. They burned down what was a nice big mall, Central World. Glad I wasn't around when this shit happened. The city acts normally again but I see less tourists now which is a good thing. I'm sure the corrupt government will continue as usual now.

Stupid RC project.

So some clown posted an RC build contest and I had nothin better to do.

Check out the link if you're bored.

http://www.scale4x4rc.org/forums/showthread.php?t=47810

Honda Riding School

So my friend wants to buy a Kawi Ninja 650R but he's never ridden a bigger bike. His gay 110cc scooter has 5 HP and weighs 150 pounds, but now he wants to jump to a 75HP, 450lb bike. Having almost lost it on several occasions on my big bikes and knowing how crazy it is riding in BKK, I recommended he go and ride a big bike so he can get an idea how fast and heavy they are.

So Honda has a driving school in the city, and its only $6 to ride small 150cc bikes all day long. They charge $100 if you want to ride the big 600/1000cc bikes. I was cheap and just rode the little bikes. I rode a Honda CBR150, a cool little sportbike. Then a Sonic 125, a manual scooter, then I took my own scooter out on the track which was way boring as there's no shifting. Then they let me ride an old police bike, a VFR750. It was a locomotive, 550 pounds and lots of torque. Here's a video of me on the CBR150 doing the slow course. The camera has a 180' wide angle lens so it looks like I should go faster, but it was pretty narrow in places.

The day was mostly about slow riding and agility which was so boring I ended up experimenting by riding with one hand, riding on the back seat, and riding standing up. At the end of the day we did 10 minutes of high speed which was fun. Kinda boring for me, but for $6 it was a great way to spend the day. My friend has a long way to go, but he's going to buy that Ninja big bike tomorrow.

Redshirt protests, awesome!

Many have asked if I'm OK here since all the protests are happening. So far yes, but it's beyond my control and I'm not going to live my life in fear and hide out for months while these guys figure shit out. I support them protesting the illegal government and if I was a Thai I'd join them. They've shut down half the city by blocking roads and camping out. I ride through their gatherings all the time: not by choice, I just don't know where they roll and I run into them. Here's a vid of a bunch of them riding by my neighborhood, they just kept coming and coming so I got bored and went to see Clash of the Titans.

This vid is my first ride through their main gathering point back on April 4th. It was early and no one died yet so things were mellow, but notice how many blocks they took over. I turned the camera off because it got boring.

This video is from April 12th, I was on my way home and got detoured as the mobs were growing, this is the time people started dying.

Lastly is a video my friend made of the more recent gatherings in the main tourist shopping area called Siam. I rode through 5 blocks of this area on April 17th but it was raining so I knew they weren't going to be violent. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMWoJjbtERQ

Since I look Asian they don't stop me driving through their barricades. Guess I'll probably end up being a casualty of a bomb or something. Some Japanese photographer was killed and a bomb went off 2 miles from my place. Whatever, beats being in the Middle East and it's not a shark attack. I bet more people are killed in LA every week than they do in a year here so its no big deal. I remember some dude got shot one block away from me in South LA. I'd be more concerned living in Detroit, Atlantic City, or New Orleans than in BKK.

I'm hoping that all this protesting will reduce tourism forever. Thai people are getting greedy and lazier because jackass Westerners and tourists are paying too much giving them easy money. I don't see where the Thais get off charging 40% import duties and $5 for a crap beer at a club when the infrastructure of the city is so pitiful. There's definite discrimination here, they automatically double or triple rent and product prices just because you look Western. The cops charge me $6 a moving violation, the Thais pay a dollar. You think American politics are corrupt? Well at least some money makes it back to making America look nice: paving the roads, clean water, and educating its people. All the money the Thais take is never put back into making the country, its people, or businesses better. It all ends up in some politician's bank account while the country continues to look like a shithole. My friends tell me there was a time when you took a girl home and she would cook you breakfast and wash your dishes in the morning. Not anymore. I've paid $10 to have my tiny apartment cleaned and my microwave is still filthy. I can clean my place better than these so called professionals. In a global sense this place is like New Orleans, if it vanished it wouldn't matter. The people and business done here is not advancing society, in fact Thailand is just polluting the Earth and doing nothing to better it. Don't get me wrong its still dirt cheap and awesome to live here, I just want to keep the idiots in check by bringing them down. Yay, Revolution!!

Songkran Water Festival

April 12-15th is the old school Thai New Year's celebration. Really its just a good way to fight the humid peak of Summer so the whole country shuts down and parties by hosing people down. Everywhere you go there are people throwing water at you, but during the day its kinda refreshing. I got some lame squirt guns to fight back; next year I'm going to have to import some Super Soakers. I was riding my scooter and kids threw buckets of water at me. Good thing my visor was down as some got me flat in the face at speed. I couldn't get pics of the wetness riding, so these pics are from Soi Cowboy, the main gogo bar street.

People were getting wasted and wet, but they pretty much stop the wetness at night since people get cold. For some reason they like to smear baby powder on you too. The black guy is my buddy Karl from LA. He's trying but having a hard time getting a girlfriend, they all say "no, you have too big banana". Black man can't get a break anywhere.