With 44,977km on the clock – 33,677km of which has been chalked up so far on our ride from London – today it’s time for a full service by the BMW guys at Barcelona Motors in Chiang Mai. The last on the bike had been performed in Chandigarh, India by the Triumph mechanics as BMW India had refused to use the genuine BMW spares I’d bought at BMW Innsbruck and BMW Ankara, instead insisting that I order the parts from India and pay in advance. Fuck them basically.

Initially I’d had some difficulty in getting into email contact with Barcelona Motors Chiang Mai, but an email to Germany helped resolve the issue, and from then on I’ve received nothing but great service – both via email and in real life – from them.

Also, with 9,000km wear and two repaired punctures in the rear tyre it was also time to replace our Continental TKC80’s with new tyres. The gt-rider.com website includes a list of bike tyre and service shops in Chiang Mai and the Piston Shop came up with some good reviews, so a few phone calls and emails to Nat there had lined up two new Metzeler Karoo 3 tyres.

After a late breakfast – bike shops in Chiang Mai don’t open early – Karen and I rode the few km out to Barcelona Motors, both feeling a bit naked as last night we’d dropped off our riding gear for washing and so we didn’t have our usual protective gear on. The GPS led us directly to the BMW car showroom, with the Motorrad section tucked away on the end, a small display of new bikes including the R1200GS Adventure, XR1000, Nine-T R, F800GT, and a fully-faired R1200RT.

Once we’d overcome some confusion regarding the service booking and the associated language difficulties, the bike was taken away into the workshop around the back. I followed close behind, keen to watch what was being done to the bike. BMW have switched away from Castrol Power 1 Racing oil to their own branded 5W-40 oil after experiencing some issues with the Castrol oil, I learnt after discussing oils with the mechanic.

New differential oil was required as well – Karen watched the mechanic with interest injecting the new oil into the swing arm using a large syringe. We had new front brake pads installed as the old pads had done 23,000km, but the rear pads were only half worn with about 18,000km on them, so they were reinstalled and I ordered a spare set of rear pads that I can carry with me.

As the service was being wrapped up Karen and I took the opportunity to walk across the road – somewhat indirectly as we were facing a tunnel and needed to walk to a nearby bridge – to a large shopping centre on the other side, the Central Festival. Karen was impressed with the large Christmas Tree outside….it’s the first we have seen and somewhat unusual for a predominantly Buddhist country. We wandered around inside for a while, somewhat amazed at the brand name stores located inside – it was if we had been suddenly relocated to a large shopping mall in the USA. We grabbed some crackers and cheese from a gourmet grocery store and munched on those outside in the shade before crossing back to BMW and collecting the bike, first ordering a set of pillion footpeg rubbers, as both of Karen’s footpeg X have been devoid of rubbers for ages now and it’s difficult for her to maintain her footing, especially on steep descents. This is the second time we’ve had to get new rubbers to replace the originals – so these are a definite weak point in the bike. I should look at getting some serrated metal pegs similar to the rider’s footpegs (NB Karen is not keen on these)

From BMW we followed a GPS route out to Denchai Trading – a large camera and electronics store that had sourced a new Olympus TG-4 for Karen and put it aside awaiting collection. We were pleased when we received the camera as it has some nice improvements over the previous model and should piss all over the Nikon AW-130 we’ve been using for the past two months.

Just around the corner from Denchai is the Piston Shop, so within a minute we were riding the bike up into the cramped service area ready for its tyre change. I was surprised to hear that Aad and Mike were still at the shop working on their bikes as I thought they would have finished hours ago, and we walked out the back into the rear yard to find them just finishing up their services. Both the guys looked hot and they explained that the Piston Shop had no water, so I walked to a local 7-11 store and got them some cold cokes and Pringles, whilst Karen went next door to a printing shop and organised a couple of custom ‘2upadventures’ t-shirts for us.

I returned to the Piston Shop just in time to see our BMW being reversed out of the service bay, new Karoo 3’s fitted and ready to ride. Aad & Mike were very appreciate of the cold drinks as they looked absolutely parched, even though the Piston Shop guys had kindly set up a sun shade for them to work under.

Karen paid for the tyres and we bought two repair kits for tubeless tyres as I had used up all of my worms and glue, but later that afternoon when I opened up one kit I realised that it didn’t include rubber cement, so I’ll probably return the kits to the shop and sort out something else.

In the evening the four of us went for a walk to the Rider’s Corner – I’d seen a sign to this place when riding into Chiang Mai the other day and a few bikes parked out the front including a KTM 990 so I was keen to see what the place was all about, and I was blown away almost when I walked up to watch a guy fitting bark busters to a CRF250 and realised that it was Sheldon of “Ride For Smiles” blog fame. Karen and I had met Sheldon in Germany at the Horizons Unlimited meeting, and had enjoyed his boisterous company and huge smile. Working with Sheldon on the bark-busters was a riding buddy of his – Andrew – who is riding an F800GS from Sweden to Australia.

I went inside to get a scrap of paper to write down our email addresses as Andrew offered to send us some details about flying our bike back to Australia and I bumped into Philip – the English owner of Riders Corner, and also owner of rideasia.net – one of the great online forums dedicated to riding here in SE Asia. Riders Corner is like the Thai version of the Ace Cafe, and it was great to chat with Philip for a while, before we all – Karen & I, Aad & Mike and Sheldon & Andrew – grabbed a table and sat down for dinner, drinks, and a couple of hours bench racing and bullshit about bikes and riding.

Catching up with Sheldon, Andrew and Philip at Rider’s Corner was a great finish to a busy but successful day of getting bike stuff sorted, and now we’re ready to go riding again and explore northern Thailand. Bring it on – I can’t wait !!!!

16th November. 200km approx.

Sleep was a bit difficult last night, with tiny little ants walking over us in the tent and the hot night air refusing to circulate, even though I’d pulled back half the tent fly to open up the tent a bit, so when six am came around and it started getting light enough to see the trees outside it was a pleasure to wake up and greet the day.

Karen whipped up a pot full of instant oats which we flavoured with honey, cooled with UHT milk and shared with Aad and Mike, and also a plate of fried tomatoes and baked beans, whilst on Aad’s Coleman cooker we boiled the water for teas and coffees.

Bikes packed – we were the last to get ready as I’d spent 10 minutes or so getting out my 12v compressor and bringing the rear tyre pressure up to the required 42psi – we left the campground in the early morning heat. The road out didn’t look half as challenging or as impressive as it did last night when we rode in under cover of darkness, and it wasn’t too long before we stopped at the junction with the main road and waited briefly for Aad and Mike to join us, as they were a bit behind having stopped along the way to take some photos.

We turned north and followed the 105 up to Mae Sariang. Conscious that we had about 200km to ride today and had no more gear to repair any new punctures with we took it easy on the ride, trying to dodge the few potholes we saw on the road. At Mae Sariang we turned right – east – and joined the southern section of the famed ‘Mae Hong Son Loop’. The road condition was perfect for riding – beautifully cambered corners, smooth consistent surface, and a bright yellow centre line that was easily visible, and with minimal traffic we had a blast on it.

Aad had given me the route to load into my GPS, but some glitch had caused the map layer containing the road network to disappear so all I could see was a pink line that I needed to follow and the blue triangle that represented the bike’s current location. In discussion later Aad recommended unloading the Open Street Maps of Australia and India and reloading SE Asia, and that solution worked.

Despite the need to protect the rear tyre I couldn’t resist the temptation to change the ride mode to ‘dynamic’ as the twisty road just beckoned to be ridden fast, but today I tried to be a little more subtle with the throttle, and I must of at least partially succeeded as Karen didn’t pick up immediately on the change in behaviour, but gradually it became apparent to her that we were on a charge. To Mike, who was riding behind us, the up-shift to dynamic was blatantly obvious – a flick of the switch and two gear changes later and we’d disappeared from his sight. I do love our bike!!!

We stopped at a small servo to refuel – the first petrol station we’ve encountered in ages that included a little shop selling drinks and snacks, so we all enjoyed an almond Magnum ice cream and some Pringles, washed down with some Coke.

Back on the road it was twisty curvy riding again, up and down along the mountains. Aad had said at the refuelling stop that he was hanging back as he wasn’t riding at his optimum today, but when I got delayed by a cement mixer truck at some roadworks and Aad snuck ahead on the inside he just bolted away, enjoying the road that now followed the contours of the brown river flowing on our left. The road rose and fell and cambered left and right through the myriad of curves like a roller coaster, water on one side and cliff edge on the other.

Eventually our riding playground gave way to some light industrial plants, signalling the start of the commute into Chiang Mai. The traffic became denser and slower, and soon we were passing through built up commercial areas, squeezing our wide bikes through the narrow gaps near the curb reserved for scooters. Entering the city of Chiang Mai we saw quickly how the city is laid out in a square shape surrounded by a water filled moat. I pulled back so Mike could lead us to our destination – Panda House Guest House – as my GPS wasn’t showing me enough detail to navigate by.

A few twists and turns along the one-way streets that ran adjacent to the moat and before long we snuck down a side street and arrived at Panda House. I was particularly elated as we’d succeeded in making it to Chiang Mai without any further tyre problems. We unpacked the bikes, carried our gear to our second floor rooms, and enjoyed the air-conditioned coolness that welcomed us as we opened the door.

After a bit of a rest we went for a walk to the Piston Shop – they’ll be fitting the new Karoo 3 tyres to our GSA tomorrow, and Aad arranged with Nat – manager of the shop – to bring in his bikes tomorrow so they can fit the new rear Avons that have been sent from the UK to Chiang Mai in four days for them, and also so he can service the bikes. Nat was very helpful and he offered Aad every assistance he required.

From the Piston Shop Aad and Mike went straight back to the Panda House to meet their contact who had received the Avon tyres for them, whilst Karen and I stopped at a hotel we walked past and had dinner there. We did pass on a message for Aad and Mike to join us for dinner if they wished, and they did start walking to meet us but as we found out later they discovered a cheap street restaurant and ate there – 190 baht for the two of them, drinks included.

Back at the Panda House we said goodnight to Aad & Mike and retired early to bed – we hadn’t slept well the previous night in the tent and we were both quite tired. Tomorrow I need to take the bike into Barcelona Motors for the service and then Piston Shop for tyres – so another busy day ahead of us!

Sun 15th November. 200km approx.

The plan today was to get off our collective backsides and ride approx half the distance between Mae Sot and Chiang Mai, aiming to camp overnight in the Mae Ngao National Park, just 20km south of where Route 105 runs through Mae Sariang and then becomes a 200km section of the Mae Hong Son Loop – the magical 2-3 day loop to the west of Chiang Mai that is famous for its 1,864 corners.

We – Karen & I, and Aad & Mike needed to get off our backsides as we had settled in at the Hop Inn Hotel in Mae Sot, which had allowed us to recover both from the exhaustion of the past 10 weeks or so, and also a short bout of illness that I’d succumbed to – first a fever that just came out of nowhere and hit quite hard, followed by stomach cramps that lasted a day or so. Yesterday had been an improvement for me over the previous two days, and today I was good to ride.

We also needed to get going as whilst we’d had the chance to rest, relax and recuperate in Mae Sot, our allotted 15 day visa allowance was being rapidly chewed through and we weren’t making any forwards progress. Not only did we need to get to Chiang Mai to kick off our Mae Hong Son Loop ride, but there were things we needed to do in Chiang Mai that would take some time (bike service and new tyres), and there are many other famous & scenic rides radiating out of Chiang Mai that we wanted to experience.

The route we’d selected to take us from Mae Sot to Chiang Mai wasn’t the quickest as we wished to avoid the main highway as much as possible, but it promised to be more scenic as it ran straight north up from Mae Sot, hugging the border with Myanmar in many places as it entered Thailand’s western mountains.

After packing the bikes and having a light breakfast featuring the nice hot chocolate drink, we were all ready to go. The first section of the road was commercial in nature, but quickly the built-up area started to start away and be replaced by cultivated lots of land, which themselves soon gave way to the jungle bush.

The road was good, the sky was blue, the temperature a pleasant 25 degrees C – and we had an awesome ride. I switched the bike across to ‘dynamic’ mode – something I haven’t made much use of to date – and instantly it felt as if we were rising a different machine – no longer the tame, well-behaved animal that we’ve grown accustomed to, but an absolute beast that reacted instantly to throttle and brake commands, snapping out of corners as the power came on and braking sharply at the lightest touch on the front brake lever. I was loving the responsiveness and unbridled power of the machine but Karen was somewhat less than impressed as she could sense the rear end sliding through some of the perfectly crafted corners we were shooting through.

We had a few short stops in the morning – a police check post that just wanted to see our passports (most checkpoints have either been unmanned or they have made no effort to stop us as we’ve approached so we’ve just ridden through slowly), a fuel stop, and just a short while later we stopped at a tyre repair place so Mike could pump up his tyres as they were a bit low.

The countryside was lush, green, serene, and beautiful to ride through. We pushed on steadily, enjoying the road that in most places was smooth and well-formed, easily coping with some older sections of road surface that were showing signs of age and repairs. Out in the lead at one stage I created a hill to see a family of six cows lined up across the road, so I stopped quickly and put the hazard lights on, with Aad and Mike a few seconds behind and giving them enough advance warning to just avoid the hazard – the 1200 can pull up very quickly when called upon.

Around midday we came to a long section of rough unsealed road that twisted and climbed up the mountainside but even that was blissful to ride – standing up on the pegs and leaning the bike in, body out in the curves that dipped and snaked. A short section of tarmac appeared but this quickly showed major signs of determination with large potholes in it, and this was more demanding to ride across than the unsealed section.

Out in front I crested another hill and slowed to assess a very steep downhill section when the tyre pressure alarms started to freak out on the dashboard – the red warning light wasn’t inviting and I could see that the pressure in the rear tyre was plummeting towards zero in the space of a few seconds. I stopped completely and flagged down Mike to tell him we had a puncture, and Karen alighted so I could get the bike down to the bottom of the steep hill and onto some flat ground where we could take a look at the problem.

The downhill section was quite rutted and covered in gravel, and I walked the bike down with a combination of clutch and brake, Aad & Mike walking alongside ready to catch any slips as the bike squirmed around with a completely deflated rear tyre, but the front braking action was just superb, never once invoking a slide on the steep, loose surface.

Down on flat ground I rolled to a halt, and Aad slipped a plank of wood he’d found under the centre stand before we all helped to get the bike up onto its stand. The damage to the tyre was easy to see – a slash between the blocks. We were carrying our spare (but very well used) front and rear tyres – though the spare rear still had a puncture in it that we’d picked up at the temple of 8,000 Buddha statues in Myanmar and hadn’t repaired.

We’d stopped in a small valley, a rice paddy field on one side and lush jungle with the sounds of a waterfall on the other side. The road level was a few metres above the paddy field, and a small hut made from concrete blessed blocks stood a short distance away, adjacent to the small river that flowed under the road and which fed the waterfall on the other side.

I lifted out our puncture repair kit and 12 volt compressor and set about repairing the puncture, with Aad looking on closely as he’s never used one of these kits to repair a tubeless tyre – and then he laughed when I told him I’d never used this before either. The kit is simple to use – ream out the hole using the reaming tool, lather up one of the worms with rubber cement and then use the insertion tool to drive the worm into the hole. Let the glue dry, trim off the excess worm ends that protrude from the hole and then reinflate tyre via compressor.

And so our repairs would have been simple except for the fact that rather than a small puncture the tyre had been slashed – probably by one of the last potholes we’d encountered just at the top of the steep hill – and one worm wasn’t sufficient to fill the hole. Neither was two worms, and neither was three worms, and this was starting to look problematic as my repair kit only had five worms to start off with, and had also found another puncture near the slash and repaired that with a worm, so we had one worm left and diminishing confidence that we could repair the tyre.

By this stage Karen and Mike had settled into their chairs, sitting under the shade of a nearby tree that rose up from the field below us – and were quite enjoying watching Aad and I work on the tyre. We had a look at the spare tyre I was carrying – whilst the block had been slashed by the shard of glass we’d picked up at the Buddha temple from inside the tyre we could see that just a small puncture had actually pierced the tyre, so we reamed that from the inside and plugged that with the last worm we had, and then Aad removed the rear wheel from the bike and set to work swapping the tyres over.

Mike got some detergent from his pannier and we used that to get the repaired the onto the rim, and then we hit problems as we couldn’t get the bead to reseat. My little 12v compressor couldn’t generate enough pressure to reseat the tyre, so we ended up removing the wheel from the bike and trying a few tricks – like winding a strap around the circumference of the tyre and compressing the strap, but all of our attempts were fruitless, and we couldn’t reseat the tyre and inflate it.

From our GPS and trip meters we knew that the tyre repair shop that had helped Mike in the morning was 84km south, and Mae Sariang was about 50-70km north. Cars and light trucks were passing us reasonably frequently as we worked on the side of the road – covering us in dust as they drove past and providing entertainment as many of them struggled to climb the steep hill we’d come down a few hours earlier, but assistance came in the form of a young man on a scooter, who had stopped to watch us briefly a while earlier and had then disappeared, unbeknownst to us, into the besser block shack in the paddy field we were stuck next to.

With few words of English but clearly obvious hand signals – I was summoned to his scooter, along with the uncooperative tyre and rim, which he placed in front of him on the scooter. I grabbed my helmet, climbed on the back of the Honda Wave 100cc scooter, and we attacked the steep hill, bouncing and skating up the rough rocky section.

Half way up the hill my right foot slipped off the footpeg and the footpeg retracted, so I had to stick my leg out straight to avoid having it driven into the ground, and it was a very precarious and action-packed ride, but the rider seemed to know where the smoothest line to take was, and we continued to make forwards progress up to the crest of the hill where I tapped him on the shoulder and got him to stop so I could find the footpeg again. He passed me the wheel and I held that between us as we started the descent on the other side, negotiating the ruts and bumps as we headed down.

We bounced and bumped along the off-road section for a few km til we came back to tarmac, and around the next corner we pulled off the road into a little scooter workshop. The mechanic there only had an ancient foot pump to offer and whilst we tried that it still couldn’t pop the bead back on the tyre, so he instructed my helper to take the wheel further down the road – either 10 km or 10 minutes or 10 hours (I couldn’t understand what the unit of ’10’ was), whilst I was given a chair to sit and watch the mechanic at work on the steady stream of machines arriving at his rural workshop. I was a bit concerned at sending off my wheel in the hands of someone I didn’t know, but two-up plus wheel on the 100cc scooter was making it almost impossible to climb the steep mountain hills, and it made more sense to lighten the load on the little machine.

In the hour or so that it took my helper to return with the wheel successfully fitted with the reinflated and seated tyre I watched the mechanic work quickly and efficiently work on his scooters, and grabbed a refreshing Coke from the store adjacent to the workshop. Tarpaulins laid out in the yard were covered in rice and nuts, and as the sun started to drop ladies gathered up the dried produce and filled up sacks with them.

When my helper returned I grabbed him a beer and paid his fuel cost as he refilled, and then gave him a small gift of appreciation. He arranged for me to return to our stranded bike in a dual cab ute along with the wheel and some cold drinks I’d bought for Karen, Aad and Mike, and he followed behind on his scooter.

The sun was almost gone by the time we got back to the bike, and Aad quickly refitted the wheel to the bike whilst Karen snapped a couple of quick photos of our helper and his scooter. Bike reassembled and repacked, we headed off towards the campground in the Mae Ngao National Park, about 20km north of our location.

The tyre pressure alarm went off again – the recommended pressure is 42psi and it had only been inflated to 29psi, but at least the worm repair was holding and we weren’t loosing any air. The bike was squirming on the soft tyre so we just rode along at a slow pace, trying to protect the tyre.

Darkness fell quickly and the lights on the bike lit up the road extremely well, highlighting the curves and twists in the jungle road. We turned off the main road and headed down the track toward the campground, a further 5km of riding. Riding into the camp a man jumped onto a scooter and led us to a spot where we could pitch our tents next to the river.

In the darkness we pitched our tents and then went up to the nearby shelter and started cooking dinner. Karen had bought some steak in Mae Sot and she cooked that to perfection, whipping up some mashed potato and carrots and and a pepper gravy. Meanwhile Aad and Mike shared hotdog sausages and baked beans in their one-pot dinner. A hungry dog came by and Karen gave her some steak.

The air was very still and hot, and Mike and I grabbed some cokes and water from the campground store. Dinner over and pots washed and dried up we retired to our tent, struggling to get to sleep in the heat but weary from our long day. It had taken five hours from puncture to getting back on the road, but we had dealt with the situation as best we could and we’re happy to have arrived at our intended destination. Part-way through the night I got up and pulled back half the fly, uncovering the tent and trying to get a bit of cooler air into the tent. Sleep finally came, brought on by the relaxing sound of the river water rushing by. A great day’s riding – despite our puncture and unintended halt along the way.

10th, 11th, 12th and now 13th November

I think the original plan was two nights in Mae Sot, but that was extended to three nights and then four as last night I was sick with a fever and Aad was very tired, so we’re staying put here in Mae Sot again today and will head upcountry tomorrow.

Karen has located some accommodation in Chiang Mai, and we’ll camp for a couple of nights on our way there. In Chiang Mai I’ve got a service arranged for our bike as there’s a BMW Motorrad shop in town, and I’ll get new tyres to replace our worn TKC80’s. Unable to locate any Continental tyres we’ll be switching across to Metzeler Karoo 3’s – an unknown quantity for me but hopefully they’ll do a good job. I do like the TKC80’s as they are very confidence-inspiring – very predictable and forgiving.

Karen has also tracked down an Olympus store who has been able to source a new digital camera for her – a TG4 – the model we’ve been trying to get our hands on since her old TG3 died somewhere in India. The Nikon AW130 we bought as an interim solution just doesn’t cut the mustard – it’s slower shutter speed and darker lens doesn’t capture sharp images from the back of the bike as we’re riding along, and our photos are our only souvenirs as we don’t buy any momentos along the way, so we’d like to get some reasonable photos at least.

The past few days have been relaxing, off-bike stuff. Karen has caught up with her 31-day backlog of uploading photos and attaching them to old posts, and that’s been a massive job – taking two days and evenings to complete. I’ve been trying to track down tyres and doing some forwards-planning for the next parts of our trip – Laos, Cambodia, and back to Thailand again. We’ve also started to look into the logistics of flying the bike back into Australia, and Ivan from Bikes Abroad is helping us with that.

Breakfast is included at our nice little Hop Inn Hotel – an egg on toast, with a few tinned sausages on the side and some salad. There’s a coffee machine in the breakfast area that also makes nice hot chocolates, and they go down very well.

We had planned to go see 007 last night but I was feeling exhausted – I didn’t realise it at that stage but I was just starting to get sick – so we all ordered pizza except for Karen who had mushroom pasta, and we all ate our dinner in our room, watching the last Moto GP of the season on tv, as Mike had been able to download it a few days ago.

We had gone to Tesco’s around midday yesterday – we caught a taxi there and a three-wheeled trolley-motorcycle contraption back to our hotel as the sun was blistering. Lunch was KFC and then – to Karen’s absolute delight – desert was an ice cream sundae at Swevenson’s (or something like that). We did a bit more shopping for our upcoming camping trip, but it’s that hot here that it’s perhaps unlikely we’ll be camping out too much.

So in a nutshell all four of us – Aad & Mike, Karen and I – are relaxing and recovering from the hectic riding schedule we’ve endured over the past month or two. It’s been great to not have to pack up the bike every morning and move on every day. With that said I’m sure we’ll be looking forwards to exploring the back roads of NW Thailand from tomorrow onwards, once we are all a bit more rested.