Chiang Mai & Northern Thailand

Rolling Thunder! That's about the best way to describe the latest tour some of us from the Nagas MC were on. Twenty two motorcycles, mainly Harleys, signed on with the Powerstation tour to Chiang Mai for the 4th Annual Bike Week, and what a tour!

To explain: after last years Bike Week the folk at Powerstation Motorsports of Bangkok extended their return by a few days to spend time touring the mountains and make the trip more worthwhile, so when this years event was on the horizon those good people started planning a tour that would take a week to first get to Chiang Mai, spend 2 days there and then have a leisurely sightseeing trip home... the kind of tour we all at some stage think about but never seem to get around to doing.

I for one have always wanted to do the route along the Burmese border from Mae Sot to Mae Hong Son and then down into Chiang Mai via Pai, and this extremely well organised tour did that, and more! What made the whole trip so enjoyable was wherever there was a highway giving us the shortest and quickest route between destinations.... we didn't take it! Provincial roads all the way, even on day 1 when our overnight stop was in Ban Rai, a mere 300 kms from Bangkok.

From there we spent the next 6 days on a meandering route through Kamphaeng Phet, Tak, Mae Sot, Mae Sariang, Mae Hong Son, Pai, Mae Taeng, Fang, Thaton, Mae Suai, Wiang Pa Pao, Phrao and finally into Chiang Mai. My Buddha did we need a bath! (Actually I am pretty sure that most of us got the bikes booked in for a clean before we peeled off the 'ol dusty denims and jumped in the shower!)

Rather than give you a boring list of road numbers (and lets face it, any of you interested in replicating our tour can pick up a map and trace the journey from the places named above) I'll just tell you about some of the things that made this first part of the trip so memorable for me... the route along the border with literally hundreds and hundreds of Burmese villagers shacks built on tiers in the hillside with a 6ft high barbed wire fence separating them from us, mere feet away; the 1,864 corners and hairpin bends you have to take to get to Mae Hong Son and the certificate you can get testifying this once you are there;

Hong Kong Gary not being able to get his certificate because a metal cats eye on one of those 1,864 corners caught his foot peg and flipped him off his bike (he found the cats eye after his bike had completely ripped it out of the tarmac, held it up and proclaimed "my first tour souvenir!!");

visiting the Paduang (Long Neck Karen) village at Huay Suatao near Mae Hong Son, and crossing a half dozen fords to get there; staying at the gorgeous Belle Villa Resort in Pai and freezing our cobblers off sitting around the pool for the evening meal when the mercury showed it was only about 9 bloody degrees!; the nightly barbeques and hilarious bonfire parties that followed... folks, the list is endless, go do it!

On Monday morning after the Chiang Mai event the main group turned south for a 2 day return to Bangkok but a couple of us headed further up north to the Golden Triangle and had a good look around Chiang Saen and Mae Sai, buying the obligatory Thailand/Burma/Laos Triangle t-shirts none of us will ever wear and taking the "motorcycle posing in front of sign saying Golden Triangle" photo's before turning south to spend a night at one of my favourite old stops, the Ben guesthouse in Chiang Rai. The place hasn't changed a bit in 10 years... still a great budget stopover for only 400 baht!

After this our route home took us from Chiang Rai to Phayao, Phrae, Uttaradit, Phitsanulok, Petchabun (where we stayed at the very convenient ie. bang smack alongside the main road Burapa hotel), Saraburi, Nakhon Nayok, Prachin Buri and on in to Chonburi province.

All in all, 3,500 kilometers in 10 days taking in some of the best roads, sights and resorts the north has to offer, with some amazing experiences along the way, making loads of new friends with precious few mishaps. Half a dozen bent motorbikes and a broken leg?... as I said, precious few mishaps!

So, any advice for riders wanting to join a similar tour? Yes, I would say wholeheartedly go for it but always bear in mind that with so many bikers you are going to have every riding style there is, from skilful to inexperienced to careless to dangerous. I find the worst are always those who think they have something to prove... usually youngsters trying to impress their elders but just end up riding recklessly or the elderly trying to impress the youngsters, blasting a path through to the front, thinking it's macho and trying to convince everyone that they've still "got it"... unfortunately on our tour we had one of each!!

Anyway, my advice, for what it's worth, is to take the first day checking out everyone's riding style... who is naturally a front runner, who the accomplished riders are, who the wannabe's are, who the reckless ones are, who the cautious ones are and who the laid back "I'll get there when I get there" one's are and slot yourself in where you feel most comfortable.

Our tour ended up with 3 clearly defined groups, with the majority of riders respecting other riders safety margins and staying in some semblance of formation. We were also blessed with a superb back-up crew in pick-up's who were always bringing up the rear in case of break-down's, so no-one could get lost unless they really tried!!

So, a superb and enormously enjoyable tour...a huge and heartfelt thank you to Eric and his team at Powerstation from Martin, Pon, Ray, Ooy, Rod and Gung of the Nagas Motorcycle Club. Next year...? We're in!