Author: StaleFish

It’s a Win-Win: How and Why We House-Sit

September 2, 2022

For the past two weeks, we’ve been living in a renovated 1886 schoolhouse outside of Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, England. For free.


This was originally the village schoolhouse. Built in 1886, the last classes held here were in 1965. Now it’s a beautiful home and gardens.


View from the back garden. It’s quiet here. Very quiet. And relaxing.


Another view from the back yard.


It doesn’t look like much, but this pond behind the house is called The Hossil, or Horse Hole. This was the only natural spring in the area in the 1500s and 1600s, and thus the only source of fresh water for farmers and ranchers in the area. It’s said that Oliver Cromwell watered his horses at this pond after sacking nearby Bolbec Castle in Whitchurch, the next town over, during the English Civil War (1642-1651).


Win-Win

This is a win-win situation for both us and the homeowners. For us, we get to slow down, relax, sleep in a real bed, see the local sights, cook meals in a kitchen, do laundry, catch up on our favorite Netflix shows (and this blog, hopefully!), and enjoy some time with some great animals. For the homeowners, they get to take an extended vacation without having the expense and worry of caring for the pets, in this case two dogs, a rabbit, three tree frogs and a tank of fish. The pets get to stay home, in their own environment, without having the stress of dealing with a kennel (and where is the tree frog and rabbit kennel anyway?). They also get to relax, knowing that their home is being cared for and lived in, which is of course a deterrent to break-ins.


Kenzo and Groovy. Amazing dogs make house-sitting easy.

While it may sound like a lot of work caring for such a menagerie, it really isn’t. Everyone gets fed in the morning and at night, and the dogs get walked for about 20 to 30 minutes each day. I spend a little time with the rabbit (who has its’ own room). Total daily time invested: maybe two hours. The rest of the day is ours to do as we please.

On our end, while we aren’t zooming across a country or two, we’re still visiting local sights, like Bletchley Park (next post), and exploring the local culture. This means we’re not only saving on nightly lodging but also on gas purchases, and by the way, it’s down to only $6.89 per gallon here! Woo-hoo!

Here’s a closer look from a budget standpoint: for the first 19 days of August, including spending five nights with friends for free, we averaged $62 a night for lodging. This includes AirBnB’s in major cities so we can sight-see, and a random hotel to sit out the rain. Now factor in the last 12 days of August house sitting, and the monthly average drops to $31 a night. Which means we saved around $600 last month in lodging.

We also cooked real meals most nights while we were in Aylesbury. Going to the grocery store versus the pub (even though the pub was a two minute walk) reduced our monthly food expenses. And we’ve only put one tank of fuel in the bike in the past two weeks, whereas we normally average about $21 a day on gas purchases.


We walked over to the Black Boy Pub for dinner a couple of times. This pub was built in 1524, and much of the original building and bar remain. The name, “The Black Boy”, is a common pub name across England, and there are more than 25 pubs with this name. The origins are unclear, but the most common belief is that it is a reference to King Charles II (1660-1685).


Celebrating all the money we’re saving by house-sitting with drinks and dinner at The Black Boy.


How It Works

We use a website called Trusted Housesitters. We pay an annual subscription fee, which is about equal to the price of one night in a hotel. Right now there are about 4,600 homes listed on the site all over the world. You can filter by date, location, type of home, length of stay, and type of pets. Occasionally there are homes listed that don’t even have pets; they simply need someone to look after the plants or the house. Once you find a location you’d like to apply to sit, you send your application to the homeowner, and they can check over your application, including your references, your background, and any prior reviews. They may also do a video-conference call to interview you. So it isn’t like they are letting total strangers into their home. There is also insurance included with the subscription price, both for the sitter and the homeowner. For the homeowner, it covers damage to the home. For the sitter, it can cover your expenses if a confirmed sit falls through at the last minute.


The “Other Side” of House Sitting: From a Homeowner’s Perspective

We use the same site to find house sitters to take care of our home while we’re traveling. We’ve been extremely fortunate to have the same house sitter for the past two years. Our sitter is a “digital nomad”, and has lived this lifestyle for about eight years now. Everything she owns is in her car, and she works from home — just not her own home. She has spent as much time in our house in the last two years as we have, and I hate to say it, but I think she takes even better care of it — and our cats — than we do.

We’ve been house-sitting for a couple of years now, and it’s been a great experience. We love the ability to settle in and see things more from a local perspective. And the money we’ve saved has helped extend our travels.

Bletchley Park: Home of The Imitation Game

September 2, 2022

While housesitting near Aylesbury, we realized that we were only about fifteen miles away from Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes. So we jumped online and bought a couple of tickets for the tour and rode over the next day.

If you’ve seen the movie The Imitation Game, you’re familiar with Bletchley Park. It’s the real deal. This was the place where some of the brightest minds in Britain came in the early 1940s to try to break the code of the German cryptography machine Enigma and later Lorenz.


The manor at Bletchley Park. This place was vacant after the widow of the owner died, and sold at auction. It included the manor house, with 27 bedrooms and eight bathrooms, a ballroom, a billiard room, and more. A developer bought the property, but shortly after the British government secretly bought it and turned it into a top secret code-breaking effort, employing up to eight thousand people at the height of the war.


A number of “huts” were built on the property. The workers in each hut had a specific job duty, and were not aware of what was happening in the other huts. This secrecy prevented even the people who worked there from knowing the overall mission. Intercepted encrypted German messages would be brought to Bletchley by couriers on BSA motorcycles, and delivered to one hut. Of course the couriers had no idea what they were delivering. The workers in the hut receiving the messages would organize the coded messages and send them to the next hut, which would have a different duty. Another hut would translate any deciphered messages from German to English and pass it on to the next hut, and so on. The secrecy between huts was such that a passage was built between two huts, and the messages were passed through this wooden passage into the office above, through the sliding door in the wall.


A reproduction of a German Enigma machine. Poland had achieved some success at breaking Enigma codes just before the war broke out in 1939, and their work was the foundation of the British effort at Bletchley Park.


A reproduction of Alan Turing’s Bombe machine, which ultimately allowed Britain to decipher encrypted German messages in as little as two and a half hours from receiving them. It took this Bombe machine less than twelve minutes to test all 17,756 possible combinations of the rotors in the Enigma, and arrive at the correct settings. As mentioned in the movie, it was the inattention to required German procedure by the Enigma operators, such as re-using a prior day’s rotor settings, or the operator setting the rotors using his girlfriend’s initials, that allowed Turing and his team to more quickly break the code.


Alan Turing’s office in Hut 8.


In what was then the Motor Pool, the current museum has several vehicles displayed, including this 1947 Sunbeam Talbot that was owned by Mick Jagger and was used in the 2001 movie “Enigma”, which was produced by Jagger’s film company.

Bletchley Park is a large place and a magnificent piece of history. It wasn’t until the 1970s that it was finally revealed what actually took place here. It’s hard to believe that just thirty years ago it was in complete disrepair and was about to be razed by a builder to be replaced with houses. Thankfully people who saw the historical significance of it stepped in and saved it.

If you go, keep in mind that it takes a few hours to properly tour the facility and explore all of the exhibits.

After leaving Bletchley Park, I decided now was a good time to get the bike washed. Due to the current drought situation in England, the coin-operated type of self car washes were not available, but I found a hand car wash that claimed that they also washed lots of motorcycles. So I wheeled it in…


Here’s the bike being given the “Hard Wash” as I was told it was called. I’ve never seen that much soap, but it did a good job of removing four months of grime.

After the bike was rinsed off, I was asked to move it forward to the drying and detailing area, where it was hand dried. Then a guy walked over with a gallon bucket full of Armor All and a large paint brush, and proceeded to paint my tires with extremely slick liquid. Having just recently slid down the freeway in a diesel spill, this was horrifying. It took me a good ten minutes with dry rags to scrub all of the Armor All off of the tread surfaces of the tires, and even then I rode very gently home.

Llegando a España: Tucking Away The Bike

September 9, 2022

We left Aylesbury, England at the end of our house sit there, on a mad rush for Spain. Once again, this isn’t the way we like to travel — too many highways, too many daily miles, not enough stopping to chat with the locals — but we had limitations placed on us. The Schengen Rule says that non-EU citizens can only spend 90 days out of every 180 consecutive days in the currently 26 Schengen countries. We re-entered at France on September 3rd, which was Day 79 of 90 for us. That left us nine days to make the 1500 mile trek to Malaga, Spain, store the bike and get out again, with two days left for our overnight in Frankfurt, Germany on the way home at the end of this month.


Before leaving England, we discovered that a bolt had come loose and one of the “latches” that secure our removable metal boxes had fallen off and disappeared. This is what the original part looks like. You can see the aluminum tab on the right, with a bolt that goes through to the inside of the pannier, where a threaded knob tightens down and clamps everything in place. An acorn jam nut then sits against the knob inside the box.


After a day or so of searching around for a suitable piece of metal to fabricate a new tab, I realized that the answer came from within: within the pannier. My tire levers are just about the same width as the original latch. Cutting a short piece of the end left a shorter tire tool but still usable.


Not much different from the original. It’ll do.

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If I was a conspiracy theorist, the sky this morning would have scared me. On our way through France we spent one night at a really nice municipal campground in Gacé. The next morning the sky was covered in contrails.


Tembleque, Spain. Many of these small towns looked like something from a horror film; no people anywhere.

Our first night in Spain had me re-thinking the country. We pulled off the road and into Tembleque, a small town of just under two thousand people (and shrinking), in the province of Toledo. The town is the typical La Mancha style: all of the buildings are white, painted in a lime whitewash. There were no people to be seen anywhere, but we found a hotel. No cars, no people, but a hotel, with an open front door. I parked and walked in and found the host behind the counter.

“Tienes habitacion?”, I asked. (Do you have a room?)
“Si”, he replied.
“Cuanto?” (How much?)
“Cincuenta” (Fifty euros)
“Puedo verlo?” (Can I see it?)
“No.”

Normally this would be the point where I turned around and walked out. But it was hot and we had ridden nearly five hundred miles today. Way, way more than we should ever do in a day. So I took the room sight unseen. It turned out to be a nice room, with air conditioning. But the encounter left a bad taste. We hadn’t experienced anything like this in the last four-plus months.

We walked into town to one of only two restaurants that were open, and sat down, but after twenty minutes without finding anyone to place an order we left and walked to the other restaurant. The bartender there was much more friendly, even though he spoke no english, and we were able to at least order a couple of sandwiches.

We made it to Malaga from England in four long days, which gave us another four days to just chill before catching an early morning flight back to London. We stayed in an apartment one block from the beach, and our host Pedro was the extreme opposite of the hotel clerk in Tembleque. We’ve already made plans to stay at Pedro’s place again when we return to Malaga to pick the bike up.


Sunset in Malaga.


Walking along the beach, we passed by this restaurant with an outdoor grill, where they were preparing espeto, a fish common to this area, on skewers.


26,489 kilometers (16,423 miles) since May 3rd.

The Schengen Rule doesn’t say the motorcycle can only spend 90 days of each 180 in the 26 Schengen countries. Therefore, as of this morning, the bike has been tucked away in Spain for a little break, while we fly back to the UK to do a few more house sits before flying home. Why not just fly home? Well, it’s complicated. The easy answer is that we have an agreement with our house sitter through September 25th, so we don’t really have a home until then. Staying in England for a few weeks isn’t really much more expensive than being at home when you don’t have any lodging expense and can eat in rather than going out to eat all the time.

This isn’t the end of the ride. Quite the opposite actually. It’s simply a short break to re-group and head off in a different direction for the rest of the year. There’s a lot more world to explore and we intend to explore it on two wheels. Because as we always say: “If not now, when?”

“Ozzie and Canada”

October 15, 2022

During our few weeks at home re-supplying for our world travels, Diana saw a Facebook post from a couple who had just entered the US from Canada. When the border immigration people asked where they were headed, they said “Mexico”, to which the border agent — who likely has never spent any time in Mexico but instead relies on State Department information — replied, “I wouldn’t go there right now. It’s not safe.” Which of course got them wondering. So they decided to ask around, with the usual mixed results…most people — correctly, in my opinion — said “You can’t paint an entire country with a brush based on one area”, or something along those lines. As I’ve always said, lots of people are shot in south Chicago every weekend, but yet you never see a State Department notice that says “Avoid the Entire United States” because of it.

Diana reached out and offered a little advice on border crossings and invited the couple to stop by on their way south, since they mentioned they were planning to enter Mexico via Texas anyway. Within four or five days, Danny (from Australia, thus “Ozzie”) and Debbie (from Canada, thus…well, duh) pulled into our drive on their Harley Davidson. They had crossed the US from north to south very quickly, as there wasn’t much they hadn’t seen before and their real intent was to get out of the States and have some new experiences in another country.

Danny has spent most of his life traveling, mostly either with a backpack or on a sailboat. The only new part for him was having to import a vehicle through these countries. We quickly found that we shared a common outlook on traveling. We both prefer to avoid cities, opting to spend more time with the locals in the more rural areas in order to gain appreciation for the culture. And we all love experiencing new foods, especially local street food.

We spent a bit of time poring over a map of Mexico and Central America with highlighters, marking off places to go as well as places to avoid, sharing experiences about surf beaches, caves, tunnels, wildlife, food, and all types of water from seas to rivers, lakes and pools. We helped them with their Mexico immigration forms and bike insurance, walked them through the Temporary Vehicle Import process, and made sure they had all their paperwork in order for the border crossing. We talked about the wonderful (not!) world of topes in Mexico, local driving customs, and introduced them to breakfast tacos. Our goal was to make the process of entering Mexico as smooth as possible, while at the same time picking their brains for suggestions on where to go in Australia when we finally get there.


Sharing travel stories with Deb and Danny.

After a couple of days sharing stories, routes, and plans (okay, we shared our plans…Danny and Deb prefer to totally wing it. Very impressive), Ozzie and Canada loaded up and headed south. We’ll keep in touch via Facebook, etc. and hopefully cross paths again somewhere down the road.


Ozzie and Canada ready to head south this morning.

Next Leg

November 8, 2022

After a brief visit with friends and family, and a bit of R&R (Research and Resupply), we boarded our first of three flights this morning to head to the other side of the world. We should arrive by midnight local time tomorrow night. Yes, it’s a lot of time in airports and on planes. We could have saved about eight hours by spending a lot more money, but that money instead will buy us about twenty nights of hotels (yes, they are cheap where we’re going).

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By Monday we should be back on two wheels and making new friends, despite the language barrier.

The World Changes. Plans Change.

November 9, 2022

When I first started getting serious about riding a motorcycle around the world in 2014, I began by laying out a general route and doing some research, beginning with weather patterns. I wanted to try to stay in what was typically late Spring or early Fall weather — not too hot and not too cold — but also avoid the “monsoon season” or other periods of heavy precipitation.

Based on this, I made a plan to leave home and ride south to the bottom of South America, then ship the bike to South Africa and ride north to Europe. From there I would head east into Asia, crossing Mongolia. At that point I had a couple of options: the first was to continue to Vladivostok, on the eastern seaboard of Russia, where I could take a ferry to Japan and spend a few weeks there before shipping on to South Korea and eventually Thailand.

The second, and at least in my opinion, more interesting option was to hire a guide and ride through China to Thailand. This can be expensive, but overland motorcyclists had figured out that they could coordinate and meet up at the border, sharing a guide and splitting the costs.

From Thailand, my plan was to continue south through Malaysia and Indonesia, working my way down to Australia.

In 2015 and 2016 I completed the first part of my plan, including South America, Africa, and Europe. After twelve months I took a hiatus from the ride and returned to work, intending to pick up again where I left off — at the Russian border — at a later date.

That was Round-The-World 1.0, a different world than today. Much has changed since 2016, some of it obvious to everyone and other parts only obvious to the motorcycle traveler.

Covid changed everything of course. It closed borders, shut down non-necessary shipping (including recreational motorcycles), and impacted the world economy. When we could finally resume the trip, shipping the bike by air from the US to Europe had gone from around $2400 to $10,000. Shipping containers for sea freight had become scarce, and so had shippers willing to deal with an individual that wanted to ship one motorcycle.

Then came the Russia-Ukraine war. This obviously had a detrimental effect on a US couple with a US motorcycle entering Ukraine and Russia. It can still be done, but the headaches and concerns had me questioning the sensibility of it. Some things I would have done as a solo rider I won’t do with my wife on the bike with me. In addition, there’s not only the logistics but the ethical or moral issues I have with spending my money in Russia right now.

Then there’s Thailand. About the time I stopped my ride in 2016, Thailand was introducing new rules, making it incredibly difficult if not impossible to bring your own motorcycle into the country. If I couldn’t enter Thailand from China or pass through Thailand to Malaysia and continue south, then my whole route would have to change.

So while we consider the options for riding across Asia from Europe on the bike that is currently stored in Spain, we’re going to approach Asia from the other side. We’ve rented a smaller bike in Thailand and another in Vietnam, and we plan to spend the next couple of months doing some exploring. We’ve already accepted that this isn’t nearly enough time to experience these incredible countries, and we want to see Laos and Cambodia as well if possible, so we already know we’ll have to return. But for now we plan to take in as much of the local culture, people, food, and scenery as we can.

We’re on the plane to Narita airport in Tokyo as I write this. We’ll then change planes and head to Bangkok for a few days to play tourist before picking the bike up in Chiang Mai. We’ve packed very light for this trip: basically sharing one backpack and a small tail bag on the bike. One thing we did pack was rain gear. It may not be the height of the rainy season, but it still rains in SE Asia regardless.

Bangkok Day One: Temple Tour & Night Cruise

Nov 12, 2022

Note: Since we’re traveling light, all blog posts are being created on my phone, which takes a lot longer. So I apologize in advance for the delays and quality. Also, I won’t be able to edit together a good overall video until I have laptop access, but there should be some videos available on our Instagram.
Updated note Nov 15, 2022: We’ve been in electronics Hell for several days. First WordPress did a system update that locked me out of posting to the blog; then our tracker quit sending location for several days. And now I guess the bike got jealous and decided to join in with its’ own electronic gremlins, refusing to start randomly.
We’re slowly getting some of them sorted, and as of now I can post again, so I’ll start trying to catch up.)

After 21 hours of plane time and another eight or so hours of layovers we landed at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok at midnight Wednesday night. Less than two hours later we were in our hotel room and quickly tried to fall asleep, as we had a busy day starting in just a few hours.

Our hotel is not in the hub of tourist central, but it is in the middle of Bobae Market, a huge textile market area. The Prince Palace Hotel is an older hotel but fairly well kept up, with several restaurants, a nice pool area on the 11th floor, and a rooftop bar. We ended up with a corner suite room on the 16th floor. It’s about the size of three Hampton Inn rooms. The huge and very good breakfast buffet is included (although the first morning we had to do battle with several hundred convention goers…plenty of food but tables were scarce even though the buffet is in a ballroom area. Because it’s Bangkok, this is one of the most expensive places we’ll stay: our large suite with breakfast buffet is about $50 a night.

By 7am we were in a tuk-tuk headed for River City Plaza to meet Mina, our tour guide. After a short water taxi ride up the Chao Phraya River, we arrived at the Grand Palace.

Taking a water taxi up the Chao Phraya River to the Grand Palace

Entering the Grand Palace

Monkeys and demons stand side by side in many places,guarding the temples and Palace


There’s a dress code you must follow before you can enter the temples. Basically it says @no uncovered ahoulders and no uncovered knees. However, it turns out that “dress modestly” also means no leggings here. They sell “elephant pants” and “elephant skirts” at the entrance to solve these issues.

The monkeys are the ones without shoes. Here, it’s the white one.

The Grand Palace has been the official residence of the Kings of Siam (and later Thailand) since 1782. It is a 54 acre collection of impressive buildings, including the royal chapel which holds the Emerald Buddha, a 19 inch wide by 26 inch high carving of green stone (not Emerald) created around 43 BC. While the King no longer resides here, it is still the center of ceremony for the monarchy.

Not a great photo, but this is the Emerald Buddha. About a week ago, they changed his clothing to symbolize winter. The King changed Buddha’s hat, then workers did the rest.

After touring the Grand Palace grounds we took a short ferry across the river to Wat Arun, or the Temple of Dawn.

Before crossing the river, we stopped at a street food vendor and bought sticky rice with coconut milk and mangoes. It was very good and around $1.50

This location was the capital of Thonburi before the capital was moved across the river to what is now Bangkok (being surrounded by temples, there was not enough room to expand at Wat Arun, so King Rama I moved the Palace to the other side of the river in 1782).

Later, King Rama II ordered Wat Arun’s main prang to be expanded to 70 meters high in order to be the highest at that time.

Wat Arun’s main prang is over 200 feet high.

At many of the temples, there are nearby shops that rent traditional Thai dress to tourists for photos.

We then returned across the river to Wat Po to view the Reclining Buddha.

It’s hard to capture the enormity of the reclining Buddha. His head is over 50 feet tall.

It’s hard to grasp the size of this monument. The Buddha is 50 feet tall and 150 feet long. The reclining position represents the entry of Buddha into Nirvana and the end of reincarnation.

Note that all ten of Buddha’s toes are identical in size and length. It’s said this is to show his perfect form.

Wat Po has the largest collection of Buddhas in Thailand at over one thousand spread over nearly 20 acres.

Rows of Buddhas at Wat Po.

Occasionally we would see a cat curled up and sleeping, while crowds moved past. Nothing seemed to bother them.

Mina, our tour guide.

After a couple hour nap, we headed back to the river for a dinner cruise. The buffet was huge and there was a duo who performed (mostly in English but occasionally in Thai and Chinese). The city looks and feels very different from the river at night… less hectic, more relaxed and very pretty.

Ayutthaya

Nov 11, 2022

Our last tour before heading north and back on two wheels.

We boarded a van for a two hour drive north of Bangkok to the ruins of Ayutthaya.

Built in 1350, Ayutthaya was the second capital of the Kingdom of Siam. It was a huge development of temples and monasteries and included a hydraulic water supply system that was extremely advanced for its time.

It was attacked and burned to the ground in 1767 by the Burmese army, and never rebuilt. The capital of Siam was later moved to Bangkok.

Wat Chaiwatthainaram consisted of five pagodas, with the main prang in the middle the other four spires at the corners of the cloister.

Main Pagoda or Prang

When the Burmese Army attacked Ayutthaya, they chopped the heads and hands off of all of the Buddhas. In some cases they also dug below them looking for hidden treasure.

A colony of bats lives in this corner pagoda.

Two women wearing rented costumes pose in front of the ruins.

Another large reclining Buddha. This one was originally in a wooden building which deteriorated over time. UNESCO chose not to reconstruct the building.

Due to its’ condition and location, you are allowed to touch the feet of Buddha in order to make a wish. Pretty sure she wished for shade and/or air conditioning.

At our lunch stop we saw these tourists on an elephant. While this is no longer encouraged it is apparently still allowed on a limited basis.

I also saw this Yamaha R1 at our lunch stop. This is very unusual here in Thailand, where the most common motorcycle is the 125cc Honda Wave scooter.

At our last stop, Wat Maha That, we saw the famous Buddha head in the tree. The head was laying loose at the base of this tree which then began growing around it.

The tree has begun to lift the head as it grows.

Tomorrow we fly to Chiang Mai to pick up our wheels for the rest of our Thai travels.

Chiang Mai to Mae Sariang

Nov 13, 2022

The population of Bangkok is just under eleven million people. Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second largest city, is around 1.2 million. The difference is immediately noticeable as you enter Chiang Mai. You can feel the slower pace of life.

The constant frenzy of Bangkok traffic doesn’t exist in Chiang Mai. Yes, there is traffic, but it is more controlled, orderly, spread out, and calm. It’s amazing to me that-there aren’t many many more accidents in Bangkok, as pedestrians, bicycles, scooters, motorcycles, tuktuks, cars, trucks and buses all scramble and fight for the same space. The lane markings are truly nothing but suggestions as cars split lanes between cars, Tuktuks split lanes between cars, and scooters split lanes between tuktuks and cars, all at speed (at least when possible). Turns into and across traffic occur at will, and occasionally a scooter will slowly come down the left shoulder in the wrong direction rather than go around the block. Yet with all of this chaos, vehicles mostly complete this dance with inches to spare and no honking of horns, obscenities, etc.

I could feel myself relax in Chiang Mai. Watching the traffic, I felt a new reassurance that riding into this traffic on a motorcycle could be safely accomplished. “Safe” being a relative term of course.

We spent two nights at Rider’s Corner, a bar/restaurant/B&B/motorcycle rental place. We had originally planned to rent a Honda CRF250L, but a CB500X came available and we opted for it as it had a little more room for us, a little more power, and a lot more storage space.

Rider’s Corner was a good base in Chiang Mai. It was close to several good restaurants, markets, etc, and made for an easy departure out of the city.

Inside Rider’s Corner.

Our ride for the next two weeks. We didn’t plan to have this much storage space, and since we packed light we actually have room left. But not enough for “souvenirs”!

After plastering a 2 Ride The Globe Sticker on the wall and loading up, we headed out. Rider’s Corner is on the northeast corner of the inner ring, a road that runs counterclockwise just inside the old city walls. The outer ring is just outside the wall and runs clockwise. So we had to go about 300 meters on the inner ring before we could cross to the outer ring and head back in the other direction. And about 400 meters later we were pulled over by the National Police. We hadn’t been on the bike five minutes! They asked to see our passports and International Driving Permit. In nearly 50 countries and 50,000 or so miles, this is only the second time anyone has ever asked to see the IDP (the first time was in Namibia). We got off the bike and I pulled our document bag out of the backpack. Before I could even pull the IDP out of the bag, the officer saw it and his demeanor immediately changed. He no longer wanted the passports and was almost apologetic. I think he was truly surprised that we had an International Driving Permit. There are so many tourists and backpackers in Chiang Mai that rent scooters and have no idea that an IDP is required in Thailand. It’s easy fishing for a cop: just find the Farang on the rental bike and probably 8 or 9 times out of 10 it’s payday.

The officers were very nice and even joking once they saw we had the correct documents and they saluted us and wished us a good time in Thailand.

We headed out of Chiang Mai for about an hour on the main road west, then turned off and headed north up the mountain to Doi Inthanon, the highest point in Thailand. We were both looking forward to some cooler temperatures and this was our chance.

The summit at Doi Inthanon.

Everywhere we go we see tourists doing their poses for their social media photos, so I’ve decided it’s time to join them. This is my new “look at me!” pose.

The summit at Doi Inthanon is 8421 feet above sea level. And the permanent sign here also said it was 9 degrees Celsius, or 48F. The sign is screwed in with rusty screws and the numbers aren’t changeable, so I’m not sure when it’s 9C, but I’m sure it’s right occasionally. It was closer to 16 when we were there, which is still a welcome change from the heat and humidity at the lower elevations.

Buddha shrine at the top of the overlook.

Diana taking a photo of the above shrine. In the background you can see… nothing. The fog was so thick at the top that there was no view. It’s probably a distant stretch of mountains on a clear day.

As we headed back down the mountain we turned and took a back road across to pick up Highway 108 again. The smaller road was rough in places and full of potholes. It was obvious that the rainy season had not been kind to this road. There were many mudslides and downed power poles along the road, and occasionally we would come upon a place where the road had washed away, leaving little more than one lane.

We eventually made our way back to 108, a huge improvement in pavement, and considerably less dogs and chickens in the road. From here the road begins to curve and wind its way through the hills, and there is rarely a straight section of road. The average speed is around 30 to 35 mph (50 to 60 kph), and every now and then you can get up to 80kph.

We made our way to Mae Sariang and found our hotel for the evening: a nice bungalow with a shower and A/C.

People often make fun of me for using GPS coodinates instead of addresses when planning routes. I even give my home address to other travelers in the form of GPS coordinates. And here’s a good reason to use them: the sign in the photo is our hotel. Try typing that into Google Maps.

We ate dinner at a roadside stand just down the road from our hotel. We were the only non-locals at the place, and the menu was in Thai only and no accompanying pictures. We’re far enough out of Chiang Mai that there is very little English now. I used Google Translate’s camera function on my phone with some small amount of success and was able to order two plates of food and a large Singha beer. We’re still not sure exactly what the food was, but it was delicious.

Menu. Use Google Translate camera, get maybe three or four words to pop up but they change constantly. One second it says “chicken” and a second later it changes to “disloyal agent” or something similar that means nothing. Point at item that you think is somewhat identifiable. Roll dice.

Beef. Looks and tastes like skirt steak or beef fajitas. Very good. Dipping sauce is spicy, somewhere between “Need a sip of beer now” and “My lips are on fire”.

Fried seafood. Unsure what kind; possibly a combination of local fish and calamari. Also very good. There was a lot more on both plates, but we were so hungry we forgot to take photos before eating most of it.

Today was one of the longest days we’ll do in Thailand, at 160 miles. It felt great to be back on two wheels. Most of the next couple of weeks will be between thirty and eighty miles a day. Most people do the Mae Hong Son Loop in three to four days. At four days you can see a lot of the scenery, but not much of the people and culture. It will likely take us closer to twelve days, and we’re already moving too fast.

Mae Sariang to Khun Yuam

Nov 15, 2022

We left our hotel in Mae Sariang, returned to the 108 road and continued north. The road is nice, and the traffic is fairly light, consisting of a few cars, some Toyota pickups with large cargo walls made of steel pipes and carrying farm staples: crops such as rice, bananas, papayas, or hay; and the steady stream of locals on scooters.

Thailand is sometimes referred to as the “World Capital of Scooters” and the “Land of One Million Scooters”, and it’s true. More than 80% of Thai households own a motorbike. Many have been modified to pull a trailer or have a sidecar attached. Some of the sidecars are actually the Thai version of a pop-up food truck. Some of the scooters are fully functional and some run enough to get by, but may not be roadworthy or registered. Thai police turn a blind eye to these locals for the most part. Of course it’s a different story if you’re a tourist on an unregistered scooter.

The scooters are very intent about riding only on the far left side of the lane (traffic here drives on the left, like in the UK). The scooters only leave the left edge of the road to pass another scooter or to turn right, and sometimes even then they stop on the left edge and wait for a break in traffic to turn right.

It’s not uncommon to see a family of three or four on a scooter. In the US, motorcyclists scoff at “small” motorcycles of less than 250cc and eapecially at mopeds and scooters. They think these are vehicles for children and only good for distances of a few blocks at a time. Here, they are the workhorses of the people, and adding a sidecar full of equipment and three more people to a 125cc machine is normal.

As we head north we are rarely out of sight of a scooter regardless of how far out in “the country” we are. I try to be vigilant of traffic behind me as I pull out to pass scooters; the approaching cars behind us sometimes assume we are another scooter and not capable of passing the other scooters at speed, so they don’t expect us to pull to the right to pass.

Just north of Khun Yuam we turn right onto a side road and begin climbing to the Thung Bua Tong fields at Doi Mae U Kho. We ride through miles and miles of rice paddies and a few small villages before suddenly emerging into the fields.

This seemingly random area atop these hills is covered in large sunflowers.

As quickly as they appear, they are gone again as we descend the other side of the hill. Just a few kilometers down the road we find Posaho Café and stop for a coffee and an iced Thai Green Tea.

Not Starbucks. What Starbucks should be.

Overlooking the fields from the deck at Posaho Café.

No mechanical farm equipment here. Everything is done by hand.

As we remounted to leave, the bike wouldn’t start. We’d been having this problem on occasion and I had narrowed it down to either the key switch of the engine stop switch. I had Diana try to push me and bump-start the bike (resulting in a burst of giggles from the children at the cafe, but no success). It became more clear that the problem was in the stop switch when, after flipping it on and off several times, I could suddenly hear the fuel pump start running. At that point the bike fired up and we were on our way.

About one kilometer down the road I had just begun to tell Diana over the intercom “I think it’s going to rain”, when half way through the sentence the skies opened. There was no reason at that point to stop and put on our rain gear as we were already soaked. Combined with the cooler temperatures at higher elevation, it quickly became quite chilly. The road quickly turned to a river of flowing red mud in places. We continued like this for about ten minutes until the sun broke out of the clouds. By the time we arrived at our hotel in Khun Yuam we had mostly dried out.

Our hotel for the night. Even the nicer places such as this are cheaper than camp sites in Europe and the US.

The owner of the hotel, like all Thai people we’ve met, was very nice. When she asked if we wanted a room in the main building or a bungalow for the same price, I asked which was nicer. Her response: she looked at me and said “The main building is not so far to walk.” Ouch. I hate getting old.