Unleash Your Adventure

Three weekends ago we had the pleasure of attending the Horizons Unlimited Chiang Mai mini meeting held at Rider's Corner. (I am having difficulty wrapping my head around the fact that January is over and that the meeting was almost a month ago now).  The mini meeting was not all that mini in fact, with the second night being packed. Of course the second night was presentation night and I was torn between being glad that I was not presenting to an empty room and wishing that I was presenting to an empty room.

Photo by the amazing and talented Kimberly Byrant, whose work you can find by clicking on her name or by clicking here.

The overland motorcycle community is rather small. Not so small that everyone knows each other, but small enough that most people know of each other. Hearing a story over beer in Ulan Bator can provoke the following or something like it: “Ahhhhh, I know you! You're the one who my friend so and so met on the side of the road in Ushuaia out of gas and with a flat tire.”  And so the fact that we met Dave in CM shortly before the meeting should not have been so shocking. Dave is practically a family friend at this point, as he first met Patrick's sister and soon to be brother in law in South America while they were on their South America trip.  He then met Jannick, and finally us, in Thailand. Over beer we learned he also knows Bob and Lorraine and that really should not have been the surprise it was either. Dave organizes the Cambodia Ride For Charity and almost ended up meeting the cousin Joscha as well, as we almost opted to do the ride instead of traveling in North Thailand.

I have uploaded the videos from the presentation to Youtube. I also added a plug for the Iceland book at the end of each video. No, that was not there for every video during the presentation. Just the last one.  ;-)

Learning to ride over rivers:

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My Christmas present this year was the promise of a dog. Namely from Christmas on I had the option to travel with a dog if I wanted, or I could wait until we were back in Germany. I think Patrick finally broke from seeing how excited I got whenever we were charged by a happy dog or puppy. I was hesitant to get one however. Not because of the trip, most dogs cruise around on motorcycles here in SEAsia, and we have seen many others in Europe. Plus any dog of ours was going to have to get use to motorcycle trips. So this was not my initial block. What made me hesitant was the flight. A long and terrifying flight. (Or a drugged one).

So how did we go from "wait until Germany" to "meet Mango the motorycle puppy?"Read on!

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What the Volkswagen Beetle was to Germany after the second world war is the moscout to Asia. Namely it mobilizes the masses. But if you think its only good for transporting a person or two at a time, you don't even begin to do them justice. Moscouts literally transport every thing - as in we see them regulary defy the laws of physics. (And for that matter the legal riding age as it is nothing to see what looks like an eight year old kid whizz by with his five year old sister on back. But that tends to be strictly scooters as opposed to the moscoot so it must be safe....)

Even after 2 months of riding through south east Asia, every day we find ourself amazed by another example of what the moscouts are capable of.

Here is a litle (incomplete) list of what we have seen so far:

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We are presently in Cambodia and after locking ourselves in a room in Trat for a week in an effort to get the Iceland book out, we gave ourselves sometime off from our laptops and are currently being pure tourists.  But as that was 4 days ago we are feeling a little twitchy today and so we are allowed a little Internet time. Updates on the 3 weeks with my parents and (worth every bit of the hype) Angkor Wat to come. Until then I leave you with the newest Chasing Summer article, “Welcome to the Jungle” or my working title “Savage Monkey Bastards.”

And for the record, we followed the rules! They still went savage on us.

If you liked this try one of these:

If You Prefer Our Adventures Edited For Grammar

Arguments With Gravity

Goats On Bikes

The newest Chasing Summer is out! Bangkok Underwater and our not planned for encounter with the floods.

If you enjoyed this, check out some other Chasing Summer articles

Naked With Strange Russian Men

The Story Of the Russian Immigration Police

Cafe Wonderfulness and Newest Article Out

The latest Chasing Summer article is out! Doctored Documents can be found there for your reading pleasure.

Other Chasing Summer Articles:

The First Article

Naked With Strange Russian Men

Arguments With Gravity

After completely changing our plans  we decided to ride in South East Asia. But to do so we needed new bikes. We sold our BMWs in Mongolia. It was not easy to find out the best way (what country and from who) to buy bikes in South East Asia. We searched through different forums and other web resources but there is surprisingly not much substantial and up to date information out there. It took us many hours to find out what we know now. Mainly with the help of the Ride Asia forum. Thanks guys!

We want to write here a little wrap up and share our experience. Maybe it will be useful for others. (and again if you are family and not the biking half of the family, there are still some pretty pictures!)  ;-)

Before we started to look into buying we set some perimeters:

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