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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The newest article is out on our first week in Cambodia . We rode in expecting to ride out as fast as possible after seeing Angkor Wat. Instead we fell in love with Cambodia itself and the wonderful people there!

Other Articles In The Chasing Summer Series:

If You Prefer Our Adventures Edited For Grammar

Goats On Bikes

My Best Accidents

I have great news to start 2012. The Ted Simon Foundation announced 12 new travelers on January 1st, and of the 12 I am proud to say I am one of them. I have been thinking about what to write about the foundation but finally came to the conclusion that the best words are in fact from the about page from the foundation itself:

All of this is challenging but fertile ground for those of us who seek to understand the beauties, the mysteries and the tragedies of our world, and no traveller, in our experience, ever came home with a message of hate. (Emphasis mine)

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As we are about to spend some time riding Northern Laos I have written a couple of posts to be autoposted over the next couple of days. That means the blog does not go dead for a week at a time as it tends to do (it can be hard to find wi fi in the jungle). This also means I will not be emailing people back or moderating comments, so just because a post goes up does not mean I am ignoring you – I wrote all of it tonight while I still have access to the internet.

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As we get ready to hit Laos' route 13 I have decided to autopost a couple of articles so the blog does not go into radio silence. So sorry if your comment is not moderated, as soon as I have internet I will be checking the comments first thing!

The latest Chasing Summer article (and the last for 2011, the Indy is on a Christmas hiatus) is an article I wrote over the summer that we decided to hold in reserve in case at some point I could not get access to the internet. It is hard to believe but in this day and age it still happens, particularly when you get lost in the jungles of Cambodia. Couch surfing with Anna has been one of the highlights of my trip, and not just because it meant I got to cook with an ex Soviet engineer who use to work on top secret tank plans. (Although really, without couch surfing how else would I ever had had that experience?) But getting to meet Anna herself and basking in that girl's joy for life reminded me why I travel in the first place.

Why is mine always the odd one out???

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

Naked With Strange Russian Men

The Story Of the Russian Immigration Police

Goats On Bikes

If there is a part 1 there has to be a part 2, and this one is in 3 parts. But we did a little repeat of the jungle adventure in Laos and we were without internet for almost a week! So here is part 2, once again mostly visual, which is good, because the internet connection here is DODGEY and I would hate to spend Christmas inside an Asian prison because I lost everything I typed and ended up throwing my laptop out a window. Pictures are easy to get back, so anger level should remain low in the case where the nets decide to eat this post!

As we rode off into what was no longer a real road, we were not so concerned, the dirt road led down to the Mekong, and we had to cross over with a rather interesting ferry:

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Pictures of Angkor Wat to come! But first a mostly visual summary of our Cambodian jungle adventure.  Both will be followed up with more text based articles with fewer pictures.

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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