Good Rides, Good Vibes

Seems like I've been meeting a lot of interesting people lately. Prostitutes, DEA agents, corrupt border guards - but nobody want's to buy my bike. What's wrong with these people?

My first day on the islands was spent in a torrential downpour. The last day was the same. In between was sunny skies with occasional night time showers. So on the last day, I figured, aw this is a one day thing, tomorrow it'll be gone and so will I. Well things didn't go exactly to plan. The morning was a bit overcast but there were no rainstorms visible on the horizon. The boat back to the mainland is a double decker affair. The rice and supplies and silly people sit on the lower deck and the smart people sit on the upper deck. There is a thick tarp that covers the entire top deck which sits behind the pilot's booth and contains about 15 of those fold up canvas sling beach chairs. The boat ride is three hours. One hour in the seas started swelling. The sky got dark and boat began to pitch. Everyone besides me and a salty old guy with one foggy eye and a fang crowded into the pilot's unaccomodating shack of a cockpit.

All of the chairs began sliding in unison from side to side like backup dancers in a Janet Jackson video. It was impossible to sit, so me and salty man stood, bracing ourselves against the rickety canopy frame. I couldn't help feeling like Marky Mark in Perfect Storm. Actually, I usually feel like Marky Mark anyway, but this was specifically a Perfect Storm moment versus an Italian Job moment or something like that. As the boat rolled, I found definite pleasure in looking towards the rear of the boat (stern?) and watching the horizon tilt to an unnaturally acute angle. Then the boat would right itself and tilt in the other direction and the chairs would slide the other way. It was pretty freaky. Water was spilling into the lower deck, pre-salting the rice. You know what salty man was doing? Smoking a cigarette. Considering the horizontal rain and gale winds he must've lit the thing with voodoo magic or a handy acetylene torch hidden in his trousers.

The rain stopped by the time we got to shore. I asked the guys huddling around my bike if they thought it would rain again. Definitely yes, they all concurred. Well they must be mistaken I thought and I mounted and rode off. Actully, after being dormant for so long I think I flooded the motor and it wouldn't start, so they gave me an unheroic push start. Oh and I forgot my shoes on the island. They were nasty little buggers and I'm glad I left them behind, but I really wanted to document them before I tossed em. Later I bought some 15 dollar shoes in Bangkok - size Large. These shoes are so cheap they don't even make them in real sizes. But they fit great. Turns out my feet are exactly Large.

A few drops hit my helmet and I figured that it was just some residue dripping from the trees. They were big old drops too, landing with a heavy thunk instead of a light pop. Within ten minutes I was soaked through. How did my butt get wet when it was glued to my seat the whole time? Thai roads are really good, but sometimes they get overwhelmed by the weather. On a few low spots, the road would get flooded. This is a multi-lane freeway. So I'd be going 90 or 100km/hr and suddenly I'd be swimming through a huge puddle. The bike didn't seem to mind and at first it was kinda neat to get the big splash. Then I got passed by a bus which almost drowned me in it's puddle wash.

I was driving through thunderstorms. It rained, with differing intensity, for three hundred kilometers. I had long ago given up on rain gear. It doesn't really help and it keeps you from drying up when the sun comes out. But a body just can't stay that wet and cold for such a long period. My big problem is that I get really heavy shivers and my fingers go numb. The numb thing isn't too bad, but the shivering sucks because it's hard to control the bike when I've got these little convulsions pulsing through me. But why stop? There's something cool about being completely soaked through and driving as fast as you can down the freeway. People in their cozy little VIP buses look out with their reading lamp lit faces and throw looks, macho pickup drivers (and it seems everyone who has a pickup in Thailand must prove that their pickup is faster than your motorcycle if just for a kilometer or two) splash, and visibility is poor, but dammit, it's fun!

The Atlanta hotel was booked so I stayed down the road at the Raja to avoid having to make a left onto Sukhumwit road. The Raja, a delapidated hotel which was once lustrous is now just a flophouse for johns and their nightly Nana street girlfriends. Everytime I go to Bangkok I get closer to the redlight district. Next time I'll probably end up crashing at one of the strip clubs in the sex mall. Maybe I'll come home with a girl whose name I can't pronounce but has more experience in bed than me and all my exs and all their exs put together. Every bar and restaurant in the Nana area also doubles as a prostitution clearing house. So if you go to eat a slice of pizza and drink a beer you will inevitably end up chatting with a girl who's trying to pick you up. One girl I talked to works seven days a week and has two kids. Apparently the long work week is standard. And the kids? She estimated about fifty-fifty. Pretty weird, huh? Anyway talking to the prostitutes is way funner than tallking to the guys that are there to pick up on the prostitutes. Creeps.

Over at Rajah's (my tailor, not my hotel), I got fitted for the rest of my suits. They are always super crowded and they give you Heinekens and peanuts while you wait. I met a DEA agent, a couple of black dudes working in computer manufacturing in China, a marine colonel helicopter pilot, and half of the Bangkok expat community. Bobby Rajah, the younger half of the father-son team, showed me the blueprints for his new crip. It's a seven story apartment building on the very happening Soi 20 on Sukhumwit. Bobby and family will be occupying the 6th and 7th floor and the pool laden roof deck. His plans include skylights bigger than my room in San Francisco. Right then I realized that I should have bargained a little harder for my suits. What's the overhead on a 200 dollar suit when the boss is building a million dollar property Donald Trump would undersign?

Weather forced me to stay an extra day, so I headed down to Siam Center for some shopping. At this point, at the end of my trip, I'm just blowing cash like mad. I bought a couple of hats, some button down shirts, some t-shirts, some shoes, some totally useless stuff from a weird Japanese store that sold everything from beer cozys to children's underwear, and I went to the movies. Shrek 2.

Siam Center is big. Probably about the size of the financial district in San Francisco. Part of it is two huge, multistory malls. One is upscale and one is downscale. One has Gucci and one has an entire floor of cell phone shops. The latter is the Asian way. All of these shops sell almost exactly the same thing. And there are hundreds of these tiny shops on one floor of this uber mall. I actually gave up at this place. I made it up three of the seven floors and finally just took an elevator down. The two malls are surrounded by hundreds of tiny shops in various smaller mall-like configurations. These are mostly run by independent designers and mom & pop shopkeepers selling original designs or complete ripoffs. I bought an Alphanumeric hat and a Bathing Ape t-shirt. It would be so great to have a place like this in the city. Hip, young people paying cheap rent and selling their stuff for relatively cheap prices. I guess the labor is so cheap out here that anybody can be a designer and then hand off their drawings to some lady holed away in the ghetto sewing unicorns on spaghetti strapped camisoles all day.

When the sun came out I left Bangkok and headed for the border. Totally uneventful trip. The roads are just so damn good out there. Poipet reminded me that I was in Cambodia again. I navigated three scams before leaving the border area. Immigration guards wanted me to pay a dollar to get my bike across a tollgate. I had my paperwork and I knew this was bullshit, but I paid because arguing with these dudes is not worth a dollar of my time. Then some random dudes wanted me to pay them to get my visa. This was right in front of the visa service booth. So thinking that the official visa booth was closed I went with them. Then they saw that my passport was full and wanted to charge me ten bucks to get the police chief to OK putting the visa on a non-standard visa page. Apparently the last few pages of US passports don't say "PUT VISA HERE" and so the Cambodians found a way to make ten bucks off this little detail. I refused to pay and knocked on the tinted glass of the visa service booth. A sleepy immigration officer slid the window open and made a hook with his finger, motioning for my passport. I handed it over and without removing his head from his hand, resting on his elbow, he said no and waved me away, closing the glass. I knocked again and he opened up, showed me the last page and said "passport no good," dropped the document and closed the window. AAARRGGHH! So it turns out you have to ask the scam guys to ask the window clerk's boss to sign off on your no-room passport. They pay him because it's illegal for immigration officers to take bribes from travelers. Or something like that. I got the overall price knocked down five bucks by putting up a stink. Lastly, at the immigration entrance to Cambodia they wanted five bucks for overtime approval of my motorbike. This time I just refused and lied that I came through the border three times a year and never paid any fee like that. Good lie. They let me through.

One more little reminder that I wasn't in Thailand anymore was that roads sucked! As soon as you leave the casino infested pavement of the border the road turns to shit. Literally, cow shit, dog shit, goat shit, all blotted over the rocky, broken down dirt and remnant asphault of National Road 6. This is the only thoroghfare from Thailand to Angkor Wat, Cambodia's national treasure and main tourist attraction. Then it started to rain. I made it about 60km across a hectic muddy pot holed road and finally gave up in Sisophan. Not because I was tired or defeated, but because it was pitch dark. Actually, after the boring flat and smooth roads of the last couple weeks it was fun to stand up in the saddle, get dirty and scramble.

The next day, to Siem Reap was even funner. The bridges are higher than the road, making little ramps so you can sort of jump them. Oh man, the kids are so stoked on that. I approach the bridge, stand up to see if any traffic is coming and then gun it, giving a little extra gas at the end for that extra kick. The bike is airborne for a second (nothing like that crazy shit you see on ESPN4), then land squarely in the middle of the little bridge, then gun it again to get air over the descending ramp. And the kids standing around the bridge go ape shit and throw thumbs up and yell, wanting another go.

Siem Reap is a cool little town with a bit of that lawless Cambodian vibe. The expat bars are filled with expats and the road rules follow the law of the jungle as they should. I met Paul at Hidden Cambodia Adventure Tours. He couldn't afford to buy my bike but said that his friend at Earthwalkers (or some hippy name like that) had a hotel and she might want to buy it. Paul gave me a bunch of advice about selling the bike in Phnom Penh (basically, lie) and shared some lychee and watermelon with me. I checked in to Earthmothers (or whatever) and met the two hot Swedish chicks that own the place. I'm not making this up. But they didn't want to buy the bike either, so they sent me to Angkor What?, the main expat bar in town. It was easy to find the place because there were five Honda enduros parked out front. I played some pool and drank a beer and even smoked a cigarette but nobody wanted to buy my bike.

Everyone needs to start sending good vibes so I can sell this bike. This is like the bat signal in reverse. Batman (me) needs good vibes, Gotham!