Alex is a climber. Denise is a cliff-jumper. Me, I am a… hmm… Let’s face it, I play tennis and like to drive cars.
However, after some sweet days of doing nothing in Chang-Mai, Alex came back to our German guesthouse all excited with news about a 15 metres high climbing wall. Off we were and within a minute the climbing instructor made me mount some man-hood killing climbing harness. My voice changed to Soprano. I also got a small bag with chalk to keep my fingers dry and then I was politely asked to climb the wall which was equipped with several overhangs. I changed my route about 15 times during the 15 metres and Denise had to wait because I repeatedly crossed her way. But – and I am very proud about this – I made it. Twice! After this my arms very too weak to hold a beer. The watching Thais found everything very funny and shouted “Toby, Thai-Boxing!”. I had (and do still not have) no clue what this was about, but they seemed to mean no danger to me and therefore I let them live.

After having proved to be able to climb deadly walls we felt strong enough, to tackle the next challenge: Myanmar&! I had to go there since my Thai visa was about to expire and I had to do the so called “Visa Run”. Denise and Alex were excited to travel to another country and therefore the Land-Cruiser was parked 50 meters in front of the border. Entering Myanmar, a police-state similar to a former soviet satellite state, with a Swiss car was a “Mission Impossible” we were told by both the Swiss Embassy in Kuala Lumpur and by Emil and Liliana Schmid from www.weltrekordreise.ch.

For the first time in Asia I was remembered to the border crossings we had in Central America. Small boys were offering their unneeded services for custom clearance, loads of people were selling fake watches, and we even saw mothers sending their about 3 to 5 years old children to approach us in order to beg for some coins. In fact, it was much worse than anything I had seen in Latin America.

We could not leave the border town on the Myanmar side (for travels into Myanmar you would need special permits and I did not want to leave that car alone for so much time) and were accompanied by begging kids on literally every meter of our march through the market place. Puuuh! After some 2 hours we could not take more and left Myanmar with our renewed visa for Thailand.

We made way towards the North-Western part of Thailand which was supposed to be beautiful. After sleeping in the tent for a warm and for once dry night, we arrived in Pai. We found a beautiful hostel directly at the Pail river and there fate struck badly on me: I saw a motocross motorcycle.
 
The owner, Mr. Tip, invited me for a one-day trip on the next day and asked whether I could ride a bike like this. My mouth said yes while my brain still was thinking “aeeeeehr?” and I concluded that I knew how to ride a normal motorcycle and a mountain-bike and that this, together with my off-roading experience with the Land-Cruiser would be enough, to be a proficient motocross rider. Tip told me to come around at 9AM on the next day and said “Toby, Thai Boxing!” with a big smile. I need to find out about this…


And professional I looked with all my heavy duty equipment when I entered the scene of crime in the next morning. Tip was all exited and prophesied loads of mud, dirt and fun since it had been raining heavily during the night. He praised Buddha and together with the Italian Claudio we set of with the three 250ccm bikes and made way on small streets towards the nearby mountains. My Kawasaki was the only two-stroke bike among the three and therefore much louder and more aggressive. Which I would have liked, except that I now realized that I have not been riding any motorcycle for more than 6 years. However, I still remembered how to switch gears and therefore followed the others. And then we were in the mud. Which was sort of fun, except that I was far to occupied with steering and not falling down to realize that I probably did like it. The scenery was breathtaking: we saw small mountain villages, peaceful rice fields, water buffalos…. It was magic!

After some hours my arms hurt and I was glad about a lunch break in some mountain village with NO TOURISTS at all! So it was at least worth the effort in order to see some indigenous tribes and their villages. After lunch Tip said that we now were warm enough to tackle some of the steeper single tracks. Excellent!


He again said hello to Buddha (I felt tempted to join in by now) and asked for a safe trip. He should have asked more intensively: I fell down three times, each time lost more trust in both motorcycle and my capabilities as a driver and finally I was slowing down the group with my now more than cautious driving-style. However, even though the clay-like ground still was slippery as hell and my motorcycle behaved like a diva on ice, I made it through the jungle alive and came back together with the others and literally on the last drop of Benzin. It has been a splendid day but now all my bones ache and my legs are colored blue. I think I just do need four wheels to survive – whether Buddha is with me or not.