The Golden Triangle Rider

[brat]

Hi all, we arrived in Sihanouk Ville 24th Oct to pick up the Uly from the Oasis Hotel where it's been stored and ride to Bangkok to on-ship to Oz.

Quick fact sheet.
There are 4 bridges under construction, 2 are nearly completed and we paid $1 US at each to cross rather than use the ferry/boat.

Of the 2 remaining bridges one bridge is half built and the other just started, all have bike/car crossing craft available, $1 seems to be the up front cost at each for a bike.

The border crossing is open 7.30am to 8.00pm daily.

We got to the Cambodia/Thai border with only a scanned copy of the front of an Australian Registration notice for the bike and our recently stamped passports, the Cambodian's totally ignored the bike and just passed us through as normal tourists.

The Thailand border consisted of Immigration processing our passports and a slightly confused Customs official processing the Bike rego, this was mainly due to our bike being owned by our company and showing them a document that showed our relationship to that.

The road is very good all the way through, though a inexperienced off road rider could have trouble in the wet/mud with the entry and exit to the river crossings! We had a 200kg bike 50kg of panniers and got through in wet but not very muddy conditions.

We stopped overnight a few times and Nat's trip report will cover that in detail.

The ride from the border was made exciting by us inadvertantly going on the expressway from Pattaya to Bangkok, we paid tolls, we just sat with the motor running at the toll gate until they accepted our payment, the first time by lack of knowledge, from then on because we would have got lost if we left the tollway! Got stopped twice by Police, we just pointed at the toll receipts and shrugged, they did the same and told us to go!

On the road prior to Pattaya we had a cop try to book me for not riding in the bike lane, I pointed out that he had been standing there and I would have had to run over him to use it, he shook my hand and told us to go!

The bike is now in Bangkok awaiting shipment to Oz, as we get the costs I will post them!
Cheers
Chris Moore

[Davidfl]

Brat
Nice one, good to see you back on the board contributing.
Now we know were the mighty Buell ended up. I look forward to the rest from Nant, & hopefully a few hot piccices to keep the troops happy.
Thanks again for the input.

[brat]

The pictures are another story, our previous trip involved a incident with a mini-van where our #1 camera got destroyed, a new camera (Canon 40D) was purchased for this trip and it turns out to have a card in it that doesn't fit our reasonably new laptops! All in good time but the gods are throwing a few obstacles in our way!
PS I still love Thailand and wish to eventually settle there, probably Krabi area!
Cheers!