Globe Gallivanting- motorbiking across the world

In Koh Samui we saw middle age Thai women with bad facelifts try very hard to look young, while their gross old foreign counterparts, twenty years older than them, drank beer and slapped each other on the back.  We found them in the British bar in Chaweng.  The men had Brummy accents.  One was so old and liver-damaged he could barely walk to the door.  The women sat apart from their husbands and laughed, in Thai. We tried to go exploring.  There were dirt tracks leading through the island interior with wooden huts where the more normal folk lived.  We attempted the drive up in Steve’s hire car, even gave it a good shot with a run up, but we bounced back down, backwards.  It made loud noises as it tried to deal with the pain of the rocks hitting its underbelly.  The dirt tracks were steep and covered in water drain-offs.  We tried another way, but fell off the end of the concrete road.  It was still being built.   Event...

  Goodbye, dear Laos We finally made it out of Laos, with copious paperwork and hurried scurrying on the border control. The friendly border guard took pity on us and upgraded our bike visa to 6 months. We can only stay two on our visas, but its nice to know the bike can have a little holiday of its own. The ride down south to Bangkok was somewhat fleeting- we had less than 48 hours to be in Bangkok, to pick Sue and Steve up from the airport. I can remember a lot of blurred trees racing past, and swerving lumpy tarmac at 100kph. We stopped overnight in Nong Khai, and ventured out to find food. We didn't find any. But we did find a gaggle of chinese dragons, enormous and curling round and round with people running round underneath. There was strange deafening cymbal music in the background, and fireworks, exploding far too close with the sparks falling on the audience and people hiding and covering their ears. In the middle there was an altar with people worshipping in th...