Motorbikin'

What's the dumbest thing you can do on a trip to SE Asia without travel insurance or health insurance or proper licensure?  Why, rent a motorbike of course!

Our hotel in Noppharat Beach offered motorbikes for rent for 200 BAHT per day.  This is a fraction of the cost of taxis, or tuk tuks, or buses and even with gas we spent approximately $28 for 3 days or about $9 per day.  We agreed it was the best purchase of our trip.  I spent that on that Zeitoun book at the Singapore airport for gosh sakes.  So, the motorbike offered us: freedom, a fan, a ride, an element of danger, and a ticket out of our sleepy little beach town.

Here are some things we saw on our lil' motorbike:

See the part of the strap that is plastic and big?  It goes on your chin, but we hadn't figured that out yet.  And when we did, we wished we hadn't because it was like harvesting zits on purpose.

This statue was like 10 feet tall.  And 30 feet wide maybe more.  I'm not good at judging size, but I stood next to the statue and didn't come up to the shoulder. 

Our hotel offered us "elephant trekking" for $50 each.  We couldn't afford that, but then happened upon an elephant trekking place which let us feed their elephant some bananas for $1.50.

'Twas scary.

Roadside food markets.

Yes it was scary, and we had a few near misses.  But it was so well worth it.  SO well worth it.  I'm only saying that because now it's over and we lived.  And by the way drove on the freeway at 48 miles per hour.   One time, Summer turned into the right lane because she wasn't used to left side driving yet, and I put my hands on her shoulders and tried to turn the bike with her shoulders.  We took turns driving.  It was better to be the driver, because then your life was in your own hands.  Summer felt the same.  I had a hard time with the starting and the stopping and the turning, but on the straightaways I was genius!