11 May 2010
The previous day while riding along on the scooter four or five motocross bikes whizzed by and stopped just in front of
us. I stopped to take a look and asked whether they would rent out (before I noticed the sign). I found out that they actually have a track near by and charge $1000 THB for an hours riding. So the next day I went and booked in for a ride at 4pm – I was really looking forward to it!
It was great fun, the owner Lek was very nice and he had a nice son but the riding experience was not what I expected.
In the riding party there was me and another European guy who has recently moved to Thailand and is now operating a dive business. I expected trail riding through the rain forest with a large group of people seeing elephants and tearing up the track. But as it happened I ended up following Lek and his son who were on a scooter out to the back of the township to a farming area where we came across a motocross track at which point Lek pulled over and pointed at the track indicating that I should take to it.
Lek would give me tips, encouraged me and even demonstrated how to properly ride the course wearing only shorts, t-shirt and jandals. The Thai people are fabulously crazy!
It is so tiring, at one point my left hand pretty much gave out and I couldn’t pull the clutch in any longer. We were soon dripping with sweat. Essentially we would do a few laps of the course, have a rest and guzzle down some water and then get out there again.
It’s a different experience to road bikes and I want to do it again but would happily start out with trail riding rather than motocross track riding.
We would have been out there for over two hours and our hand shake agreement had stated the price was $1000 THB for an hour. I was under the impression we would only be gone an hour and started to get worried when I realised we had been out so long. Was Lek going to try charge me for more than one hour? When we got back I found out as I expected would be the case that he was just real nice and had added in extra value with no intention of charging more.
