Night of the Iguana: Old Fogies with young Thai Nubiles. Do they mix?

[Bard]

For the trip we decided to do the 17th of September 09, only me and Tony meet up, everyone else were busy at work and Simon had to get his bike touched up.

We decided to meet at the 331/3304 intersection at 9:00, as he came from Bangkok and me from Rayong. Filled up fuel and headed off to a road I always wanted to see how was the 3239 as it hits right through a national park, a big green blob of land in Eastern Thailand which spans 6 provinces, Chonburi, Chachoensao, Sa Kaeo, Trat, Chantaburi and Rayong and together is a pretty large area. After we meet up my genius GPS took the shortest route from the intersection to 3239 which was mainly a gravel road, this was only some few kilometers and no hassle, just pretty nice actually. My FZ6 and Tony’s Ninja 650R did well on that road, and the scenery was pretty, with lush green forest as a backdrop.

We started out on the 3239 which I was very curious about mainly because it looked much more interesting to ride versus the extremely boring 359 to Aranyapratet, with the upcoming plans for Cambodia trips I believed it would be good to find something more interesting to ride over there.

The road is nice, pretty straight but very nice forest area as a nice green backdrop, following my GPS which I forgot to update the road forked out which did not appear on the GPS so we followed the GPS. Some few kilometers later the road disappeared into a lake, when looking at the lake you could see the handrail on the bridge in the middle of the lake, pretty funny and it was a cool experience. To be honest the road is not curvy but it is a massive improvement versus the boring 359 and it has nice scenery, actually we saw a lot of European looking cattle there which was a rare experience. There were the lake, and if you do ride the road you can go down for a fun view or just follow the sign around it. We just rode back and around it after but I am glad we went down and saw it, was one of those rare experiences with a road going into a lake… Never seen that before… So I can recommend the road versus the 359 any time, a far more interesting road.

After the road we continued towards the Cambodian border, and rode to Khlong Hat and followed the border down from there, at one place we found a armed roundabout and turned towards the border, but 2 kilometers from the border the army stopped us and told us this was no-mans land. But told us to go further down the road and there were a border station we could reach there. Pretty nice guy… Continued the ride and at one army post there were a military guy who owned a big bike Honda something, he waved a lot and smiled, awesome…

We found the sign with “Cambodia Border” and rode down the road, to our surprise it was an international crossing with a market, we wanted to find out more. Tony checked out if “Falangs” could cross with the immigration, which was not a problem… Cool, next Customs, can we cross with our bikes here? Sure, all the paperworks was there and the people in the customs were very helpful. No line of people there, no visa run line nothing almost desrted and very helpful people. This was it, this was the crossing it looked like. We headed off to a restaurant and had a bite, a massive downpour stopped us from moving on for a little while and we queried about the road condition on the other side of the border. Gravel road… You can drive down to Pailin and further on on the other side of the border… The crossing for my upcoming XR was suddenly realized. Great find, very happy we went there. The immigration is on one side of the road and the customs on the other side of the road, can’t miss it…

The entire trip from Khlong Hat to were we hit back to Route 3 in Chantaburi was awesome, curvy and very scenic, beautiful mountains towards Cambodia and it looked like the other side of the border would be a brilliant ride as well.

Highly recommended trip, a lot of fun and again make me happy to ride in Thailand.

Cheers Bard

[LivinLOS]

Good TR and nice pics..

Once wet season really leaves us I have to put some time into a Cambo run (less offroad than your planned XR run I am guessing) if only this pesky work thing didnt keep coming up !!

[BigBikeBKK]

Cheers Bard!

Great pics and Brilliant Ride! some awesome scenery over on the Thai-Cambo border and we discovered quite by accident the border crossing at Ban Laem- a very easy place to cross into Cambodia that wasn't even on the map!

Satellite view:

Just got enduro tires on the ER6n and am looking forward to exploring Cambodia and Laos once the rains stop.

Ride On!

Tony

[Bard]

Nice one Tony, give me a report how the tires perform.

Just looking forward to the pesky work to stop harassing me from riding, luckily the wet season will stop when I get home...

Can't wait to get the XR running into the jungle, or maybe wheelie through the jungle

Would be cool if you came on a exploration trip LivinLOS, it's pretty neat stuff...

Cheers Bard