Post 245: Summer Holiday, Back to Bangkok

After four days in Isaan, Bangkok slaps your face and steals any remnants of tranquility that you'd managed to find in the provinces. It's a different world, a different country, a different culture. We've fallen lucky. I've found a shiny new boutique hotel just off the Kao San Road that's batting well above it's introductory room rate. All the mod cons, three tourist stars and not one of them borrowed or faked. It's a short walk from the 'SleepWith Inn' to Wat Phra Kaeo (The Temple of the Emerald Buddha) and Phra Borom Maha Ratcha Wang (The Grand Palace), but as it's Hannah's first visit to Bangkok, that means taking a tuk-tuk. Tuk-tuks used to be the main means of transport for those who couldn't afford taxi's, but now they're strictly for the tourist and priced accordingly.

The roads are congested, busy even for Bangkok. Within minutes the reason becomes clear. We're surrounded by thousands of protesters. 'Red Shirts', supporters of ex-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. A man in exile, a man accused of massive corruption, of electoral fraud and of buying votes by giving away a million free cows to the farmers in the north. Tens of thousands of people form an ocean of red in Sanam Luang, a huge parade ground just to the north of the Grand Palace. Organisers use microphones to whip the crowds into a political frenzy. I have no idea what they're chanting but they seem more than enthusiastic about their cause. It's not intimidating, but it becomes quite claustrophobic as they spill out onto the streets. They stop the traffic and surround our tuk-tuk. It's good spirited, they pose for photographs and wave at Hannah who seems to take it all in her stride. There are no masks to cover their faces and the only visible weapons are banners and long strings of jasmine and orchids worn around their wrists and necks. Then without warning, everything stops, not a single person moves and a comfortable silence falls across the entire area. The sound of Thai music replaces the protesters chanting, the Thai national anthem begins to play. At 8am and 6pm every day, all outdoor spaces across the length and breadth of Thailand are filled with the sound of the national anthem. Everybody stops, everybody stands still and everybody listens. Thaksin Shinawatra might be popular here, but the King is in a whole different league.

We avoid the smiling touts who surround the main entrance from dawn till dusk. They inform unsuspecting tourists that the complex will be closed for two hours, two hours in which they'll escort them to various tourist shops, fashion boutiques and gem stores. In exchange for escorting tourists to these establishments, the tout will receive a healthy introducers fee before returning them to the always open Grand Palace. Nobody seems to stop it, many seem to fall for it and it's the one thing in Thailand that is guaranteed to test my saint-like patience. Thankfully today the touts didn't ask, probably because Tassaneeya was with us, but many other tourists seemed to be falling for their no doubt convincing charms.

Once inside the grounds of the Grand Palace, tranquility is restored. A hundred well armed Thai soldiers march past us at the double and block the entrance against the protesters. Good timing, one minute later and we too would have been denied access. Hannah and Tassaneeya are shocked, not by the demonstration or by the appearance of our well armed guards, but by the fact that they have to rent sarongs in order to cover their lower legs. As we'd left the hotel an hour earlier, the girls had laughed at me for wearing jeans on such a hot and humid day. But I'd known the 'Rules' and no matter what they're called here in Bangkok, I really don't do skirts of any description. Appropriately attired, we reach the turnstile and Hannah is shocked again, ''Foreigners 400 Baht, Thai's Free''. Discrimination she cries.

Dating back to the late eighteenth century, The Grand Palace complex with it's tall golden tower is probably Bangkok's most famous landmark. A complex of richly decorated palaces, rooms and temples that has developed and grown over the centuries. It's a rappers utopia, blingtastic in every sense. Everywhere that you look there is gold, gold and more gold. In the centre of the main temple stands the Emerald Buddha, a statue made entirely from Jade, hence the name, 'Emerald'. The Siamese once covered entirely in gold in order to make it appear worthless to invading forces. I've no idea if the Khmer or Burmese invaders ever reached this far south, but if they did, then the gold diversion had clearly worked because the Emerald Buddha is still here. Of all of the temples that I've visited here in SE Asia, this is my least favourite. It's undoubtedly beautiful but with each additional visit, I get an increasing sense of 'Disney Land'. I prefer the ancient ruins of Ayutthaya or the faded magnificence of Wat Po. But this is for Hannah and no visit to Bangkok is complete without a tour of Wat Pra Kaew and The Grand Palace.

After several hours of wandering, the girls return their temporary sarongs and we escape the tourists and pack sardine-like onto a water taxi along the Chao Phraya River. From the river, you see a side of Bangkok that's invisible from the street. The only open spaces are the perfectly manicured lawns of the luxurious hotels bordering the river; the Mandarin Oriental, the Shangri La. Between them and hidden behind high white walls, are shanty homes that cling to the banks supported by wooden stilts that sink down into the depths of the river. Rows and rows of clothes hang drying on makeshift washing lines and every ramshackle home represents a platform upon which another can be built. No planning permission, no permits, illegal living awaiting the inevitable fall of the developers axe.

We leave the still overcrowded commuter boat at Thaksin Bridge and take the BTS (Sky Train) to Nana Station. I love Thai food and will happily sit all day long at a street stall and eat until way beyond capacity. But this is a holiday and Hannah needs a reintroduction to menus and crockery. It's not the cheappest, but I take the girls to my favourite restaurant. It's unusual and the name sounds strange, but the food is quite possibly the best that I have ever tasted. 'Cabbages & Condoms' is located a few hundred metres along Sukhumvit Soi 12, but it's well worth the walk. The restaurant supports Thailand's Population and Community Development Association, a non-profit organisation founded by a former Thai Health Minister. It promotes safe and responsible sex in a fun, and I guess, practical way. All around the beautiful outdoor dining area, light shades, art work and statues are made from condoms and as the delicious meal comes to an end, instead of the usual after dinner mint, each diner receives a condom. It's difficult to explain this unusual place, you really have to go there, but for the food alone, it's well worth the journey. Hannah and Tassaneeya loved it. After the meal, production of a receipt at the adjoining clinic entitles the presenter to a free vasectomy .... an offer that I politely declined.

www.justgiving.com/geoffgthomas

Post 244: Summer Holiday, The Village Temple

As Buddhist's, Thai's believe strongly in the process of making merit. The belief is that the actions taken in this life, will determine their position and happiness in the next. The three basic ways of making merit are to pray, to maintain the Buddhist commandments and to give alms. In a modern and lets face it, seemingly sinful city like Bangkok, this process can often feel at odds with what's happening in the current life. Even in the bars of Bangkok's notorious 'Entertainment Districts', every venue will have a small shrine where prayers are offered and food is given to the spirits of their ancestors. On Bangkok's streets, every morning between 6am and 7am, thousands of monks will walk in their saffron robes towards their various temples. While the tourist sleeps, Thai's will flock onto the streets and place food into the monk's bowls. They add freshly prepared rice, fish, vegetables and fruit to the monk's bowl and place candles, joss sticks and flowers into the monks shoulder bag. Then, they will bow their heads and receive a short blessing from the monk. As the monk performs the blessing, they will often pour water between them signifying that the merit that they receive is to be shared amongst the donors entire family. Most tourists probably miss this daily act, but to understand it, you have to leave Bangkok and travel to the more rural areas, places that are yet to be affected by the cultural pollution that has infected the towns and cities of Thailand.

In Bangkok, or in any other major town in Thailand, you'll see many young and middle-aged people. However, you'll seldom see a Thai of any great age. Thai's are historically village dwellers and the villages are the homes of individual extended families. The cities are for the young with careers, places for making money to provide for the extended family back home. Life will usually begin and end in a small village, often a village without a name. The city or town is for the middle part of life, a means to an end but never a place that a Thai will really consider to be 'home'. Home is a rural place, a place where the family can trace it's ancestors back to the times of deforestation, a time when the travellers levelled the land and began irrigating and planting their rice. The buildings are new, the traditions are ancient and the contrast between the two can seem irrational to the European eye. It is only out in the villages where everything begins to make sense.

We kick off our shoes and follow Tassaneeya up the burning marble steps into the coolness of the dark Village Temple. Thirty elders of Tassaneeya's family, mostly the womenfolk, sit around the floor on uniformly sized straw mats, mats upon which they'll pray, eat and sleep for a period of 24-hours. They're all dressed in exactly the same white robes, they share the same facial features and chatter together in chirpy Isaan Thai. It's a language derived from Thai and Lao, a language that I struggle to understand. Amongst the thirty sisters and cousins, I eventually pick out Tassaneeya's Grandma. She looks at me and cracks into the most beautiful and toothy gleaming smile. Three monks with shaven heads wearing less than pristine saffron robes, sit cross-legged on a small dais and quietly meditate. To the side of the dais stands a small and temporary internal room that wasn't there on my previous visits. It has walls of golden silk fabric that flow and shimmer beneath the cooling breeze from the whirring ceiling fans above us. In front of the curtains is a low altar covered with flowers, burning candles and strongly scented smouldering joss sticks. The chattering has stopped, all attention is now on us, or more particularly, on Hannah. As whispers turn to giggles, I pick out several often repeated words; 'sow, farang, narak', girl, European, lovely, Hannah is the subject of all conversation. The eldest monk gestures for us to come forward. We kneel in a line before the monks and offer the goods that we have brought for them. UHT milk, paper tissues and fresh fruit. They smile and together nod their approval. We knew that the monks would approve of our offerings because they operate something of an informal 'wedding list' system, we'd brought only the things that remained outstanding. The ritual of making merit might be ancient, but it's also totally practical. You give only what is needed at the time, nothing is wasted. The people take care of the monks and when the people become, for whatever reason, incapable of taking care of themselves, they can join the Temple as monks. A perfect system of welfare. We light candles and joss sticks on the altar in front of the curtained room before returning our attention to the three monks. They provided their blessing and smilingly indicate to Hannah that she should turn around. Forewarned by a fatherly whisper, Hannah turns around slowly and with hands clasped tightly together, head bowed, she speaks quietly, 'sarwasdee ka'. To the European eye and in perfect unison, thirty identical septuagenarian women return the smiling gesture and say aloud, 'sarwasdee ka'.

You had to be there, it was a moment in life that is unlikely to be repeated. In a slightly scary movie, this would have been a 'one-take' scene, perfect, surreal and so bloody funny. Everybody was laughing, excited that they'd met another European, a girl, and a girl who spoke some Thai. We leave the temple and wander outside in the Temple gardens. We're still laughing, Hannah asks me what 'the thing' behind the curtains was? There was no point in trying to hide it from her, the whole point of traveling in this way is to discover. I told her what was behind the curtain and surrounded by strongly scented joss sticks ...... but unfortunately we wont be here for the Senior Monks final funeral on Monday.

www.justgiving.com/geoffgthomas

Post 243: Summer Holiday, Leaving London

Heathrow hotels charge upwards of £60 per night. That's equivalent to staying five or six nights at hotels in Thailand. No contest. An uncomfortable night on the free but inadequate benches of Terminal 3. Cold metal, multiple armrests, too little comfort, zero sleep. The Etihad tickets had been amazingly cheap. I assumed this meant that the planes would be empty. Boarding at 8am for the 7-hour flight, no spare seats, no room to sleep. Muslims returning to Abu Dhabi for the holy month of Ramadan. Two hours in transit at Abu Dhabi's new airport before boarding the 6-hour onwards flight to Bangkok. Again, no spare seats, no room to sleep. Muslims escaping Abu Dhabi for the holy month of Ramadan.

Bangkok; hot, humid and wonderfully vulgar. Hannah's first visit to South-East Asia, a culture shock of some magnitude. All personal space is abandoned at Suvarnabhuni Airport, a taxi to Sukhumvit Road, kind offers of golf, massages, tailored suits and precious gems all politely declined. The Guest House, £12 for two rooms. Fifth floor, no lift. Hannah gets a room with balcony and a wonderful view over Bangkok. Next door, I get the buildings two giant watertanks and the promise of a reasonably priced night of sleeplessness. The prospect of a 7-hour bus journey to Khon Kaen is unpopular. I revisit the purveyor of forged air tickets on Sukhumvit Soi 4. It's closed. Wednesday 12th of August, the beginning of the grouse season in Britain, the Queen's birthday in Thailand. A public holiday.

North of Bangkok, we arrive in Khon Kaen. The vast and inexpensive hotel, always empty, always welcoming. A conference for H1N1, the threat from the swine flu pandemic has followed us into Asia. The hotel is full, all hotels in Khon Kaen are full, bad timing, poor planning. I consider the prospect of sleeping at 'The Village'. No great problem for me but a hardship too far for a teenage town dweller with an addiction to all things electrical. I smile and I beg, they find us two rooms. The first proper nights sleep, pressed cotton sheets and cool air conditioning. Hannah will need it, and so will I.

The huge silver pick-up truck bumps across unpaved roads that weave between flooded paddy fields surrounded by lush green trees. It's growing season in Thailand. Entire families work as teams in the fields. Bent double for hours on end beneath wide brimmed hats and a blazing sun, not an inch of flesh exposed. The rice is planted by hand. it grows lush and thick before before transplanted into flooded fields where it flourishes until harvest. These are hardy people, Isaan people. Their long eared, long faced cows are more sensible. They shelter beneath the broad leaves of the banana trees as they watch their masters toil. Eventually, we arrive in the second village, the home of Tassaneeya's family, a village still without a name. As Hannah climbs out of the truck, a small crowd of children gathers. The adults, more reserved than their offspring, stand back and observe us from a distance. I was not the first European that the villagers had seen, but for most of them, I was the first that they had met. Now Hannah was something completely different, a giant European girl, a first for everybody. I could hear the chatter of the adults in the background and the giggling of the children closer to us. They wanted to reach out and touch Hannah, perhaps to see if she was real. It was quite surreal, possibly a once in a lifetime experience for her.

The village seemed to be quieter than usual, none of the older generation were outside to greet us. A fast exchange in too fast Thai. Tassaneeya then explains their absence. The village elders are 'making merit' at the Temple. They will be spending the night there, paying their respects to Tassaneeya's Grandfather and the senior monk who both recently passed away. We too should go to the Temple, and we did. But, I'll try to convince Hannah to describe exactly what happened next.

www.justgiving.com/geoffgthomas

Post 242: Holiday Season

When it comes to English weather, you can only have so much fun before you finally admit defeat and throw in the beach towel. But escaping these shores in the summer is expensive. Whenever the schools are in recess, the cost of flights increases and the price of sunshine moves further beyond your budget. For me, the answer is to head for the rain and to hope for the best. It's 'Low Season' in Thailand and I managed to book flights for myself and Hannah when they were still relatively cheap. It will be Hannah's first taste of travelling. Nothing extreme, apart from the limited budget. Hopefully a temporary separation from hair straighteners and meals that don't need to be unwrapped will prove less traumatic than she currently fears. We'll be roughing it for a night in Heathrow Airport before flying via Abu Dhabi to Bangkok. We'll spend a couple of days in and around 'The Village'' close to Khon Kaen and then back to Bangkok for some therapeutic shopping that should help to reduce any teenage trauma. From there, it's down to a beach hut in Krabi for a few days before returning home via every landing strip in the Middle East. Hopefully, Blighty will still be here when we return at the end of August.

Meanwhile, I think it's fair to say that 2009 hasn't been Gordon Brown's finest year. I suspect that for him the summer recess couldn't have arrived soon enough. For the first few weeks of his family vacation, Mr Brown is spending time with his family in the Lake District and by avoiding flying, he'll be helping to save the planet. Then, he'll return to Kirkcaldy where he'll be undertaking voluntary work and thus helping to save his reputation. To prevent this altruistic act from looking like any another calculated publicity stunt, the Downing Street press office has quietly announced that this volunteering should not be a matter for media attention. Shoot me.

Back in Westminster, Deputy Leader Harriet Harman had moved loudly into Number 10. It's interesting that she's chosen this particular time to announce that 'Men' are to blame for the current financial crisis. She's probably quite correct in her assumption that men are to be blamed, but as she makes her feet comfortable beneath Downing Street's shagpile, I wonder if she'll be brave enough to name the 'Men' she's referring to? Harriet is undeniably ambitious, but Gordon needn't worry too much about her current bout of sniping. Next week she''ll be gone and replaced by his trusty sidekick, Peter Mandelson. In turn, Mandelson will later be replaced by Jack Straw who'll keep things ticking along until Gordon returns to the helm at the end of the summer recess. Hold on. I know that Alan Sugar's been drafted in to support Gordon's Cabinet, but this is beginning to sound like a very scary episode of the apprentice. The contestants may be quite familiar to us, but I think we can guess who Peter Mandelson is hoping will get ''Fired'' and ''Hired''.

When Lord Mandelson of Foy in the county of Herefordshire and Hartlepool in the county of Durham, First Secretary of State, Secretary of State for Business Innovation and Skills and Lord President of the Council moves into Downing Street next week, I suspect that included within his personal baggage there will be a tape measure. Mandelson may lack many things, but like Harriet Harman, ambition isn't one of them. It seems that having saved Gordon Brown's arse, Mandelson has been given the freedom of Westminster and is using it to advantage. His own advantage of course. Gordon Brown must surely have enough vision to see that those around him are planning their own advancement based upon his demise.

Lord Mandelson hasn't employed any subtlety in his efforts to undermine the Prime Minister. He doesn't need to be subtle, Brown is a fighter on the ropes, punch drunk, upright but unconscious and clinging to every possible glimmer of hope. Mandelson privately devised, and then publicly destroyed, the obviously flawed message of 'Tory Cuts'' verses ''Labour Investment''. He volunteered Brown for a ''Presidential Debate'' that he can never win and that he'd already declined. I can only guess that it was the Lord of Darkness himself who advised Gordon Brown to continue the Government's stupid and immoral challenge to the levels of compensation paid to service men and women injured in the line of duty. I'm no fan of Brown, nor a supporter of Cameron and Clegg, but they're all infinitely preferable to the twice disgraced and unelected hubris horror that is Lord Peter Mandelson.

Perhaps I'm being paranoid, but my theory is this: Mandelson plans the complete the public destruction of Gordon Brown and thus ensures that Cameron's Conservatives win the 2010 General Election. A task that with Brown's assistance, he seems to have already achieved. Prior to the election, Mandelson will relinquish his many titles and stand as a Labour MP in the safest possible seat. Following a humiliating election defeat, Mandelson will run, with Harriet Harmen as his Deputy, and gain the leadership of the Labour Party. The Tories will inherit an economy where for many years to come the only thing in the black will be Alistair Darling's eyebrows. They'll have to increase taxes and drastically reduce Government spending. Within five years of necessary but unpalatable economic pain, we'll grow bored with the austerity and vote New New Labour back into power. Peter Mandelson, First Lord of the Treasury, Prime Minister ...... mission accomplished.

www.justgiving.com/geoffgthomas

Post 241: Old Dog ... New Trick

For a while now I've considered myself to be 'Middle-Aged'. Then last week I sat down and did the maths, middle-aged my arse, I'm 'Old'. Back when I was just middle-aged, I could have done the maths in my head, but now that I'm old, just like when pulling on my waterproof over-trousers, I'd had to sit down to do it. Half of seventy-four is thirty-seven, and that's a particular milestone that I passed almost a decade ago. I didn't notice old age creeping up on me, maybe it didn't creep, maybe it just pounced on me from nowhere. Ageing is a slow process that begins at birth, but becoming old is something that seems to happen almost overnight. Don't start shedding tears, because I'm certainly not. I'm still far too young to die from old age and being old actually comes with benefits.

When I was young, which for forty-five years I was, I often worried that when I eventually got old my mind would begin to wander. The truth is that my mind has started to wander, but thankfully I know the reason why and it's not an entirely negative thing. When you're old you think about sex an awful lot less than you you did when you were young and as a bloke, it's amazing just how much mental capacity suddenly becomes available for alternative thoughts. It opens up a whole new world of discovery and I'm now beginning to understand why so many men of a certain age return to motorcycling. It's not that they're trying to recapture their collective youths', it's just that for the first time in years they've had enough spare mental capacity to start thinking above the belt.

For example, I've been shaving for thirty-five years and while the first five years might have been purely voluntary, the following thirty have been a necessary pain in the arse. I've missed a few days here and there but it's definitely never been more than a week. For me, the itch of four-day stubble is akin to having facial haemorrhoids and no matter how much I loathe the act of shaving, it's an awful lot better than the irritating alternative. During the early years of shaving I experimented with various combinations of foams and blades before finally settling on a decent combination and turning it into a standard and familiar routine. Same time each day, the same number of facial strokes and the same temperature of water etc. It's a ritual, a subconscious OCD, an act that can be carried out on auto-pilot and as such allowed an additional five minutes to think about other things, probably sex. Now that I'm old, and clearly not thinking about sex quite as much, I once again sat down to consider the maths.

Over a period of thirty-five years, I've spent five minutes of each day painfully stroking my lathered face with a razor. That's more than forty days and nights and while that's a lot less time than I've spent eating, it's an awful lot more time that I've spent actually having sex. I'd thought that after spending so much time shaving, there'd be little left for me to learn about the art. But I was wrong. last week I picked up a tiny bottle of 'Shave Oil' made by King of Shaves. It actually costs more than a large tube of shaving gel and the price might deter many blokes from trying it, but don't be put off. It's a shaving revelation. Thankfully for us forgetful old folks, the bottle contains clear instructions for use. The challenge now is not to forget that I've discovered it .... and then not to forget that I've forgotten.

www.justgiving.com/geoffgthomas

Post 240: London 2012

I remember hearing the announcement back in 2005 - ''The International Olympic Committee has the honour of announcing that the games of the 30th Olympiad in 2012 are awarded to the City of ......... London''. Misery in Madrid, New York, Moscow and Paris. That Wednesday afternoon, the roads of east London had become snarled with traffic as people took to the streets to celebrate the IOC's announcement. People were celebrating the fact that we'd won the race to host the 2012 Olympic Games, but at the time I was only jubilant because we'd beaten the French. I wasn't confident that as a Nation, we had the ability to build the infrastructure and host a successful Games. Recent experiences of government driven engineering projects didn't bode well; Wembley Stadium, Scottish Parliament, Portcullis House and The Dome, all financial disasters that came in well behind schedule. I had visions of athletes running across building sites and of tourist's wandering aimlessly, and possibly quite dangerously, around the east end of London as the promised new transport links failed to deliver them to the new venues.

Progress towards 2012 wasn't exactly smooth. The day after the IOC's announcement we suffered the tragic bombings of 7/7 and celebrations immediately turned to mourning. Then there was the '2012 Logo' fiasco and a minor miscalculation on the costings as the combined brains of Whitehall had forgotten to add VAT to the budget. For a year, nothing seemed to happen. Several times each day, I rode passed the proposed Olympic site in Stratford and it seemed that nothing was changing. Then in April 2008, I left London and didn't return until January 2009.

What a difference a year makes. Over the summer of 2008, Team GB (and NI) had enjoyed their most successful Olympics ever and new buildings had risen form the wastelands along the East Cross Route running north from Stratford. Today, 27th July 2009, it's exactly three years until the opening ceremony and I'm actually quite confident that we'll make it on time. Physically, I think that we'll be prepared for the Olympic games and for once I'll happily give credit to the government for making it happen. OK, the government have made it happen by learning from their previous mistakes and standing back to let the real professionals get on with their jobs, but at least they've had the good sense to avoid interfering. There's still an awful lot of work to be done, perhaps especially in the area of 'Customer Service' ........ but I honestly think that we stand a very good chance of succeeding.

www.justgiving.com/geoffgthomas

Post 239: Rose Tinted Visor ..... ??

But for a missed shot on the 18th hole at Turnberry, 59 year old Tom Watson would have won the 2009 Open Golf Championship. I don't follow golf, but you've got to respect any senior player who can hold his or her own against the superstars of today.

Cast your mind back to 1978 when Tom Watson was the number one player in the world. Thirty years ago the bikes of the day were the beautiful and sleek Ducati 900SS, the fast furious but often fragile Yamaha RD350 LC and the new class leading Suzuki GS1000. If you were riding at the time then perhaps you were lucky enough to own one of these Superbikes, or if you were a little too young, then posters of them probably sat alongside Farah Fawcett-Majors on your teenage wall of dreams. Barry Sheene and Kenny Roberts were the Prince's of Moto GP and Mick Grant was the undisputed King of the Isle of Man TT. We look back on these bikes with fond memories but as realists, we probably understand that while they were definitely great bikes of their generation, today's Superbikes are in a totally different league .... but just how much better are they?

In 1978, the Suzuki GS1000 was a revelation. It handled like an Italian twin but provided the reliability and power of a Japanese four. It weighed in at a then class leading 242 Kg's and it's 997 cc engine produced a respectable 87 Bhp giving it a top speed somewhere in the region of 140 mph. Today's Superbikes will produce an extra 100 Bhp and weight 50 Kg's less than the GS1000. The Yamaha R1 and Suzuki GSXR 1000 of today drip with carbon fibre, electronic fuel injection, upsidedown forks, radially mounted six-pot brake calipers and tyres that are streets ahead of the Avon Roadrunner's and Dunlop TT100's of 1978. Today's Superbikes are safer and more reliable than their predecessors but are they as far removed from the Superbikes of yesteryear as we're led to believe?

In Motorcycle News, Superbike and Bike Magazine, writers wax lyrical about the latest Yamaha R1. It's so much quicker than it's slightly older brother and the improvements that Yamaha have made in the past twelve months are apparently earth shattering. We're almost made to feel that if we're riding last years models then people will instantly think that we're somehow lacking in the penis department. I can't deny that year on year Superbikes have improved, but sometimes I'll read a test report in a magazine and start to believe that Yamaha, Honda or Suzuki have just discovered a new primary colour. My personal opinion is that such hype is 50% bollocks and 49% marketing spin. Any reported benefit from an updated bike probably owes more to the continued sale of advertising space in the magazine than it does to any distinguishable improvement in the bike itself. Usain Bolt holds the world record for the one hundred meters sprint, but that doesn't mean that Carl Lewis was a snail.

Back in 1978 at the Isle of Man TT, a real-road circuit that has changed very little over the years, Mick Grant lapped the Island at an average speed just short of 115 mph. He was riding a three cylinder Kawasaki based on the aging KH750 and using the best tyre technology of the day, which lets face it wasn't particularly good. There was no carbon fibre, no mono-shock suspension, no upsidedown forks, no titanium trinkets, no tyre warmers and certainly no radially mounted brakes. Mick Grant was a great rider, but certainly no better than the stars of today and he didn't even wear knee-sliders. Thirty years after Mick Grant's 115 mph lap, on the same circuit, John McGuiness set a new record of 127 mph on a Fireblade derived 1000cc Honda. John McGuiness rode a truly amazing lap, but it was still less than 10% faster than Mick Grant's lap of thirty years earlier. Assuming that improvements in tyre technology accounts for at least half of that increased speed, then the benefits from thirty years of technological advances have delivered a real performance improvement of slightly less than 5%.

I'm not suggesting that a Superbike of thirty years ago is as good or as fast as a Superbike of today, but if somebody like John McGuiness can only squeeze a 5% improvement from thirty years of Superbike development, ....... then should we really be in any great rush to trade-in our current Superbikes for next years models?

www.justgiving.com/geoffgthomas

Post 238: London Congestion ..... it's nothing new.

‘’Passenger traffic within London has reached a stage where not only are the existing means of transportation totally inadequate, but any increase in traffic can no longer be dealt with through the extension of existing means. Suburban trains are overcrowded during rush hours, tube trains are full to the point of suffocation and buses, although now so numerous that all road traffic is reduced to little more than walking pace, are already unable to carry the crowds who wish to travel on them’’.

As a despatch rider in London, congestion is a way of life. In fact, if it wasn’t for congestion then despatch riders probably wouldn’t exist. I often look back through my rose tinted visor and dream of how beautifully quite the capital’s roads had been when I first began riding on them. Thirty years ago, London's roads seemed to flow freely, trains were a pleasant means of travelling Inter-City and there was always a seat available on the Tube. The report above reads like a recent consultant’s analysis written for Mayor Boris Johnson and the London Assembly ....... but it’s not.

I was sorting through a dusty leather suitcase full of old family papers and photographs. Amongst the memories and documents, I found an official report entitled "Summary of Proposal for Elevated Mono-Railway System". The report’s author was my maternal Grandfather Mr. H.W. Fright, and was written way back in the 1920's. The proposal talks of 'Central Stations' with radial arms that would serve the developing suburbs. It states that providing trains with a more rounded frontal area would vastly reduce their resistance through the air. He calculates that given the electronic engine technology of the day, such trains would be capable of achieving speeds of up to 150 mph. He suggested the introduction of the 'Soft Closing', centrally operated sliding door, a system that would allow a train's guard to safely operate all doors from one point and thus dramatically improve time-table efficiency. He talks of the inconvenience of and cost of building such a Mono-Rail system but suggests that failing to tackle London's congestion problem would be far more costly in the long run. In today's terms, this all sounds so familiar ...... but this 'Proposal' was written more than eighty years ago.

Since the days of H.W. Fright (Military Cross & Bar), transportation in London has enjoyed some massive capital investment. Countless litres of paint has been used to designate 'Red Routes' and drivers now pay a daily fee to enter the Capital's streets. London clearly decided against the idea of building a functional Mono-Rail system but they did eventually develop the Docklands Light Railway. I wonder if there is a timeframe for the expiry of patents under UK Law?

www.justgiving.com/geoffgthomas

Post 237: Tigers & Cows

I received some sad news today. Tassaneeya called from Thailand to tell me that her Granddad had died. I liked Granddad, he always made me laugh, he made me smile, but more often than not he enjoyed making me squirm by asking awkward questions about my relationship with his Granddaughter. I knew that he was teasing me, and he knew that I knew .... but it never stopped him.

He was an old man, nobody is sure exactly how old, but in a village where official documents are no more than garnish, such minor details never seemed to matter. He was a rice farmer who should have retired many years ago. Every day during the growing season he'd be out in the paddy fields tending to his crops and every night throughout the year, he'd sleep out in the fields where he could keep a close eye on his favourite cow. I’m not sure if the cow was ever in any danger or whether it was just the traditional thing for an aging Thai rice farmer to do. I’m sure that an illicit bottle of fortification was involved somewhere ..... but Grandma didn’t seem to mind. Granddad knew that I came from a farming family but he never quite understood why I didn’t still own a cow. Perhaps something got lost in translation, we were fluent in two totally different languages and the conversations that we shared were always accompanied by liberal quantities of laughter and Kao Lao, the local rice spirit.

I’ll miss Granddad, I’d promised to one day take him for a ride on my bike ....... but I think he’d have been far more impressed if my Tiger had been a Cow.

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Post 236: Future Plans ... Minor Problems

I couldn't quite work it out, every option that I considered just seemed to come up against an impenetrable bamboo wall. The problem was Vietnam .... the rules seemed to suggest that without prior Government approval, it was going to be impossible to temporarily import any bike with an engine larger than 150cc. That restriction I could happily live with, but reading deeper into the current situation it appeared that the size of the bikes engine might be totally irrelevant. No matter what the official rules stated, crossing into Vietnam with any foreign registered motorbike seemed to be a general and insurmountable problem. It reminded me of Russia where they seemed to have one universal set of rules ...... but a hundred different versions of the rule book. Thailand, Laos and Cambodia seemed to be quite straight forward but Vietnam was starting to look like a problem too far.

I considered deleting Vietnam from the itinerary but that would be cheating or at the very least, admitting defeat. Besides, Vietnam was the country that I most want to explore on a motorbike, it's wild, it's beautiful and it's still amazingly cheap. I thought about buying a bike in each country, touring around and then selling it at the next border crossings. That would probably work, but the bike is really a major part of the journey and chopping and changing bikes would be a total pain in the arse. Then it came to me, ...... the problem was always about getting a foreign registered bike across the border into Vietnam, so why not start the journey by buying a Vietnamese bike in Hanoi? .... Simples.

Problem solved. I can probably beg a 'free' return air-ticket to Bangkok and from there travel overland by bus to Hanoi in northern Vietnam. Once there, for around £300, I can buy myself a ''Minsk 125'', put in a new spark plug, have it blessed at the local temple and then ride down the coast to Ho Chi Minh City in the south. Across the border into Cambodia, up to Angkor Wat and then cross into Thailand. From there I can follow the Gulf of Thailand down to Hat Yai and then turn around heading north along the Burmese border. From Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand, I can cut across into Laos and then complete the circle by returning to Hanoi and selling the Minsk.

So far, I've bought maps for the four countries, made a connection with my chosen charity 'SOS Children's Villages' and started the big 'Sell-Off' on ebay. Anyway, that's the plan so far. Three months touring SE Asia spending no more money than I would ordinarily spend on just Rent and Council Tax if I stayed at home in Blighty for the Winter. Of course it wont be as exciting as sharing a student house in Braintree for three months ....... but I'm sure I'll find something of interest to fill my days.

(If you're wondering about my fascination with Minsk's and Vietnam .... see the You Tube link)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2y5jVJWs2w

www.justgiving.com/geoffgthomas