If you’ve read my Asian Indian introduction, you’ll see it was inspired by a bike my Malaysian mate Atannazs (we’ll call him Atan from now on) built. There’s a picture of it on the first page.
It turns out that there’s a HUGE Chop scene in Asia. We presumed it was based in Malaysia, but it’s actually in Thailand. I went to Malaysia in ’92 to build a chop for a rather wealthy geezer, and fell in love with the place. Been back 8 more times, with Lynne and Erin.
After a year of Emailing Atan, the pictures he kept sending me were doing my head in, and I just had to see them. I’ll let you into a secret now. I’m doing some writing again for BSH (the Indian should appear in a few months), and when Atan mentioned a big custom show on the Island of Phuket (I call it Fukit), I had the excuse I needed to do my 10th Asian trip. To do a report on the show! I contacted my good mate Myles, an excellent cameraman, and we decided to “Go for it”. We left the women at home and set off for Kuala Lumpur. Little did we realise that it would take us two days just to get there!!!!!!
The only plans we had were a 2 day stopover in the Federal Hotel, KL, and 4 nights in another hotel on Fukit. After that, nothing was booked. All we knew was that we’d meet Atan at the bike show, and he would show us some of the top bike builders in Thailand. We never expected to jump into a pickup truck with 2 chops in the back, and drive 1200km flat out, in 16 hours, to Bangkok!!! From there, we took a taxi 200km to Pattaya where we saw some of the most stunning bikes on earth. These Thai boys are pissing rings around anything the Brits and Yanks can build, and the Chop scene is 10 times bigger than over here!
We were about to embark on two weeks of travelling that make Alan Whicker seem like a pedestrian.
To give you an idea, here’s an outline of the travelling we did in those two weeks.
Myles picked me up in Yarmouth. Drive to Norwich. Train to London. Two tube trains to Gatwick Express. Express to airport. Long wait, then flight to Dubai. Dubai fogbound, so land in Bahrein to re-fuel. Fly from Bahrein to Dubai to get connecting flight. Connecting flight delayed 6 hours. Finally land in Kuala Lumpur a day late. One day in KL being touristy. Flight to Fukit. 3 days at bike show. 1200km dash to Bangkok. One day there. Hire a taxi to take us 200km to Pattaya. Two days there photographing Chops. Hire another cab back to Bangkok. Another day there checking out the builders. Jump on ‘plane back to KL. Too knackered to meet any more bikers, we now have 1,000 ‘photos between us. Two days and a night in KL getting messy. Plane back to Dubai. Dubai to London after a four hour wait. Gatwick express, Underground and train, and back home. And that’s just part of the travelling we did! We hired a posh Chevvy MPV in Pattaya, more later.
In Part 2 I’ll tell you about KL and Fukit. We were certainly Fuked after that trip! |
