FUKIT to BANGKOK

When we arrived at Atan’s hotel, I took one look at our transport, and re-voiced my idea of getting a plane. It only takes 45 minutes to fly to Bangkok. In the end we piled in the pickup truck that sat before us. Two chops in the back, along with all our luggage and Atan. Me stuffed in a small space about 18” wide behind the seats, Myles in the front, and Lim, the owner of the bikes, driving. For some reason, he seemed a bit agitated, and we set off  at lunchtime at breakneck speed, with him driving like an idiot.
After several hours, I banged him on the shoulder and by sign language, told him to pull in somewhere, as it was obvious he was just going to keep going until he needed fuel. He only had one CD, of “Disco-Pop” music, which he put on loud, and on “Repeat”. It was driving me and Myles mad, but he was singing and bopping to it. It was boiling, but he refused to open the windows or stick on the air-con. He was constantly on his mobile. I started to really dislike him. We arrived in Bangkok 16 hours later, with 3 short stops on the way. It took several more hours in solid traffic to get to his shop, which was a complete shithole crammed with bikes. The idea was to film him riding his bike, but I was pissed off with him by now, and we didn’t bother. My feet had swollen to twice their size and I just wanted to find a Hotel.

It turned out that Lim had thrown a complete tantrum when he found out he’d not won anything at the show, hence his flat-out drive back. What a wanker! We found a hotel in the centre of the city (another two hours by taxi) and crashed out for a while. Bangkok is bloody huge. I’d estimate 4-5 times the size of London. We found a hotel in the centre of Bangkok. $5 a night for a room each. Now we were off the tourist trail, the prices virtually halved. Had a bit of a look around, and I treated myself to a bottle of Thai whisky from the 7-11 shop. £2 a bottle and quite nice. Myles and Atan decided to go out to some niteclub, but gave up trying to find it in the end, the city being so vast. Even their taxi driver got lost! I stayed in, as my feet were killing me.

Next day, with feet almost back to normal, Atan promised to take us to one of the top builder’s workshop, which he did. Now, even the Thais are not allowed in this place, and he doesn’t advertise. He has no signs outside, so when we turned up at what appeared to be quite a nice house, we wondered what we were going to find. When we walked in the door, we were amazed. There was a courtyard at the rear, covered with a tin roof. This was the workshop. There were Harleys and Chops everywhere. An Evo engine under a bit of old roofing. A Sportster engine covered in dust. Parts all over the place, and a “Scrap-pile” to one side that you’d kill for over here! In fact, as we rooted around the scrap later, we actually found a car under it! There was a HUGE monkey sat in the tree with a chain around its neck, the owner’s pet. A vicious looking brute!

Atan introduced us to the owner, framebuilder and sole employee, Aod Ba Wau. A little chap, and hadn’t got a word of English. Atan introduced me as “English Bike Budda”. I thought he was saying I was the God of Builders. Found out later that “Budda” was in fact meant to be “Builder”, but Atan’s English wasn’t too good. It transpired that Aod was, in fact, the top frame builder in Thailand. He only built frames for the top shops, and rarely dealt with the public. He came across as a really nice guy, and quite unaware of the phenomenal frames he was building on his own in his little workshop.

There weren’t a great amount of machines, turns out everything is made by hand. Set of slab yokes, to top show quality? Simple….get out the hacksaw and files. We looked for his pipebender. Took a while to find it. It was just a former welded to the top of a huge iron cauldron full of water….must have been 100 gallons in it, to stop it moving. He pulled the tubes round by hand. One item he did have, which no-one else did, was a pretty nice TIG welder….exactly the same model as I used to use. There were jigs everywhere, and he was working on six frames at a time! When I say jigs, I use the term loosely. They were pieces of flat (ish) plate and re-bar, and there were bits of fishing line strung across to give him his centres. But his frames were incredible, as good, if not better, than any I’ve seen over here! Check out the single-sided swinging arm. Done (we think) using the old method of filling with sand, welding caps on each end, heating and pulling. Tremendous work! This one little bloke was turning out masterpieces!

Aod ‘s wife brought out iced water. The temperature must have been well over 120 degrees….and that’s outside in the shade. Aod brought out his ‘photo album. Pictures of him on radical chops….25 years ago. This huge scene had been going on all that time, and no-one in the UK had a clue! We left well impressed, but this was just the taster for what Atan would show us during the next week. He’d been mumbling about the builders in a town called Pattaya, where the “No-War” man had his shop. We were purposely steering away from the main dealers, as the purpose of this trip was to check out the back-street builders. On the way back to the Hotel, we asked the Taxi driver if he’d take us there. £20 for the three of us, he said. Now, that’s 200 kilometer (125mile) trip…..once you’ve got out of Bangkok. And the poor sod had to do the 5 hour return journey without a fare. 10 hours driving for £20? We asked him to be at the hotel at 9am next morning.

Next morning, to our amazement, there he was! In fact, there were two taxis. Turned out he was busy, so he brought his mate round to drive us. Bloody sound blokes, these Thais! We had so much luggage we had to sit with half of it on our knees, as the boot was filled with LPG running-gear. Eventually we arrived in Pattaya. Oh my God! It was their turn for the Songkra Water Festival, and it was on for a week.

 We were now a trio. Me, Myles and Atan.

 We booked into quite a nice hotel. Atan was aghast because it was extremely expensive and we had three rooms. £10 a night each including breakfast! We shook hands with our driver, who was actually a moonlighting policeman, and decided to chill out for an hour and meet downstairs. There was no sign of Atan. After waiting over two hours, we were getting a little angry, when he pulled up outside in a really posh Chevrolet “MPV”. He explained that Pattaya had no ordinary taxis. They had covered pickup trucks doing sort of circuits of the town, a bit like our bus service. You just hop in the back, and eventually you end up where you want to be. They had no destination boards on them. So Atan had gone to find “Big Bike”, the big cheese of Pattaya, who hired out vehicles. The Chevvy was ours for a tenner a day including petrol. He also had a fleet of elephants, but I preferred the van. Atan was turning out to be a top man.

Seems all the really productive workshops are based in Pattaya, which is a pretty huge town….well, City, so we loaded all the gear in the Chevvy and set off to see one of them.
More in the next part. Ever seen a workshop where there are chickens and fighting-cocks roosting among the frames?