Reunion in Pattaya…

Willi Hoover and I had remained in contact after our departures from Cyprus.We had met in Croatia, and ridden together through Bosnia, Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia and into Bulgaria, where we parted company for the first time…

My first meeting with Willi and his GS... (Croatia, September 2010...)

In November, he had then convinced me to join him in Cyprus, despite it never being a country I had planned to visit… We had a great time on the island, and then, out of the blue, Willi sold his GS, and flew to South East Asia, having decided that there was no way he was going to be able to handle “the Arabs in the Middle East”…

Willi bought a scooter, and set off on a tour of Cambodia and Vietnam and was now back in Thailand…

He advised that he was in Pattaya, a resort town about 180 km south of Bangkok, and would be traveling north towards the Burmese border in a few days, before heading for Laos.

I decided to ride down to join him, to decide whether our plans matched in any way, and if they did, to see if we could ride together again… I was a bit dubious of riding long distances with somebody who was on an overloaded scooter, and needed to know how much distance he could comfortably cover in a day, and at what speeds he was able to ride…

The night before I was due to ride, I managed to get my “brother from another mother”, Khalid Kaab from Morocco, on Skype, and with his considerable assistance and long-suffering patience, we got my GPS updated with the Thailand, South East Asia and Australia maps… Without Khalid’s help, riding in these countries would be far more of a hassle for me, as the World Map I have loaded does not give much in the way of detail…

Sami and Khalid on board the ferry from Wadi Halfa in Sudan, to Aswan in Egypt... A few days in our lives that we will probably never forget...!!

Thanks again my friend…!! You’ve taken much of the stress out of so many of my rides…!!

The owner and manager of the Canary Residence, who was convinced that she had seen me on TV, an told everybody so...!!

The friendly waitress and my taxi driver friend who made my short stay in Bangkok an easy transision into Thailand...

Before I left the Canary Residence, there was the obligatory photo session with members of the staff and my taxi driver friend who always seemed to be around…

The highway south to Pattaya began barely a few kilometres from my hotel, so I had no hassles with the usual Bangkok traffic, and before long, I was out in the countryside heading for Chon Buri, the first major town on the route south…

It was pleasure to be out on decent roads since India and Nepal, and the Big Fella responded to our “new found freedom” with alacrity… The bike seemed to have more power, the front wheel “popping” up off the tarmac when I changed through the higher gears…

Willi suggested it would take about two hours to get to Pattaya… We made it there in an hour and fifteen minutes…!!

Motorcycles are prohibited from riding on some of the main motorways... On the road to Chon Buri, I was under the motorway for much of the time...

I passed the "Traveling Thaiburies" making merry on the back of their pickup....

The final half hour of my ride into Pattaya, was made in light rain, but it didn’t come down hard enough for me to bother with my rain gear… I stopped at the first service station in town, and called Willi to get the co-ordinates of the Patanya Inn where he had been holed up for the past few days…

A few minutes later, I arrived in the street where the hotel was located and looked around to find the correct entrance… There were half a dozen hotels within the immediate area, and I could not see a sign for the Patanya Inn from where I was… I switched off the motor and was just about to hop off the bike and call Willi, when I heard his voice floating out from somewhere behind me…

“Gypsy….!! Gypsy…!! Over here…!!”

Willi poses with a copy of the Pattaya Times... It was good to see him again...!!

I looked over my shoulder and saw a figure waving frantically from a balcony on the third floor of the hotel on my right…

The camouflaged cargo pants, cotton shirt and grey hair was all I needed to know that William Hoover was back on the scene…!!

By the time I had turned around and ridden up into the hotel’s parking area, Willi had managed to get down the three flights of stairs and came ambling out into the bright sunshine, grinning from ear to ear…

“You made it…!!” he greeted me…

After the usual welcome hug and backslapping, we carted my gear up to the room that he had arranged for me, and then sat on the hotel’s patio and drank coffee while Willi updated me on “things to do in Pattaya”…

It had been three and a half months since we parted ways in Cyprus, and we updated each other on our individual travels since then…

Willi tried to get me to rent a scooter, but I baulked at the idea of having my bike there and not using it, even though the rental would cost barley $5.00 a day…

Instead, I took my panniers off and stowed them in a storage room near the kitchen, and had no hassles buzzing around in the traffic after that… Although finding parking for a bike nearly twice as big as most others here, was not so easy…!!

The town was far bigger than what I had expected from a resort town that catered not only for locals coming down from Bangkok on weekends, but over the last few years had become a enclave for Russian tourists and retirees from Scandinavia…

Even the street maps are in Russian...!!

Many of the condos in the immediate area were owned by Russian and Swedish businessman, who had either retired down here for good, or visited their apartments for a few months every year.

The restaurants in the area have Russian menus, and often, I would be handed one by a waiter, without them asking if I was Russian or not…!! In the “7-11” supermarket around the corner, there are more Russian signs than there are English…!!

Many of the shopkeepers and their assistants speak a fair amount of Russian, and at an estate agency across the road, every single property on offer was described in Russian only…!!

There were so many of them about, that while walking down the road, you would hear as much Russian spoken as you would Thai…!!

Seems like a great place for a food fight...!!

“We can take a ride out to the walking street down by the beach tonight, and watch the “freak show”…” Willi suggested… “It’s something you gotta see…!! Then tomorrow I’ll show you around town…!!”

We planned to spend a few days in Pattaya before heading north, which would give me an opportunity to not only experience the surrounding area, but to do some maintenance on the Big Fella, and try and sort out some problems I was having with my laptop…

Every enterprise in Thailand has a small shrine, where offerings of fruit and drinks are left on a daily basis... This rather ornate one stands in the parking area of our hotel, The Patanya Inn...

With great weather in the offing, and the possibility of going on a 42 foot catamaran that belonged to a Swedish friend of Willi’s, I could see that our time here would be both busy and well spent…!!

©GBWT 2011