Its very easy renting badly maintained dirt bikes here. In fact, its pretty hard not to. Every second dwelling advertises bikes for rent, jeeps for rent – Thai massage. And probably they’d rent you an idea of a complete slack, beach-bum existence, let you hold it in your head for a few months, and then take it back when you’d spent all your money. But I imagine that you wouldn’t be able to put your finger on the idea once they’d taken it back. If you were lucky, the space in your head where the idea had been lurking would remind you of the notion of paradise. (If your idea of paradise involves cushions, being brought food and booze, and watching movies on a beach all day, and watching the progress of the sun and moon as they chase each other into the sea, before heading into a melee of fun-loving partygoers. The same partygoers that one veteran happily describes as wankers)
And the roads are quite suited to the bikes, being etched out of dirt, surfaced in some places but not in others. And there’s a certain feeling you get when your back tyre suddenly goes over really soft sand that you weren’t expecting. The tyre breaks away, and the rear of your bike steps sideways before finding some grip again, and the power can lay itself down predictably once again. But in that moment, where you aren’t going in the direction you expected, your heart leaps into your mouth, and you have no idea when that next piece of predictable traction will save you from a future that only holds skinless limbs and a limp. And that’s the only way I can describe the way your brain feels when you’re sitting on the beach at Haadrin in Ko Phagnan, after you buy one of those funny mushroom drinks. You might be watching the dancing one minute, taking in the beatiful sight of lots of monged out zombies arythmically twitching in the sand. The next minute, your whole train of thought, everything your experience told you was likely and possible, would suddenly slide away, and you’d be left slack jawed and confused, waiting until the next piece of tangible sense entered your head.
But at least with motorbikes, you get the wind in your hair.