Vintage Bike Meeting 2012 - Kanchanaburi/ Thailand

2 days, 560km and quite a few beers later, another great Vintage Bike Meeting has come to an end.
This was actually the first time for me and it took quite some skills to convince my wife. At first she didn't want to go, but when I told her "Hey, no problem...I can go alone!", she changed her mind. Apparently I'm not allowed to have fun by myself... Anybody else got this?

Anyways, I must take my hat off to her endurance. I did mount the original SR seat just for her as it is more comfortable, but even my hard bum was pretty battered when we got home.

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Unfortunately, we had to ride through ueber-busy Bangkok to get there. Trust me, that's not something anyone would look forward to. But once you reach Kanchanaburi, you can ride up the last 60km to the dam along the (in)famous River Kwai, and that makes up for all the stress in Bangkok. By the way: bless the guy who invented the GPS!

The venue itself was great. Inside a National Park, close to the Srinagarind Dam, surrounded by (small) mountains...very peaceful.
Until the bikes came, that is.
And there were loooots of them!

Mostly vintage and classic bikes, but also more recent ones and of course an invasion of Yamaha SR, which is always something to look forward to.

This year we decided to pitch a tend in the area, as far as possible from the main stage, but for next year we'll know better. The relentless music stopped at 3a.m. and the first bikers to wake up, had to wake up everybody else by furiously revving their bikes.
Thankfully I prepared myself for this eventuality by indulging in some Thai beer which kept me asleep through most of the night. :-)

All in all it was great fun and I'll definitely look forward to next year's edition.

And now what you were waiting for: PICTURES!

we took a ferry to cross the Chao Praya river

this one's for you, Angelo...

hmm....that doesn't look very vintage...

an oil-stained bike support

This gentleman built this trike all by himself and you can see from his face that he's rather satisfied with his job. The bike features an old Subaru engine, double front forks and a gigantic home-made tank. Well done, sir. 

in a sea of modified SR, an original really stands out

now that's a beauty ;-)

a strange contraption that surprisingly made it to a stage of honour

one of my personal favourites