Bikes!

Since I didn't take any pictures, you'll have to imagine it. We pull up to a market about 10 km out of town. From the distance you can sort of hear a buzzing sound and when we round the corner, there it is. I would guess around 300 motorbikes all lined up, people milling about, revving this engine and that engine, exhaust wafting out the edges of the building and 3 americans with eyes wide open and insecure looks on their faces. We came to buy motorbikes. Fortunately, we were with Boom, a friend of a friend. Boom is a petit thai woman, who speaks english perfectly accept for her british accent. Boom doesn't necessarily know much about the honda dream or the suzuki crash, but it is safe to say that she know more than we do. She certainly knows more about how the market works and explained that the prices you see are only the starting point, but not to expect to bargain down too much.
Megan was the first to find a bike she loved. She test rode it. I test rode it. Boom negotiated a good price (around 19,000 baht ~500 dollars). Jeff found a sweet ride for 14,000 baht. Now it was up to me. For some reason, I was stuck on getting a 125cc bike (sort of the top end for engine size around here) while Jeff and megan settled for 110 cc. There is a price jump and a significant decrease in number of bikes available when buying a 125cc. I test rode a few. One made a weird clicking sound, another had bad transmission, another stalled frequently. There was one that seemed just right. It was built in 2546 (that is thai calendar for 3 years ago), has 10,000 km on it and seemed zippy. The front brakes didn't work too well but that can be fixed cheaply (about 6 dollars for new brakes it turns out), so I took the plunge and just bought it. We were able to bargain down the price 1000 baht (30 dollars) -yippee- and payed 24,000 for it. I took it to the Honda dealer, they told me it was still under warranty- yippee- gave it a free tune up, changed the oil and now I sure hope it will run well for the year.

So now I am officially here. We have a home, I have a motorbike, I have a membership at the climbing wall, I can count to one million in Thai, and I have had a stomach bug. In fact, just now I'm feeling even more committed because as I write this, I'm on Skype with Verizon Wireless trying to disconnect my US cell phone. So far I have been on the line 20 minutes trying to do this. Why does it take so long? For all the hassle of trying to figure out the cell phone over here, it does seem like the systems are way easier with much less need for crazy call centers.

As it turns out, Jeff took some photos with his new fancy cell phone. Pretty hot.

Marshall