Courage test on two wheels – by the bicycle by Bangkok

Recreational Bangkok Biking
Baan Sri Kung 350/127, Soi 71, Rama 3 Road, Yannawa Bangkok 10120, Thailand.
Tel: 02 285 3955 / 02 285 3867 Fax: 02285 3431
Internet: www.bangkokbiking.com


Extract from Berliner Zeitung from the 27.02.2010 (report of Martina Miethig)
The cycle track marks belong to the strangest what has to offer hip Bangkok. For example, on the sidewalk in the Sukhumvit Road in the trubeligen hotel quarter and cash quarter: The roadway has from six to ten lanes according to time of day. The hardly two-metre-wide sidewalk tourists and bar girls, dapperly dressed department store employee and monks divide. They all push, trip and writhe by the chilli clouds of many done kitchens, past overflowing souvenir states, skew telephone boxes and precisely throat-deeply to hanging cable tangle. And now still cyclist! On the idea to offer to calculated in this moloch Rad-Touren for tourists only one lunatic could come. Or an emigrated Dutchman. Andre Breuers.

“In the beginning I was also sceptical, with so many skyscrapers, traffic jam and thick air”, says Breuer and jokes about a stereotype about his compatriots: “Who Should want to ride a bike here except the Dutchmen who are born everybody on the wheel?” When a motorbike taxi driver from the neighborhood asked Breuer for the purchase price of his ATB comfort bicycles, was shocked itself of the Thai: “20000 Baht? Ares you crazy? Nevertheless, for it you get a really good motorcycle!” Nevertheless, Andre Breuer’s wheels roll, he has won a prize and even habitués. And also we venture the courage test on two wheels with him.

Curiously and a little anxiously we swing ourselves on the bicycles, two older German vacationer’s couples go ahead. Breuers advice: Always nicely on the left hold, one behind the other. We bend straight away one in Rama III. Road, a main arterial road in the south of Bangkok. This means: five million cars, pickup truck trucks, in the two tact rattling Tuktuks with bluish exhaust gas flags and whole hordes courageously maintain in an everyday traffic amount from a good themselves at the same time in the traffic lights of howling motorbikes. Power summa summarum about 1 tonne of lead on the day.
In Thailand not only link traffic, but also the right of the stronger rules, by the way. What is not so bad for most Thai in case of an accident completely, because Buddhists reincarnate. Only we six foreigners not. The Thai in the street edge look at us compassionately or smile what can be called in this country, as everybody knows, a lot.

After 15 minutes we turn. Draw a deep breath, it follows along an unexpectedly relaxed Radelei of dwelling houses with palm gardens to a suddenly wall the way obstructed. From in the backyard of Bangkok. We squeeze ourselves pressed elbow in a lane from board partitions with the wheels and closely to the body: past mind small house and coloured laundry, faded election posters, flowerpots and satellites.

Some inhabitants in the arm settlement of Yannawa sit on her door thresholds and grin to the cyclists behind. “Mind your head”, shouts an old Thai with bare lean upper part of the body, pay attention to your head! Corrugated sheet leftovers rise in the way, cables hang all over. It smells not exactly of orchids, because today morning the river Chao Phraya sloshed once more hard about the sandbags in the pier.

Andre Breuer has explored the labyrinthine quarter all around his office for months all over with the wheel and, besides, has also got to know the neighbours in the slums. Meanwhile many inhabitants estimate him, because he has founded here years ago a kindergarten which he just as a Muay Thai-kick box school supports till this day with donations. Breuer the luxury shopping centre, the temple being full before gold and cloisters, the splendid hotel lobbies and odoriferous spa oases offers to his guests with the „Recreational Bangkok Biking“ a look behind the glittering scenery. The wheels virtually roll in the middle through the sitting room, we look in saucepans and in small family businesses. “Sweatshops”, for example, in which 60 hours rattle in the week the sewing machines in the chord, also on Sunday.

No Bangkok inhabitant knows the nicest area of the bicycle tour, it is registered on no town plan. Even Breuer has seen this „green lung“ first only from his Appartment high rise: the park dedicated the queen in Phra Padaeng on the other side of the Chao Phraya. We place with the rattling Longtailboat. The wheels roll along from canals and lakes under a thick roof from coconut trees, banana plants, mango and papaya trees. Butterflies before the nose, Warane in the thicket, hibiscus in garden fences. Old timber houses stand on palm trunk posts in the middle of the water. On the straight concrete footbridges we overtake a man with a cart of full coconuts – “Sawadikaaa!“ Good afternoon!

After three hours of green, almost dschungeliger oasis when we cannot already believe any more to be in Bangkok the first high rises appear in the distance again. „Back in the concrete jungle“, shouts Breuer. Incredibly: We were never again removed during the 25-kilometre tour as five kilometres of air line from zehnspurigen to Sukhumvit Road and her quite fading wheel track.