Motorcycle adventures: from Yunnan to Angkor on a bike
A 2,000km run from southwest China to northern Cambodia gives five like-minded motorcyclists a whiff of adventure, writes Gary Jones
Well-to-do Parisian author Andre Gide famously wrote, "It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves - in finding themselves." Replace "adventure" with "a luxury resort" and Gide's observation becomes daft. Were you enlightened by your last signature spa treatment, or did you just shuffle back to the pool villa reeking of bergamot, geranium and lavender?
At the end of the second of eight days spent motorcycling from Yunnan province, through Laos and northeast Thailand, to Cambodia, I smell of other scents.
There's the essential oil (for the motorbike's chain), which I've managed to smear down a sleeve; there's the diesel funk of nearby trucks' belching exhausts; and there's the faint tang of sweat, which is surprising considering how chilly it can get on the winding mountain roads of northern Laos.
Oh, and I'm covered in a fine red dust, kicked up by those growling trucks, and have crash-helmet hair and a bug stuck in the corner of an eye. I'm also nursing an icy cold Beer Lao. I'm in pleasant, like-minded company, a hot shower awaits, and the Ou River, an emerald-green tributary of the mighty Mekong, gurgles below us and through the dramatic karst landscape that looms all around. I couldn't be happier.
Four of us are in the hands of Willem Vermeulen, the Dutchman who heads up Corner Adventures (corneradventures. com), which operates motorcycle tours out of Xishuangbanna, in the exotic subtropical south of Yunnan, and bustling Siem Reap - the primary access point for wonder-of-the-world Angkor Wat - in Cambodia.
