Bikes, what bikes?

We were beginning to give up. All the decent bicycle shops in Chiang Mai didn't deal with secondhand stuff. The shops that did only dealt in £30 single speed sit up & beg bikes so weren't interested. We weren't in a jam. I was happy (ish) to bring mine home and our friends Danielle & Mike who live here said they'd sell Kate's on her behalf. 

We were in the last shop on our list, it didn't look hopeful. A guy was browsing the new bikes for sale. I nearly didn't bother to speak to him (his camo t shirt  and checked short combo was a little off putting) but gave it a go. He wasn't interested in our bikes but put us onto another shop we'd not heard of. To cut a long story short, they bought both bikes off us for just under half of the price we paid for them. Good deal, bad deal? Percentage wise it doesn't sound great but it works out that it actually cost us £230 each for the ownership/use of the bikes for about 10 weeks. That equates to the price of one latte in Costa's per day.  We covered the best part of 2400km on them (we're not sure of the exact figure as we didn't have the computers on for all the city riding) but that's close enough.  It was a hassle free in & out deal and we walked off (carrying our saddles we'd brought from England) with smiles on our faces. A chance meet, a quick haggle and bish, bosh, bash we were done.

We've booked 2 motorbikes for a 5 day tour starting tomorrow and are then back to Chiang Mai for next weekend (inc a quick Thai cooking class) and then the overnight sleeper train to Bangkok. We'll have 2 days there to mince around and then it's the big bird in the sky back to Blighty.

Apart from that we've just been taking it easy. Kate's had a pedicure (they managed to not make her toes bleed like they did in Cambodia). Chiang Mai is pretty damn touristy, it seems difficult to get away from it. I really wanted to love it here (I came here in1987 and have fond memories) but I'm just not feeling it this time.   Oh well, we'll stick with Greenwich for now then....