Route 3009 - a favorite ride

I first discovered this scenic byway when Nut and I traveled to the popular little hamlet of Pai a couple of years ago on the Phantom. My GPS was actually responsible for finding it because I asked it to take us to Pai by the "shortest route", rather then the usual setting of "fastest route". The quickest way to get there involves driving the traffic-choked Route 107 north to Route 1095, hanging a left and following that road to Pai for about three hours. Route 1095 is a pretty road in itself and is one I've occasionally mentioned before in this journal. Route 3009, the shortcut, traverses some very pretty farmland more or less diagonally between R 107 and R 1095. It shaves a couple of miles off the journey but is a slower ride and much more scenic than the faster route. Nut and I often drive out to a little coffee shop, Pankret Cafe, just for the fun of the ride.

Route 3009 (purple) shaves a few miles off the trip to Pai

The first few photos below have appeared in another post but I included them here because I like them so much. These scenes are from September of 2012. In order to see them best you should click on each to open in a new window. My newest camera, a Sony RX100 (which replaced my Canon G10), with its extra large sensor does an incredible job for such a small camera.

Rice field - Route 3009

Rice field - Route 3009

Rice field - Route 3009

Fast forward to August of this year and almost the first thing Nut and I did was hop on the bike and ride the 3009 for a visit to the Pankret Cafe.

It is still summer in Thailand yet the weather has been nicer than I expected. It is uncomfortably hot in the afternoons and it does rain almost every day, as you can tell from the dark clouds in the photos above, but when it does rain it cools things off nicely. Riding a motorcycle on cloudy days like these is a joy.

We had our coffee and took the obligatory photos of the beautiful orchids at the Pankret Cafe. I recently watched a Youtube video about fine photography and in it the hosts advised aspiring photographers never to include flower pictures in their portfolios because they're just too common a subject, and ahem, because all flowers are beautiful already. Even though orchids can be found literally everywhere in Thailand and despite the aforementioned sage advice to the contrary, I couldn't resist these beauties.

Oh, the new motorcycle arrived a few days ago too. It's a fantastic machine! It fits me much, much better then the CBR and it has power to spare. We've done a few rides already, the Samoeng Loop, another favorite, and a couple of mapping runs in the country north of here. I'll have more to say about the CB500X in future posts.

Danny, Ning (our landlord), me and Nut