February 6, 2013

Bangkok Bike Festival 2013

My wife has a small business with wedding decorations and I always help out, so I had my fair share of weddings in the past 2 years. You can imagine how happy I was last week, when she told me we were invited to the wedding of one of her friends in Bangkok. Ecstatic! Yeah, right.

Finally, after a few days of avoiding the issue, I agreed to go. Actually, I was quite excited!
I've got to be honest. This change of heart wasn't due to a raving desire to be part of yet another Thai wedding or to gain always needed points with my wife. It just so happened that there was the annual Bike Festival at Central World. Why not combine the dreadful with the pleasant?

So it happened that last Saturday I dropped off my sweetheart and her friend at the wedding, while I made my way to Central World.

I don't like big cities and crowded places. It makes me physically and mentally tired to be around hordes of people and being bombarded by street noise and shopping mall 'music'. In the end it was more like a touch and go experience rather than full immersion. I also have to apologize for the poor quality of the pictures, as my camera was being used at the wedding.

Here's a small photo collection:




I must admit I'm not a big Honda fan, and I certainly wasn't blown away by the new Honda CB500 when I first saw the pictures online. However, seeing it live and sitting on it, made me change my mind, somehow. It's got several good things going for it, not least the price tag. At 205.000 Baht for the CBF, one can't complain much.
I still think there's too much plastic, though.




These modern bikes...far too much plastic hiding the nice mechanical bits







 Not too shabby for ol' Honda, but let's get serious now







 A sea of crazy scooters



Another addition to the  lazy Honda engineers: the KSR copy...




What a little gem I found among scores of same-same Kawasakis ER6 and Harleys...
The key was there and I was really tempted. :-))



KTM has got to be the most fun loving brand out there...their bikes are hooligans on wheels, but at 200.000 Baht for the new 200cc available in Thailand, sad but true, I rather buy the CB500F. Oops, did I just say that out loud?



The new Freeride...I wished I could ride it away for free


One of my all time favourite bikes. I'm not much into sport bikes anymore, but the MV Agusta is SEX ON WHEELS!!!!!!!!!!!



The F4 is not bad either!


Ducati! Yeah baby!





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