CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A proper escape from Bangkok with roads worth waking up for. A 336 km loop that starts and ends near Bangkok, about 4 h 57 of riding. The stops in between: Samut Songkhram and Kaeng Krachan. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Bangkok is a city you meet with all your senses at once: the smell of charcoal grills and jasmine garlands, the sound of tuk-tuks and boat engines on the river, the heat that reaches you before you step out of the hotel lobby. About five million people live in the city proper and many more in the sprawl around it, and the Chao Phraya river is the thread that still holds the old centre together. The Grand Palace, Wat Pho with its huge reclining Buddha, and the temples of the old quarter sit along its eastern bank, and ferries cross the water for a few baht.
Samut Songkhram is the smallest province in Thailand, a flat, watery land where the Mae Klong River meets the Gulf of Thailand, criss-crossed by canals and covered with coconut palms, orchards and salt pans. Its capital, also called Samut Songkhram or Mae Klong, is a busy market town about an hour and a half south-west of Bangkok, and it is home to one of the strangest sights in the country.
Kaeng Krachan is the largest national park in Thailand, a vast, rugged expanse of rainforest along the Tenasserim Hills on the border with Myanmar, and in 2021 the forest complex it belongs to was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is home to elephants, leopards, gaurs, gibbons and hornbills, as well as an astonishing variety of butterflies, which gather in clouds on the damp sand along the streams. It is one of the wildest places in the country, and you can feel it as soon as you enter.
Return visit. Read the place description above.