One of things we love about travelling with our bikes is the feeling that you get when, having figured out when and where to ride, you know your way around a city and have found favourite places to eat and drink. For a local rider, our level of knowledge will appear superficial, but with that caveat in mind here is what we found out in a recent visit to Singapore and Chiang Mai.
Don’t be afraid of six lane expressways. Having lived in the UK for most of my life I always associate such roads with lots of traffic driving very fast. It took a couple of rides in both places for us to realise that although these look scary, they are actually pretty safe… as long as you go on them at the right time (see below). All the cars are going in one direction, there are no parked cars – at least in Singapore – and the multiple lanes gives vehicles a chance to overtake you without having to crush you into the side of the road.
Start early. As well giving you a chance to avoid the heat of the day, a 6.00-6.30am start in Singapore means that some of the roads are almost empty, for example the big highways through the main financial district. In Chiang Mai you get to avoid the full chaos of cars and scooters jostling on the six lane ‘Superhighway’ and the Canal Road, both roads you need to follow to get out of the city to some of the local rides.
Cyclotourism is even better in hot countries. Both Singapore and Chiang Mai are hot and humid. On our trip (late October/early November) temperatures were similar (26-30 degrees) but Singapore was much more humid and uncomfortable. On a bike your motion creates a natural breeze so as long as you don’t stop you stay cool. You see a lot more than in a car, can travel further than on foot, and can easily stop and check out anything that looks interesting.
Singapore and Chiang Mai are of course very different, so without attempting to draw any more parallels, here are some pictures and notes on some of the rides we enjoyed and would recommend.
In Singapore, I’ve covered Round the Island and Mount Faber, the local climb, in total 80m of vertical ascent. In Chiang Mai, I’ve picked the Samoeng Loop (which we dubbed ‘Round the Mountain’ as it is a loop around the Doi Suthep mountain, and Doi Suthep itself, the local climb, in total 1300m of ascent!
Singapore – Round the Island
This was a surprising tough ride. I wouldn’t call it scenic, but there were a couple of pretty sections, in particular a winding road in the north-west of the island around Kranji and a few cycle trails. Most of it was on big highways although with light traffic – we rode it on the morning of a national holiday.
We completed the loop in a clockwise direction and our route was 116km with 366m of total ascent.
Our ride started through the main financial district. It wasn’t obvious where to go but these local riders put us on the right route for Sentosa.
It was a surprise to us how many groups of cyclists there were on the roads, albeit it was a national holiday so probably a popular day for people to ride.
It was surprisingly hard to find food and drink, maybe because we stuck to main roads. There must have been loads of places in the housing estates we passed by, but we didn’t find somewhere selling drinks and snacks until a gas station in Yishun, 57km into the ride. Just prior to that we were lured off the route by a 7-11 that looked enticing but also a bit strange. Close up inspection revealed why.
Some sections of our route were on cycle paths including a section along the Punggol Waterway which finished with this bridge. These were scenic diversions but as there were a lot of people walking we had to ride quite carefully.
After a final drag on the straight windswept roads around the airport, we stopped for lunch at the East Coast Lagoon Food Village (aka hawker centre!). This is only our first course, popiah, satay and fried kway teow.
Singapore – Mount Faber
Although not the highest point in Singapore – that is Bukit Timah at 164m – Mt Faber is the highest one with a road you can ride up. It has a one way system on it so you only climb the more sustained ascent once without looping all the way around again on a busy road. However, it is easy to do laps on the back side of the hill. In preparation for Thailand, on our final riding day in Singapore we paid a second visit to Mt Faber and knocked off six reps, which if nothing else helped with some heat adaptation.
This includes a short warm up on Sentosa and meandering back through the city looking for a place for coffee/breakfast which was open and which had free seats outside.
We passed these apartments, on the eastern side of Sentosa, on the day when we first rode up Mt Faber. Nice if you can afford to live there…
Also from that first visit, this is Lillian at the top of the climb up the back side of Mt Faber.
Luckily the top of Mt Faber has a vending machine selling 100 Plus, for which we were grateful. We didn’t try to hot food though the nasi lemak looks tasty.
Even early in the morning – this picture was taken at 7.47am – it was still hot.
Riding through the wide streets of the financial district, pictured here after our first Sentosa / Mt Faber ride, was something that we will remember. We saw a lot more of Singapore on our bikes that we would have done had we been walking or in a taxi.
Thailand – Samoeng Loop (‘Round the Mountain’)
Chiang Mai has become a popular destination for cycling training camps and there are a multitude of good bike routes. Once into the hills the roads are quiet and the road surface is good. The Samoeng Loop, which we called Round the Mountain as it circumnavigates the hulking jungle covered massif of Doi Suthep / Doi Pui, is one of the classic routes. You can make the loop a bit longer by tacking on a climb up to Mon Cham (also transliterated as Mon Jam) which is the version we did.
We rode in an anti-clockwise direction with the loop being 107km with 2278m of ascent.
As mentioned in the introduction, the big highways in Chiang Mai were not as bad to ride on as they appeared at first sight, particularly early in the morning. We also found that these red taxis are also perfect for transporting bike boxes.
The initial climb to Mon Cham was quite sustained and deposited us amongst some local hill tribe villages (I think they were Hmong villages but may have that wrong). As with everywhere we rode there were lots of dogs, all of them friendly. However this one was was a little bit too friendly – dogs seem to prefer Lillian to me and he nudged her over to the wrong side of the road into the path of an oncoming pickup truck.
The hilltop village of Mon Cham / Mon Jam contains many clusters of glamping pod accommodation for tourists. There were hundreds of these scattered across the hillsides with very few tourists in evidence.
After a Coke and bowl of noodles in one of the small local eateries in the background, we were ready for the next stage of our ride which was a very steep descent to re-join the regular Samoeng Loop.
Looking across the hills above Samoeng you could see Myanmar in the distance. One point to note is that the Samoeng Loop does not actually go to the town of Samoeng – this was a disappointment as we had been fantasising about what snacks we could tuck into when we reached it – but at least we had filled our water bottles in the last town before heading into the hills.
Towards the end of the Samoeng Loop there is a steep climb with a few switchbacks. This is not what you want to see on your Garmin when it is sunny and 30+ degrees!
After that there is a long and pleasant descent to Ban Dong… without meeting any elephants in our case.
After Ban Dong rather than ride back on the busy six lane Canal Road we cut through the hills to pass the Baan Suan Café which was a nice cafe/restaurant by a stream in a cool forest that we had discovered on a previous ride. It was perfect some food to sustain for the final 40 minutes back home. The dish in the foreground is a local version of omurice (omelette on rice).
Thailand – Doi Suthep
This is the Alpe d’Huez of Chiang Mai, or perhaps more accurately given the 1300m of vertical ascent, the Mont Ventoux. From our accommodation, it was only a short ride to the start of Doi Suthep, barely long enough to warm up properly. We were staying in a cycling focussed residence called the Vanilla Residence, which was perfect accommodation for cyclists. Not only was it well located for accessing the popular rides on the west side of the city, it was set up for cyclists with an overnight security guard to watch the bikes, bike-washing facilities, tools and track-pump.
The full climb up Doi Suthep is 1330m of ascent but it becomes less constant and more rampy after the Bhubing Palace (at 1000m of ascent), the Thai King’s summer residence. In the above screenshot I stopped at the highest point, though as mentioned below, the tarmac road continues for a few undulating kilometres to the Doi Pui Campsite.
At the bottom of the Doi Suthep climb there are a couple of temples and when we rode by in the early morning the monks were out collecting alms.
The road starts with three lanes to the Doi Suthep temple, then becomes two lanes to the Bhubing Palace and is finally just one lane for the final section up to Doi Pui.
After the highest point the roads continues to the Doi Pui Campsite. Beyond that the roads are all gravel though look worth exploring.
There is a panoply of stores selling gifts and snacks outside the Palace and although you can visit the gardens when the King is not in residence, we weren’t able to given our bikes and inappropriate clothing. For the same reason we never got to see the inside of the Doi Suthep temple.
After our first ride up and down the mountain we stopped for brunch at the Maesai Noodle Store that was recommended to us for its khao soy noodles. We mistakenly ordered the ones pictured above, rather than the khao soy, and found that the cubes were congealed pigs blood. Actually I thought they tasted okay and we did also have a bowl of regular khao soy too, which was delicious.
For our final bike ride in Thailand we had another blast up Doi Suthep. These dogs seemed to be in exactly the same position three days previously!
After descending we went to the Basecamp Trail Cafe, another one of our favourite spots, and were surprised with a Pocari Sweat promotion. Pocari is our go to hydration drink in Hong Kong, and we miss not being able to buy it in the UK or New Zealand.
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