First and foremost is the bike. A guy I work with loaned me his bike that he brought over from the states.It's an old YamahaMaxim 750 in all of its air cooled, shaft drive glory. REALLY old bike! I'm surprised it still runs, but run it did, and it ran well! They're used to treating bikers like second class citizens here, but the the largest displacement you normally see is 125cc, so I surprised a few people who thought they were going to pass me.



Don't look Deej!




Coconuts, anyone?



Beautiful coastline here on the East coast...but it largely goes to waste. Most chinese believe the that the coast is were you go to bury your dead, so you see very few go there for pleasure...although that's starting to make a turn-around with the younger generations. The people you see in the lower photo are looking for sea urchins, which they pluck out of the reef with a long handled knife then sell to Japan.



More coastline



Close-up of a sea urchin hunter.



These Myna Birds fly free all over the island. Couldn't seem to find one whenever I had the camera out though, so I settled for the caged variety. The locals are always catching and selling them.





Well, that's all I have time for now. It sure was nice to get on 2 wheels again. For around town commuting, I have a Kymco 150cc that does just fine for its purpose. I'llpost a couple of pics of that later. Crazy gear pattern though!... FIVE DOWN, but the most curious part is that if you press down one too many times it goes full circle back to nuetral!

 

Back on 2 wheels? Did I miss something, where's the KLX?

 

The KLX is in Japan. I'm currently on a business trip to Taiwan and was going into motorcycle withdrawl until one of the programmers where I work lended me his bike.

 

Cool pics[8D] ,I like the ones of the beach

 

Tremor,

I know what you mean by the second class citizen remark. I lived in Singapore for a year and rode a DR400 during that time. On the freeway, motorcyclists did not deserve a whole lane to themselves, so the people driving cars thought. They would squeeze you into the "lane" which was the area between two lanes, centered on the lane seperation pavement marking.

At first this was very annoying and finally I resolved that I could not ride on the street like I did in the States. Actually it worked out OK, because the upside was I wasn't affected by traffic jams (almost a constant in Singapore) and I was always at the front of the queue at traffic signals.

Owning an automobile is very expensive in Singapore, nearly 3X what they are in the U.S. The base price is roughly the same, but the government slaps on a nearly 200% tax. So only the well-to-do can drive, therefore anyone on a motorcycle isn't at thier socio-economic level and are treated as such. (Being in Taiwan, so probably know what I mean, the ethnic Chinese are very status driven).

What's funny is that my company gave me a transportation allowance which enabled me to lease an automobile (probably could have leased a Benz if I wanted to), but I choose to lease a bike instead (pocketing the surplus for travel/fun). A Singaporean manager co-worker just could not understand why I would choose bike over a car, it was unconceivable.

At the bike shop where I rented the DR, I was offered a bunch of 250cc and below bikes. Being used to the 900 that I had back in the states, I asked if they had anything bigger. The 400 was the biggest thing that they had (for rent).

After getting the bike, people would ask how many cc's. The typical response to my answer of 400cc, was WHOW!!!

 

Are you sure it is a seca?? I owned a 1981 Yamaha Seca 650 for many years and that bike looks like no Seca that I have ever seen.

Ken

 

At least you got to ride while you were gone from you klx.

 

I owned an 82 Maxim 750 that looked an awful lot like that bike.

 

Savage Ken and ZX. Yes, you guys are right. For some reason I had 'Seca' on the brain when I wrote that...it's a Maxim. Mooredan, you hit the nail on the head. The status of bikes over here is identical to Hong Kong and Singapore for many of the same reasons. One verysignificant reason is parking space..there justisn't enough of it, so they heavily tax anything with four wheel to discourage ownership.

Until recently, the largest displacement bike allowed over here was 150cc. They've opened that up now to ulimited I believe.

 

Nice pics. Dean I thought you were in the armed forces?