Keep updated with phanganist.com by following our Facebook page.
I am sitting at the Handle bar in Ban Tai outside the mechanic workshop next to Blue Top Coffee Shop - drinking an ice cold water in a frozen beer glass, well showing that it MIGHT be that a lot more beers than water is actually enjoyed here!
Not that anyone around me are drunk or even looks to be the slightest bit under the influences of any kind of freaky substances. Nope, everyone is just enjoying the day in the workshop talking and fixing bikes. Christian – the young padiwan – is chilling around, clearing the tables and cleaning up around the space.
I arrive when Carlo is in the middle of a small talk with his Thai Brother – a friend from Carlo who helps him like a big brother and takes good care of him here. Carlo though, seems like a man who can take care of himself. He is a tall red Viking with a long brazed beard that reminds you of the Old Fashion in far but not forgotten Viking lands! His attitude is friendly and welcoming and you quickly fetch the idea that this man creates a sphere of authority with an absolute intelligence behind.
Carlo is a busy man.
He came here to Thailand around 11 years ago and has since then found himself a sweet sweet wife. A real woman with a Q – as Carlo would have said it!
I do not want a female welder I want a real woman. A Woman who paint her nails and wear high heels and express the woman she is, he says, while I am trying to hide my own feet and fingers – cause for sure I am not wearing the high heels and it is very easy to see that I do not paint my nails either. Actually at this moment I even have quite dirty nails. Oh well .. I guess we will always be friends ;) !
Carlo brought Nid to Phangan after lots of sweet talking to her father.
Koh Phangan is not an Island for “nice” girls.
Koh Phangan is the Full Moon Island, full of Mafia and stupid drunk idiotic “Fallangs” ( white skins ! ), so no father in his right mind would just let his daughter roam around here.
It took some talking and some time and now Carlo and Nid are having a beautiful married life under the palms of Phangan!
Father and Brother are still in Isan taking care of business there. A rubber plantage, with trees that both Carlo and Nid helped to plant 10 years ago and now supporting them in the North.
Pappa is getting old and as tradition is in Thailand – the oldest sister has to take care of the parents when they get to the age where it is hard to live on their own. This responsibility is Carlo full aware of as well.
He enjoys the traditional Thai ways. His and Nid’s wish is to live a traditional Thai marriage.
She is a Buddhist and he claims to the old Ase and Viking Believes. He will go to Valhalla after this Life!
When Carlo arrived to Phangan, his first project was the Munchies resort.
Today he has a” few” projects going on at the same time!
The Blue Top Coffee shop with the Mechanic’s workshop next to it - and the Handle Bar is Carlo’s creations. He is also handling The bike safe – a brilliant idea to store your bike safe with him while you are away.
No one will rent it out or steal it while you are gone and if you let Carlo know a week before you arrive you will also find your bike in top condition and full checked by the “Bike Doctor”. And along with that we get to the Nomad Riders.
Brothers who loves to Ride.
And this they do!
And when they do, they try to create something nice from and off the Ride.
They ride to provide school books and school toilets or baby diapers and rice to eat.
They ride to help the temple school, they ride to aid the challenged or handicapped kids who have nowhere to go in a place they don’t exists .. They ride to take those to the beach who will never see the sea; they ride to collect for the ones who are not as lucky and spoiled as we are!!!
This group of black t-shirts with skulls - knifes and deaths, rides to Help the ones who cannot help themselves.
The believe is not – as you might think – a Jungle law with a natural selection, an anarchy where the biggest, strongest most powerful lives and wins. NO – the thought is to help the ones who cannot help themselves – to help them to help themselves.
A kind push in the right direction from the ones who have enough to give to the ones who never had a thing to give.
A thoughtful balance from the ones who have – if not TOO much – then at least enough – to give to the ones who never had.
The last ride on Phangan was the poker ride, where they collected for the Temple School.
As they say, they do not give out cash money. They build toilets, buy rice, buy diapers, find teachers, make trips and find ways to help without bringing money into the “wrong” hands.
This way, they can always be sure that the aid they provide will be used right and for the kids as planned!
Carlo tells me one story from a friend of his called Charles, who works with and try to help a group of challenged kids here.
He brought the kids to the beach one day, they never eve come out of the house they stay in cause of their in-abilities so this trip was a very special day for all the kids.
They had a wonderful day by the beach all day and everyone was very happy. When it was time to go home, they all went back to the car, except this little mate who ran all he could back to the ocean. Here he filled up a plastic bottle with seawater and before Charles could get to him – he drank it all! Charles who yelled and shouted NOT to drink it wanted an explanation when he arrived and all the little boy had to say was: I will never see the ocean again. Now I will always bring it with me!
On September 21 this year 2013 Carlo will create another Ride for the Aid of Charles’s Kids!
A special collection for a special man with special kids!
.. And now I said .. Carlo will create ..
Yeah, see, maybe HE will or maybe the ROAD CAPTAIN Pe Note (DNA Tattoo) will.
Big Boys with Big Hearts – on the road - Makes trouble when one wants to see the waterfall and another one the beach. The third ones wife don’t like aircon while the fourths ones girlfriend will die without a western Toilet. One likes to ride looooong stretches and another like to stop for a smoke with an hour in between.
Oh dear .. there you got it, here we go !
.. this needs to be taken care of before you stand ON the road in the boiling sun in leather outfits for Asphalt eczema protection and try to discuss which way to go now.. !
For this – we have the Road Capitan!
He decides the basic moves along the way and your choice is either to listen to him or choose another ride! He will make space and place for impulsive ideas but the core directions of the trip are final!
With that – we kind a get to the hierarchy within the Boys domain.
How does that work then?
Well, as I was talking to Carlo about it the whole idea, he managed to convince me that it is absolutely not a stupid idea.
The thought is to only let in people who are actually what they say they are.
Many people can easily charm you or talk you into believing them and their ways, but if you hang around friends for longer periods it is harder to fool anyone. You will show exactly who you are and not who you SAY you are!
This is why, to be a “real” part of the Nomad Riders, you have to start as a “Hang around”.
This is where you get to know everyone and everyone gets to know you.
When your period as a Hang around is over – and this is up to the other Boys to decide this – you will be promoted to a “Prospect”.
In your years or year as a Prospect, you will show your new brothers that you fit into the group same ways as they do. That you are in Your Safe zone as well as they are. Among like minded who think and act in similar ways with similar thoughts and believes behind the actions.
In Koh Phangan it is even a bit more mixed, both cultural but also backgrounds and believes.
Here everyone comes from different backgrounds with different religions and different experiences.
Back home in Denmark – where Carlo started his passion for big bikes – it is more like a family you grow up in.
You know your “brothers” from you were a teenager or a kid and you have together lived through many things and experienced a lot of life.
Your thoughts and back grounds are more similar than you can find if you travel and stay in new places.
Bikers around the world are .. kind a known .. for their criminal backgrounds. Which can be true or not true ...
Mostly we see them around cities and even small villages, working a bit like the Mafia.
Collecting protection money, ruling the tattoo and prostitution businesses and making sure the drug marked is well sorted!
Well, there can be lots to say to that, but let’s rather not!
Instead we can have a look at the logic for this kind of business HERE for Carlo and his Nomad Riders.
Good Luck with collecting protection Money in a land that is not your own! From a business that was never yours and from a family who are A LOT bigger than the one you currently preside in!
Since Thai Tradition makes Tattoo’s quite holy, you will have to fight the core believes of Buddhists families and even MONKS to take control of this business here!
Many Monks are honored for their holy bamboo tattoo makings and creations and you will find in many temples that there is a room especially made for the Monks to practice their art on Pigskin f.x. It is a holy act to get a tattoo in a temple by a Monk and even man hood can be proven from this. When the young son grows up, it is a tradition that he becomes a Monk for a period of time. In this period his man hood can be proven with a Holy Bamboo tattoo as well. To take command of that requires a bit more than a threat ! ?
Then we get to Prostitution. Well, that is nearly a joke if you think you can take ANY kind of control over that here.
Sure you can open your own lady bar, you are welcome. But that’s about how much control you will ever get. This is already Thai business through so many generations and such a business here that no outsider will ever be allowed to take control. Again you will be out numbered!
That leaves drug trafficking.
And sure you can make some money on that here. The only difference is that here you bet your life and not just a few years in prison!
- and even if it was just a few years in prison there is no guarantee that you will survive that here!
This is prisons as you might imagine hell! .. So – if you are in this business – you do NOT want to flaunt that with your loud bikes and very visual gear and personalities and you would KNOW that once caught never home! .. That way – you do not have any series offenders here, if you are caught – you are OFF the streets FOREVER! So yeah .. most smart people would not engage in that here and these people know that too! It is not hard to make that calculation!
Or – you use your savings to buy yourself out and this way you are sure to never get any ( profit ) from your business. That will surely balance itself out here!
From Carlo’s point of view he doesn’t even like his young Padiwan, Christian to attend to the Moon Parties!
This is not a place we should be seen he says! We should be at our shops, with our bikes, working to make the day and find ways to give something back to the community that we are residing in!
Buuuut they are not UN familiar to the Party venues on Phangan! Below is a snapshot of some of the Riders in the Mer Ka Ba Beach Club ;)
Beside his Coffee shop, mechanic work shop, the bike safe and the Handle bar, Carlo is also managing to work on and renew cinemas in Denmark where he comes from.
He is a well known Danish dude with connection to the Danish HOLLYWOULDS and a few times over the season you will find what the Danes calls “movie stars” in Carlo’s places.
This reporter was for sure around when famous Danish musician Rasmus Noer and Thomas Bo Larsen was around the coffee shop. SO Danish famous that she didn’t even like to go and say hello but just sat in the cafe next door and tried to sneak peak inside Carlo’s shop!
Yeah Carlo is a man with friends and connections!
The final link in the chain from “Hang around’ to “Prospect” to Full Blown Nomad Rider and if anyone ever wishes you to be – also the President.
Yeah, only if anyone wishes you to be! A democratic vote is given every second year to determine who the next President will be. Or Road Captain for that matter. The Socialistic Liberals are democratic electing their new hierarchy every time.
When I was there at the Blue Top coffee shop to talk to Carlo he showed and told me about the earlier Nomad Rides.
The big PINK poster- which is still hanging the in the Bike Fix shop from 2010 where they rode to support Breast cancer! The year before where they had a big ride around Phuket and Kao Lak.
A collection of Sweet pics of Big Bikers planting tiny trees and playing with the lost and found children from the orphanages.
Surely they have their parties too. Drunken Vikings on “look a like Mjoed” – heavy beer with rice or potato spirits inside – and High Heeled Ladies with painted nails ;) – are Rocking on when they meet at their gatherings around on the roads and when they visits each other. This is Full Biker Fun. – and as far as I could see from the pictures actually “cries, shouts, hopes, push, helps, wants” peace.
If I am not stepping over my limits here – I will share with you that not only will they hope or maybe even FIGHT for Peace – they will also Masturbate for Peace. Dear Carlo is – most likely a Proud -Member of the Club called: Masturbators for Peace!
Earlier we were talking about believes, Carlo and I when I visited him.
I asked him to submit his life philosophy into a sentence and the after a few moments of thoughts he told me that action and consequence is what comes closest. You are your own Luck and you need to take control and action in your own life and doings. It can be very easy to just follow the lead from governments, states, family, friends or whoever seems to tell you what to do or how to do. It is when you break free of that – that you start to live your own life and take responsibility for your future.
With that come the consequences!
To this there are 2 sides!
If your action creates bad consequences for me or my family I will make you responsible.
To the same extend that I feel your actions have created in MY life and I am the judge of that. You are responsible for your own actions completely! Freedom under responsibility!
A Liberal way of looking at life, I said, and he answered that this might not be so far from the truth all though that you need to express it as (Social-Liberalism) since he still also feels that if you have more than enough you have a responsibility to share, help or push the ones who have less than enough to survive!
Leaving the interview Carlo opens his – quite wide arms – says Love love love and gives me a big warm hug!
The war is over! – He says. No more war. Now it is time to find the peace and common grounds to help each other.
He shows me pictures from an earlier ride with big posters claiming the War is over in WoodStock colours and peace signs!
Charles will be inviting 120 children from ages between 6-17 from Orphanage in Nahkon Si Tammrat to Nadan beach at the CC Beach Bar, on Saturday 21st September 2013 for beach activity and a beach B-B-Q.
You can find more info on FB page: cc beach bar
The ride will be from Koh Phangan Khanoom- Nahkon Si Tammrat- then back to Nadan Beach at CC beach bar to help out with whatever they can during the day.
Bikers on The Beach/Ride-4-kids.
Please visit the home page: ride-4-kids.com
Keep updated with phanganist.com by following our Facebook page.
