LogisticsSend the bag ahead

Why this is a real question and not a fussy one. Most rental bikes on this circuit have nowhere to put anything. A 110 automatic's underseat box takes a helmet and a rain jacket and then it is full. A geared Wave has a small compartment and a hook. A naked or sport bike has nothing at all. So the bag ends up on your back or bungeed on top of the pillion seat — and a rucksack across six hundred kilometres of camber changes is a back injury waiting for the third afternoon, while a tail pack sitting high behind the rider is the thing that makes every hairpin an argument with the bike.

The shape that works is two bags. A small one that stays with you — documents, water, waterproofs, tools, phone, and anything medical. A larger one that leapfrogs ahead and is waiting in the room.

Two ways to leapfrog it.

By post. Thailand Post has a counter in every overnight town on this circuit except two. Send from the town you are leaving to the town you are arriving in, a day ahead. Cheapest of the options, slowest, and bound by government office hours.

By bus. This is the one most people do not think of, and on this route it is the better answer. The minibuses and coaches that run Chiang Mai–Pai–Mae Hong Son and Chiang Mai–Hot–Mae Sariang–Mae Hong Son carry parcels on the same runs that carry passengers: you hand the bag in at the operator's counter, it rides in the hold, and it is collected at the destination office. Tradition holds — this is ordinary and widely used across Thailand, and the crucial thing about it here is that the bus is going exactly where you are going, on the same day. It is the only method as fast as you are.

Where it can land. Counted from OpenStreetMap on the harvest date: Chiang Mai, Mae Malai, Pai, Soppong, Mae Hong Son, Khun Yuam, Mae Sariang and Hot all have a post office within walking distance of the centre, and every one of those towns has a bus station. Mae La Noi has nothing mapped at all, and Mae Chaem has a bus office but no post office — if your route sleeps at Mae La Noi, that night's bag rides with you. The table on the baggage page lists each one.

What actually goes wrong. A parcel needs a real address and a person willing to sign for it, so the guesthouse has to agree in advance to hold a bag for a guest who has not arrived — ask when you book, not when you post. Collection usually needs the ID the parcel was addressed to. Upcountry post offices keep government hours and close at lunch and at weekends, so a parcel arriving Saturday sits until Monday. And soft luggage survives being stacked; a paper bag does not.

Who runs the buses you would be using. OpenStreetMap tags the operator at the Mae Malai stop and at the stop above Soppong as Prempracha Transport, and gives Pai's bus station the Thai name เปรมประชาขนส่ง — Prempracha Transport. That is the northern leg: Chiang Mai, Mae Malai, Pai, Soppong, Mae Hong Son, which is the clockwise route. Mae Hong Son, Khun Yuam and Mae Sariang all have their own bus stations on the southern leg. So a bag can be handed over at one end of a leg and collected at the other, on the run you are riding alongside.

The step that makes it different from the post. A posted parcel goes to an address, which means a guesthouse has to agree in advance to receive a bag for a guest who has not arrived. A bus parcel goes to the operator's counter at the destination bus station, and you collect it yourself when you get to town. Nobody else has to agree to anything. Inference — on a route where you are arriving in a different town every evening, that is the simpler arrangement by a distance.

What you are actually handing over. A soft bag, closed, with the destination and a phone number on it. It goes in the luggage hold with the passengers' bags. It is not tracked by an app; it is on a named departure, and it arrives when that bus arrives.

Tradition holds — the procedure is ordinary and it goes like this. Every step is what this service normally involves; none of it is a quoted policy, and prices, cut-off times and what any given operator will accept are not on this disk.

1. Go to the operator's counter at the bus station, not to a parcel shop. It is the same window that sells tickets for your route.

2. Say what you want. ฝากของ — fàak khǎwng — is the everyday phrase: to entrust goods. ส่งพัสดุ — sòng phátsàdù — is the formal one, to send a parcel. Then the destination: ฝากของไปแม่ฮ่องสอน — send this to Mae Hong Son.

3. Give them the details. Destination town, the name of whoever is collecting, and a phone number that works in Thailand. Your own name and number go on it too.

4. Pay and take the slip. The fee is usually paid by the sender, at the origin, by weight or size. You are given a receipt — ใบรับของ — and the number on it is the thing that matters. Photograph it.

5. Ask when it lands. ถึงกี่โมง — thǔeng kìi moong — what time does it arrive. It travels on a specific departure, so the answer is a time, not an estimate.

6. Collect it. At the destination bus station, at that operator's counter, with the slip and your passport. มารับของ — maa ráp khǎwng — I have come to collect a parcel.

Turn up early enough. A parcel has to be at the counter before the bus goes, and that is earlier than you would think. Send it in the morning for a bag you want that evening.

Do not send: cash, documents, anything medical, anything you cannot replace. Those ride with you. See the baggage page.

Carry, do not ship: anything medical. A CPAP, an inhaler, insulin, anything you would have a bad night without. If a bag goes astray you have a laundry problem; if the CPAP goes astray you have a medical one, and it is not replaceable in Khun Yuam at nine at night. A CPAP also needs mains power and a flat surface, which is worth confirming with the guesthouse rather than discovering.

The rest: send it two days before you need it if you are using the post, or the same morning if you are using the bus. Address it to a named person at a named guesthouse with that guesthouse's phone number on the label. Photograph the bag, the label and the receipt. Put nothing in it you would cancel the trip over — passport, cards, keys and phone stay on you.

Inference — and if all of that sounds like more administration than it is worth, the fallback is still sound: a soft 20-litre bag strapped low across the pillion seat, not a rucksack on your back, and the heavy things against the tank.

Inference — the inventory, by what the shop is likely to hand you.

110–160 automatic. An underseat box that takes a helmet, or a helmet and a thin jacket, and nothing more. A hook in the legshield. A flat footwell in front of you, which is the only real space on the bike and the best place on it for weight — low and forward.

Geared underbone, 110–150. A small compartment, a hook, and a rear rack on many of them. The rack is the useful part: a soft bag strapped flat to a rack sits lower than the same bag on the pillion seat.

Trail bike, 250–450. Almost nothing as standard. A tail rack if you are lucky. Long travel suspension means whatever you strap on moves more than you expect.

Midweight and big adventure. The only ones likely to have panniers or a top box, and the only ones where the answer is genuinely "put it on the bike". A top box is convenient and it is also weight high and behind the rear axle, which is exactly where a loaded descent least wants it.

Naked and sport. A pillion seat and a bungee, and that is the inventory.

Inference — which is why forwarding the main bag is not a luxury on this particular ride. On more than half of what gets rented in Chiang Mai there is no place to put four days of luggage that does not end up on the rider's back or standing on the bike's tail.