Reinventing the Wheel: How a Group of Bikers Keeps Us Innovating
6 december 2023
Back in 2004, when Smiling Albino was a youthful 5-year old, we hosted a trip for a group of friends from Canada who wanted to get away for a few days of adventurous wanderlust. Our suggestion? A five-day journey in the rural mountains around Chiang Rai, staying in local guesthouses and travelling on rented 125cc Honda scooters.
How could we have known at the time that just last month we would host them again – for the 17th time! Over 19 years, the motorbikes have grown in size, as have the budgets (and the expectations!), and the locations have varied, but the core concept has stayed the same – a bunch of friends exploring some of the more remote regions of Asia, eating well, and meeting the locals. We’ve all become friends, and several of the group even flew over to Italy for our founder Dan’s 50th birthday in 2023.
These annual trips have become something of cult classics in our Smiling Albino lexicon of experiences: several days of motorbiking around interesting parts of Asia – not in a macho, midlife crisis kind of way, but as connected travellers having meaningful encounters with local communities – with a built-in day off to do something different, such as playing a round of golf, visiting a coffee plantation, planting rice, floating down the Mekong on rafts, cave hikes, cycling, or doing some wine tasting (after riding, naturally!). However the development of the trips over time – the additional touches, the quality of accommodation, the research and attention to detail, the imagination and creativity involved – has mirrored the development of Smiling Albino as a whole, echoing how we’ve gone from a rough & ready provider of grass-roots Thailand trips to being the leading high end experiential travel company in Southeast Asia.
Just as we began our journey in Thailand before expanding to other destinations, so our bikers did their first trip in the Land of Smiles before travelling to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Nepal. And over the 19 years they’ve been travelling with us the highlight reel is too deep to list in this blog, but here are a few highlights:
- Exploring secret CIA villages on two-wheels in Laos in 2007
- Royal Enfield riding some of the Annapurna range in Nepal, 2008
- Taking part in a very local Loy Krathong (lantern) festival in a rural Thai village, whilst staying in a private royal villa on the banks of the Mekong in 2009
- Donating funds for flood-stricken villages and elephants in Surin by organising and participating in a surreal ethical elephant polo event in 2010
- Crossing the Mekong into southern Laos on cargo ferries to explore the 4,000 Islands in 2010
- Exploring former Seri Thai and Thai Communist hideouts on the ‘Outlaws Trail’ in northern Thailand in 2011
- Crossing from Bangkok through Cambodia and to the capital of Phnom Penh, 2013
Biking sections of the legendary Ho Chi Minh Trail through Vietnam in 2016 - A full scale ethnic Khin village party in elevated wooden homes in remote Son La, Vietnam, 2016, including sharing large vats of rice wine with the elders (after biking!)
- Kayaking southern Thailand’s spectacular Khao Sok National Park in 2017
- Exploring the ancient Siamese capital Ayutthaya adorned in traditional Thai costume (much to the amusement of the locals!) in 2018
- Driving Royal Enfields through Myanmar’s Shan State in 2019
- A private homestay/villa journey on lesser explored provinces of Northern Thailand in 2023, with a brilliant day E-Biking and cycling in between
For a group who have done 17 motorcycle trips with us, it is interesting to note that none of them are what we’d called motorbike people. In fact, most of them only sit astride a motorbike when they travel with us. They’re successful individuals who are more used to fast cars, boats, and lakeside houses than motorbikes and mountain villages in Asia. So what keeps them coming back year after year?
The answer lies in our approach to designing their trips. Firstly, we realise that each trip has to be as good or better than the last. So, with a dash of kaizen – we allow creativity to help each trip evolve into a narrative of its own.
Secondly, for us the moments where we can make a difference are not the “attractions” as such – after all, anyone can put together an itinerary taking guests from A to B to C. The magic is what happens between those points, creating comfort in remote places and immersive experiences where our guests may not be expecting them. Being invited to consume rice whiskey with long bamboo straws in a cold mountain village with ethnic Khin elders in Northern Vietnam one evening is a memory we’ll all cherish. So whilst they might be perfectly happy with a lunch stop at a local restaurant, we often opt for riverside picnics or “smoothies on the go” blended on site by our team. And while they’ll happily knock back a few cans of local beer after a long day of biking the Ho Chi Minh Trail, it means a lot more when those beer cans are branded with their group name, just for fun. Why not? It’s about analysing every element of the trip, from lavish gala dinners right down to the simple things like the morning coffee stop, making sure each one has the Smiling Albino stamp on it.
So what began as a spirited motorcycle adventure has evolved into a symphony of luxury and genuine connection. This annual friends’ journey is somewhat of a metaphor for Smiling Albino’s 20+ year evolution. Creating value in the spaces in between, and having the time of our lives doing it. Here’s to more years of extraordinary adventures and lasting friendships!
