A night in the saddle

ONCE JUST A speck on the tourist map, the eastern province of Sa Kaeo has much to attract the visitor, from national parks and ancient ruins to Talad Rong Kluea, one of Thailand’s busiest border markets.

Today, Sa Kaeo and the border town of Aranyaprathet are becoming a hub for conferences and seminars and, if the city fathers have their say, a centre for cycling.

The development of Sa Kaeo as a special economic zone in line with the government’s policy has seen many new hotels being built and old ones refurbished, among them Station One, which was formerly known as the Mermaid. Shopping malls have also sprouted and the new Dreamer Water Park is slated to open next weekend.

“Sa Kaeo is the commercial nexus between Thailand and Cambodia, and the government encourages other districts to transform their agriculture practices and shift to specialised production while protecting the natural environment,” says Anurak Thienthong, chairman of the Provincial Board of Industry. “Sa Kaeo is serving as a pilot province for the development of agricultural transformation. The government has approved the budgets to build two more border crossings at Ban Nong Ian and Ban Pa Rai, as well as more roads and a railway line. We have hotels to serve the new investors coming here.”

Those accommodation options include The Velo’s Hotel and BMX Pump Track. Located on five rai, the bicycle-themed hotel boasts a BMX pump track and two buildings comprising 90 rooms, 20 of them special “Bike Type” rooms that are geared for cyclists. 

“Aranyaprathet has plenty of tourist attractions but some of them are 20 to 30 kilometres away from town so we were looking for something more central and The Velo’s was the perfect answer,” Anurak says.

“This is a pump track that everybody can use. When it started it didn’t have many members but now it is drawing more and more young people. We support and encourage children and adolescents to take part in provincial-level competitions. We’ve also invited a national team coach to train them for free in the hope that this will get them out from in front of the TV or the computer. And before the end of the school year, our bike team put on a show at the local schools to inspire the youngsters. It’s paid off too and many more children are now paying attention to our bike activity. We are the first and only hotel in the country, indeed in Asia, to offer a BMX pump track, which incidentally is also the largest in Asia.”

Pen-Ek Karaket of Likhit Design Studio, which handled the architectural, interior and landscape design, explains that the hotel is based on the structure of a bicycle and composed of four main parts: frame, accessories, system and handlebar and seat.

“The frame is formed by the mass of the buildings and enhanced by the graphics of the hotel’s black-and-white logo, which appears on the room number and key card. The accessories refer to the decor, which features lanterns and lamps inspired by the handlebar, wheels, bearings and chains. We have separate loops for cars denoted by a red line, bikes by a yellow and orange line, and people by a blue line,” says Pen-Ek.

The BMX pump track, which was designed and built by France’s Adrien Loron, one of the world's fastest pump track riders, and Swiss rider Claudio Caluori, representatives of Velosolutions from Switzerland, is a man-made looped bike course with rollers, berms and other features. Last Sunday, it hosted the first official BMX Pump Track Challenge with teams turning up from several provinces and neighbouring countries including Cambodia, China, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

“Pump tracks are now a global trend and really took off in Thailand, after BMX was featured in the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China and our own Amanda Carr won the gold medal at the 2014 Asian Games in South Korea,” says coach and racer Chakkit Thongon, 34, who has won coveted royal trophies in the Thailand National Championship series for BMX Racing and MTB Supercross events for the past five years.

“Pump tracks help you to have strength and good balance. Here kids learn how to control their bikes when cornering and jumping.”

Anurak expects the pump track to become a hangout for children and adolescents and says he’s already seeing them gather there most evenings to have fun.

“There are both hardcore and fair-weather cyclists from The Netherlands and England coming here every week. They cycle to Prasat Sdok Kok Thom and Lalu, in addition to our two national parks, Pang Sida and Ta Phraya,” says Anurak.

Sdok Kok Thom is an 11th-century Khmer temple about 34 kilometres northeast of Aranyaprathet while Lalu is 36km away.

 

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