BikesThe 110–125 step-through

A Honda Click, a Scoopy, a Mio, a Nouvo: automatic, small wheels, drum or single-disc brakes, and the rental shop's default. It will complete the loop. Several thousand a year do.

What it is like. Feet forward, back straight, the whole valley in front of you because there is no screen and no tank. It weighs almost nothing, so you place it rather than steer it, and at forty kilometres an hour on a road this tight you are going quite fast enough to be busy. Everyone in northern Thailand is on one; you will be waved at by grandmothers.

Two things about a twist-and-go on a long mountain descent, and they are the same thing said twice.

An automatic transmission gives you no engine braking worth the name. On a road with the hairpin density of Route 1095 or 1263 that means the brakes do all the work for tens of kilometres at a stretch, and a small drum brake that has been dragged for four minutes stops working the way it did in the first minute. Inference — this is the single mechanical fact that most changes how a scooter should be ridden here: come down slowly, in stages, and stop to let the brakes cool, which feels absurd until the lever comes back to the bar.

Second, the wheels are small. A 12- or 14-inch wheel drops into a pothole a 17-inch wheel rides over, and the loop has potholes, gravel wash and edge break on every unsealed patch.

What it is good at is everything else: the towns, the fuel economy, the parking, the weight when you have dropped it, and the fact that any mechanic on the circuit has the parts.