Kit and logisticsSending the bag ahead

You need clean clothes, a toothbrush, chargers and whatever else four nights takes. It does not have to be on your back. It can travel town to town and be at the guesthouse before you are.

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.

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.