All good inventions take a while to catch on, but the brilliance behind designing this cycling tour in Bangkok was to keep the bikes off the road and in the back-streets and laneways.

“Everyday I ride to work along the canals and footpaths, and I never worry about being run over by a tuk-tuk”, Says Nok Noysuwan who runs the tours for Grasshopper Adventures. The rides are available any day of the week and are guaranteed to run with as little as one person.

Tours begin a few streets back from Khao San rd, in an area of Banglamphoo that is popular with locals for its markets and temples. It’s easy to get there on land or water, and most people who visit Bangkok will already have selected this neighbourhood as a place to visit.

We get on the bikes just before the sun goes down, so you can get familiar with the gear before darkness sets in. The path ahead is completely flat, so there’s no need to work the gears too hard, but the brakes are definitely an essential element to enjoying a safe ride. Once you know you can pull up in an instant it’s easier to wander about on your journey with a little bit of confidence. Like the day-trips, your level of skill required to get around town is very low. You don’t have to be Lance Armstrong to do the tour, you just need to have good balance on the bike and be prepared to take it slowly when the path gets narrow.

The itinerary is as much about stopping to enjoy the highlights as it is the riding. Entering the grounds of Wat Po at night reveals a new world of peace and tranquillity that would be hard to imagine during the daytime when thousands of visitors ramble past the temples. The soft glow of flood-lights bouncing off the stupas is enjoyed by ourselves and a handful of locals. You can’t visit the reclining Buddha at this hour of night, but the smell of incense still wafts through the air to remind you that this is a living place of worship.

Wat Po and Wat Arun are headline grabbers during the journey, but the smaller temples in minor streets are equally entrancing. Bangkok is filled to the brim with Buddhist devotion, which is one reason the people in this city are so nice. Every community has its own temple, a central point for the gathering of harmony and kindness, and when you have the time to explore these lesser known locations you get a different feel for the city.

Grubby tuk tuks and epileptic taxi drivers are not what Bangkok is about, it’s the generations of families living together in small homes along rivers and streets that defines the city’s charm. Typical of any Asian city the charms do tend to spill onto the street, and as we ride through cloistered neighbourhoods we encounter the hazards of low-hung laundry, cooking over hot-coals and children inventing new ball games.

The sudden arrival of cyclists and flashing-lights cause a bit of stir with the kids and they pop out of the darkness to wave and scream in excitement. Even the grandmothers get a little overwhelmed sometimes and they too give a grin and a chuckle.

Bangkok is a city of canals and klongs that form a network of water-ways feeding off the Chao Praya River, and this is where much of the city’s life takes place. The footpaths and lanes that connect the klongs to major thoroughfares are not very wide, which makes them ideal for cyclists. There’s enough room for bikes to zip along, but not for cars. It’s these smaller streets that make Bangkok such a great place for two wheeled transportation.

Paths may not only be narrow, but they can also become wet at times. One section that follows the klong for several hundred metres suddenly does a left turn and heads out across the water. It’s a little mysterious in the dark, this concrete trail that leads away from terra-firma, but eventually it returns back to the river banks where it hugs a narrow strip of ground to one side and avoids the wide open river to the other.

Bangkok locals like Nok wouldn’t dream of taking a taxi to get across town or even a bus for that matter. They’re not trying to be eco-friendly, they just know how simple it is to grab a bike and head into the back-streets. In the absence of traffic lights and traffic jams the distance from one side of town to the other seems pretty small. And you don’t have to race along at breakneck speed either, a gentle pace gets you around in very little time while helping to keep the breeze going and cool you down.

The duration of a tour depends on your group and how long you want to stay and play at the temples and markets. Day-trippers around Bangkok may find themselves engrossed in some of the smaller markets across the river in Thonburi, while the night-riders can get easily distracted by the variety of street-eats on offer. Two wheeled adventures in Bangkok are not merely a way to see the city, but they give you a rare chance to experience life through the eyes of the locals.

Two wheels are more fun than none.