Sao Motorcycle: Kham Mueang from a Jaran Manopetch Song

Sao Motorcycle ("The Motorcycle Girl") is a Kham Mueang (Northern Thai) folk song by Jaran Manopetch. It tells the funny story of a young farmer who goes courting by pan rot thip (ปั่นฯร฿ถฯถีปฯ, Kham Mueang reading pan rot thip, riding a bicycle), only to lose the girl to a young man on a motorcycle. The lyrics are short, easy to remember and full of everyday Kham Mueang, which makes it a very good song for practising listening.

This article is part of the series Kham Mueang through songs and literature. We retell the song in our own words, go through its Kham Mueang words one by one, read the chorus line by line, and look at what the motorcycle meant to people in the years the song was written.

Listen to the song first

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This version is sung by Jaran Manopetch with Soontaree Vechanont, from the Nititad AOA Official channel of the Nititad label, which Jaran recorded for. The song is on his first official album, Folk Song Kham Mueang Amata, the same album as the song Noi Chaiya. Wikipedia gives the album's year as 1977, while Prof. Dr. Pinyapan Potjanalawan (cited in Naewna, 2025) says the song came out in 1978.

What is the song about?

In short, in our own words: ai (อ้ายฯ, read ai, "elder brother", a young man), a farm boy who is chon (จ฿นฯ, read chon, poor, hard up), cycles off to visit i nong (อี่น้อฯง, read i nong, "younger sister", a girl), the prettiest girl in the village. When he arrives he calls out to ask whether she has had her evening meal yet, but she shuts the door on him, so he quickly wheels his bicycle home.

Before long another young man comes past on a Yamaha 125, and now the girl gets up, lights a lamp and calls out a sweet greeting. The bicycle boy hears it and is heartbroken. He declares that he will sell his rice field and buy himself a Kawasaki, then go and rev the engine in front of her house until she chokes on the smoke.

The whole story is told in the young man's voice, with the girl's calls dropped in between brackets in the lyrics, like a short scene of dialogue in a play. That is why the duet by Jaran and Soontaree is so much fun.

Kham Mueang words in the song

This table gathers the words and short phrases of the song in story order, with their meanings from the dictionary.

Words worth learning to use yourself:

• oen (เอิ้นฯ, read oen) means to shout, to call out to someone, or to call out an announcement. In the song it is used both when the young man asks the girl and when the girl greets the motorcyclist.
• kin khao laeng (กินฯเขั้าแลงฯ, read kin khao laeng) means to eat the evening meal. khao laeng (เขั้าแลงฯ) is the evening meal. The lyrics write it ข้าวแลง, following central Thai, but the dictionary spells it khao เข้า.
• ka (คาฯ, read ka), placed at the end of a sentence, turns it into a question: "or?", "yet?", "is it?". The dictionary's example is "luem ai laeo ka – have you forgotten me?", which is also the title of another Jaran song.
• cha dai (จได, read cha dai) means how, as in pen cha dai (how is it?) and yia cha dai (how do you do it?).
• kam diao (คำฯดยฯว, read kam diao) means in a moment, just a moment, as in kam diao kon (just a moment).
• chung (จูง, read chung) means to lead or wheel along, and bo (บ, read bo) is the negative, like "not".
• phit chai (ผิดฯไจ, read phit chai) does not mean to fall out with someone, as it does in central Thai. The dictionary gives it as angry, resentful, disappointed, let down. tae wa (แท้ว่าฯ, read tae wa) means really, truly, and usually comes at the end of a sentence.
• kaen khwan (แค้นฯฅัวฯร, read kaen khwan) means to choke on smoke; kaen (แค้นฯ) on its own means to choke.

Reading the chorus: "kam diao ko mi rot Yamaha"

This is the part people remember best. Naewna (2025) quotes it like this:

กำเดียว ก็มีรถยามาฮ่า ร้อยซาวห้า ก๋ายหน้าอ้ายไป น้องได้ยิน ก็ฟ่างลุกต๋ามไฟ แล้วเอิ้นออกไป อ้ายมอเตอร์ไซด์ ไปไหนมาเจ๊า — Sao Motorcycle, by Jaran Manopetch (cited in Naewna, 2025)

Roi sao ha: counting in Kham Mueang

sao (ซาวฯ, read sao) is the number 20. The dictionary explains that in the Lanna language the digit 2 in the tens place is read sao, so 21 is sao et and 925 is kao roi sao ha. So roi sao ha is 125, which in the song means a 125 cc Yamaha.

Kai: passing close by

Some lyric sources write this line as "ก่าย หน้าอ้ายไป", but Naewna writes "ก๋าย". In the dictionary these are two very different words. kai with a low tone (ก่ายฯ) means to lay across, to rest on, to put on top, while kai with a rising tone (ระฯกายฯ, read kai) means to pass, to brush past close by, as in tiao kai (to walk past close by). The meaning of the song matches the second, ก๋าย.

tam fai (ตาไฟ, read tam fai) means to light a fire or lamp. It comes from tam (ตามฯ), which besides meaning "to follow" also means to set alight, as in tam tian (to light a candle). The picture of the girl hurrying to light a lamp when she hears the motorcycle is especially funny, because when the bicycle boy came she shut the door on him.

Chao, with which tone?

Rot thip, rot khueang and the motorcycle

In the song Jaran uses rot thip, a true Kham Mueang word, but the motorcycle side uses nothing but loanwords: motorcycle, Honda, Yamaha and Kawa(saki), none of which are in the dictionary. The Kham Mueang word the dictionary gives for a motorcycle is rot khueang (ร฿ถฯเระฯคิ่อฯง, read rot khueang), and to ride a motorcycle is khi rot khueang (ขี่ร฿ถฯเระฯคิ่อฯง, read khi rot khueang).

This choice of words helps tell the story: the poor young man speaks plain village words, while his rival arrives with foreign brand names that sound modern. Prof. Dr. Pinyapan Potjanalawan of Lampang Rajabhat University used this song to open a seminar on the history of the motorcycle in Thai society in March 2025, and inferred that in the year the song came out the motorcycle was the image of modernity (Naewna, 2025).

The same article reports that the Thai motorcycle market grew by 26 per cent in 1980, and that in 1982 a motorcycle cost about 17,100–26,000 baht, while the minimum wage in Bangkok was 65 baht a day, so a motorcycle cost several hundred days' wages. The joke about selling the rice field to buy a Kawasaki was not entirely an exaggeration.

Kham Mueang sounds you can hear in the song

The last part of the song has the phrase "tai chang man" ("to hell with it"), which is a central Thai expression. Said in Kham Mueang, following the dictionary, it would be chang man toe (ช่างฯมันฯเทิอฯะ, read chang man toe), meaning "never mind, forget it, I don't care any more". Jaran's Kham Mueang folk songs often mix central Thai words and loanwords with Kham Mueang like this, which makes them easy to follow for listeners from outside the North.

The rhymes of the chorus

Looking at the lyrics quoted above, the chorus is strung together by repeated vowel sounds (our own observation):

• Yamaha and (roi sao) ha carry the -a sound across the line break.
• pai, fai, pai close the lines with a repeated ai sound, which makes the chorus easy to sing along to.
• The girl's greeting, pai nai ma chao, stands apart as speech, as if another character has walked onto the stage.

Unlike khao or so, which have strict rhyme rules, Kham Mueang folk songs use rhyme like modern songs, focusing on a chorus people can sing along to and on telling a funny story (compare the chained rhymes in the song Noi Chaiya).

Summary

• Sao Motorcycle is a song by Jaran Manopetch from his first album, Folk Song Kham Mueang Amata, about a bicycle boy who loses out to a motorcycle boy.
• Key words in the song: pan rot thip (to ride a bicycle), oen (to call out), kin khao laeng (to eat the evening meal), kam diao (in a moment) and phit chai (disappointed).
• roi sao ha is 125, because Kham Mueang calls the digit 2 in the tens place sao.
• According to the dictionary, kai (ก๋าย) means to pass, tam fai means to light a lamp, and chao (เจ้า) is a polite ending used by women.
• Kham Mueang calls a motorcycle rot khueang, but the song deliberately uses loanwords and brand names to paint the modernity of its time.

Look up more words from the song in the Moradok Lanna dictionary (in Thai), read the song from the same album at the song Noi Chaiya, and read about Lanna courting visits at Kham U Bao U Sao.

More in the same series: Sao Chiang Mai · the song Noi Chaiya, or see the whole series at Kham Mueang through songs and literature (in Thai).

Sources

• Moradok Lanna dictionary (dict2), entries ปั่นรถถีบ, ซาว, ก๋าย, ก่าย, ต๋ามไฟ, เจ้า, เจ๊า, รถเคื่อง and the other words in this article. In Thai.
• แนวหน้า [Naewna]. (5 May 2025). รายงานเสวนา "จากประวัติศาสตร์สู่อนาคต : มองความสัมพันธ์ 100 ปีไทย-ญี่ปุ่นผ่านเทคโนโลยีและสังคม" [Seminar report "From history to the future: 100 years of Thai–Japanese relations through technology and society"] (Prof. Dr. Pinyapan Potjanalawan). In Thai.
• เอื้อมพร ทิพย์เดช และสิริวรรณ นันทจันทูล [Ueamporn Thipdet and Siriwan Nanthachanthun]. (2023). ภาพแทนคนเมืองในบทเพลงของจรัล มโนเพ็ชร [Representations of Khon Mueang in the songs of Jaran Manopetch]. Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, Uttaradit Rajabhat University 10(1), 167–184. In Thai.
• Nititad AOA Official. สาวมอเตอร์ไซค์ – จรัล มโนเพ็ชร-สุนทรี เวชานนท์ (Official Music Video) [Sao Motorcycle – Jaran Manopetch and Soontaree Vechanont]. YouTube.
• วิกิพีเดีย [Wikipedia]. จรัล มโนเพ็ชร [Jaran Manopetch] (album list, used as background only). In Thai.
• MusicATM. เนื้อเพลงและคอร์ด สาวมอเตอร์ไซค์ [Sao Motorcycle lyrics and chords] (used to compare wording). In Thai.