Goodbye bikes, hello car

We’ve flogged the bikes! We did everything we wanted to do with them so we emailed a couple of cycle tour holiday companies in Krabi, Southern Thailand and sold them to a chap named Vern. He’s just starting a new cycling business with his Thai girlfriend and we hope they’ve gone to a good home.

Krabi has beautiful countryside and limestone karsts and is world famous for it’s rock climbing so we did a bit in a small beach area called Railay. Nick now thinks he’s Spiderman.

From Krabi we went further south and crossed into Malaysia. Georgetown on Penang Island is the oldest colonial settlement in southeast Asia and we had a few days there before moving on to Kuala Lumpur. The humidity was significantly higher and the sightseeing was very sweaty. We really only went to KL to catch a plane and so flew from there to Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. It’s a relaxed city with various courses on offer and we learnt how to do Thai massage from a women who smelt of alcohol all day long. She taught us in her home, there was a pile of Chang beer cans in the corner but she really did know her stuff. Her main instructions were “thumbs walking” or “palms walking” and we went to bed that night with those statements ringing in our ears.

We missed the freedom and mobility of the bikes so we hired a car for a week and drove a 1500km loop through Sukhothai, Mae Sot, Pai and Chiang Rai (where we are now). The whole area is very mountainous and the road twisted and turned though beautiful countryside, albeit smoky from the slash and burn agricultural techniques. We went to world heritage sites of ancient former kingdoms and, as Jen says…saw “more temples”. We stayed in a few small towns along the way very close to the Thai-Burmese border where the two cultures meet and twist together. Men walking down the street in a Sarong, David Beckham style, was a common sight. We also visited a long neck Karen tribe village but we found this quite sad and Jen felt they were being exploited.

Although we enjoyed the freedom and comfort of our air conditioned car it made us feel quite humble. We regularly drove past tribal people scraping a living in the woods, our plentiful lives in contrast with theirs, and our posh car totally incongruent with their world. If we didn’t realise it already, we know we’re very lucky.

We stopped in Pai for a few days and went to an elephant camp where we rode and bathed the elephants. I don‘t know who enjoyed it most, the elephant seemed to love chucking us off it‘s back and spraying us with water and we too thought it was great fun! We didn’t have a saddle and not even all the previous miles on the bikes prepared us for the bony spine of an elephants back.

We also did a Thai cooking course which was great fun. There are plenty of cooking courses all over Thailand, all vying for the tourist dollar, but we deliberately chose a lady who wasn’t quite as slick as most of the others. She was fantastic and she taught us 10 different dishes including masaman curry, mango & sticky rice and tom yam soup. Some of which we hope to cook for you when we’re home. We spent the whole day with her and were completely stuffed at the end.

So this is our last day in Thailand. We’ve been in and out of it 3 times in the last 4 months and have loved it all. It’s a very varied county, a wonderful mix of cultures, religions, old & new and east & west. The people are friendly and helpful, the food is tasty and cheap and there are plenty of different things to do. But now it’s time to move on…. Cycling in southern Laos was one of the highlights of the entire trip and we decided in December that we’d go to northern Laos (hence the flight out of Kuala Lumpur.) We get the bus to the border in an hour then maybe tomorrow we’ll take a slow boat down the Mekong River to Luang Prabang. Who knows, we’re making it up as we go along….

Hope you’re all well and enjoying spring

Love

N&J

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