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Published: March 16th 2009
bangkok
from the boat busJen; hello everyone at home, and all around the world! welcome to the third part of our travels around the world by bike. This time from south east asia, well, thailand so far....
we arrived in bangkok on th 20th feb, tired but having experienced a fuss free flight courtesy of etihad (they have a great film selection), and located the bikes quickly, found a large taxi easily, and located the hotel with no problems despite my hastily scrawled address for it!
It became quickly apparent that bangkok it a huge sweaty busy largely modern city...but not without its charms. Our hotel was very smart and great value by british standards. It was in the sukhumvit area which is abit out of the action tourist site wise but its easy and an experience in itself to travel around the city. The sky train and the river bus boat were a good combination to get to te royal palace area. The two main tourist sites we checked out were well worth it in a gold, glitzy, mirrored tiled painted way! i would really recommend having a look around what Pho (temple of the banyan tree) and the royal palace. Our
enthusiastic guide showed us around various sites including the green buddha and the huge gold reclining buddha (Im sure you will all have seen photos of the latter) and explained to us all about chedis bots viharns etc...which i promptly forgot. Oh well.
Otherwise we had a ride around in a tuc tuc which was fun except the driver kept taking us to tailors shops. unfortunately we werent that interested in fitted clothes to fit the pre tour measurements!
we left Bangkok by train heading north to pitsanulok. The train billed as rapid most definately was not but great fun nevertheless, and it allowed us to check out the countryside. the train itself was basic and hot, so all the windows were completely open the whole journey. despite it being basic there was a dining car where we had tea and some beers with the belgian cyclist, benoit, who was heading towards china. Not sure what ian thought of the dining though as he ended up with a plateful of peanuts for his meal. Ah the joys of vegetarianism! Throughout the journey we experienced more of the friendly attitude of thai people as they made room for us
in the dining car and told us when our stop was coming up. instead of a trolley selling drinks various people with buckets of beers, soft drinks, boxes of noodles and even dried fish passed up and down the carriages. Our journey also included an untabled 1 hour stop when "the engine broke", so we arrived at the non descript town of pitsanulok late in the evening but easily located a hotel.
The following day was supposedly easy flat ride of less than 40 miles...but had me wondering how i was going to cope with cycling in thailand, it was so hot and humid it was overpowering, and it was hard to drink enough water to replace the ridiculous amount of sweat produced! Fortunately i acclimatised a bit and it became cooler and cooler as we went further North. However, air con was my new best friend...
sukothai was the destination which is a world heritage site and the previous capital ciy of thailand. It is now the site of a very impressive collection of ruined temples spread over a huge site. The new towmn where we stayed was a 12km bike ride from the ruins, along a
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sukothia..old capital..nice twisty path alongside the river, through villages, and the ruins are definately worth a days exploring. Some are on islands on the moddle of ponds, some have huge buddha statues.
From Sukothai we headed north and west to Thoen (pronounced turn) stopping off at a little resort in the middle of nowhere on the way. the vivid greeness of the rice paddies against the backdrops of the shadowy hils was impressive here. as we were making our way to Thoen we got chtting to a canadian thai couple who invited us to their house for lunch. jhet and ...were extra hospitable and produced bowls and bowls of rice and tasty vegetables and water for us and even some amulets to carry with us! Besides being very helpful to us as we were running outof water it was a real experience to hang out in a real thai home. Oh, they also gave us some of their home grown bananas! due to the heat and the lack of rain, forest fires are frequent at this time of year and they told us a huge fire had just decimated the area at the otjer sideof the road. We we were to
see many more fires as we cycled along but for some reason they dont seem to spread over huge areas.
Thoen is ok for a stop over...the hotel has perfectly acceptable rooms...but i suspect they also rent rooms out by the hour. From Thoen we headed up th 106 to chiang Mai. The road leads up a really pleasant twisting gradual pass out of thoen and the rest of the route is relatively easy. Chiang mai is a large city in the north and doesnt have much to recommend in itself but is a great base for exploring. Its a bit too touristy and there are a fewe too many old unattractive white men hanging around! After al leisuley day checking out the wats and swimming we headed off on the mae Hong sSon Loop. This is a loop of road heading over towards the burma border, past Doi Inthanon (Doi = Mountain)
From Chiang mai we headed south west on a flat busy road to chom thong where the road up to the summit of doi inthanon starts and stayed at a cool bungalow resort 7k up the road. Then I had a day relaxing and checking
out some of the waterfalls in the area whilst ian conquered doi inthanon. He reports there are some v steep parts and granny ring or legs of steel are needed! We rejoined the loop at chom thong, did more flat until Hot (hot hot) and then 8 miles of gradual uphill to the Obluang national park entrance where we were assured by the guide book there was accommodation…hmmm…after some protracted discussions with park staff they agreed to rent us a 3 bed tourist house for a third of the normal price. It was a pretty good set up, complete with special thai national park bedding! And I was glad not to have to reverse 8miles downhill!
The next day started with a 12mile climb which took most of the morning to complete, then up and down, then an exhilarating and well needed 12mile descent into mae sariang a funny little town but plenty of accommodation and places to eat. The 100 km ride to Khun yuam was pretty tough rollercoaster going up overall and took most of the day to complete but nothing like as hard as what I might have expected. And the next day was even easier
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scooter heaven here... with a 42 mile ride that was mostly downhill, allowing us a pleasant afternoon off the bikes in Mae Hong Son. MHS is on the tourist trail but is also a nice town with a pretty lake, tons of accommodation of all types and an artisan evening market. After sorting out somewhere to stay with a really strange English bloke we hired a scooter and zoomed off to some of the hilltribe villages. A big tourist attraction over here is trekking to these villages to see the so called long neck women. It’s a bit sick really; a tradition of putting more and more brass rings around a womans neck to supposedly extend their neck, but in fact just compresses their collarbones. Anyway it was great just to explore more of the country at faster than 4mph uphill!
Setting off the next day it was only 10km to the “Fish Cave” which isn’t much of a cave at all just a sort of pool under a cave where there are lots of carp. It was a pretty good stop off though as theres a pretty garden, its free, and the fish are entertaining. There followed a really hard steep
section of cycling to soppong where we stayed at a great little bungalow resort with a pool, and lovely garden with hammock overlooking the nearby river. I was taken with it so the nearby caves provided a good excuse for a day off. The caves were pretty impressive in parts; a guide with a lantern walked us through, pointing out stagamites etc that looked like other things. Most of them were naff, but there was a really good crocodile shaped one. Then to get to the third cave we got on board a bamboo raft and were punted down a river inside the cave.
Soppong to Pai was another hard but short ride and we had another afternoon free to explore the hippyville which is Pai! Again piles of accommodation but overrun with tourists. At this point I have to admit I bailed out at the prospect of an 80+ mile ride back to Chiang mai and got the bus. Ian did the ride and apparently it wasn’t too bad.
At chiang mai we hired another scooter, and felt like we fitted in again. There seem to be only 2 types of vehicle on thai roads; scooters and
huge posh pick up trucks. And people get the most out of scooters, using them for up to 5 people, riding side saddle, and occasionally getting drunk and crashing into things!
The scooter gave us a bit of freedom to visit the tiger kingdom which is an offshoot of the zoo where they keep tigers of different ages and allow people to go in the cages with them and have photos taken. Which I know sounds dangerous, but the tigers seemed totally docile; maybe they were on valium! It was incredible to be able to stroke a real live tiger. We also visited an elephant camp that was packed with thai people as it was a special national elephant day. They put on a demonstration of elephant artwork (surprisingly good) and acted out a thai myth with traditional dancing. There were up to a hundred elephants there all feeding on bamboo and bananas and it was great to see the huge animal up close and seemingly happy and comfortable despite being in captivity.
From Chiang mai we headed up towards chiang rai stopping overnight at the small town of ban hong. After finding a well hidden guest house
9the signs were only in thai) the town was surprisingly fun. I went for a stroll around the night market and felt totally at ease despite being the ony farang in sight. I had my first rotee (a pancake type thing with evaporated milk) from a dude street stall who informed me the chocolate flavour was Belgian. The main focus of the town in the evening was a restaurant/ beer garden where they were showing the man u Liverpool game projected onto a wall. Football is huge in Thailand and most people in the north are man U or Liverpool fans, so it was like a street party. In typical friendly thai style the tables around us started chatting and we talked for ages to 2 thai teachers and one of their girlfriends. Tong invited us to the village he teaches at near the Burmese border but unfortunately its not on the route.
overall our travels in thailand have been great fun and really easy. everywhere the thai peolpe have been amazingly friendly and all the time whilst cycling peolpe shout hello at us or wave as they pass us on mopeds. Or as we pass them! the pace
of life is very relaxed here and its not unusual to see a scooter doing 10mph. The roads outside of cities are amazingly quiet and although steep in places, not as difficult as i had imagined. Anyway if low on energy you can always have an M150. these little medicine looking bottles of liquid are the equivalent of red bull and available everywhere.
The accomodation has been also geneally good and reasonably prices and the food is great...roadside shacks everywhere sell the standard fried rice with a bit of everything at dirt cheap prices, and ian hasnt had problems getting big platefuls of rice and vegetables.
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captain korf, tony the tiger, flirt
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Hey guys! thanks for your postcard! i got mine today but was at home so anna read it out to me! mum and dad got thiers today too. Nice pictures it looks very hilly! and very hot! heres a tip for you the seven elevens have really good airconidtioning and me and alice always used to go in there to cool down! enjoy the rest of thailand. mum wants to know if you have frosties for brecky??!!! miss you guys, mum, dad and tara xxx ps i havent been getting the email saying your blogs been updated so can you send it me?