Day 8 Part One: Kuiburi to Prachuap Khiri Khan The next morning, I swam in the resort’s luxurious beachside pool while J got in a little weight lifting at the gym. We embarked at 9 and after biking for a short time, realized I was exhausted due to dehydration from excessive diarrhea. Sometimes this diarrhea thing happens while traveling and I generally just ignore it. But the dehydration as a result was causing me to nearly fall off my bike with nausea, so we stopped and I drank heavily as well as taking some re-hydration tablets. I was feeling a bit [View Full Entry]

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Day 7: Hua Hin to Kuiburi The next day was a scorcher, and we were blessed to find roads along the ocean for most of it. WWe passed gorgeous, secluded beaches, with fishermen and local people working, and a resort every now and then. Passing the Dolphin Bay Resort, a shimmering swimming pool calling our names, we figured we might as well stop for lunch. The ping-pong table out back was the clencher, and J blissfully began challenging employees to play while I changed in to my suit and got down to it. As long as we bought lunch, the staff [View Full Entry]

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Day 5: Cha-Am Beach to Hua Hin We arose at 8, shocked it was so late as we’d planned to leave very early, but in our windowless room, with cloud pillows and puffy comforter, we thought it was still the middle of the night. Biking along the beach, we passed a cute lady who greeted us, “Morning!” and it was such a sweet salutation I decided it would be my greeting from then on too. The road winded away from the ocean, forcing us on to a main road, but we continued to take side roads cutting towards the ocean, hoping [View Full Entry]

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Day Four: Petchaburi to Cha-Am Beach This morning we set off early, biking on the main highway and searching for a small side road, shown on our map, that would take us along the ocean. We stopped at a gas station to ask directions and three teenage boys on a motorbike offered to guide us to the correct side road. We followed these boys six miles, about fifteen minutes, back the way we’d come. And yes, they did look funny, all three of them squeezed on a motorbike. The last boy was pretty much holding on with his thighs. But these [View Full Entry]

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Day 3: Samut Songkram to Petchaburi This morning our route brought us back on to 35, the main road, and we decided to try biking against traffic. It was fun seeing the cars coming at us, in case one was going to hit us, we liked the option of being able to see it first, so we could veer out of its path. Luckily, this did not happen and of course we were in the breakdown lane. The breeze we got riding against traffic was refreshing, though after stopping for fresh oranges and green sweet bread cubes, we realized biking against [View Full Entry]

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Day Two: Samut Sakhon to Samut Songkhram Somehow, we managed to get up and continue on the next day, although we sure didn’t leave early. At about eleven, after a lovely meal of grilled chicken, sticky rice and crab papaya salad in a breezy roadside shack set on bamboo over a marsh, we began biking. We did not get lost on this day, biking successfully south for hours, stopping often, once to buy a sim card (to make our phone work in Thailand), for orange Fanta, fresh sugarcane, green cake-bread. Ecstatic, we got our first glimpse of the sea, biking alongside [View Full Entry]

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Day One: Bangkok to Samut Sakhon Getting out of Bangkok was a real bitch. We’d bought a map the previous day and written down very simple directions, just four streets should have gotten us out of there, but those streets kept ending, or coming to an unexpected T, or looping around. We stopped to ask directions, and that first stop was symbolic of the kind of help that we’d find throughout our trip. We pulled over on the side of the street and started asking people the way to Samut Sakhon, the next big town on the main route south out [View Full Entry]

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It was June 30th and the bar had been closed for eleven days. I went to collect my pay for the prior two-week period and knew something was wrong when my boss suggested we sit down on the patio and talk. Although I must avoid the specifics, the result was that I couldn’t work in the bar anymore. The visa my boss had gotten me wasn’t quite right, and the authorities would soon come by he bar to check that it was. I was devastated. It’s not that working in a bar was my dream job; it was just that working [View Full Entry]

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All of a sudden, as happens with all lao weddings, it was time for my lao family’s wedding and baby party. Lao people don’t send out wedding invites months before as we do in America. Oh no, numerous times, I watched these invites show up at the guesthouse, set for dates the next day. In addition, I had wrongly assumed that my the mother and father in my family were already married, since they lived together and had a baby together, and I thought lao people were traditional in these matters. Well it turns out, because Lao people are so traditional, [View Full Entry]

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When my boyfriend arrived from the US, a week in to the EuroCup madness, I was exhausted. Fortunately J was too, from the jetlag. The trip had taken him over three days, on account of weather-related delays. On the day he was too arrive, I nervously chose an outfit, changing four or five times. We’d been apart five months and during that time I’d often imagined what his arrival at the airport would be like. It is really inappropriate to publicly kiss or hug a member of the opposite sex in this country but I wasn’t sure how I could avoid [View Full Entry]

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