Still on the bike and alive and kicking

We have moved quite a few kilometers since our last post from Ko Phayam. In southern Thailand we only had a few days left on our visa, so we decided to hop across the border into Myanmar for the day. Unfortunately our visa money went straight into Myanmar’s military government’s pocket, but what can you do? It was only a short boat ride across the sea, but the other side was a lot different to Thailand. Roads were old and dusty and buildings seemed a bit older and dodgier. We didn’t get to see much of Myanmar, but it gave us a bit of an impression anyway. We were planning to travel around in the country, but it seems impossible to arrange the paperwork to bring our scooter with us, so we went back into Thailand that same day and got a stamp for an additional 15 days. Plenty of time to get into Cambodia.

There’s only one highway connection southern Thailand with the north, so after a beautiful scenic mountain pass we had to stick to the highway for most of the way to Bangkok. We did find a quieter country road for about 100 km at some stage, which was a very nice change from the busy highway everyone uses. The highway has a couple of lanes and an emergency lane that is used by all slow vehicles, including us. This lane is also used by all slow traffic going in the opposite direction to avoid U-turns. The highway is dotted with petrol stations, which seems logical considering the number of little motorbikes on the road. Our scooter has a capacity of three liters and we can ride about 120/130 km until we need to fill up. Petrol here is not as cheap as in other Asian countries; about $1.20 per liter. Lucky we’re very fuel efficient! We can ride about 350 km per day before our bums get really sore and we both get grumpy. The first 100 km is over with in no time, but the last 80 are so hard; it can sometimes take up to three hours! When we do 350 km we really ride the whole day. But we get to see lots and we take lots of country roads that we wouldn’t have been able to see otherwise. The bike isn’t as fast or as comfortable as the bus, but it is cheaper and certainly gives us a lot more freedom and flexibility. It’s also very handy when looking for accommodation. We look at a few places before we decide where to stay, we don’t have to walk the distances between hotels and than back again anyway. It’s given us some great bargains!

We reached Bangkok after a long ride from Pretchuap Kiri Khan (where they have a disgusting monkey temple on a hill where the monkeys are very cheeky and show their teeth lots) and via a detour to the Damnoen Saduak floating market. We wanted to go to the market, but the place seemed dead and there wasn’t anywhere suitable to sleep, so we decided to push on to Bangkok, only an hour away, or so we thought…

The frantic, horrific, chaotic traffic of Bangkok met us about 60 km away from the city and only got worse, the closer we got to it. Without an accurate map of the outskirts of Bangkok, it was hard to navigate. We were also tired, having ridden all day long. Thanks to the compass we found our way east and within the map’s borders. Bangkok is a very difficult city to navigate in. The map might say that a road will bring you straight to it, however, it suddenly changes into a one-way street and you find yourself suddenly in a maze of unfamiliar streets, considering the streets hardly ever show street signs (or we kept missing them). After we rode around the city about three times, we finally found the bridge we were looking for and were in the middle of the city. We wanted to stay south of Rama IV (a main road in Bangkok) and saw signs for this road everywhere, but none of them actually led to this road. Eventually we found it and all we needed to do was a U-turn. This was possible in the past, but these days Rama IV has permanent barricades to make a legal U-turn impossible. We did an illegal one anyway and ended up with a fine (later on), only to find out that the hostel we wanted to stay at closed four minutes earlier. But not to worry, the suburb of Sathon had many more guesthouses on offer and they weren’t even expensive. Just a few minutes later we settled into a dodgy hotel, ready to explore Bangkok. And then it is really nice to have your own transport. We braved the traffic once again with David as excellent rider and Jenny as brilliant navigator. The first night brought us to Patpong market, where Jenny had been once before. The memories of this market were somewhat different, though. We stayed in Bangkok for a couple more nights, saw the sights, met some people and left on the 31st of December for Khao Yai national park.

Leaving Bangkok was a delight in terms of traffic. There was none! The 31st is a public holiday and no one seemed to be on the road. What a blessing! We quickly found our way out of the city and by chance found a really nice country road that led us to where we wanted to be. After studying the map a bit we decided we wanted to ride through the Khao Yai national park and stay in Pok Chang, not too far beyond the park. Just before we got the entrance of the national park there was a huge traffic jam (so that’s where all those people from Bangkok ended up), all weekend-trippers wanting to enter the park. The entry wasn’t free either, it would have cost us 830 Baht, about 30 dollars, to just ride through it. Lucky for us the traffic jam was so long that the guards decided to let traffic through without paying for a few minutes, to keep traffic flowing. That saved us a bit of money! The park was nice with thick monsoon forest and signs saying ‘watch for crossing cobras’ and ‘watch for elephants crossing’. Of course we didn’t see any of these animals, because they probably choked on the exhaust fumes of all the cars and motorbikes coming past.

New Year’s Eve was uneventful and the next morning we were on the road again. We ended up in Surin, in north eastern Thailand. A lovely, pleasant, sleepy town where we found a great bargain for accommodation and from where we could visit elephant villages and silk towns. It was really relaxed there and we made the best purchase ever; two pillows for our scooter! People seem to find our pillows very funny, but then again, we always get giggled at. It’s quite cute and everyone is usually all smiles. It’s so nice finding yourself amongst smiling, happy, friendly people all day!

We wanted to go into Cambodia, but our scooter wasn’t accepted in. Apparently along the Thai borders we should be able to fill out certain documentation, but not at this particular border. They told us Cambodia wouldn’t accept Thai registered bikes in their country. We decided to try another border, about three hours way. The same thing happened here and David even went into Cambodia to speak to the officials on the other side, but no luck. Oh well, we won’t see the temples of Angkor then. Instead, we ended up in a great little city with, again, brilliant food. We’ll stay here for a couple of days and then try to get into Laos. Let’s hope we get there!