So after some nice relaxing time in Bangkok it finally become clear to us that we couldn't postpone the trip anymore. So we gathered all our brave spirits and got on the bus to Tak 500km north to start biking right in the mountains(we might should have given it some xtra thought whether it really was a smart move...). Really rough ride having to sit down and endure the air con whilst trying to stay behind the curtains to hide from the burning sun that obscured the computer screen we were watching movies on. But we eventually made it. Went to the town market and met a couple of guys who offered us "whipky" (the thais have a difficult time saying s's which sometimes turns quite funny). They had obviously already had a good taste of the whipky so when we declined their offer they chose to give us pancakes instead. Nice boys.
In the morning we ate a good breakfast and set of to the biking adventure. The first ten or so km everything seemed fine and our decision to not train before leaving home seemed like the perfect choice... But then we met the mountains. I guess it didn't really come as a surprise but we we're none the less pretty unprepared for the beating we were taking. And when the temperature reached 35 in the shadow (none of that around of course) we were just about ready to turn the bikes around and head to the nearest beach 700 km away. That seemed a lot easier than doing the last 10 km of uphill... But we stuck in there and around sunset and after about 10 hours of pure pain we arrived at our goal. Mae Sot. A border town between Thailand and Burma(Myanmar). We rolled around town looking for a place to sleep when a car pulled in front of us and a guy jumped out of the car asking us questions. It is not an uncommon experience here that people start showering you with questions that really have no purpose so when this guy did it after the tough day we had had we could really do without. But pretty fast it turned out that all he wanted was to talk about bikes and invite us to sleep at his place. Fast we accepted the offer and soon we we're freshly washed and had the tent ready in the garden. We spent the evening chatting to Jun and his friends about bicycles and we found out that he too was a real bike freak. He had recently decided to stop mountain biking and instead devote his time to bike touring. He had one of the nicest bike either one of us had ever seen! But we're not really sure if it ever actually went anywhere. It seemed like Jun was more into talking about bikes and building bikes than actually riding them. But maybe we got that wrong... He had a crazy little dog called Botox(pronounced Botoc) that we really liked. Wider than long. We played a bit with it and then we went to bed very very exhausted.
In the morning Juns wife prepared us a mean mean breakfast and his friend - a police man - brought even more. So when we left we were stuffed. Jun had arranged for us to meet one of his friends in a city further on so we wouldn't have to worry about a thing. A great fucking guy this Mr. Jun.
The riding was pretty easy along the Burmese border until Mikele was ill. Maybe some of that nice breakfast wasn't so nice after all. We were about 20 km away from the town where Juns friend lived and we weren't sure if we could make it there. But all of a sudden a guy on a shiny mountain bike and dressed fully in lycra rolled over to us and said hello. It was Juns friend, Nit O'shar! So we decided to push through to the town. The going was really really slow and Nit on his fancy mountain bike and his fast clothes must have had the slowest and most boring biketrip of his life. Maybe he thought the bit when Mikele threw up was a bit funny but that was probably it. He was a real gentleman though and stayed with us to the bitter end and showed us the only hotel in town which very conveniently was located just next to his restaurant where he told us to come and eat. We had a small break before doing so. When we went out the sky was covered with flying lamps from the monastery. Really beautiful sight. Hundreds of silent lights flowing through the night. While we were standing there I was thinking about love. And home. And love at home. I think this time travelling is the first time I experience longing for home. I think it's a good thing. We ate and went to bed content.
Next morning on the road everything went fine again. Flat roads. We had lunch in a bit of a wierd little village. In most of Thailand it's not unusual to run around looking for a trash bin for quite a while. And it's not unheard of that you don't find one at all just throwing your waste in a pile of something that looks like waste. But in this little village there was so many bins it was absurd. I guess if you took all of the bins in the village and spread them around the country the chances of finding one would be just about doubled. But instead it has been decided that every inhabitant of this exact village should have two each. Wierd...
We had been told by Jun that we would be encountering some real killer hills on this stage of the road and on the way out of the village we were joking that Jun probably never had ridden his bike there and wouldn't really know. But BANG!!! There it was. A huge nasty 20 percent many kilometers climb right after the village. Fuck me dead as they say in Australia. I think we must have done around 70 km before lunch but after we only managed to cover roughly 10 before we had to give up at a bus stop. We sat there feeling beaten and broken when a thai dude rides in on his scooter and takes a piss. After he comes to sit at the bus stop for a short while not really saying much. But all of a sudden we find our selves in a conversation with this dude that absolutely doesn't speak english apart from a few words here and there. We do understand though that he has been ordered to take a job in the desolate mountains far away from his home and family. And the people of the region don't really speak thai so he had no one to talk to. And he was utterly desperate for a chat! So we did our best at understanding him and to use the few thai words we know to give him a feeling of beeing understood. Which we're pretty sure he didn't get though. Poor guy... He left after a little while and we went to the tents. Short after we heard scrambling sounds a short distance away and went out to look. Twenty meters away a huge water buffalo stood staring at us. So we stared back. Tense moments passed were nobody knew who would back down first. But lucky for us the buffalo was well fed and chose not to eat us that night. Phew. We went to bed a bit uneasy but had a good nights sleep after all.
In the morning the first thing we had to do was to push the bikes over a giant hill. We could simply not ride our bikes there cause it was so steep that our front wheels lifted of the ground when we pushed the pedals. So walking it was. A long hard day followed in the heat but we enjoyed it because of the small villages with hill tribes and the lack of heavy traffic. The trucks could simply not go there... Crazy beautiful scenery.
We found a town around sunset and found a cheap ass guest house to sleep in. We also met a Christian guy named Christian. We have been laughing a lot about that since. Hehe. Christian Christian. Hehe. Oh the deterioration of an already pretty busted humorous sense when we are on a bike trip together. Gotta love it.
We woke up the following morning early early to get to the market and out of town as soon as possible so we could do some kms before the sun got too strong. We biked out of town going uphill but the fucking hill just didn't end again! 25 km uphill right after waking up is not a great recipe for a splendid mood... All we could hope for was that the downhill would be just as wonderful as the uphill was horrible. But the damned thing never showed up. So after 50 km we had to stop. Smashed. One nice thing happened during the day that was pretty interesting. Somewhere after the uphill ended the vegetation changed all of a sudden from lush jungle to very dry pine forest. Perfect for camping. And really funny to have a feeling of being in Northern Germany. We had a wonderful nights sleep there after we ensured that the smoke we smelled was not from a forest fire starting right next to our campsite.
In the morning we finally found the missing downhill from the day before. Yeehaa and down we went for about 30 km. Very satisfying. It also raised our hopes of reaching Chiang Mai, the capitol of the north, the same day even though it would mean doing 135 km in one day in our still rather miserable shape. But we pushed and pushed and even before sunset we made it there. Found a guest house and went out looking around. We didn't like what we saw. A lot of bars with middle aged white men trying to pick up not quite so middle aged thai women... Not so nice. But we discovered a couple of vegetarian restaurants and decided to stay for a couple of days to stuff our faces. On the second day it was my turn to be sick and after a dash home from a market I spent the day in bed. Mikele brought me food and coke, Thanx dude! The only thing that got me out of bed that day was Mikele telling me about the police fishing out a dead body in the moat surrounding the old town. Too drawn to sensations like that I couldn't stay in bed and went down to have a look. A lot of other people apparently have the same strange urge to look at something as nasty as a half rotten bloated corpse being picked out of the water by a guy just wearing swimming pants. Or maybe it was just ordinary shorts. Who knows. Anyways, it wasn't really dramatic because the corpse looked like something out of a really bad zombie movie. It was hard to show the situation the respect I should have probably felt but the corpse just looked so funny really. Weird how media changes perceptions. All because I've watched more zombie movies than dead people the reaction I get is to think that the corpse look unreal. Instead of having a boost of empathy. Fucking TV. Fucking reality distorting TV. Bastards. I wonder what else has been changed inside me from watching that shit...
Well after a couple of days stuffing our faces with fake meat we had had enough of the city and rode 140 km fast to escape it. We spend the night sleeping -voluntarily this time - at a police station in a tiny town. No hotels around. In the morning we hurried up and got away from the station as we wouldn't want the coppers to decide that we needed to stay a bit longer because of who knows what... We arrived early in Chiang Rai were we are now at the very most northern part of Thailand. We have spent another day here filling our already really full stomachs with even more delicious vegetarian food because we are scared that once we reach China all we can get is pork feet. And also cause we like it. We'll probably exit Thailand the day after tomorrow and then China is only a few days away through Laos. Uhhh China. Heard so many scary things about that place. We are really looking forward to experience a new part of the world. And it's time to say bye for this time to the helpful, smiling and charming thais. But that's fine cause we're going on an adventure!
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| Charming boy on the first day of riding. Close to giving it all up... |
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How you catch flies in a village restaurant.
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| How you look when you're eating in a village restaurant. |
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| Oops. Guess they should have put that one in the brown category. |
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| Mr. Jun! |
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| Botoc!!! |
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| A creepy bone yard we came across because I had to take a dump... |
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| Slightly retarted because of heat. Presumably. |
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Didn't make it back before the self-release went of. But a perfect example that the hottest fashion and practicality can exist at the same time. Crocs we love you.
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| Made it back. |
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| Mikele making a joke about being sick just before being sick. One of those hybris/nemesis things... |
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| My new found-in-the-roadside-hat. |
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| Flying lamps. Really nice sight. |
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| Big Bug! |
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What we eat more or less everyday on the road. A couple of times a day. Fried rice with vegetables.
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| In the pineforest. Slightly retardeded. |
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| Woah. Easy boy! |
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| The spectators looking at the corpse. |
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| A commercial we saw in a pissy little village. The parents of this girl must have good connections at the advertising company. Or own it... |
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| The thai ladybike police. Not the most efficient unit of them all. |
