on the road...

We enter Thailand via the east coast, in Hat Yai. The first few kilometers in this new country take us on a small tarsealed road, going from village to village. Around us, there does not seem to be a specific type of agriculture dominating: bananas, pineapples, rubber (Thailand is the first manufacturer of natural rubber), palm oil, betel nuts, coconuts, rice... Smallish sections are cultivated, one after the other, showing us a bigger variety than what we were used to on the Malaysian side - it seems that everything and anything can grow in Thailand! At the pace of our riding, we discover a country that is greener - and even green to the extreme when it comes to rice paddies -, where mosquees are still more prominent than bright-coloured temples along the road, where all the houses have small colourful birds in cages outside. It is also on that road that we will get used to the green colour of the army uniforms, and to barbwires...

We then go up to Songkla, further north, on the coast, where we meet up with some of our first "white tourists" since leaving - but not so many of them. They will become more numerous as we get closer to Bangkok and as the tsunami has pushed them from the west to the east coast. We follow the road along the coast, fighting against head winds from mid morning. The further we go, the less mosques we see. They are replaced by green, yellow and red temples, and by gigantic buddhas covered in golden leaves, that can reach more than healthy heights, sizes or widths...

From Surat Thani, we carry on on our way to Bangkok, on a small road parrallel to the highway: a small road that we have called the "bang road". To our west side already lies Myanmar. To the east, the Gulf of Thailand. Our maps are really average, and it seems there are many more roads and intersections in reality than on the map. And a lot of Bangs or Bans - we figure it must mean village in Thai, or something along those lines - but it makes our choices sometimes a bit of a guess: between going to bang bang hat to the left or ban bang had to the right... The "bang road" is however magnificent, a small road that goes up and down through villages, where we can see, first hand, election day happening across the country. Election booths have been set up everywhere, in schools, sheds or gathering places... It is at the end of the bang road, just before Prechuap Kiri Khan, that we must cross - after double checking there is no flying apparatus coming from the right or the left hand side - no less than the landing strip of the Thai air force (photo above).

After that, we just meet up with the main road to Bangkok, surrounded by trucks, motorbikes, and any other combinations (motorbike-car, bicycle-motorbike, bicycle-trailer, etc...). And Mike, what a champion, even manages to find a smallish road to get into Bangkok!

We were stressing a bit regarding our arrival in Bangkok on bikes. To make this exercice a little bit easier, we thought we would arrive early in the morning (so stay 30ish km out of town), when there is less traffic and we are not so tired, and on a week end... True to our intentions, we arrived on a friday afternoon, after 178km on the saddle! Our arrival however was, unexpectedly, magical! First, the enlightened, smily faces of the Bangkok-ians, who one after the other encourages us. The scooters and motorbikes who, at most intersections, leave us a bit of room and let us go first at the green lights. And of course, the great obstacle course! We are able to test our riding technique - and we manage rather well! Except for the time when yvoine almost got run over by 30 scooter riders coming from the left at an intersection (neither her nor mike had seen the hand of the policeman indicating to stop...) and a couple of times when our pannier bags lightly touched buses as we were passing them, our obstacle course was good, and in fact became a game. Bangkok is an explosion of all of our senses, as we arrive at sunset. The colours of the city that is about to get into darkness are fantastic; the smells - with chilli in particular, which, everytime we go passed a foodstall makes our our noses sting and brings tears in our eyes-; the sounds with, everywhere, people yelling, working, eating, drinking, men demonstrating kung fu on the street, the sounds of the engines and the tuk tuks that almost become like music, speaker phones, an icecream salesman honking the bell on his bike, a few whistles... And the sights are amazing - so many things happening! I look, with wonder, at this woman at a traffic light - she sells cellar tape. She has the biggest collection of cellar tape I've ever seen - different sizes, colours, qualities. Unbelievable to fit so many different types of cellar tape in such small space. And the lights of Chinatown - who is celebrating Chinese New Year, the year of the rooster - must have made the fluorescent salespeople happy! Bangkok breathes life - and yes, we fell comfortable here.

After 3 days of rest in Bangkok, we head east towards Cambodia - as we go further, the country becomes dryer, more desertic. But we manage to find a very nice little tarsealed road that takes us through some hilly country and a wildlife reserve. We camped in that park and the sounds of the animals we heard that night, as well as the size of some of the excrements we saw in the morning (mike reckons the size of yvoine's head), made us happy to have heard and seen those signs only after staying there...

Our Thai trip had some difficulties - the heat and the humidity, the weight of the bikes (50kg for yvoine, 55kg for mike), frequent headwinds, and a few small hills - nothing too nasty but enough to think about alternative options - and only think about them because to go further would not be true to our cycling project (;o): to grab the back of a truck as it is struggling up the hill (but less than us), or a scooter, to get a water buffalo to pull our bikes, or a few chickens (if we get enough of them), or mount a small lawn mower engine on the back of the bike, almost invisible... Anyway, it never goes any further than thinking on the bike, under the heat, and it is probably a good thing - as we enter Cambodia, we discover the joys and easy-going ways of Thai roads. As soon as we cross the border, Cambodia is waiting for us with soil, unsealed roads, dust and big great potholes...