Our schedule:
6:00 - We wake up and go as soon as there's light. During the afternoon, it can get up to 40 °C (104 °F), and it's hard not to overheat. (Wim cleverly cut apart two sombreros and attached them to our helmets for added sun protection) At 6am though, the heat is not as bad.
6:30 - We head for the morning market, which is packed with people cooking, buying, and socializing even before the sun rises. Here they sell everything you can imagine, and it's all made fresh right in front of you! Wim always searches out a breakfast full of legs and antennae, and I head for the curry stalls. Forget oatmeal, we've come to crave spicy fish curries in the morning.
7:00 - We start out. The roads have big shoulders, there is hardly any traffic, and limestone cliffs loom up around us.
Dogs chase us through the streets. Whole families shoot by on their little mopeds, all wearing big smiles and waving at us.
10:00 - Our first break. As soon as we get tired we search out a little shack to sit down for something cold to drink and something yummy to eat. Our search usually lasts about 2 minutes, because in Thailand almost every house is a restaurant, and they all make delicious food.
However, ordering is sometimes a problem. Despite my efforts to learn some thai, it is a tonal language, and so I seem to say everything wrong. One morning I went to a restaurant and asked for an iced tea with lime. Everyone in the restaurant broke into laughter, and when they finished they all just stared at me. No lime tea for us that day.....Also, the writing is different, so we can't read menus.
12:00 - Lunch.... if we are successful ordering it. Thai people always give us an honest price, so we don't have to ask the price before we eat, argue about the price after we eat, or fight for our change like we did in the Middle East. The people here are honest, helpful, and they always have a huge smile.
Once, as we approached a city, famished and looking for a restaurant, Wim quickly pulled into an empty restaurant on the side of the road. I said," No,no, let's go to that restaurant up the road where all of those people are." So, off we went. As we pulled up to the restaurant, a hoard of people were excitedly motioning to us to come and sit down to eat with them. It was sort of strange that they were so enthusiastic for us to eat at the restaurant, but we like enthusiastic people, so we sat down. Before we knew it, a man was bringing out plates and plates of food to our table. Everyone was laughing and excited. So you can imagine our surprise when we looked around to see a dead guy in a casket across the way. We had just crashed our first funeral.
1:00 - We bike our final kilometers in the afternoon, sometimes stopping because we are turning red and feeling woozey from the heat. We find a shady spot and munch mangos until our tummies hurt. The dogs even stop chasing us when it's this hot.
3:00 - We end our day early, find a clean, cheap room and head for the night market to stock up on weird fruits and yummy snacks (barbequed bananas, grilled lobster, rice blubber cakes, spicy chicken legs, fruit shakes). Then we have time to relax and explore the village. Thailand is so fantastic for bike touring, that we are enjoying ourselves more than ever before!
Our route:
From Malaysia we crossed the border on the hilly west coast, and are heading north towards Bankok. Along the way we plan out where we'd like to go next. Problem is that we don't know Thailand, so we relie on our Lonely Planet guide for advice. When they advise a 'paradise beach', we, like every other Lonely Planet guide owner (= everyone and their dog), get all excited and head out for that spot. As we approach this 'paradise beach', skin tones turn from brown to bright pink, restaurants start advertising english food and sauerkraut, people are leaping around in tiny speedos, no one is waving, and no one smiles. Suddenly it occurs to us.... we have entered.... Little Europe!
We have made this 'Little Europe' mistake a few times. We once even went as far as to buy a boat ticket to a 'paradise island'. As we sat in the waiting area for the ferry, hundreds of people started arriving in cattle cart busses. Panic stricken, I turned to Wim and said,"refund?" Before I could say another word, Wim was off returning our tickets. We biked off that day, and unexpectedly came upon a desserted beach. Twelve kilometers of white sand for Amy, Wim, a sunset and an ice cold pintje.
The road in between the tourist attractions is really the best place to be. Where else can you crash funerals, eat octopus on a stick, or ride with four people on a moped?
36 °C
