A quiet ride from the border to Khota Baharu, then up the coast
An unmanned roadblock. We pass through these every 30 minutes. When we see soldiers we’re surprised at how high-tech the gear is. Like Mexico, Colombia, Peru, the troops are outfitted like SWAT teams back home, the finest equipment and Oakley sunglasses, very cool. But no pictures. We should be running video. More on that soon
Muslim kids. We’re a big surprise here and don’t know of another rider who’d been this way in a while
Bad storm rising. It’s rainy season. This is absolutely the worst time to be riding into SE Asia
The next picture is a two-day track because the Garmin decided that’s how it was going to remember it, drat
Beside the road, shallow ponds of lotus for miles
We’re not sure what these shrines are about. Just that there were a row, each progressively older than its neighbour
Then, after a night in Pattani we took a diversion onto a small country road towards Trang
We stopped when we saw this. Clearly rubber trees with the little ceramic bowls below stripped bark
So we stopped and talked to the gatekeeper. Well, not talked, just smiled as I signed that I wanted to look around
A close up
In his shelter he had these. I asked “rubber?”. He smiled and pointed high into the trees and indicated something about birds. This we never figured out
He pointed down the road through the plantation and off we went
To this, clearly a factory
Outside, fires burning under the building
Lots of wood
The raw rubber is thrown into this big melting vat, where it’s filtered, although I never saw how that was done
Poured through here into the factory
Then it’s all quite like a beehive for a moment. The rubber is poured into ‘supers’ and divided by ‘flats’, where the rubber sets
The sheets harden as they cool and thrown into a sluice
Then squished flatter through rollers
Rinsed, hung
And put in hot rooms
Where, after a day they end up like this. Not complicated
Outside the factory we snacked on wollongong (I think)
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Really refreshing, medium sweet
Then onwards, following our country road through small villages
Our first temple. We had no idea, just having arrived more or less, whether we could go on the grounds or not, so kept a respectful distance
If you look carefully you’ll see people playing in the falls. I badly wanted to join them. The heat and humidity are almost overwhelming
Then into the town of Trang. I’d been feeling a bit shaky and the next morning woke up with a fever and flu/cold symptoms. This was punishment for my hubris. I’d been thinking recently that the riding lifestyle had made me immune from all casual, non-crafty illness. The fact is, until Trang I’d had a couple of short colds, a very mild stomach illness from bad food in Nicaragua and that’s it in three years. Even not bothering with my malaria tablets. Superman. Well that idea came crashing down as I sweated and suffered in a hotel room for a week. It was really grim. I’d caught something weird, I’m sure, in the waiting room at the border two days ago
A haircut, when I was well enough to ride. Barely well enough. Might as well look tidy though
On to Hua Hin through a flu-ey haze. It was large, touristy and the main strip was like a Thai version of Vegas. The map below has a chunk missing as, to be as economical as possible with brain-space on the shoddy Garmin, I’m downloading precise tiles and scrapping old one’s as I go
Beyond Hua Hin, still ill
In a huge empty field
This very nice monastery, excellent concrete work
The only thing I saw in english
Monks wandering around. Orange is the color, and I’ve recently learned that being born on a Thursday, in Thailand orange is my birth color too
A classroom on the grounds, with a nice traditional blackboard
Another temple off the road a bit. I lay in the shade on the grass here, wasted
Many of these
An enormous wild bee colony above the temple front door
A monk building something
Here you go, my first Thai monk close-up. He’s cementing the post. Awesome dude
Through a town, can’t remember which
Into Bangkok. A very brief post
Which was a bit like I had imagined, riding in
The river Chao Phraya meanders through central Bangkok. Most of the significant temples are riverside. Despite the wealth, it’s not a built up as you’d think. All kinds of boats, from countless ferries, to long tails, to huge barges
Ferry terminal. These are dotted regularly along the river
Typical building on the riverfront
In contrast, a few of these
Vegetation grows everywhere it can
The streets are lined with food stalls
There were two priorities in Bangkok. Getting fit again and getting our China visa. The Chinese embassy was crazy. After completing all the paperwork carefully in advance I hit a wall here. For three days I queued all morning, only to be told on the final morning that, despite the fact I was entering on a motorcycle, they wanted an air ticket in and out corresponding with the daily itinerary I attached. I explained this was impossible. They explained it had to be that way. So I emailed the group I’m entering with (the first time) and they said apply in Chiang Mai
Chiang Mai airport, just a short flight
Cops taking a selfie outside the Chinese embassy. Instead of waiting for hours for a turn at an immigration window we walked in, saw one other person, and had our visa in 6 hours. Incredible. But more than that, we had a better visa than we anticipated. More on this in a couple of months when we test it
A couple of tourist things in Bangkok, of the many. Tons of tourists everywhere
This is the head of the reclining Buddha at Wat Pho. It’s an incredible 130 feet long
A temple at Wat Pho
Monks at Wat Pho
And the above is all the tourist stuff I’m going to cover from that point of view. We have a more intimate and I thought more interesting traditional experience in a future post from the town of Phitsanulok, where there were no tourists.
The night flower market. They claim it’s the largest in the world. Certainly it would take hours to walk around everything. The reason for it is to service the huge daily need for fresh flowers, offerings each morning by everyone from businesses to individual homes. Each night the growers bring in the flowers from the country and the entire lot is sold off to distributors before dawn
Lit corridors of flowers at about 11:00 pm
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Another essential thing to do is to tour the canals that branch off the river by longtail boat. Unable to find a boat to charter solo, despite what I said above I grabbed a tour with 5 Germans. They were really great but drank a ton of beer they bought from little floating vendors and got noisy. Off we went
Just a few pictures. It was special
This was a canal intersection, complete with a sign
Schools of a type of catfish being fed bread from a dock
Drowned World, JG Ballard we thought
A fancy residence
The catfish
