December 10, 2012

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We left Ban Pong as the sun was rising and hustled to Kanchanburi. It was a nice flat ride and we covered the miles pretty quickly. We stopped along the way to look at another wat. This one was on top of a hill, so we had to climb a lot of stairs, but it was worth it. There was a large central building with lots of windows. It wasn’t clear who was in there, and we were too scared to explore in case it was some private area for the monks.

Beautiful Wat

Stairway to Buddha

Bells

Buddha

We also saw this guy. Not really sure what was going on, but we are getting used to that.

Dragon

Kanchanaburi is famous for the bridge over the River Kwai. The bridge was built by British and other Allied POWs for the Japanese during WWII. Fun fact, the guy who wrote the book, which was made into a movie, had never actually been to the area and got the name of the river wrong. The actual river Kwai is a tributary to the river upstream of where the bridge crosses. So, the Thais just changed the name of the river to the Kwai river to avoid confusion (or to add to it?) The history of the area is interesting but the place caters to Westerners and tourists in general. Lots of bars and pizza places, tourist trips and traps, not exactly our scene.

I did decide to go for a Thai massage, for only 150 baht or $5 USD for an hour, how could I not. It was like a yoga massage. The woman was bending my legs and twisting me all over the place. She was using her hands, feet and forearms. It was an interesting and relaxing experience though. Chandler stayed in the room and read.

We went for dinner at a vegetarian restaurant, which was awesome.

Chan's dinner

My dinner

The bridge was the scene of an expensive “light and sound show” that night, which we skipped. We saw it the next morning as we were rolling out of town, but we were on our fully loaded bikes, so opted not to venture out on it (trains still actively use it). Our plan is to take the “death railway” on the way back from western Thailand, so we’ll ride across it then.

The famous bridge

December 9, 2012

We had a leisurely breakfast with the owners before hitting the road at 730. If you are ever in Thailand, you should really consider staying at the Hidden Holiday House, (HHH). The owners are super nice, have a great knowledge of the area and the place is in a very quiet, beautiful setting. I can’t say enough good things about their guesthouse.

Our destination for the day was Ban Pong which is half way to Kanchanaburi. We took a lot of back roads to avoid all the traffic on the highway. We have found that the riding is fine until 930am and then it becomes hot. As long as you keep moving, you are fine. Once you stop, that is when the heat is more noticeable and kind of unbearable. But we are both getting much better at handling the heat.

Here are a few things we saw today:

Ban Pong is a busy commercial town, with lots of traffic and not much in the way of tourist attractions that we saw. We found a room with AC at what appeared to be the nicest hotel in town for 600 baht or about $20 USD. The hotel was right next to the river, tucked into a row of “inns”. We found out from our host at the HHH that these “inns” are really love motels, or “hotel no tells”. Their signs have two prices, one for 3 hours and one for overnight. Most conspicuously the car parks in front of each room has a large tarp like a giant shower curtain that is pulled shut to conceal the occupants’ vehicles. Luckily we knew all this before hand and were able to avoid them.

We spent the night in our “regular” hotel reading and watching a bit of Thai TV. American Idol type shows are all the rage here.

December 8, 2012

We had half a plan to start biking early this morning but were were slow to get up. After watching the sun rise over the rice fields and the river, we quickly decided to stay another night. We had a delicious Thai breakfast of a veggie omelet over white rice with fruit on the side. We also met the owner’s husband who is also a bike tourist, what luck! He had just come in that morning on a bus from Laos. We ended up chatting with both of them until 10am.

Sunrise from inside the raft house

Sunrise

They gave us biking directions to the floating market up the river which is a popular weekend spot for local Thais. The market was only 17km away, so it was a quick ride with our unloaded bikes.

The floating market was really interesting. Not only were there food stalls on the river on floating rafts, like our raft house, but there were also vendors in boats tied up selling food. I don’t know how two people can run a restaurant on those tiny boats, but they did.

Restaurant boat

We hung out until 2pm so we wouldn’t have to bike during the hottest part of the day. We bought lots of excellent food, people watched and feed some fish. I also bought a kilo of my new favorite fruit, mangosteen!

Mangosteen

Eggy poofs

We took a boat ride about 10km down the river to Wat something instead of biking. The ride was awesome with wonderful scenery and hundreds of storks.

Floating market

The boat dropped us off at a Buddhist temple famous for giving tattoos. The monk doing the tattoo uses a very long needle while two men stretch the skin of the person being tattooed. The famous leader of the temple, a monk who died 5 years ago, was mummified and now is on display in a glass coffin to which many people were paying respects. No pictures of that stuff, but here is a gong and elephant from the courtyard.

Gong and elephant

When we finally got back to our raft house we decided to take a swim. I jumped in but also jumped right out. I am a little bit afraid of water I can’t see through, especially with all the fish that were jumping around. The owners had an innertube that I could float on. However, right after I got out, a little snake swam by our porch. Last time I am getting in that river.

At dinner we discussed possible routes around Kanchanaburi and along the coast to Cambodia with our host. He guides bike tours around southeast Asia and generously gave us his notes. We headed to bed early in order to be well rested for our ride to Ban Pong.

December 7, 2012

We woke up well before sunrise today, brought our bikes and gear down to the street and loaded up. We bought coffee from the lady across the street who makes an excellent espresso for only 20 baht, or about $0.65. We also bought some fried sesame dumplings and some egg and corn puff things from some food carts on our street. With that fuel in our stomachs, we rode south west towards the

We crossed the river at the iconic Rama VIII bridge which we posted a picture of a few entries ago. The access was up several flights of stairs, but luckily there was a narrow bicycle ram cast into the steps which made it possible to push our heavy bikes up onto the road deck.

Pushing the bike upstairs

After crossing the river we rode in pretty heavy, slow moving traffic for several miles weaving with a pack of motorbikers around busses and cars.  A new elevated highway was being constructed in the center lane of the road we were on which made it very difficult to make a right turn to get north of the congested main road. The next road was less congested, but still very busy. After riding along for a few miles, the continuous wall of buildings on either side of the road began to yield as small undeveloped swamps began to appear here and there. Before long we started seeing short stretches of rice and orchid fields.

Around this time I realized the GPS routing algorithm was on “automobile” mode, and even though it was avoiding major highways, we were also avoiding small roads. Once switched to “bicycle” mode the GPS began routing us through small villages off the main roads. We were still making good time on the small roads and we were able to relax and take in the scenery, which was very rural at this point.

Plowing

After several miles of rice fields we crossed a medium sized river and arrived at the Hidden Holiday House. I had randomly come across this guesthouse on the internet when looking for a waypoint to put in the GPS to route us out of Bangkok. I figured it would be in a village center, but it turned out to be in the middle of nowhere. At this point it was around eleven and getting very hot, so we decided to take a break and check out the guesthouse. It turned out to be a beautiful spot right on the river overlooking rice fields. It didn’t take much convincing to end our day of biking, plus I think Jenny would have killed me if I wanted to continue. We stashed our panniers in a raft house floating on the river, our bikes in the garage and had a wonderful home cooked Thai meal for lunch. The raft house is a single room built on a dock floating empty plastic oil drums. There was very little river traffic, so it was a very peaceful spot for reading and sleeping.

Raft House

I went swimming in the river for a little while to cool off, then we went to a nearby town to look around. We had a simple dinner of fried rice and shrimp. Jenny had the owner of the guesthouse make her a note that said in Thai “I am vegetarian, I eat eggs, shrimp and fish”. She felt like a dork handing it to the guy at the restaurant, but it worked perfectly. We rode back to the guesthouse and went to sleep just after dark.

Taking the plunge

View from our porch

Stork

December 6, 2012

We woke up super early this morning, got some breakfast and did some more gear organizing. Our mission today was to find a bike shop. Long story short, we found a shop and got the parts we needed.

We also got to experience biking in Bangkok traffic, which was good. The traffic is CRAZY with motorbikes weaving between cars and pedestrians darting across the road. Once Chandler and I were in Mexico with the family I nannied for, waiting at a red light on a multi lane road. After all the cross traffic passed, all the cars around us went through the intersection, even though the light was still red. That’s how traffic here is all the time, but I have never felt safer biking amongst cars. With all the motor bikes weaving around, and cars and busses starting and stopping suddenly, everyone seems to be paying attention and anticipating the actions of others.

Since we didn’t really do anything extraordinary today, here are a few
random photos from around Bangkok.

Spirit house

Standing Buddha

Tiled roof

Eggs outside market

Survey marker?

My new tail lght is probably better than Chan's