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

December 5, 2012

We had another early night, so both of us ended waking up very early. Like 2am early. Since neither of us could go back to sleep, we decided to walk around. The neighborhood around our guesthouse, usually a busy place, was eerily quiet. The night before, Chandler had wandered into the fringes of the “backpackers ghetto” area of town and I was curious to see what was going on there. Bad idea. The place was miserable. The place was crawling with drunken westerners of all sorts generally behaving like idiots. It was a little embarrassing to even take in the spectacle. We got some pad thai from a street vendor and headed back to our very quiet street and hotel. (Thanks for the suggestion Tara)

We spent an hour reading before we ventured out again. Our taxi driver from the airport told us there would be a parade and celebration today for the King’s birthday, so we headed towards the royal palace. However we didn’t get the memo about what do wear. Everyone, let me emphasize EVERYONE, unless dressed in a military uniform, was wearing a yellow shirt. We already stick out as tall white people, but to not know the dress code didn’t help things. The yellow color represents the King’s birth color, tied to the day of the week he was born. As we found out later, my blue shirt was probably OK because that color represents support for the Queen. Chandlers black shirt on the other hand may not have been the best choice. At least it wasn’t red, which represents the political opposition here.

We didn't get the yellow shirt memo

We were in the main area which was becoming more crowded and warm. There were some rousing volleys of what we assumed was something like “Long Live the King” prompted by a remote controlled tricopter with a camera mounted to it hovering over the crowd.

Being watched from above

When nothing happened for awhile, we decided to move on to our next destination: Chinatown.

Chinatown was very crazy with vendors everywhere. There was an unbelievable variety of plastic crap available. Chandler kept trying to buy a pair of sandals, but the shop keepers would only offer 10+ packs, and after a while we figured out that most of the shops were wholesale only. After wandering around for a bit, we decided to move on to Wat Pho. Wat Pho is home to the reclining Buddha. This Buddha is huge, 43m long and 15m high.

Buddha peeking out

Reclining Buddha

The rest of the temple grounds were also beautiful and much less busy than the reclining Buddha room.

Another Buddha

Temple guard

After the reclining Buddha, it was time for a nap. We had already been awake for 12h and with the heat and humidity, it was time for a break. I took a short nap back at the guesthouse while Chandler got some lunch. We spent the rest of the night packing our panniers and planning a route. We wanted to leave the next day early in the morning while it is still dark and little traffic, but discovered I didn’t have a tail light and Chan’s bike computer was dead. Oh well, one more day in Bangkok.

December 4, 2012

We woke up around 530am which was nice because it wasn’t too warm. We got some delicious donuts/dumplings filled with sesame seed paste. Next we wandered around through a fish and meat market, bought some iced coffee and egg puff things.

Market

Eventually we found ourselves at a pier. After figuring out where we were and were we would go, decided to hop on one of the boats.

Sunrise and temple

Different temple

We were going to see the reclining Buddha, but the temple didn’t open for another 2 hours, so we just walked around.

Large produce market

Grand Palace

Around 10am we headed back to the hotel because it was extremely warm out and I was exceptionally sweaty. After a shower, we headed out for lunch. It was surprisingly hard to find vegetarian food on the street near our hotel, but not impossible.

We spent the hottest hours of the day in our room hanging out in our underwear doing laundry in the sink, reading and putting the bikes back together.
By the end of the day we had two fully assembled bikes and were ready to start loading up the panniers.

Bangkok is a crazy place and is pretty exhausting, everywhere in every space there is something going on at all hours. There is so much to see we have been putting off our departure. Tomorrow is the King’s birthday which is supposed to be a big celebration, so we figured we’d stick around for that.