It felt good leaving Bangkok. Between the noise, the pollution and the traffic, the week there left me feeling drained. Hannah, Gemma and I had a quiet Christmas at Hannah’s place in the middle of the city.  I spent most of Christmas Day with Ruby (the bike) cleaning, repairing and doing scheduled maintenance on the Rohloff hub in the garden downstairs. The only sign of Christmas in Bangkok was the tacky Christmas trees and tinsel strung up in the main shopping area. I needed to find spares for the bike and, inside the giant shopping plazas, I felt bombarded by reruns of endless Christmas carols.  I avoided the area like the plague.  For a Buddhist country, it didn’t feel much like Christmas - more of a facade to encourage people to spend and enjoy a day off work. I often wondered where the true spirit of Christmas was hidden. Had it been all but lost in the religious hype and commercialisation?
On Boxing Day, we rode out of Bangkok with a group of local Thai cyclists. The locals knew some of the smaller back roads out of  Bangkok that avoided the heavy traffic.  I’d experienced being swallowed by the city traffic trying to reach Hannah’s place in the middle of Bangkok on the way in. It was stressful, dangerous riding on the streets, dirty and unhealthy. I was keen to avoid that experience again. Riding within a large group felt really good.  I struggled to keep up with the cyclists at the front of the pack on their flash looking ultra light carbon bikes, but when I got the momentum up on my 70kg beast, it was easy to maintain a good rhythm on the flat roads.
We arrived at the ancient city of Ayutthaya in the afternoon to view a theatrical performance about a local hero who defeated a water serpent to win the heart of a young princess. Full of drama, romance, brevity and comic value, it was a beautifully enacted play on a stage under a foot of water. Surrounding the stage were local musicians supporting the cast and markets selling lunch. It was a joy to watch, but our time was cut short as we had a scheduled meeting with a legendary Thai cyclist, Preecha Pimpan. I didn’t see the end, but I’m sure the hero slayed the demon and ran off with the princess to live happily ever after.
In his late 70′s, Preecha Pimpan was semi retired, working as a teacher at a local school. During the 60′s, Adjun (a term of respect for a teacher in Thailand) Preecha cycled from Thailand to the USA via Europe on a bike he built himself with just three gears! I was amazed at this feat considering there were hardly any good roads in Asia at that time.  The cars were few, the roads were mostly gravel and repairs were made with whatever material was available by the side of the road. Adjun Preecha wanted to study at the University of Alabama in the USA and had no other means of getting there, so he set out on his bicycle! Air travel at that time must have been in it’s infancy and incredibly expensive. He cycled through Thailand, Burma, India and the Middle East to Europe. He then took a boat to Canada and cycled across America to Alabama. The Thai people aren’t well known for travelling the world. I thought WOW, here was a real pioneering legend!  (Listen to the interview here).
After our stay in Ayutthaya, the expedition continued north towards Chiang Mai cycling past sugar cane plantations, rows of sunflower fields, corn fields and ducks feeding in recently harvested rice paddies. The sun was always shining, the roads wide and flat. Food was available everywhere and I questioned the need to cart around a stove and cooking gear in South East Asia.  Staying in the wats, or temples, I saw a different side of the Buddhist culture in Thailand. The contradictions became plainly obvious, monks throwing shoes at dogs, smoking cigarettes, lounging around all day, drinking alcohol, acquiring possessions, eating meat and having money on hand. In a way, seeing this other side of Thai culture challenged my own ideas of what I believed a monk was and how they should behave. Some, it seemed, were drawn to becoming a monk for a number of reasons; as an escape from society, as a customary duty or because their parents were unable to support their upbringing – just to judge a few. Perhaps some simply enjoyed the quiet life. I always took the opportunity to speak to the monks, finding out about why they became a monk and their beliefs and views on life. During one such discussion, Hannah and I began talking with a young monk about aspects of our trip by bicycle. He seemed very interested and stayed most of the night chatting to us.  Hannah was patient enough to translate for me, but I’m sure subtle aspects of the discussion were lost in translation. The most humorous part of the night came when we stumbled upon the subject of why the earth shook, (i.e. earthquakes). The young monk, who guessed I was 44 and Hannah was 35, began to explain his theory of why the earth moves. He suggested that men drill holes in the earth and plant firecrackers in the ground (at least that was the first translation). It then became explosives then, finally, we cleared up the misunderstanding – that they were in fact nuclear weapons! These explosions caused the earth to move and it wasn’t good because nature was upset. Hannah and I had a lot of fun trying to understand his theory. I must admit I had trouble trying to keep a straight face as we resorted to diagrams to try and help.  I tried stretching my response  to more metaphorical meanings, but he was quite adamant it was more scientifically based.
After he finished, I confidently proposed an alternative theory about continental plate techtonics, using diagrams, actions and sounds while Hannah tried her best to translate. It didn’t seem to go down well with the young monk and so I looked up techtonics in the Encarta Encyclopaedia I had on my computer. There I found a video illustration of how the earth moves, how volcanoes are formed and how earthquakes happen. Quite pleased with myself, and my superior knowledge, I began showing the video. About half way through the monk lost interest and by the end simply refused the Encarta explanation, denied this was the case and again pointed to his illustration. When he decided the topic wasn’t up for debate any more,  he changed subjects! It was an entertaining night. For whatever reasons the monks found themselves at the wat, the atmosphere was always warm and welcoming and the monks incredibly hospitable.
I took a day off at a wat in Northern Thailand and used the time to fiddle with the bike and undertake some makeshift repairs. A bracket holding the rack to the front forks was bending and looking like it was going to break – the same bracket I’d replaced twice earlier (once in Australia and once in Indonesia) when it snapped. This was the last spare bracket I had so I decided to try and strengthen it using some spare plates, screws and nuts. It worked surprisingly well and, with the help of my incredibly friendly host at the wat (a man with Down’s Syndrome), we had something rigged together in about an hour. I hoped it would hold out for a few more months. My new friend was intent on smoking a cigar and looking on more than helping, but he did manage the rustle up a tasty lunch with one of the warmest smiles I’d received in a long time.
We spent a quiet New Year’s with Hannah’s friend’s parents who kindly offered to put us up for a few days.  Retired, they spent their days at home, meeting friends, playing cards and wood-ball. Wood-ball is something similar to croquet on a mini golf-like course. Using a mallet, you hit a wooden ball around a circuit and through a gate (similar to the hole in mini-golf). The winner is the one who can get through the 24-hole course in the least amount of strokes. The course is defined using a string line and you lose a shot if you go out of bounds.  Simple enough, I thought. I played with a retired teacher and a parachute regiment Major at an abandoned air force base. Not exactly what you’d expect a teacher and a Major to be doing in retirement. We laughed a lot at each other’s misfortunes and I learnt the word “obi†which means out in Thai. I used that word a lot. Hannah and I spent the afternoons relaxing at what Hannah and I termed ‘retirement central’. Old people came over to eat, drink, read the paper, sleep and gamble. We were fed really well and looked after like we were their own. However, the next day I fell violently ill with a case of food poisoning. I ate some deep fried fish the night before that didn’t agree at all with my stomach.  I was up all night violently vomiting and constantly attending to my explosive diarrhoea until there was no solids or fluids inside my digestive system. It wasn’t pretty, but I was impressed by the way my body knew what to do with the poison. It left me feeling in awe despite not being able to remember the last time I was that ill.
Gemma was headed in a different direction to eventually return to Australia to become a vet. We said our goodbyes and bid each other a safe journey. Gemma had cycled all the way from Southern Thailand and we’d become good friends over the last two months. The hills of Northern Thailand had a beautiful golden orange tinge to them. They were the first hills we’d encountered in Thailand. I was impressed by Hannah’s ability to keep up through the numerous switchbacks and bends winding their way to the top. The area had been once described as Thailand’s Switzerland, but I had to really stretch the imagination to fit the image of Switzerland I had in my mind. Fallen leaves carpeted the grounds, pyramids of hay were scattered around small farmhouses. The fresh air and the smells reminded me of how much I missed the mountains. I grabbed onto the back of a few tractors, hitching a ride on the flatter sections. The front half of the tractors was used as a plough, while the back half was used as a trailer. Together they made a vehicle that could transport just about anything, just about anywhere, doing a top speed of 40km an hour.  They were all over in Thailand.
We cycled through national parks, past ruins of ancient civilisations, along tree lined streets and finally arrived in Chiang Mai to visit another Oxfam project in Thailand. Oxfam had partnered with the Institute for Sustainable Agriculture Community to help promote sustainable agriculture in Chiang Mai (you can read all about the project here). In all I spent a month off in Northern Thailand waiting for the seasons to change in the Himalayas, fixing holes in saddlebags, mats and tyres, applying for a Chinese Visa and having a much needed break.
We cycled to the picturesque town of Pai with a Thai cyclist and a German Hannah and I had met in Bangkok a month earlier. En route we tried to enter a national park. The guard there wanted to charge us ten times the price of the locals to visit the hot springs. I couldn’t believe the difference in price. Determined as we were, when the guard went off duty we rode past the gate into the national park, pitched our tents near a river and enjoyed the hot steaming pools, walks to the geyser and all the facilities. I spent a few weeks in Pai, some 260km north west of Chiang Mai. Mostly I spent the time reading, meditating, sightseeing and working on aspects of the expedition, blogs, cleaning the website, getting in touch with family, sponsors, friends and thinking about the future path of the expedition. There was a lot of behind the scenes work that I hadn’t done in the months throughout Thailand.  It seems there are always things that need attention and it was a joy to give myself the time once again.  It was in Pai that I decided to extend the expedition by a year in order to cycle Nepal, Bhutan, India and Pakistan.
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