After being in Nepal for so long, it felt hard to say goodbye to our friends there. But, we had to continue our traveling. The only feasible overland travel option available was to cycle east through India and Bangladesh, where we would have eventually run into a wall in Myanmar (Burma). According to reports from other travelers, we would not be permitted to enter Burma at a land crossing – the only way for tourists to enter is to fly in. So, given that, and given that we heard that traffic in India is crazy, we decided to fly once again. We took a flight to Bangkok, where we stopped for a few days to get further organized for this part of the trip and do a little bit of sightseeing.
We were both surprised by how modern Bangkok is: Lots of malls with all the gadgets one finds in western stores, a modern railway runs above the crowded streets and the streets are clean. At night, blinking billboards lit up the sky with bright colors. Coming from Nepal, where the streets are gritty and lined with tiny shops and where evening energy blackouts darken the sky, we felt overwhelmed.
We made our way out of Bangkok by train, traveling south to Hua Hin. From there we continued on south by the east coast of Thailand. The streets here are very nicely paved, but the main roads are often busy and there is not that much to see. We passed a lot of fish farms and rubber and palm oil plantations. Whenever we could, we tried to escape to the smaller roads, but they were not always easy to find and navigating was sometimes challenging. For example, one day we were riding along a perfectly smooth road that meandered through a serene landscape dotted with shrimp farms and limestone hills, when suddenly Mario’s tire went flat. For the first time in _4922_ km. (i.e. the entire trip to date), something managed to puncture the super tough Schwalbe Marathon tire. When he found the culprit, we discovered it wasn’t just something that punctured the tire, it was a 1-inch long thorn! The thorn – and more like it – got there when we rode through a short stretch where workers were pruning the roadside bushes. Within the subsequent two hours, we fixed 3 more flat tires. So, we went from no flats in _4922 km. to 4 flats in one day. Impressive record!
In a few days, we made it to Chumphon, from where we took a boat in the morning to Ko Tao, a wonderful island located in the Gulf of Thailand. We arrived at the quite crowded westside of the island. To flee the party crowd we pedaled and pushed our bikes over an extremely washed out street across the island. Completely soaked with sweat, it took us nearly an hour to cover four kilometers. But it was worth it: the other end of the island was way more quite and had the best snorkeling spot to offer. We stayed there for a few days, hung out, enjoyed the view, and went snorkeling and diving.
We left the island with the overnight-ferry to Surat Thani where, after a quiet night at sea, we arrived at four in the morning. We got our bikes ready and started pedaling in the dark. We were heading towards Krabi, on the other coast, where we planned to arrive in three days. The streets were very flat and smooth, there was not much traffic and except rubber and palm oil plantations, nothing to see. With our early start we reached our planned goal already before noon, but after a short break we kept on pedaling. Even a monsoon-rainfall could not stop us. The kilometers flew by and at some point in the late afternoon we decided to just keep on moving and make it to Krabi in one day. After 170 km, already in the dark, we arrived tired but very happy.
From Krabi we went to Phi Phi Island to relax a bit and go diving. When we arrived, we were shocked: it looked like a party town in Spain or Mexico! The streets were narrow and full of stores and guesthouses, we found signs warning people against getting too drunk. At night one could buy plastic buckets with rum and Coke, loud music was blaring from the endless bars at the beach, half drunken yahoos with a beer in their hand stood on the street inviting you to go scuba diving. It was disgusting. Away from the crowds, we found Blue View Divers, a great little dive center, and we did two very nice dives around the island. From their boat we saw the Maya bay; the beach from the movie “The Beach”. This was also far from idyllic: Yes, it was a nice setting. But, more than a dozen speed boats were anchored in front of the beach, while several more continuously roared in and out of the bay, ruining any hope of savoring the tranquility. A mass of bright orange life-vest clad tourists hovered on the water’s surface, all vying to gaze at the same piece of coral; like dozens of confused clown fish all crowding the same anemone. This experience made us leave the Island after only one day. It is sad, since the scenery is beautiful.
The following days we made ourselves very busy by completely changing our plans for our wedding in the Philippines, which was a little over a month away at that point. So we spent days on the internet, just getting things organized. From Krabi we cycled further south towards Kuala Lumpur, which we had to reach by mid-December to catch a flight to the Philippines. When we ran out of time, we were forced to continue our way by bus.
Overall riding in Thailand was a hot experience. It was hot and we poured bottle after bottle of water into us. Sometimes we were lucky and found some crushed ice that we put into our bike bottles, so that the water stayed cold for at least a little bit. When we stopped in the evening, our arms and legs were covered with a crust of salt. The nice thing about Thailand is that we always found little restaurants and stands close to the street where we found some delicious food. We indulged at the lovely night markets with fresh sea food, at little restaurants with outstanding curry and shakes. From spending so much time in Nepal we were used to eating deliciously healthy vegetarian meals most of the time. But here we had some trouble explaining people that we wanted food without meat. It was as if they don’t understand the meaning of “no meat” – often when we ordered a dish without meat, we still would find at least a few pieces of chicken or pork and always some seafood in our food. But we still tried it every time.
Overnight we often stayed at monasteries. At one monastery we were invited by the monks to eat and drink and even to celebrate a ceremony in the morning. They were wonderfully generous and kind to us.
After racing through Thailand, we made our way to the Philippines, unfortunately, by air. We had wanted to take a ferry but, even in this region of the world with thousands of islands, international ferries can be extremely difficult to find. So we flew from Kuala Lumpur to Manila on December 16th 2009.