Happy Time in Thailand

To say that Phetchabun had revealed her lovely charms during our brief respite there would be quite an understatement. It’s mid sized towns like this that make central Thailand so charming, with all of the modern conveniences that the bicycle tourist needs on his day off available. Phetchabun has a Swensens with a big glass window facing onto the street so that the populace can observe the bicycle tourist inflating his stomach with sugary treats. Phetchabun has a central market area where the bicycle tourist can eat a plate of economically priced food and network with the local HIV infected Swedish man who sits there drinking whiskey all day. Phetchabun has an open air bar where the resident fat English expats can spend most of the daylight hours enjoying a refreshing ale or ten with their prostitute wives.

But since we are bicycle tourists we cannot stay in one location for too long lest we be confused with the more lowly garden variety tourist. So Tony and I reluctantly packed our sweat stained tshirts away and I rubbed some petroleum jelly on my balls and arse before saddling up my custom bamboo fixie.

(For those of you interested in the techical details of my fixie, you may be surprised to learn that I made it myself. In the tradition of great Australian backyard innovation, I harvested a set of lugs from a late 80′s aluminium Miyata road bike, found some local bamboo from the edge of a creek near my house in Brisbane, and with the assistance of large quantities of epoxy resin, a blow torch and some experimentation, managed to construct a rideable bamboo bike that didn’t feel like it was going to kill me.)

What followed was several days of difficult riding in the mountains close to the Laos border. Riding a 52×18 fixie didn’t help matters either, and I will admit that there were several occasions where I found myself pushing my bike up hills and cursing the gods of geology. We passed through places like Loei and Nong Bua Lampu before once again finding civilisation. The appearance of a Tesco Lotus sign on the horizon on the outskirts of Udon Thani heralded the availability of air conditioning and the possibility of eating a fried fish in comfort.

After consuming a fried fish and several other plates of food in the Tesco Lotus food court, Tony and I retreated to the serenity of a small cafe elsewhere in the shopping centre. As I sipped my latte, the proprietor of the cafe indicated that I should focus my attention on the beauty salon opposite, where a Thai goddess was trying to get my attention. “She say you look hansom!”, our barista said. And that my friends is why Thailand is the greatest country on earth. Only on Thailand can I walk into a place dressed in dirty cycling clothes, unshaven, stinking of sweat with a bad case of helmet hair and have an angel go out of her way to make my acquaintance.

Of course with the good also comes the bad, and a short time after I exchanged contact details with the goddess, Tony and I sighted our first Camo Man. I won’t go into the history of it all, but to keep it brief Udon Thani was a US military facility during the Vietnam War. Look it up on Wikipedia if you want all the details. The side effect of this is that now that Vietnam Vets are of a retiring age, some of them have decided to come back to a place they hold fond memories for. And why wouldn’t you? Coming to Thailand for some R&R after slugging it out with Charlie would have been like entering paradise. Unfortunately some of these guys just can’t let the past go, and walk around Udon sporting cammo pants, tshirts with stupid military slogans and Adidas sandals. And I think they all have bad backs as they walk around very stiff and upright with the arms sticking out like chicken wings, often with an old Thai boiler attached to one of the wings. I fought hard to suppress the desire to yell out “The war is over dude!”.

After making our way to the Udon Hotel and removing evidence of the day’s exertions, Tony and I went exploring the city by bike, by far the best way to orient oneself and quickly scope out some opportunities for entertainment later in the day. It wasn’t long before we found another large shopping mall, this one in the middle of the city centre. Best of all, this particular mall was equipped with our two all time favourite chain restaurants, MK and Swensens. Both of the these establishments offer high calorie fare for the hungry bicycle tourist, and large glass viewing portals that allowed us to examine the inhabitants of the Udon zoo from a safe distance. I inhaled my usual MK snack of a plate full of roast pig and duck, while Tony sampled the dim sum. More Camo Men ambled past as we stuffed our faces. Ridiculous as the Camo Man is, I did have some sliver of respect for him, as he preferred to spend his waking hours parading around town with his elderly Thai wife, rather than sitting in a bar drinking his liver into oblivion. Perhaps this a defining difference between the American Camo Man and the British Fat Slob?

Next on the agenda was a visit to Swensens, where Tony and I both ordered the diabetes inducing Coit Tower. I had to explain to Tony why I found the dessert amusing, as Americans clearly do not use the word coit to allude to their anus. The Coit is a towering monument to all that is great in America – huge parfait glass full to the brim with ice cream, sickly sweet sauce and whipped cream. After eating our Coits, we endeavoured to linger in Swensens drinking endless cups of water and ogling the teenage waitresses until they kicked us out. But in Thailand, kicking out the customer is not the way it is done. The manager had instructed the staff to cut off our water supply before pointedly placing the bill on our table. Apparently it was time to move on to other entertainments.

Today’s bicycle ride would encompass some of the finer aspects of bicycle touring in Thailand: encounters with ladyboys, the death of dogs who deserve it, gnarly descents and visits to the soapy massage.

Leaving our nameless hotel in Phichit was not a completely smooth affair. After showering I was applying my “cool powder” so that I could start the day feeling dry, cool and fresh, but an unfortunate manufacturing defect in the lid of the powder caused the entire contents to empty itself over my back and onto the bathroom floor. Not only was I disappointed that I would have to purchase another container of this miracle, menthol infused powder, but I also felt some degree of sympathy for the poor soul who would be cleaning up this mess. I completed my ablutions by smearing a large gob of petroleum jelly over my testicles and anal area to counter against any possible abrasions that may occur due to sitting on a leather bicycle seat for the best part of the day.

Once again, the scenery in the north east of Thailand did not disappoint. Rice paddies, nondescript roadside villages selling useless products under the banner of “One Tambon One Product” (OTOP), the odd factory belching smoke.

Our first drink stop of the morning was at a roadside cafe run by a particularly unpleasant ladyboy. I’m sure you’ve seen the sexy, slinky ladyboys of Bangkok with their surgically enhanced bits and pieces. Maybe you’ve even been led astray by one, blissfully ignorant that under that tight skirt lies a pair of balls. Up in Isaan however, things are different. The ladyboys up here didn’t pass the Bangkok entrance exam and have been consigned to a life in the countryside. Our ladyboy host at the drink stop was on the large side, probably around 180cm, and her long nails did nothing to disguise the fact that her hands could just as easily be deployed in repairing a truck gearbox as they were in flicking her hair back as she poured us a couple of cokes. Once she realised that we weren’t interested in playing, she went back to plucking hairs from her face with a pair of tweezers, and we saddled up our steeds and continued our way to Phetchabun.

About twenty clicks out from glorious Phetchabun we encountered a large hill. It may even have been called a mountain in a country like Australia that doesn’t have any real mountains. Tony made a point of dropping me on the climb, so I made a point of pausing leisurely at a lookout rest stop, admiring the view of the rice paddies below while drinking a coconut juice. The descent down the other side was delightfully steep, allowing my bamboo fixie to reach terminal velocity in “legs up” mode. Of course, partway down the hill I witnessed the aftermath of a traffic accident between a Honda Dream and a small hatchback. Hardly a day goes by in Thailand without seeing some sort of traffic altercation as driving standards here are somewhat negligent compared with western norms. In this case, everyone seemed to be ok, although the pillion from the scooter had a nasty graze on her arm.

As I spun my way over the last few kilometres to Phetchabun, the traffic started to become more built up, and with it the appearance of more houses and small workshops on the side of the road. Out of one mechanic’s workshop raced a mangy Thai dog, intent on having a piece of either me or my fixie. There are two standard techniques of avoiding a dog bite in Thailand, either jam on those pedals for all your worth and leave him behind, or stop suddenly and stare him down with the bike in between the two of you. On this occassion I decided to try a third technique – coax the bastard onto the road. I quickly looked over my shoulder and noticed a large truck coming up in the kerbside lane. By holding my speed constant I was able to keep the mutt just behind my back wheel, the clicking of his nails against the roadside beating out a steady rhythm. As the truck came nearer I darted across in front of it into the farside lane, eliciting a blast on the horn from the driver, shortly followed by the yelp of a dog going under the front wheels of a lorry. Darwin wins again.

As I entered the city centre of Phetchabun, darkness fell and I spent some time riding in circles with Tony trying to find a suitable hotel for our stay. Eventually we just rode towards the tallest building in town which turned out to be a half decent hotel with all the mod cons such as aircon, wifi and adjacent soapy massage.

After washing off the day’s exertions and the remainder of the petroleum jelly that was coating my balls, we strolled about the town hunting for eats. We managed to find a restaurant that specialised in particularly fatty pork belly and thousand year eggs. I bypassed the eggs but gorged myself on sumptuous fatty pork, replacing the calorie deficit from the day’s ride.

We were both tired from the big hill, but found the energy to visit the soapy next to our hotel. It was a sad place, that looked as though it had been designed and built with grand plans. There were several stories to the complex but apparently only the ground floor was being used. And once again we entered and found a darkened room with a windowed fish bowl at the far end. I was too embarassed to get close to the glass, but from the other end of the room, the ladies on display looked like asian versions of my mother with too much makeup. I looked at Tony as he looked at the ladies and all he could say was “Dude, this is upcountry!”.

I made my way back to my hotel room and made generous use of some Happy Time.

And so we ride our bicycles to another central Thai town with a name beginning with…. P.

Tony had some degree of difficulty with his anus this morning. He was complaining that the amoebic dysentery that had been afflicting his colon on and off since he left Vietnam had reared its ugly head again, and that his anus was once again in trouble. Squatting over a hole in the ground while your sphincter turns itself inside out is not a good way to start your day in Thailand, especially when it’s likely that you will be eating quantities of spicy food later in the day that will trigger further eruptions, sometime without much warning and requiring that you duck into a patch of forest to conclude your business.

I was able to sympathise with Tony, as I had suffered my own bout of the runs as mentioned in an earlier blog post. In the end I resorted to eating a teaspoonful of pure sulphur powder, which cleared up the runny mess within a day. Tony was not interested in my backyard medical experiments so elected to continue his battle with the amoebas by natural means alone.

Between Phitsanulok and Phichit I can’t say that there was very much that is blogworthy. We cycled past rice paddies, exploring dirt roads now and then when my GPS indicated that there was an alternate route available. These off road expeditions enabled us to get closer to the rural populace, and eat in establishments that offered a rustic feel, and provided mosquito infested toilets out the back that Tony could use to spray partially digested food from his rear.

In one of these small villages of which I have no idea of the name, we encountered another interesting specimen that one often sees in this part of the world. This is the Sad European Guy Married to a Prostitute. The common them of the story is that the Euro guy has been on a holiday to Thailand, visited one of the fleshpots of the sex trade, either Bangkok or Pattaya and fallen in love with one of the bar girls that he paid for sex. One things leads to another, and before you know it, he’s married to his prostitute, has sold all of his holdings back in Euroland and moved to Thailand. The next step is to build the Big House In The Village, because all ex prostitutes like to let the whole village know that they have done well in finding a rich ATM. Then comes the children, the little shop in town, the fights with the jealous locals (sometimes involving guns), bribing the local police (who won’t investigate any crimes committed against Euroguy), finding out that the ex prostitute is cheating on you with the Thai boyfriend, and then finally desperation as the reality sets in that he is stuck in this little village with all of his money tied up in a house that is in his ex prostitute’s name.

Today’s Euroguy looked like a German, but we had no way of verifying this, as he refused to acknowledge our presence. We found this a little strange, considering that we were in a tiny village on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere in central Thailand. Not exactly the sort of place that you see many falangs passing through, particularly on bicycles, particularly as handsome as the pair of us. But he managed to completely ignore us until Tony yelled out “Hey, have a nice day!”. Oh those Americans, they’re so friendly.

We arrived at Phichit in the mid afternoon, somewhat sweaty as usual, and checked into The Hotel With No Name. Seriously, it didn’t have a name out the front. I was badly in need of a haircut, so I cleaned myself up and went wandering around the bustling city centre looking for a hairdresser, but not before visiting the local food court and ordering some frog fried rice.

My haircut was one of those pleasant transactions that you can only experience in Thailand. The hairdresser spoke very little English, and I hardly any Thai, but I was able to communicate what I wanted done to my hair, and the entire procedure was conducted in a vaguely flirtatious manner. The way she would move my head to get access to one side or the other, the shampooing that was more like an erotic massage than any sort of hair cleaning exercise and the endless minor adjustments to the final cut that suggested that she didn’t want me to leave. And all this cost me about $2. Value for money.

Tony I debated where we should go for the evening’s frivolities and feeding. In the end we decided on a karaoke bar. Not because we like karaoke, but purely out of curiosity. Like many things in Thailand, the karaoke bar is a mystery. What exactly is the purpose of these places? Is it a front for prostitution? Is it designed to fleece sad and lonely guys who pay for a girl’s company? Is it just for the love of Thai pop music? Maybe it’s all of these things.

This particular karaoke bar (and perhaps all karaoke bars) had a resident lady boy, who appeared to be running the show.  It made a big deal of being accomodating to the falang guests, getting us a seat right up front near the stage so that we could hear the ear splitting out of tune Thai Pop as clearly as possible.  It helped us order some food, which appeared quite quickly from the very basic looking kitchen out the back.  Actually when I went to the toilet it was difficult to determine where the kitchen finished and the toilet began, but the food tasted ok.  The ladyboy then wanted us to pay for a bottle of whiskey so that it and its friends could drink whiskey on our tab. It was only a small bottle so we said ok.  This was a research project after all, and how much could a little bottle of whiskey possibly cost?

After about an hour of being tortured by the sound of girls in short skirts singing incredibly out of tune, our ladyboy got up on stage and managed to outdo every other performer.  More out of tune, more histrionic, all the while looking over at our table longingly.  We’d had enough so we asked for “check bin”.  Of course the bill was outrageous, but only in relative Thai terms.  They overcharged us for everything, but it was worth it just to get the opportunity to examine the workings of the Thai Karaoke Bar.  Our conclusions were that if it is a front for prostitution, it’s not a very a efficient one, and that they are indeed designed to fleece lonely guys.

We made for the exit, only to be ambushed by the ladyboy as we unlocked our bikes.  It had the balls to demand a tip from me for providing “service”.  I smiled weakly and mounted my bamboo fixie, riding off into the night looking for the 7/11.

Today’s ride was remarkable in that it was completely unremarkable.  We woke up in Sawan Khalok, we got on our bikes, found somewhere to eat breakfast, then rode to Phitsanulok, stopping a couple of times for drinks and snacks.  The last few kilometres of the ride were somewhat hectic, as we had to cross almost the entire width of the city to get to the area with a proliferation of lodgings, and Tony had decided that he was going to make the last ten kilometres a time trial.  I stuck to his wheel like glue and bludged the whole way, maxing out my cadence on the beautiful bamboo fixie that had served me so well.  If he wants to be a maniac and waste energy blasting his way to the finish, then I’m happy to sit in the slipstream and suck his wheel.

Our hotel was a glorious and period correct rendition of 1960′s central Thailand luxury, and had not been renovated or tinkered with since its original construction.  The fading green paint on the exterior and the aluminium framed entry doors transported me back to a simpler and more elegant time.  As I entered the moody foyer I noticed that on an elevated adjacent area the hotel had thoughtfully included a small brothel to cater for the tired travelling businessman.  Upon checking in and paying our very reasonable 500baht lodging fee, Tony and I retired to our rooms to freshen up and prepare for the night’s festivities.

First on the agenda was catching up on internet duties.  A cute little cafe across the road from our hotel was convenient, friendly and most importantly had free wifi.  While Tony updated his blog, I consumed three omelettes and a cafe latte, something only possible in recent times.  Thailand seems to have undergone and almost overnight transformation into a cafe culture.  The last time I was here the best you could expect was either Nescafe instant rubbish, American style percolated dishwater or Starbucks.  None of those options offer any real attraction to the confirmed espresso addict, so I was quite pleased indeed to learn that the Italian style coffee machine had secreted itself into every corner of Thailand in my absence.  Practically every out of the way town and even remote location by the side of a highway has sprouted a cafe, complete with numerous cute decorations and useless paraphernalia.  But most importantly, most have actually invested in a proper machine.  I was a happy, caffeineted man.  Time will tell whether this is in fact a “coffee shop bubble”, with over investment in a single category of retail outlet.  I hope all the copy cats don’t get burnt and send the whole industry down the toilet.  It would be a shame.

Once Tony had finished lying to the world on his blog, we took an early evening stroll around downtown Phitsanulok, looking for entertainment.  We found our way down to the river, where a large group of Thai women were engaging in an outdoor aerobics session, being led by a very loud and energetic instructor and accompanied by some some very loud and energetic Thai pop music.  I was inspired, and immediately joined in at the rear of the group.  Judging by the surprised looks on the faces of my fellow aerobicisers, falangs at best do not often participate in these events, or are not welcome at all.

After a couple of minutes of this, the novelty wore off and I detected that my welcome was more than worn out, so we continued our stroll along the riverfront, mocking the throngs of retarded backpackers reclining in armchairs receiving foot massages on the footpath.  We then spent a while hanging around outside the 7/11 where we could further examine the local backpacker population.   Phitsanulok for some reason is a magnet for the most despised backpacker subgroup, The Hippy.  Barefoot, dressed head to toe in tie died rags and sporting dreadlocks, these detestable middle class creatures had infested the riverside market and were spending their time haggling the local Thais down a few baht on the clothing for sale.  After all, a few baht saved on a pair of Thai pants is one more day that they can spend lounging around in South East Asia avoiding jobs and study back in their suburban homes in Australia, the US or Israel.  The Canadians were easy to spot because they had Canadian flags sewn to all of their possessions.  Why do they do that?

Dinner for the evening was some pad thai eaten at a streetside stall/restaurant.  It cost 30 baht.  For Tony, dessert was a glass of milk containing four or five tablespoons of sugar.

After exhausting all socially acceptable entertainment avenues on the streets of the city, we retired to our hotel to investigate the in-house brothel.  It was a sad little affair, a glass windowed and brightly lit booth housing a couple of benches covered with fading cushions.  And on the benches were three middle aged and slightly overweight ladies wearing too much makeup.  Tony obviously found one of them appealing as he immediately asked the mamasan “How much?”.  He appeared quite surprised to learn that an evening of pleasure with one of these maidens would set him back 1500 baht.  I noticed a far younger, darker and more attractive young lady sitting in the darkened viewing area.  Upon our enquiry as to whether she was available, the mamasan was quite surprised that the falangs would be interested in this inferior, dark skinned girl, but replied that her fee was somewhat cheaper at 1200 baht.  Before Tony had a chance to say anything, I had slapped my money down on the counter and secured my company for the evening.

I was forced to defecate 6 times today.

It was the crab curry.  I know it.  And it’s Tony’s fault.  If he hadn’t verbally assaulted those taxi drivers in Lampang I could have made it up to the big night market in that town and had some delicious freshly fried fish and som tam, or a grilled chicken.  Instead, because of Tony’s unprovoked rant aimed at all taxi/song thaw drivers in the known universe I was unable to find any fresh, safe to eat, non-diarrhea invoking food and was forced to buy a crab curry from an old lady in the day market which was about to close for the day.  She’d probably been selling food there since the early morning, and the crab curry that I ate was a room temperature breeding ground for several species of bacteria and amoeba known to cause a loosening of the bowels.

The incubation period for this particular blend of gastroentericly active organisms appeared to be a little less than 24 hours, judging by the shart that I had produced yesterday when arriving in Thoen.  Of course, the onset of symptoms is only the start of one’s misery, as there are numerous stages of the illness to be endured before finally emerging at the other end, drained, several kilos lighter and in need of a big steak.

For want of a better categorisation, I will call today’s abdominal adventures “Stage 2: Repeated and Unwarned of Anal Explosions”.  The first of these occurred very early in the day as I awoke in the Thoen hotel room just as first light brightened the room.  I had been having a very pleasant dream about the girl in front of the karaoke bar next door when a sharp pain the gut jolted me awake and forced me out of bed.  I only just made it to the bathroom before a gaseous eruption forced its way out of my arse and into the toilet.  Thankfully I was not wearing any clothes at the time and could just sashay from the throne to the corner of the bathroom designated for showering and wash off any faecal transgressions.

Tony and I met outside the hotel at the designated time of 7:30am.   Breakfast was easily arranged at the petrol station across the road.  It featured a basic restaurant out the front that had a few different curries on display.  They were all delicious, and so cheap they may as well have been free.  To be safe I also downed a couple of fermented, fake Yakult drinks in the hope they would counteract the rumbling in my stomach.

Today’s route would be on minor roads between Thoen and Sawan Khalok.  This also means that it would be a hilly route and first test of the rather ambitious gearing on my bamboo fixie.

I had never ridden my 52×18 up any real hills before, let alone with a couple of panniers full of touring crap, so it was no surprise that on the first real hill I was quickly forced off the bike and resorted to pushing it.  And then once reaching the top of the first set of hills my stomach once again began to cramp and cause a twitching in my sphincter.  I raced off into the bushes to take a dump, which was all too much for Tony who got back on his bike and headed down the next hill.

It’s funny what you find in the bush on the side of the road.  I thought I had picked a pretty secluded little spot to squat with my bike shorts around my ankles, but there in amongst the shrubbery was a pair of beige ladies shoes.  Why were they here?  I could see why they were discarded, as they were quite ugly and without any real fashion sensibility of any sort.  But why dump them in some bushes about 100m in from the road?  And they were quite neatly arranged side by side, as though they had been placed carefully.  Did someone fuck in the bushes here and just forget to put their shoes back on?  There was some evidence of small fires near the parking area adjacent to the road, so maybe the young kids from Thoen who have scooters come up here at night and get drunk, stoned, whatever?

I carried on down the road, which having forced me to walk uphill for several kilometres now paid off with a massive descent that put a big smile on my face.  A few more kilometres down the road I found Tony lounging around outside what appeared to be a police station filling his water bottle up using their water cooler.

The Thai police had become a very special private joke for Tony and I (and not for the obvious reason that they are completely corrupt and useless at actual police work), and just seeing him outside a police station made me laugh.  You see, I had told Tony about a story involving a friend of a friend some time ago.  This young Thai girl had been abducted by a police chief in Bangkok whom she knew, taken to a hotel room, raped, and then paid 10,000 baht to keep her mouth shut.  This story brings to light two amazing things about Thai police.  Firstly, Thai police rape young girls.  Secondly, they then pay them to keep quiet.  And despite the trauma of being raped, the girl was apparently in a way pleased with the outcome because she made 10,000 baht.  Only in Thailand.

So with this new knowledge, whenever we saw a police officer Tony would say something like “I think they’re looking for some girls to RAPE!”, “They look like they’ve just been doing some RAPING!”.  Of course, I didn’t find Tony’s rape jokes in any way humorous.

I joined Tony outside this tiny police office.  It didn’t deserve to be called a police station as it just consisted of a one room shack with an attached car port containing a pickup truck.  There were a couple of very friendly rapists, I mean police officers inside who were not showing any signs of doing actual police work.  Tony and I availed ourselves of their very cool and refreshing water fountain and he made jokes about them raping people.  The rapists even gave us a small bunch of very tasty bananas.  A good time was had by all.  Fortunately I didn’t have to ask them to use their toilet as my intestines had stopped groaning temporarily.

As we continued along the road to Sawan Khalok, the road flattened out and was gently undulating, mostly downhill.  It was lovely.  If there had been girls bathing in a river by the roadside it would have been perfect.  Even more lovely was our lunch stop which was some kind of tourist oriented facility that caters for small groups of package tourists from Europe.  They were able to supply us with a freshly fried fish which was very delicious.  They also had a clean toilet which I proceeded to spray with liquid shit until it was no longer clean.  The highs and lows, all in one day.

There was little else of interest to report for the remainder of that day’s cycling, other than one more excursion into the bush to lower my shorts and squat amongst the spikey plants and trees.  The Bristol stool chart does not have a large enough number to describe this particular anal explosion.  It was only by spreading my feet as far apart as the elastic in my shorts would allow that I was able to avoid spraying my shoes with horrible brown fluids.  I wiped my backside with my hand and water from my water bottle and made a mental note to wash that hand before eating anything later in the day.

…

Sawan Khalok itself does not have a great deal to recommend it, other than the beautiful ladyboy who served us our fried squid at dinner time.  She had probably the prettiest face and best arse of any girl in the whole town.  It’s a shame that she also has a penis.

After dinner, Tony and I felt a little frisky, no doubt due to the attention we had received from the lovely ladyboy, so we proceeded to prowl the town on our bicycles, looking for “action”.  The problem with these rural towns in Thailand is that “action” is very difficult to find.  Action is frowned upon by the so called police force, unless they are able to profit from it, so finding the action requires either local knowledge, luck, or the use of urban myths.

The urban myth that Tony had supplied for this evening was that “action” is sometimes marked by Christmas tree lights outside a venue.  We covered almost every street in the town, and whenever we found Christmas lights would investigate.  But no luck, as any place that had the lights was inevitably just a shop or house closed and dark for the evening.  I had doubts about this theory, and since Chinese new year was fast approaching I think the lights were just to celebrate this coming event.

We managed to find a young lad outside a hotel in the town who spoke English.  He had just completed a degree at a very prestigious Bangkok university and his English was excellent.  We asked him where we could find girls, but he then became very shy and claimed that he hadn’t lived in the town for a long time and didn’t know.  “Go and ask your mother”, we suggested.  This made him even more shy.  He then pointed up a side street and said “Go up there until you come to the five way intersection, I’ve heard that there is something up there”.

Bullshit, there was nothing at the five way intersection other than a mangy, rabies infected dog and an old man sleeping in a chair, so we backtracked to the main road and decided to execute one more pass along the outskirts of town before retiring to our luxurious but bunker like hotel.

Tony spotted some Christmas lights down the end of a driveway.  It was obvious that this was a private residence but he insisted on investigating.  It took exactly five seconds for the people living there to realise that two crazy farangs on bicycles had entered their front yard.  A very strange conversation ensued that involved Tony asking where the national historic park was.  One of the men there said that I was very handsome.  This annoyed Tony, so we left and went to bed.

Desolation.

Not what I expected really.

Thailand is normally a cornucopia of delights, even when cycling in the most rural of areas.  One can expect to regularly find roadside stalls, delightful villages and the oasis of the road: The Mighty 7/11 at regular intervals.   The bicycle tourist can ride in any direction, quite comfortable in the knowledge that he can find a snack, refreshing beverage or extended lunch pretty much anywhere along the road.

But not between Lampang and Thoen.

Actually that’s not quite fair.  It’s not so bad near Thoen, but for about 40 kilometres heading south from Lampang it is a desert.  Not a single sign of life but for the horrible pickup trucks with oversized exhausts blasting past on our right.  For the first time in history, I actually ran out of water in Thailand and started to get quite thirsty.  After about 20 clicks of this we came to a sad and bedraggled excuse for a village that consisted of one shop selling a useless local agricultural product (some sort of weird plaster figurine) and an empty restaurant with two old toothless men cooking off looking chicken and garlic.  I asked them using my very best Thai if they had any plain water, but they could only offer me that black poison otherwise known as Coca Cola.  No thanks.

Tony had a little spare water and poured some from his brown and mouldy looking Rivendell water bottle into mine.  Despite the warmth of the water it was still welcome.

We pressed on throughout the day, riding along in this hot, barren, cultural vacuum.  It was so different to other parts of Thailand that it was a bit of a shock to the system.  I realised that one is normally so pampered, so availed of drinks and tasty snacks that any service deprived stretch of road seems like an endless dry desert stretching to the horizon.  Yes, we are soft.

We rolled into Thoen in mid afternoon.  Tony and I without any discussion both made a beeline for the 7/11 attached to the petrol station.  I leant my bamboo fixie against a large flower pot, entered the cool oasis and revived myself with large quantities of milk, water, Coke Zeroooo and an ice cream.

We sat on the plastic furniture outside, watching the Thais come and go in a variety of motorised devices.  We noted with humour the differences in behaviour between Thais and the natives from our respective countries, not the least of which is the fact that a large percentage of the Thai womenfolk are incredibly delectable.

I felt a stirring in my bladder and wandered around the back of the toilets to the open air urinals and enjoyed the release of pressure as I unloaded a couple of litres of piss.  A small fart signalled its presence.  It felt innocuous enough, despite the rumblings in my stomach that had started earlier in the day.  So I let it through, only to regret this a moment later when an anal projectile fired within my bike shorts.  It felt wet and unpleasant as it clinged to the cheeks of my anus and the hygenically treated comfort pad of my knicks.  I cautiously waddled from the outdoor urinal section to the indoor squat toilet section and entered a cubicle.  I spread my feet apart and carefully lowered my shorts to see what damage had been done.  As they cleared my buttocks a handful of shit mixed with mucous dropped to the floor.  By a stroke of luck the vaseline that I had smeared all over my arse before dressing that morning prevented the shit bomb from adhering to the shorts in any major way and most of it had just slid straight off.  I counted my limited number of blessings and did what I could to clean myself up using the bucket of water in the cubicle.

All Tony could say was “Dude!!!” when I explained my lavatorial misfortune.

We found some lodgings in the main part of Thoen in a hotel that featured air conditioning, hot showers and wifi all for the bargain price of 250 baht.  And it was right near the night market which made for convenient eating after we had washed up (and washed the shit off my clothes).

The convenience of our lodging continued to play out after dinner when I realised that there was a Thai massage establishment next door.  100 baht per hour sounded like a bargain, even if the massage girl was a 60 year old with hands of steel weighing in at about 90 kilos.  I’ve never felt such pain in my life.  It was delightful when it stopped.

But wait there’s more!  Next to the massage shop was a karaoke bar.  Out the front of this place they had a old wagon complete with wagon wheels, and two young girls sitting on it, who smiled as I walked past on the way to the petrol station for another ice cream.  As I returned they smiled again, so I had to stop and see what was going on.  Unfortunately their non existent English and my barely existent Thai made for difficult conversation.   I did manage to work out that they had whiskey, that it is possible to sing a song, and that one of the girls had enormous breasts.  Seeing as the music was very loud Thai music and I don’t like whiskey, I declined their offer.  I did inform Tony by SMS about the enormous breasts.  This may have resulted in a less than restful night of sleep, judging by the look on his face the following morning.

The irritating bleat coming from my cheap Samsung mobile phone eventually brought me out of my sleep.  I was confused, not really sure where I was, compounded by the eye mask I had been wearing all night to keep out the harsh flourescent light that was beaming through my window 24 hours a day.  At first my body thought it was still in my own bed in Brisbane but as conciousness slowly emerged I remembered that I was in a cheap guesthouse in Chiang Mai.

I dragged myself to the bathroom and evacuated the previous day’s eatings, and then realised that there was no paper with which to wipe my arse.  A hose hanging from the wall appeared to be the only means of rectal cleansing, so I cautiously aimed the bum gun at my rear end and pulled the trigger.  Actually, it felt pretty good, the Thai arse hose could become a source of pleasure each morning.

Tony and I had agreed to head off at 730am, and it wasn’t much later than that when we rolled out of the guesthouse and into the manic Chiang Mai morning peak hour traffic.  Streams of scooters were heading both into and out of the city as I struggled to adjust to Asian notions of road use.

The road heading south out of Chiang Mai was lined with huge old trees, each wearing an orange sash.  Tony made up a story about them being “monk trees” which seemed somewhat plausible, but we were unable to confirm this with the lady at our breakfast stop as she spoke exactly zero English and our Thai was far too limited for complicated and esoteric social interactions.

The morning chill soon burned off we were soon feeling a bit warm and thirsty, so stopped at a petrol station that had a nice selection of cold beverages and a very beautiful young lady at the cash register.  Tony muttered about the lack of Diet Coke (or Coke Light as the Coca Cola have named it in Thailand) and had to resort to a Coke Zeroooooo.  I went for a large plain milk, probably the only drink in the shop that had calories but no sugar.  We sat on a bench near the door and ogled the Thai girls coming and going on their scooters, marvelling at how many of them are just incredibly stunning.

We continued on to a very old and interesting Chedi.  After all, inspecting sites of cultural significance is the perfect cover for the cycle borne man about town.  We took a few photos of the old stones and then made the acquaintance of an unemployed history professor from Berkley.  He did his best to pretend that he wasn’t bitter about being forced out of his position by the “equal opportunity” policies of modern America, and somehow I suspected that there was more to it than just the desire to employ blacks and women.  Maybe it was the fact that he was mildly annoying and arrogant while pretending not to be that turned off his former employer and led to someone getting his job who was more proficient at kissing arses.  He had a very cute Asian wife/girlfriend though and after a while I just tuned out to whatever he was saying to Tony and smiled at the wife, who didn’t look uncomfortable in the slightest while being held in my predatory gaze.

We finally moved on and after a few more hours in the sun reached the Lampang area, where we stopped off at another temple before hitting the town itself.  By this time we had done something like 120km, and being my first day on the bike I was feeling somewhat battered.  We found a crappy Chinese hotel and went searching for food.  We had passed a large night market on the edge of the city when entering, but it was too far to walk.  I was keen to get a cab but Tony took great delight in berating the local taxi drivers for being rip off merchants.  I’m pretty sure if there wasn’t a cop nearby they would have pulled a knife on him.  They were not impressed, and neither was I now that my ride to the market had just been knocked on the head.  We wandered some more and I found a smaller food market in town and bought some cold curries from a lady who was about to close up shop.  In hindsight this was probably a mistake as several days of running into the bushes for rectal explosions was to follow.

After an uneventful flight and a day of decompression in Bangkok, eating my breakfast on the hotel balcony overlooking the charms of Sukhumwit, I hopped onto a Thai airways flight to Chiang Mai. It was here that I was scheduled to rendezvous with my fellow bicycle tourist, Tony Lapiagio.

Tony and I didn’t know each other from a bar of soap, having met online via a bicycle tourist dating website (of sorts). Our schedules aligned nicely with both us planning to be in Thailand at the same time. Tony had spent the last three months cycling through China and was keen to hit Thailand hard. “We’ll just play it by ear, planning and riding a day at a time, and when it all gets too much, we can just find a soapy and bang some whores”. Sounds like a plan.

I was the last one to collect my luggage at CM airport, since it took the handlers a while to drag out my qantas bike box which contained my precious bamboo fixie. In the meantime I had a chance to observe the menagerie of passengers clustered around the baggage belt. Sex tourists, whores, pensioners and the two most hideous ladyboys I’ve ever seen were jockeying to get their luggage before each other. The ladyboys were dressed in matching outfits of skin tight black jeans and white wife beaters, and their screeching could be heard throughout the terminal.

I dragged my bike box outside the airport and reassembled my fixie. I admired the gleaming 52×18 drivetrain, while hoping that my chosen gearing would be suitable for a loaded tour in the mostly flat terrain of north east Thailand.

Tony was very interested in my bamboo frame and commented on how nice the lugs were. “If Rivendell were going to make a fixie I’m pretty sure it would be something like this”.

One of the female airport staff took a break from watching the two farangs with bikes to give my steed a test ride, with her colleague perched on the front rack. “Jeb!” she exclaimed as the rack no doubt pressurised parts of her undercarriage that are not accustomed to such things.

Once they handed back my bike, Tony led me on a rapid ride back to his guesthouse in the backpacker area of Chiang Mai. As I checked into the Same Same guesthouse, a bearded, grizzled old hippy greated me from a hammock.

“hey dude, nice fixie”.

I thanked him before joining Tony for dinner in a local restaurant where I set the eating tone for the trip by consuming three meals in one sitting.

Tomorrow we’re off!

In February 2011 my bicycle and I travelled to Thailand to see what this wonderful country has to offer.

Most backpacker scum spend their time either lounging around drinking fruit shakes or enduring bus rides from hell.  The bicycle tourist however knows better.  He travels in style at his own pace under his own power, admiring all kinds of scenery – both landscape and human form.

And when his day is finished and he has checked into his lodgings and washed away the signs of toil, the adventure begins.