TravelStream™ news feed for member goldenbez on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/goldenbez en-us Copyright ©2010 TravelPod.com Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:08:27 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1215688140/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1215688140/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1215688140/tpod.html Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:08:27 -0500 Getting on my bike outside my front door in West London and seeing how far i can ride. (Not a horse or a motorbike).

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Jakarta, Indonesia

Hello everybody! How are all you nine to fivers and retirees doing? Absolutely rockin'?



I been doing semi-ok since we left Kuala Lumpur a few weeks ago. Me and Elke did a 'big push' (ridiculous distances) on to Singapore making it in just two and a half days. 160Km got us to Melaka, which is a historic trading port in the region, so we ditched our bags in a hotel and quickly shot around town getting photos of anything slightly amusing in the fading light. Big day, slept well.



The next day we had no fixed destination to aim for so we just pedaled until our asses were sore. I edged Elke along with my philosophy of, 'the more we do today, the less we do tomorrow', and, "You've gotta do a 200km ride, those English lads I met in India haven't even done one". We were a couple of kms short of our bi-hundy so we rode up and down the main street pretending we were looking for the best hotel until our odo's, read 201km! I had indeed ridden her ass a little too hard though and she flinched with pain every time my finger wiped antiseptic cream on the the red ring of rash. Goodnight nurse!



The next day should have been a straight forward 30km to the Singapore border, then a 30km zoom into the city. Easy. Not so. We go through the motorcycle lane at Singapore immigration. Its jammed with hundreds of motorcycles backed up which, i thought would make for a good photo. I shoot one of Elke frowning in the jamb and just after I'm taking it, I notice a 'no photography' sign. Elke pulls her camera out and shoots back. I've got a really worried look on my face, fearing apprehension. There was none.... for about 10 or 15 minutes. Then... 'young boy with gun' singles me out and tells me to step aside and wait for big chief to arrive. I decided the best way out was to admit to taking a photo but then explaining that the signage needed to be earlier. It worked but Big Chief not happy, i had to delete the photo. Not really disappointed with the loss of a picture, Elke still had hers but they didn't pick her up taking it on cctv, no, it was more of an embarrassment thing in front of all these other motorcyclists, being bored as hell in the que, of course they're gonna stare my way for entertainment. Facking rubbernecks!



Things weren't going steadily over in the Elke camp either. Something about her passport not being able to scan in on the computer. Another wait for another big chief with heaps of badges & décor in recognition of his importance. A good half hour this time. It seemed to take forever to get through immigration. At least Elke wasn't in a position to give me shit about my troubles at border control, it was 1-all.



'Welcome to Singapore where we make you feel like a criminal have a nice day'.



The only consolation was that we got waved straight through customs where other motorcycles in the ‛nothing to declare' lane were being stopped and searched.



We popped out of customs in front of a highway entrance leading to the city centre. There were no ‛no bicycles' signs around, and a policeman sitting in a patrol box watching us, so we took the motorway without any protest from him.



It was wide and smooth and went fairly well until i skipped the turn-off for the city centre and we started heading out west. The next off-ramp was on the right hand side, the only one around like this, and we had to take it. Crossing 4 lanes of speeding motorway traffic was pretty uncool. I found a big enough gap alright but one taxi driver felt the need to blast on his horn to express his dis-approval.



I later apologised to Elke for putting our lives in danger to such a degree and re-thought my philosophy on using expressways; Possibly a good idea from city to city but definitely a no-no in and around cities.



Accommodation was a little tricky here, some sort of sporting event being on in town had no vacancy problems everywhere. Elke didn't want to stay in dorm accommodation for our final nights together, which i agreed with, but it still bought about some strange sort of argument that, you'd have to be a girl to understand, because i still don't. We stayed in a shithole for the first night but then found a nice double room for SGD$65 for the rest.



After settling in, we ringed a list of tourist attractions on a city map which we scored for free. A few more temples and mosques started boring the crap outta me, I seen enough of those facking god worshipping things by now anyway, but in between them was the architecture, tidy parks, trees galore and just the general neatness of the place that got most of the attention of my camera lens. Little Pentax was doing a bit of over-time today. It reminded me a lot of Dubai.



I posted yet another broken camera and other accumulated shat back home via Singapore post. As i filled out the paper work, i pondered how many hours in total I'd spent filling out these forms, and more depressingly, how much money I'd spent doing so.



Afterwards, we negotiated the MRT and a bus to get us to the Singapore Zoo. Quite a reputable zoo on the world scale and it didn't really disappoint either. The highlight for us being the ‛working elephants' show (not the massive Kangaroo balls) where they showed us how they move massive logs, squirt the audience with water (did Elephants ever get used in the fire-fighting industry?), and a few other balancing and delicate tricks as well.



This day was sponsered by Elke's mum. She'd heard that we were going separate ways and offered to let me and Elke run amok with one of her credit cards for a day or two. We didn't take the piss on such a generous offer but after the zoo admission, we decided to round it up to the nearest hundred. Thank-you Mrs K, you absolutely rock!



Apparently, Singapore's national sport is 'shopping'. Coming here and not going shopping is like going to church and not hearing god speak, or going to the pub and not having a beer. So off we went, into the main street where all the malls and plaza's are, pretty plain compared to what i was expecting, and emerged about 3 -4 hours later having spent a grand total of $19 (roadmap of Sumatra) plus lunch. Didn't we do well?

I'd promised Elke a couple of drinks with her before we went our separate ways, so on the way home we stopped in at a bar on the river. There was live rugby on the TV, England vs NZ, i knew nothing about it until i saw it, and i liked what i saw. 20-0 to NZ well before half time.



We settled in and i sipped slowly on one of the most expensive beers ($10 and that's in happy hour) I've ever had in my life, while explaining the object of the game to Elke.



Sunday the 22nd I saw Elke off at the airport, a little sad after 3 months of breathing each other. She was on here way to Jakarta to start riding towards Bali from there. I'd put my foot down, "I'm riding Indonesia alone" I told her, as I'd almost forgotten about the freedom and many merits of cycling alone. I'd hoped she'd ride around Bali, or fly back to Europe and do a couple of thousand kilometers there where i hoped she'd be a whole lot safer. Now i worry myself sick about her. That backfired on me.



I spend the next two days using ferries and a bus with a chunder-filled isle to get to Pekanbaru. It's the nearest city to Singapore on Sumatra, the shortest hop across the water on a boat. It's inland a good 100kms but on a river which, i assumed the ferry would chug on up, but at the ticket office the guy says something about a bus transfer. Yep, turned out he was right, everybody got off at the coast and jammed into these two pint size buses...



Some days pedaling is really hard work, its sweaty and uncomfortable in the saddle and i watch jealously as other tourists woosh past in air cond buses in total comfort, arriving at their destinations hours before me, getting the best accommodation snips available, laeving me with the leftovers. But that all changed today. The driver of one of those little half size buses did fairly well to slow down and swerve across the road to avoid most of the massive pot-holes but he couldn't keep down a few of he kids stomachs. I'd be lying if i said 3 little kiddies threw up so I'll say there was only 2. The driving habits here seem similar to the Viet style road-code when the potholes disappeared and things stepped up a notch there was plenty of overtaking trucks on blind corners and using the horn as our only means of safety. Well, I'm writing this, so you can see i lived to tell the tale. 5 hours on a cramped chunder-filled smokey lumpy bumpy bus took away all my jealously of ‛those other travelers'.



Man this was gonna be no easy task, after the luxuries that the last 3 countries had to offer in terms of travelers facilities, this place was definitely letting me know I'm back in a 'developing country'.



So with 'beer and partying at Kuta Beach' on my mind, I go hell-bent-for-leather to get out of this place... for the first 3 days. The roads are away from the mountains depicted on my map, down on the grassy green plains (I'd hoped) but talk about hills Trev. Jesus christ! Up and down all day long. It felt like i was getting nowhere. I was doing big enough distances each day but the effort i had to put in was taking it's toll on my body. By the end of the 3rd day i could hardly move. My head ached constantly for the next 4 days as i laid in bed and stared at the walls and the ugly cant in the mirror on the opposite side of the room staring straight back at me. Dismay.



Meanwhile, Elke's having a great time, nice short rides, good roads, friendly people, other travelers to talk to, sights to see, safe as houses...arhhh jealous!



I unfolded my map. Sumatra is facking huge. It just got me even more depressed when i looked at the distances i had to travel. I could put my bike on the roof of a bus, and jamb myself in there with all the vomiting locals. Scary thought, that would still take days just to get to Jakarta. The only thing to do was to keep chipping away at the stone, bit by bit, day by day. It worked, i got here (Jakarta) in the end, as my strength got up and my appetite came back, i was covering more & more kilometers each day.



One thing that made it really hard all day, every day, was the stiff headwind. I wished it would just fack off, same with all the boys that ride their motorcycles beside me for some entertainment through their towns. Yeah, I attract a lot of attention over here, in Singapore you've gotta go cutting cars off on the Expressways for that to happen.





So much entertainment that one young fellah with his Muslim girl on the back of his bike rode past rubbernecking it for far too long coming into a corner. I saw it coming and he didn't turn around until he saw the horrified expression on my face. Off the road, dropped down into a big depression of soft dirt, ramped out the other side, flew through the air, landed on their front wheel right in front of two logs that just happened to be laying there, and endoed it, the robed girl landing on top of the young fellah taking a slight bump on the head. No broken bones, no blood. Bloody lucky to walk away. Maybe a tad too young to be on the motorcycle anyway (I see about 10 year old kids riding them occasionally here), hence the age restriction we have back home, it's not for nothing. ‶Let the girl ride, mate″ i thought.



One day I get two separate incidences of girls wanting their photo's taken with me. One of them passes me in her van, scarf wearer seated beside her. She jumps out, tells me to stop, gets a ‛cozy' photo of us, asks for my address, so i give her my email, then when i shake her hand farewell, she pulls it to her face, and half kisses it, half rubs it all over her left cheek. Strange lady, three times the size she should be. - "Unmighty lord, if you're really up there, and you're the one responsible for sending all these fat chicks my way, as per your sense of humour, I'm gonna knock you out when I meet you"!



Now i can look back at the 'mare that was Sumatra and understand why other cycle tourists leave it out. Great if you love hills, hate other travelers (there aren't any), and don't mind celebrity status. "Hey mister", "hey mister" "hey mister". Thats all i get all day long from the locals who seem to do nothing all day but sit around on the side of the road, waiting for life to pass them by so they can meet "Hey Mister Allah". I'm starting to notice a pattern in these 3rd world countries, where the stage of development seems to be in proportion to the amount of work getting done, indicated by these blokes whose occupation is indeed 'sit around all day yelling "hello mister"'.



With everyone wanting my attention all day every day, it hasn't taken me long to start ignoring the "Hey misters". Some people that i cant ignore though are the police. They have massive big flash stations and offices and uniforms, a little dis-proportionate to the wealth of the rest of the country. Maybe a good career for average Joe if an Indonesian national. So when i ride past large groups of police (who also seem to do a lot of sitting around all day) and they blow the whistle on me and/or wave me in, i obey their authority. Sometimes they can't speak english, get all embarrassed because i cant speak any Indonesian, and wave me on. Most times though, we get through the questions together, and when one of them does speak English, I'm constantly getting told to be aware of 'bandit activities' between certain towns, and certain areas. And when i come through a place where they know a lot of crime happens, they always ask me did i see anything / anyone acting suspicious? Well, I guess I'm a sitting duck on a bike for highway robbers, but I'm always a little over-suspicious, 'on the back foot' with everyone that stops for a chat anyway. I'm ready to teach bad people not to fack with Kiwis, ready to take out the ol' #7 and start swinging, ready to hand out a little free 'corrective behavioral activity' of my own. Unless they've a gun of course, in which case they walk away with everything, and I (hopefully) walk away with my life, a great deal for both parties.



But these Indonesian police can't be knocked, they're staying well ahead of their game since the 2005 Bali bombing. I get news from my bro that they've arrested a whole bunch of dirka dirka dirka jihad terrorists, found and confiscated a whole bunch of weapons and bombs just in the last week or so. I flick on the TV (when i occasionally have one in my room) and although i cant understand a word they're saying (apart from 'terrorists' and 'anti-terror') the pics are confirming what i been told. You guys probably know more about whats gone on here than i do. But i do know and appreciate that busting these arse-hole's assholes, has saved a lot of lives, possibly even mine, and I'm truly grateful of the efforts of the Indonesian police, and their informants.
Arriving at Tebingtinggi... I got to me destination by 1ish i felt like id been averaging 15Km/hr for the last couple of hours so the trip to Lahat was definatly off. When I rolled in to the city centre, there was this massive police presence inside the Police station grounds. Half a dozen army style tents with all the policemen's roll-mats inside and a whole array of armored vehicles outside, including a battle-truck looking thing with a water cannon mounted on top, all looking straight off the showroom floor in mat grey with bright yellow wheels. There must be something exciting going on in town, there were red and white and green flags everywhere in the streets which all looked a little political. I stopped outside and ignored all the 'Hey Mistas' until i heard one coming from inside the fence. I went over and learned that indeed some sort of political party was in town. "The place was safe" so no need to worry. 'Pull the wool over the Farang's eyes, are those armed machinery's just for joyriding in then?' I thought. To ensure my safety they told me not to ride through a place called Muarasalang because of crime and bandit activity in the area. This was before they understood in which direction i was riding. I'd just passed through there a couple of hours ago and i didn't see no bandits though.






The 'Trans Sumatra Highway' is shown as a thick red line on my map. The only thick red line running the entire length of the country, through the middle, north to south. When i finally popped off one of the back-roads from Pekanbaru and met up with it, i wasn't sure if i was on it or not. A single lane each way, all the way. No hard shoulder. In places it had more craters than the moon, sometimes it was unsealed, and the gradient seemed to get pretty close to vertical sometimes. 'Trans-Sumatran-Highway is just so mis-leading and i wish they'd labeled it something like 'The Traders Trail' or 'The Old Buffalo Track'.
3rd July...


Describing the road to Lahat is a little tricky. It was definitely the worst stretch of road I've ridden on in the whole trip. Hills that i struggled to crawl up in 1st gear mixed with broken, potholed rocky unsealed shat. To say for mile after mile would be an exaggeration. The hills definitely never ceased but I'd get a km of newly sealed smooth tar-mac, alternating with a km of satans driveway.



And then my luck changed... Lunch at Lahat was a tenner, the roads flattened out and, after what i'd been through this morning, gliding along at 20k+ just seemed effortless. Everything seemed so damn tidy from here on, the towns were clean, the houses neat, the people seemed to all be working instead of sitting / laying around yelling out "Hey Mister" all day. And then there was the map saying 'Mauraenim 67Kms', fack the map when the road stone markers are counting down from 45 or so. 22K's off my day, save that for later thank-you -very -much have a nice day.



After finding dead bugs under the pillow of the first hotel I checked out today, I met an off duty policeman in the streets while on my way to check out the second. He must have mis-understood me when i told him it was dirty, and goes "Ok, follow me" about 2km of struggling to keep up with his putt-putt we arrive outside this imperial looking mansion. "Ah err, i usually ride straight past a hotel that looks like this, I reckon the price of rooms here start at about 200k. I like to pay between 40 to 60k" I explained. He wanted to check anyway for his own curiosity so went in and returned a minute later with the price list. My guess was wrong. They started at 350k. Bit of an effort all for nothing. No worries though he dragged me back into town, just around the corner from where I met him, to another hotel. God it was like having my mother there. He had to do everything for me, in the worry that the language barrier would leave me sleeping on the streets or something. Strangely enough this has been the only hotel in Sumatra that has charged me a 5000Rp 'services charge'. Hmmm Coincidence? Or something more sinister?



We met up later for dinner. "I'm gonna prayer, then I'll meet you in the lobby" he texts. "Say hi to Allah for me" I replied. It went down well over dinner, He'd passed my message on and that opened the discussion up to discussing religion, which I love doing. Very tactfully and respectfully though. He found it amazing that i had none and pointed out that in Indonesia, you must belong to a religious group; Muslim, Christian, Buddhist or whatever. How facked is that? Your government makes it law that you must devote your life to some god that doesn't exist! I guess in Islamic countries, you have even less choice.



Martapura... I'm chowing down my curry chicken (it's spicy enough to be somewhere on the verge of tollerable) and rice tonight, getting right into it with my hands like the locals do. The Rumah Makan (room for food) owner is sitting there with her two daughters glancing over and giggling. She points to me, then to her nose. Oh fack i'm thinking, ive gone overboard. Time to dip the fingertips into the small bowl of water provided, get as much mess off the fingers as this method allows and give the nose a bit of a wipe to get off the offending grain of rice or whatever it was that's important enough to justify sign-language mid-meal. A couple of minutes later i'm forking the last bits in to get the chili pain over-with, i look up and she's still pointing noses out. Another quick frantic but thorough rub and i look over for clearance and now she's pointing at her daughters flat little noses and making 'small' signs. She then points back at me and makes a gesture that can only be interpreted as 'Pinnocio'. Ohhh shit, "where's the nearest plastic surgeon"? The embarrassing bit is me thinking there's enough food stuck on it to cause a blockage or something. Oh the hilarity.



I was not expecting to meet anyone that could speak any english out here, but in every town i stayed, the english speakers would approach and bombard me with a standard line of questions; "Where are you going"? "Where are you from"? "How old are you"? "Are you married"? "why are younot married?" "Why are you traveling by bicycle". It's the last one that has the greatest variety of answers, so i started to make a little list:



List of reasons for riding from one side of the world to the other: The same reason the chicken crossed the road.
Because earth is tiny. I wouldn't bother if we lived on Jupiter.
The Devil told me to do it.
God told me to do it.
It's my 'mid-life crisis' project, i hope you like it.
To gain independence from oil usage, so i don't have to invade Texas or Alaska. It would be easy though, just convince the United Nations that USA has weapons of mass destruction. Even though, I probably wouldn't get UN approval for the invasion, but i'd invade anyway... yeah, bit of an illegal war! I'd hope the rest of the world wouldn't mind, would turn a blind eye, watch passively through my own independent news crews which may or may not be biased and one-sided, while my 'smart' missiles tear civilian families bodies and lives apart forever (ah er oops). Hopefully I could borrow Tony's and John's military, i hear they lend them out to any facking monkey for a rim job a day.
To see if i can do it.
For a bit of exercise.
To experience the countries i visit on a very 'up-close' and personal and challenging level. For Examples; Smelling the blooming country side flowers, choking on congested city air pollution, shivering all night in the altitudes of the Iranian desert, sweating like a catholic priest in a primary school in the dusty hot pot of Cambodia. Riding around glistening crystal Swiss lakes and alongside turds bobbing in the rivers of India. Noticing nations of environmentally conscious people and those whose national pass-time seems to be roadside dumping.
Because i want to. I wouldn't be doing it if i didn't want to.
For a good enough excuse to not have to work for a whole year.
Because walking would take too long.
To avoid jet-lag.






I'm sure to think of a few more to post while i'm riding out on those hot "hey mister" roads between towns. I finally made it to the resort town of Kalianda, 30km from the ferry port, a few days ago. I walked into the hotel reception and saw a white guy sitting there. It almost scared me, something i'm not used to. It made me realise this was the first time in my life, and will probably be the only time I'll have been over two weeks without seeing another Euro. I'd done 6 days of ball-squashing yakka in a row and needed and well deserved a days rest. Rest it was, i didn't even get down to the beach, only venturing out of my room for food because of the fear of more "Hey mister" attacks. Relentless. I just get 'hey mistered' by everyone.



On the way to Kalianda... The road kinda hugged the flat, near- water coastline for a while before climbing up this hellish hill. It was steep, but two lanes each way. Chaos.... The slow crawling trucks would use the middle lane, forcing all the speeding traffic to cut inside, uncomfortably close to me. I grab hold of the back of one but, typically, it's belching thick black diesel fumes, darkening the suns rays, so I let go and grab another slightly less smoky one. It gets half way up and then there's one stopped, broken down, right in the middle of the inner lane. Some trucks are going right around it, others are cutting into the outside (my) lane, while mechanics lay under it fixing the problem. Too much going on here. I let go and play it safe which involves extra hard pedaling in that hot sun. I'm now ¾ of the way up and notice a motorcyclist nearing the top come a cropper. How the fack did that happen? 'No one hit him' I'm thinking when a split second later, a second motorbike a lot closer to me instantly hits the floor and slides a little before stopping. Eh? What the fack? An invisible force field Captain Spok? Then i notice the meter wide strip of shiny oil all the way up. Oil slick! Up ahead the dudes are holding their bodies on their sore bits, bit pick up their bikes and push them to one side. The near dude walks back and grabs one jandle. I'm nearing his first one that flicked off in the accident so i stop and pick it up and frisbee it up to him. I got to understand how they crapped off, man this shat was like ice. I tried pedaling but my back wheel just spun. I put it in a higher gear and got my weight over the back wheel. I could have done a pretty impressive burnout here but this was dangerzone, no time for fooling, and no time for calling the police trying to explain whats happened. I'm struggling getting anything else but "Hey mister" out of the whole facking island so far. Yeah I've decided next time someone asks me if I speak Bahasa Indonesia, I'm gonna say "Yes, of course; Mister mister mister mister mister mister mister mister mister mister mister mister" in a whole range of tones and inflexions, with pauses here and there, to simulate my experiences of roadside conversations as i ride on past. So yeah, no! I'm not gonna try organising a truckload of sand to get sprinkled across the slick.
Now the road starts to hook right and now I've gotta watch my back to make sure something else doesn't come speeding up, get two wheels in the mucky-muck, come sliding across and take me out.
Nearing the top, I wander how long it's been there for, how many others had spudded over in it before, and should i go and sit up on the bank above and make videos of others coming to grief, the sort of stuff everyone loves to watch, but no! That would be immoral. Get outta there Graham!
Early one morning... 4:30am I'm woken to the sound of some Indo rock. It's coming from inside the hotel and its rediculously loud. Should i go out there, kick down some doors and smash up some cheap but effective stereo gear- movie hero style? I'm thinking. Nah, then it'll be too hard to get back to sleep. I'll be as amped as the tunes. Besides, it aint half bad. The good heavy riff ends and then they play a couple of ballads which must have soothingly allowed me to drift back to sleep. I can only assume that the hotel owner is a hard rocking non-muslim and, if the muzzies have the right to pollute the sound waves at that hour, so does anyone.



Later... Lunchtime was cool today. A small group of muslim ladies served me my food with love, the most delicious 'queish' type thing and a curried salad with rice, then they charged me fack all for it. I've been eating at the wrong places. Outside they were preparing spices on a cloth, de-cloving whole garlics. I explained that I had a really bad cold and asked if I could buy a whole garlic. They handed me one and wouldn't take the money I was waving at them. Then one of them gets up, washes a bit of ginger and a clove of garlic and instructs me to eat them both together and wash them down with water. As soon as I bit into them I hoped I hadn't mis-interpreted her. The taste was...er... interesting, glad i had an abundance of water.



Later, I pull over and decide my cold's annoying me enough to justify another huge clove of garlic. I got the dummist idea in my head that if I could swallow one whole, I wouldn't get that horrible raw garlic taste in my mouth. OWW! It got stuck after the first swallow. I guzzled at my waterbottle until it dislodged and got to wherever it was meant to be. That facking hurt! 'I dont know how those pornstars swallow whole cocks like they do' i immediately thought. But yeah I'd hate to have passed by a million crazy asian drivers without a single accident, and then be found dead on the roadside, 'choked on a vegetable'.



It wasn't all tears today. After I went for food I tracked down a fixed-price supermarket which I noticed a few of on the way into town, and managed to rack up a bill of 106,000. This obviously doesn't happen too often here as all the staff are laughing (not a lot of customers here). When I'm nearly all done, ol' mate serving me chucks a bag full of sugar in with it. "No no, thats not mine!" I say. "Booniss" he says. Nice gesture but what the fack am I gonna do with a bag of sugar? Elke loves the shat, continuously dropping a couple of cubes into her water bottles all day. But I aint Elke so I try to give it to the staff but they insist I take it. Outside the door I offer it to a young scarf bearer who looks at me like I'm some kind of freak. The young dude that pulls up on his cycle is a taker though, and disappears into the shop with it. Winner! Not so fast! Before I've loaded up my bike with the newly acclaimed goodies, the manager comes out this time with it in a plastic bag. (Pointing to me) "Boonis, you boonis". These guys are either not getting the idea that I don't want it, or must think I don't know what it is for and want me to take it home and try this sweet gift of Indonesia for the very first time.



08-07-08 151 Kms to Jakarta. Got away to a good ol'6 oclock start but it still didn't take all that long to over heat in the cool morning air as the much despised 'Trans-Sumatran-Highway' gave me a 33Km sending off in typical up-hill style. I stopped briefly for a photo going down the other side towards the ferry port and captured the diesels struggling up the hill the other way, absolutely hosing the air with thick black charcoal fumes. I reckon something like 80% of the trucks engines are in this sort of condition. "Maintenance be facked".
There was no such thing as a ferry ticket for bicycles. Buses, trucks, cars, motorbikes and passengers yes, bikes, no, so they just waved me through. Facking sweet! 'Give the white face something for free' is reverse philosophy in these parts, and I'd have rather paid the $3 just to stop me worrying about being caught without a ticket. It was no worries though.
As i waited another 45minutes for the ferry to load up with a few more cars and passengers, i watched as a couple of little kids jumped over the side into the murky brown water for money. Hell of a current there too, people would chuck screwed up 1000Rp notes (about 10 cents) and they'd swim over and grab them. They'd also chuck over whatever rubbish they'd just finished eating or drinking out of like it was no facking problem. 'Yeah just throw it over and let mother ocean deal with it, she'll clean up after us so my grandchildren can still swim in clean water, can still eat from the ocean a couple of generations down the line'. This was really shittin me as i noticed it happening for the whole couple of hours i was on the boat. And then there's the 'firehose' size pipe pumping thick black liquid out the side into the water, leaving a black 'slick' all the way from Sumatra to Java. I thought 'surely not every ship in the world is making this much mess.' If so, multiply this rate of pollution by a million and one can understand why whales are doing suicide missions onto our beaches all around the globe. They may be like 'suicide protesters', like those extreme protesters we hear of every now and then that set themselves on fire to express some kind of political view.



This seems to be another nation that just doesn't give a fack about living in a sty. I see bus drivers, passengers, any one on the road, they just 'heave ho, out the window she goes'. "We're real happy and proud to live in a shat- littered country". What a nation of 'wrongers'.
As the boat approaches the dock in Merak i look into the green harbour waters and see a whole fleet of plastic bags, some about a meter under the water, others floating on top. It's my facking planet too! Littering the land is a problem 'they' have to live with. Littering the ocean is everybody's and every fishies problem. Global ocean currents take one countries pile of trash from their back door and deliver it right to another countries front door. How much does this suck? Whatever country is on the receiving end of New Zealand's current gets 4 million people throwing fuck-all into our shining waters. Whoever is on the receiving end of Indonesia's 'sewer pipe' gets 225 million people's (all obviously unaware or un-phased of the consequences of their actions) discarded 'treasures'.



What the fack are they teaching kids in skool here? And with a massive portion of the nation being Muslim, how can they find an interpretation instructing them to kill WESTERN infidels, but cant seem to find anything in Mohamad's writings about living in clean surroundings (except for "you must wash your feet before entering a mosque").



So there's urgent need for environmental education in certain countries. Hopefully someone from my country with a few clues and a bit of political sway can tap the Indonesian minister of education AND minister of environmental affairs on the shoulder and say "Now listen here mate...." Or maybe they already have. Or maybe they just get chauffered around in gleaming Mercedes's and don't get to see the 'real world' the parts that the adventurous backpacker sees everyday, but doesn't have the 'clout' to get anything done about it.



I didn't get off the ferry 'till 11ish. Buggar, this Island's riddled with 'Hey Misters' disease too. I make a beeline for the Jakarta - Merak toll road entrance but as i'm riding towards the booths, there's dudes up ahead signaling me to turn around. Nothing gained, nothing lost either. Now i was gonna have to take the rough, congested 'b' road that zig-zags across the toll road all the way to Jakarta, adding on a good 20km to the distance. I rode 20km then had Mc D's for lunch. By 12:30 i had about 110km to go. This was gonna be a toughy. 'Skid skid', I high-tailed it, flat out all the way, sacrificing a little bit of safety for speed in the congested towns along the way.



The sun got lower and lower all afternoon until it disappeared. That didn't leave me a fack of a lot of time to find the budget backpacker area in a city of 25Km diameter. Luckily my mappage and the road signage were good. I covered the last couple of kilometers under streetlight with the excellent directions of all the locals that i stopped to ask. Time for hotel sampling again;



#1) Mohammad wearing the prayer hat shows me a room with a double mattress almost on the floor and a mandi (bathroom with tank of water which you scoop out and pour over yourself instead of showering) down the end of a hallway. Hmmm



In my hast to far excel the offerings here, i ride away forgetting my handlebar bag is open. In the dim street lighting, i cant quite make out the actual size of the speed hump here until i hit it with my front wheel. Its big. Big enough for the bag lid to open enough for little Pentax, camera number five to take a small flight. Some people just don't learn do they? I picked it up, closed the battery cover and hoped like hell. Later on i test it. Gees those Pentax's are tough little numbers. Resilient. Brilliant. Unlike it's bozo owner.



#2) Nicks Corner Hostel. My guidebook says nothing about this place being a whorehouse. Now, I know in my last blog i joked about staying in whorehouses, but the truth is, i haven't a clue what one looks like (unless one of my anonymous mates is dragging me into one)(you know who you are you naughty bastard). But now walk in the door, park my bike in the lobby and am looking at the room price tariff on the wall when some short fat ugly thing wearing heaps of make up asks what i want. "one of these budget rooms please" she takes a liking to me. Her and all her other friends floating around are giggling their heads off among questions about me. She takes me by the arm, the whole arm, with her head resting on what's left of my bicep and leads me to the room. Now i'm getting an idea of what's going on here, and the room is shit and i subtly express my extreme dis-interest, but I can see the funny side of things here. She leads me to the ladies dorm. It has a mandi, about 6 beds, and a make-up table covered in ladies make-up. "This very cheap, this only 30,000, you can stay in here with us" "Yearrr I have a few other places to look at" i tell her as i walk back over towards my bike, dragging her along as she still hasn't let go of my arm. "You must come back and stay with us in the dorm, promise?" she's still tryin'. "God, how many times can you play the same joke on me and still expect it to be funny? You boring bastard!"



#3) I got no plan now so disappear behind the wall of the shop next door to consult me guidebook for a 3rd suggestion when a lady in a bar across the road yells out "Are you looking for a room?" "How much?" i ask "50" "Ok, I look". It's a pretty impressive cafe and she leads me past the toilets, up some stairs to a freshly renovated spotless room with two single beds, clean linen, a fan, a shower, and for the first time in Indonesia, no mosquitoes! Value! Sold.



I order up a pasta and a large bottle of Bintang, my 3rd beer in 6 weeks (don't try that at home) while i wait for the key to turn up. The beer tasted good, a little home-brewish but went down bloody fast. When i returned to my room, i looked in the mirror and felt sorry for the people that had given me directions, showed me rooms (except for superwhore) or served me food. My face was black. Diesel fume black. I try not to think of the state of my lungs which had been working overtime today to haul me all that way before dark. I showered, curled up on my bed and drifted off to sleep with some Wednesday 13 on my ipod.



I go downstairs for breakfast this morning and order a set breakfast with a pot of coffee. They only give me one sachet of sugar....


If anyone wants to give me a call or sms, I got an Indonesian number number now, try;+62 81270389121, and if you don't get through, it's probably because I'm pedaling hard between cities, try again later.


Well all, and all the new people who have joined 'Story time with Graham', great to see you actually read down this far without losing interest. I've sensored a lot of my dairy entries this time as its just inappropriate for some of our younger readers. And it's helped keep things a little more brief.

Take care wherever you are!
Graham.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1238394600/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1238394600/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1238394600/tpod.html Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:52:27 -0400 Getting on my bike outside my front door in West London and seeing how far i can ride. (Not a horse or a motorbike).

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Warkworth, North Island, New Zealand

27-11-08 Brisbane to Christchurch


Karen drops me off at Brisbane International and i check my luggage in. I'm flying Pacific Blue, a relatively new supposedly 'budget' airline, although their fare is only $10 cheaper than Air NZ's. I couldn't find any info on their website regarding International flight baggage allowance, only domestic, which is 23kg. I assume that if people are traveling international, they are traveling further, therefore need to take more stuff, so the allowance will be even higher. Not so in Virgin Blue's books. "20kg is the limit, look, it should be on your itinerary here somewhere" says the check-in lady as she fumbles through the 3 pages I've printed out. It wasn't. "Nor could i find it anywhere on your website" i say as i load the conveyor up with about 28kgs worth of gear and start calculating what I'm gonna be paying in excess baggage charges. "Oh that bicycle's oversize so it just gets counted as 5Kgs" she says. Uh? 'Throw all logic out the window here Virgin Blue'! Well thats a relief.... until i get on the plane and find out you gotta pay for all drinks and meals on board. It needn't have mattered anyway cause i didn't get offered any of the food, twice the trolley seemed to dither around 3 rows ahead of me (while everyone pisses around sorting out money and change), then slingshots 3 rows behind me. Fack! When the isle is finally clear of trolleys, I head down the back for a piss. I have to join a short que because only one toilet's in operation because the trolley thats been blocking the isle for the last 45 mins is now blocking one of the shitter doors. Fack they're useless. I'm pretty thirsty by now and my piss has just made room for more water so I cleverly decide to combine the piss trip with a water request. The dude looks flustered and say's "We're just setting the trolley up now for drinks so will be up there soon". Facking liar, another half hour passes and for the first time i get asked if I want anything? "A drink of water please". He hands me a little 300ml bottle - "Thats $2.50 thanks". Fack these cants! I pull my virgin Virgin Velocity points card out of my wallet and snap it in half as I know I wont by flying with these clowns again. Quite a rational decision I thought considering I was starving when I got on the 3hr flight, and an empty stomach makes for a grumpy boy. These budget airline pricks are really cashing in on the new 'no carrying fluids onto the plane' rule.



All that frustration was taken away when we flew over the Southern Alps. The view was breathtaking, whispy white clouds floated by while rivers got busy winding their way down out of the mountains and out towards the coastline. I'm assuming it was Greymouth we were looking down on. And the white capped mountains ranged south as far as I could see. Beautiful. Hello New Zealand.



Quite a quiet airport made it easy to re-assemble my bike, after customs cleaned my tent pegs and gave the tent a good ol' shaking out on the floor in front of me. Apparently, that dirt that fell off is dangerous to the country.



I followed the signs to the city centre, the grid system making it real easy to find Charlie B's backpackers which would be home for the next 5 nights.



It really hurt handing $36 over to Vodafone for a new sim card tonight as they're even bigger wankers than Virgin Blue. Apparently they're the only company that does pre-pay in NZ, so I got told, so talk about a monopoly on the market - this I'm not looking forward to.



I cruised up and down the main street that night, there were so many bars and pubs there i couldn't decide which one to go into so i just went back to the Backpackers and went to bed.



The next few days I spent with Tanja, a German friend I'd met in London, she came down out of the hills from Arthurs Pass in a tiny little camper-van. She drove me out to Akaroa Harbour on the Banks Peninsular. Pretty scenic out that way, but what really buzzed me out was an old windsurfer board on the beach - made in the '80s in Warkworth at the small-scale factory mum used to laminate fiberglass at, chances are it was a bit of her meticulous work.



On the way back, Tanja started feeling quite ill, an allergy to something. So as she laid down in the back, i became ambulance driver and got her to a medical clinic with plenty of time to spare.



02-12-08 118 Kms to Chevoit.


I got the bike loaded up by 7:30 and headed out of town on a rather overcast morning. As soon as i was out of the city, the camera came out blazing. Wow. So much beautiful scenery. I think I've taken more photos today than i did in the whole of Australia's outback.



Some low lying cloud gave things a misty, cool effect there for a while but as soon as i thought about taking a photo of it, I punched through into beautiful sunlight.



I met 3 people riding the other way today, a German, a Canadian (traveling together) and later on, a 60 year old Polish - Canadian dude struggling up a hill into a strong headwind. But going my own way, I crossed paths with Jackson, a Palmerston North boy riding from Stuart Island to 'The Cape'. Either has was fast, or I was slow, or both, as he kept speeding ahead, and I caught up with him a couple of times later, the third time at a camping ground in Chevoit. He's gonna get an article done on himself in New Zealand's Adventure Magazine if he completes his course.



Wow, plenty of pain all day for me today. A few training rides would have done me the world of good in the couple of weeks prior to leaving Oz, but it's so hard having become a beer swilling pie scoffing cant. My legs were in pain all day, simply not used to the pedaling, while my butt could definately feel the extra 9kgs of gravity prone blubber trying to ram the seat up my arsehole. When i rolled into Chevoit at 4:30 (about half an hour behind Jackson, I thought about doing a few more hours in the saddle (it don't get dark here until about 9) but the pain i was in soon told me to cut the hard line attitude right out.



I sat in the spa pool for a good hour sipping a bundy, chatting to Jackson hoping it would be therapeutic enough to allow me a painless nights sleep and fresh legs again tomorrow morning. We'll see...






03-12-08 73 Kms to Kaikoura.


Cocka-doodle-fackin-doo! It was to be expected as there were plenty of chickens and roosters roaming around the campsite, just not expected at 3:15am. They crowed away at regular half hourly intervals all the way through to 7:30. I ignored my 5:30 alarm to try and make up for some of that missing sleep.



Jackson left camp 10 mins before me. I assumed he was miles ahead but he later on, caught me jumping a gate and running into the bushes for a good ol' arse piss of diarrhea. He'd gone and headed under one of the long bridges crossing the white stony riverbeds for some close-ups of the light turquoise coloured water flowing steadily downstream, while I'd ridden straight over the top of him unbeknown at the time.



Again i had the camera blazing, shooting in all directions, so yesterday wasn't just a one-off, this country really is incredibly scenic.



There were some beauty big hills though, just south of Kaikoura. I could see up ahead in the distance on the other side of the road a ute pulled over to the side, and some men diddling around it. I got up closer and saw they were wearing cycle clothes and unloading bikes off the back of the ute. 'You lazy bastards' i thought. I stopped to have them up about it and they fully admitted to being shite, joked about it and all. They told me there was about another dozen cyclists coming up the other side soon, a tour from Blenheim to Christcuurch in one day! Raising money for child cancer, the very cause of my London flat bedroom predecessor's tour of southern America. A great effort to the half dozen that were doing the whole run, but jesus I'd love someone to give me a lift up all the hills like the other half dozen pie scoffers! I sensed their pride took a small dive when they asked me how far I'd come. I looked down at my trip computer which had just clocked over 24,400 kms. Their jaws dropped. "Yeah London last July" i went on...



I rode another 200m to the crest of the hill and set myself up on the roadside for a sandwich - fresh eggs (which I'd hard boiled the night before) given to me by the campground manager (probably in compensation for the forthcoming rooster noises) - so i could cheer on the tour. And what a grand tour it was. Police escort, sponsored support vehicles, an ambulance, flashing lights galore, a second patrol car thrown in for the spectacle of it all and of course the riders, going pretty fast considering they'd just conquered the last of a series of serious rises. I applauded them for their fund-raising efforts "Well done boys (& girl)", "It's all down hill now"!



At the top of about the third fairly sizable hill, there was a sign 'welcome to Kaikoura district' with a glimpse of the ocean off in the distance. Finally down hill for me, and when i hit the coastline, more scenes of utter beauty. A calm day had smooth ice blue water stretching between the rocks at either end of the bay and reaching out to meet the sky on the horizon. The mountainous hills behind me leave little land for a road between the cliff-face and the sea, requiring a few short n' sweet tunnels along the way. A beautiful coastal road all the way to Kaikoura just soliciting itself like a cheap whore for photographic opportunities galore. Oh- and the seals, frolicking in the water with their flippers in the air and closer in, pup seals playing in the shallow waters among the rocks. Cute as hell but not as cute as me when i was their age.






04-12-08 107 Kms to Seddon.


All too easy today, or so it started out. Getting away at 7:30, i felt like i was one of the early birds. Again the ocean had a cool calm about it and i rode with ease, stopping frequently to admire and photograph the lazy seals and the snow capped peaks up behind me.



Later...
The sea got choppy and the headwind i was expecting turned up. Bit of a downer, but jesus did things get worse. When i started heading inland, slightly away from the coastline, the headwind soon became worse than any of those i encountered each day in Australia. It became almost impossible to ride. Along the flat i was struggling to do 7Km/hr (walking speed is 6km/hr) so it would have been almost faster to get off and push. Certainly safer. The wind absolutely streaming at me at what i guess to be well over 100km/hr. The danger level was definitely up there. Quite a few times i was blown into the ditch or out onto the road, luckily nothing coming. I think the motorists could see the difficulty i was having and were nearly all giving me a wide birth. Yes definitely dangerous. The sensible thing to do would have been to pitch me tent somewhere secluded for the afternoon but i could see the wind gusts on the grass howling over every square inch of otherwise beautiful countryside. So a little scary too but i think it was the element of danger, the challenge, that kept me going at about 8km/hr. I think my ears will be ringing tonight from the constant thunderous noise of that wind in them all afternoon. Great caution had to be taken in the direction of pissing today, self-golden showers were expected for the unwary.



I staggered into Seddon, got some supplies from the shop, and headed to the campground. There was Jackson just rolling into town about 20mins behind me. He'd left 1.5 - 2 hrs after me this morning so had closed the gap. He's definatley a speedster this guy, shaming my somewhat 'amature' speeds. He got a text from his mum stating that there were gale-force wind warnings for Marlborough & the Cook Straight today. That explained things but didn't help a lot.






05-12-08 31 Kms to Blenhiem.


I'd asked the check-out girl that served me in the supermarket the night before about the hills between Seddon and Blenheim. She said there was only one big one, then it was flat all the way. Sounded easy. She was right too. So quite an easy ride, less than two hours in glorious sunshine. Tanja had asked me if i wanted to spend the weekend with her. I was in two minds about pushing on to Picton and catching the ferry to Wellington with Jackson today. I couldn't make up my mind so i rang her and let her make the decision. "Ok, I'll be there in about 5 hours".



I said good-bye to Jackson who would later be in Wellington that day and went and found a park to lay down in to help kill the hours. A game of cricket between the locals and a visiting Taranaki side helped pass the time between small naps but after 5 hours i couldn't watch another single ball of the most boring game on earth. I headed into the local 'The Warehouse' to get myself a bargain - a pair of Raindeer antlers and a Rudolf Red Nose. I mounted them on my bike outside and went cruising around the streets much to the amusement of the local yocals, but couldn't help going inside quite an appealing looking bar. A few pints helped kill another few hours until Tanja finally arrived in her slow little van. She inquired at the bar about a place to camp for free and got directions out to it. We parked up by the beach and had a couple of beers until the sun went down on the last few people fishing here for the day.






6-12-08 Whites Bay.


It was cozy sleeping in the back of Tanja's van. When we woke up in the morning she slid the van door open so we could look out at the water. Beachfront living! The air had a bit of a cold snap to it and the water was even worse. I walked down to the water and waded in. It was so cold, my feet hurt. I managed to talk myself into diving under brrrr. Freezing! So I did it again, this time as I'm diving under, feeling the pain of the almost ice-cold water against my still flabby body, i immediately thought of all the people that lost their lives on the Titanic that fateful night. What a way to go, freezing to death in ice water. It certainly woke me up for the day but i had to jump back under the covers to warm myself up a bit.



After we ate sandwiches for breakfast, and Tanja had made a hot tea each, we drove around the coastline towards Picton, and discovered a hidden away little beach called Whites Bay. It had received the first communications cable from the North Island in 18something and still had the original dwelling there. Camping was allowed via an honesty box and the last few campers were walking off the beach with their sleeping bags from the night before. This was a little slice of heaven and was gonna be the place to stay tonight.



We headed back into the city for supplies, and thought 'what's being in Marlborough, New Zealand's greatest wine making region, without a bottle of wine'? Nothing. So off to a couple of cellar doors for a bottle each, I ended up with Saint Claires Pinot Gris or some shite . I arrived at this choice purely by taste testing because all the sales jargon bullshite from the shop assistant was going straight over my un-wined little brain. -"Attractive straw green, bouquet with lime characters, lifted and aromatic, underlying tropical intensity leaving a lasting impression on the palate, wall-nut blend crisp acidity nicely balanced residual sweetness ideal accompaniment to fresh fruit, antipasti, creamy sauses...... fack off!



Over the windy hilly narrow road with a sheer drop on one side, back to the beach. Rug out, we sat against a massive driftwood log and watched others play frisbee, swim (for longer than two minutes), and play beach cricket while we sipped our wine from tea cups. It must be noted that i have seen two people collide before, while trying to catch the one, high cricket ball, but this.... as three young blokes came sprinting in from three different directions, eyes to the sky, full commitment to the catch, a full bodied crunching sound came out leaving one limping away as the other two roll around in a bit of agony on the wet sand of excess rainwater running across the beach. Entertainment second to none!



The shadow of the pine trees on the hill to the western end of the beach grow longer and longer until they engulf the whole beach.






7-12-08 Cook Straight Ferry Crossing.


Tanja dropped me off at a junction back on SH1, chopping about 5 to 10 kms off my ride to Picton (Just a little cheat this time). It gave me plenty of time to wait around for the 1:15pm Inter-Islander crossing.



It was a pretty windy day so the water didn't have that smooth green look to it that I'd managed to capture on prior ferry crossings through the Marlborough Sounds but none the less, i stayed out of the bar long enough to get the best pictures i could muster from the viewing deck.



3 other South Island cycle tourists were getting off the ferry at the end with me so I got directions into town, avoiding the motorways, they were experts on the matter which made things easy. From there it was a nice glide through a fairly traffic free city (being late Sunday afternoon) up to the Government Building grounds to my mate Pete and his wife, 'the mighty Quinns'.



I stayed with Pete and Trish for three nights, waiting for a decent weather forecast to head out again on but in the meantime, i got a fair amount of sightseeing done, including one helluva ride up to the top of Mt Victoria, kinda easy without the panniers clipped on but still, they don't call it a mountain for nothing.



I also visited the Te Papa museum (coz it woz free aye) and checked out the John Britton Motorcycle, the product of a Kiwi backyard-engineer who made and raced this bike at Daytona back in the 90's. It just toyed with the Ducatti's in the race before taking the checkered flag at the twist of a throttle - Kiwi Legend that late John Britton. The Classic HQ Holden made of corrugated iron was still there much to my pleasure, but the most important exhibition there was all about the Treaty Of Waitangi, the history of it and the facts behind the disputes that continue between the Maori and the Crown today. After reading the whole display, it makes it really hard to listen to an un-informed opinion from the average bloke on the street who seems to think they have the solution to the whole mess summarised in one sentence. The literature contained on the tables of that exhibition should definitely be taught in NZ schools AND put into pamphlet form and distributed to every mailbox in the country.






10-12-08 157 Kms to Palmerston North.


After saying bye to Pete & Trish, & little Jack, I weaved my way through the early-bird city traffic. It was a little tricky trying to avoid the motorway, the oncoming cyclists gave me enough clues, that and the roadsigns went well although I was a little unsure about things dropping down into a narrow, quiet gorge, but i popped out in Tawa, indicating things were ok. Past a big lagoon near Johnsonville then over a massive hill and down to the Kapiti coast.



Things were going fairly well until i stopped at Paekakariki (pronounced pie-cock a reeky) for a pie & ice coffee. There was a Kapati coast cycle route signs which i started to follow, was nice for a few Kms until it took me into Queen Elizabeth park where there were no more signs. It just dumped me there and left me going round and round in circles. With almost 160kms to chew through today i was in no mood for this shite. Raging, I had to head all the way back to the shop where I bought my pie just to get back on the main rd. Dunno what I was thinking, its my philosophy to stick to main roads to cover ground anyway.



The gentle cross-breeze and nice smooth roads made it easy riding, i quite often found myself doing an easy 25 - 30+kms /hr. Which allowed me to roll into 'Palmy' shortly after 4. I'm now sitting outside a bar sipping on a Tui (beer), waiting for Jackie Chan to turn up.



Got the fright of my life today when a big furry bumble-bee tried flying into my mouth. I blew him off my lips before he got his sting into me. Fackstick bumble bee. I could see where he was going though, across the road into a paddock fully laiden with yellow flowers. The pollenfest was in full bloom.



Jackie turned up and after a couple more beers we threw my bike on the back of his ute and headed home to his little pad just a few streets over. Scrubbed up and headed out to the new Speights Steak & Ale House with Jen, his saucy blond bit of fantasy on legs. This place was flash and the price reflected it so. The menu was on the amusing side of things, I never knew there was an art or science to matching a certain dish with one of the many different types of beer on offer. It all seemed very pretentious to me, bordering on the line of what the average Kiwi bloke would intricately describe as 'billshite' - leave that kind of crap to the toffs and la-de-da's of the wine industry & top-end restaurants thanks Speights!



11-12-08 146 Kms to Waiouru. When i left Jack & Jens, I headed slowly up SH 3. Jack had looked up the weather forecast on the internet that morning and advised me of North Westerly winds. Thats why i was going slowly, usually maxing out at 12km/hr. Totally frustrating when i was considering pushing on to Waiouru instead of Taihape. The noise of the cars rushing past me was starting to get on my tits a little too but this was nothing compared to the hills. They were massive both north & south of Taihape. Waiouru is at 782M above sea level so thats just the max i reached, not the total of all the up hill gradients.


Out of Palmerston, the scenery was pretty much what i expected the North island to be; farmland, so the camera got a bit of a rest this morning but some of the views from altitude were well worth a quick snap.



I think I've caught a cold today. The air was pretty chilly, i found myself sweating at the top of each hill, and really feeling the cold on the way down the other side.



I stopped for an ice-cream in Taihape, as i can remember eating one there when i was 4 years old on my way from Wellington to Warkworth with dad. Keep the tradition going i reckoned.



The last 30 kms into Waiouru were amongst the hardest Kms of the whole trip. I was exhausted and sore from a rash developing on my ass.
Asked the security if it was ok to put my tent up behind the Army Museum. It was "sweet".
I crawled in and put some Dettol cream on my ass.






12-12-08 123 Kms to Taupo.


No rain overnight which was f'n sweet cause it was forecast. It had its turns at being sunny/cloudy/sunny all day, right from when i got up at 6am for a piss. Handy as hell having the public shitter straight across the road, went over there and left a massive deposit before loading up on 12 inches worth of subway for breaky.



Pretty much a firm crosswind from my left today which sometimes hindered and sometimes aided me, sometimes it disappeared altogether when I was down in massively deep gullys.



The starting altitude of 782M or whatever must have got slightly higher as I crept slowly upwards across that desert road, taking multiple pictures of snow capped Ruapehu and Tongariro. Narahoe was hiding in behind the clouds somewhere.



The grass transited from it's lush green colour to the dry brown tussocky grass of the desert. The wind was a tad on the chilly side today so i pulled off the road and laid down in a sheltered depression to eat the second 6 inches of my subway and i noticed a camper van parked in an area on the other side of the road. They mustn't have seen me cause the old boy walks around the back for a piss, fully facing me. I gave him a wave but he pretended not to see me. Surely he'd have been better off pissin in front of the van where his ol' biddy girl could have seen what she's been seeing all her life.



It was cool coming down off the plateau towards Lake Taupo, a long straight slightly downhill, until something fully smacked me in the helmet. I should have panicked but the flash of a few black feathers overhanging the tip my helmet at the moment of impact pretty much gave it away - another magpie attack. It came in for another dive-bomb before I could locate it in the sky. I looked around, it was up high but dived, picking up speed. I had to concentrate on the road riding along at 35k's so just guessed at the impact moment and swung my fist around, picturing myself getting cut on it's solid beak, but not caring. It must have pulled another attacking maneuver because when I looked around this time it was coming low but gaining on me, fully cinematic, fully freaky. Out pacing it was NOT an option. Again i judged the moment of impact, swung my fist and yelled. It worked. I couldn't pick it up on the radar after that, it must have decided I was far enough out of it's zone and disappeared behind the first row of pines. Seconds later two old boy's drive past in a Toyota ute grinning their faces off. Yeah, cheap entertainment boys, they must have watched the whole attack from the safety of their glass windscreen.



No Subway in Turangi. I'd earlier decided to go for a diet of subway to try and get the small but very present fat rolls off my tum. So a pie and pizza bread from New World it was. There was a bin of mixed xmas attire which caught my eye, Santa hats were on sale at a low low price of $4. Had to have one to add to the Rudolf antlers and flashing red nose. I parked up at a picnic table and tied it onto the top of my cycle helmet with some of the many spare cable ties i still have after 25,000kms. Yep i cracked that milestone today. But whats more amusing is the reaction i got from my mobile audience. The 'beep their horn' rate shot up 10 fold. I haven't had this much attention since I was in Asia.



All good when I got into Taupo and got whisper of a free campsite. I got all excited until i found out it was 5kms out of town. I feel I deserve a few beers tonight for cracking the 25,000 kilometerstone, as I don't think the 26 is ever gonna happen (at this point).



Ended up in a fairly lively backpackers. Jees the shower felt good after missing out on one last night . Got washing done & gonna head out soon...






13-12-08 Rest Day In Taupo.


I started to head out on foot to snap some photos of this picturesque settlement on the lakeside. I fired one off at the old DC3 that is part of the McDonalds dining area there. It was the last photo that camera ever took. Number 5 on tour. How the fack can 3 brand new cameras fack out with less than 1000 shots on them? In case you cant tell, I'm disappointed.



Depressed, i got hold of another old mate, Timmy Tungaloha. He cheered me up tenfold with a 'Tiki tour' of some of Taupo's beauty spots, including the Huka falls, where Peter Plumney Walker met his fate back in the late 80's as a dominatrix session went horribly wrong for the old handlebar moustache bearing cricket umpire. Next he bought a dozen beers and drove me round to his house and whipped up a good ol' Kiwi BBQ. Good times.






14-12-08 95 Kms to Rotorua.


With flat roads promised by Timmy Tungaloha and only 90kms to cover, i went for a nice relaxed late start, checking out of the Urban Retreat by 10, stuffing myself with Subway, and hitting the road at 11. Timo had suggested that I might meet other cyclists on the flat rural road out towards Broadlands and only 20km or so out there were two Euro girls heading the other way. I pulled over on their side of the road for a yarn and the first one road straight past, oh well I'll have chat with her husband I thought. The second one turned out to be a girl who also rode past but stopped about 5m past me. They must have thought I had bad intentions for them or something. All I got out of them was that they had started riding in Rotorua, which was unusual, and that they had limited time to travel. "Enjoy our country" I said twisting around awkwardly facing backwards. No story exchange there. Fucm, they missed out cause my story's standing up pretty well now, now that I'm almost there, about 50% listen with amazement, 20% know someone thats done a similar thing, 20% think I'm talking about a motorbike, and about 10% think I'm talking shite, having them on.



I pull under a tree in a tidy little settlement called Reporoa to eat another six inches of Subway and find a dead sparrow under the tree, two dead little chicks, and one thats still alive. It's eyes were still closed and a lot of its pink skin hadn't produced any feathers yet. It was barely hobbling around blind and helpless. I'm guessing a stoat or some other Rodent must have raided the nest. What could i do? When i was 10, Mr Agnew, my best teacher ever, taught us how to rare baby chicks from hatching them from the eggs in an incubator, feeding them minced meat and worms and dropping water into their little beaks with an eye drop. Then finally letting them go into the wild - free birds. All i could think to do was ask around if anyone had kids that were interested in adopting it but instead i just said "good luck little buddy" as i rode off and left it.



Quite a massive hill just before Rotorua allowing a nice coast down and across the last few kms into town.



Went to the TIC for a map of all the backpackers hostels and met a yank outside there that was riding the other way. He'd had a great night camping somewhere in the Karangahake gorge, really recommend a walkway there and something about riding through an old railway tunnel. I can remember walking into the end of one when we did a cycle tour with the Boy's Brigade at age 13.



The first couple of backpackers i visited wanted $27 for the night. The local campground was $16. Bleak. I cruised around and found one in the city center for $21, use your own sleeping bag. Sweet as bro!
I had a feed and a beer then showered. Pretty tired, i had a little sleep at 7pm with the intent of heading out for a few more beers later on. I just got comfortable....






15-12-08 Camera shopping in Rotorua.


A local Kodak store, Noel Leemings, Harvey Normans, Dick Smiths, Cash converters, Bond & Bond, Farmers. Hard work this shopping business. Harvey Normans matched Bond & Bonds discount price for this Fuji pocket job which has a waterproof case, carry case and memory card. Nothing astounding in the specifications dept but i'm picturing getting some snaps of my mates surfing over on the Goldie, or perhaps fish photography at the Goat Island Marine Reserve.



It really stung, having to fork out $200 for yet another camera that had facked out. 'If only they advertised them as disposable cameras' i thought. Maybe 200 photos out of the Olympus's and about 500 out of the Pentax. Sure they're probably under warranty but how the hell does someone who's mobile get them posted back to them? Again i noticed the Olympus's were by far the best value for money but they don't deserve my cash after their classic double fack-out act. Interestingly enough, I mentioned this to one shop assistant who says "Yeah, we get a lot of Olympus products come back under warranty".



So I head home (backpackers) and charge up the battery while I nip into the Irish pub underneath for lunch and a couple of quick pints. By the time I get back and go through the settings on it and jump on my bike for some serious Rotorua sightseeing, its raining. Not heavy, just light. I make myself a rear mudgard out of a bit of cardboard that i scab out of a recycling bin across the road and start to head out of town. The wind comes up and I feel the temperature of the rain. It aint warm. I abort the $250 day.






16-12-08 69 Kms to Tauranga.


The forecast was for showers but when I woke up it was sunny outside so I saddled up, had hot cakes from Maccas, and headed out.



My new camera came into commission within minutes. Steam was rising up out of the ground down near the lake front. Eerie. Geothermal activity. In the medieval days, before this could be explained, it would have been put down to the gods. There was a wooden walkway through the middle of this steaming pond. I stopped and put my hand into the clear hot water. It was bearable, would probably burn the doodle off if i were to sit in it. Oh and the sulphuric smell...



A little sad to leave this place without really exploring the plethora of sights and activities here, but, thats the way it was.



I was trying to remember Timmys recommendations on which road to take to Tauranga but couldn't. Took the shortest route and pretty quickly decided that he must have said no, not this one. Fack it was hilly. Went up for ages and ages but my velo-meditation skills reminded me that what ever goes up... When i did come back down, it was through this incredibly windy, steep road, one that had the edge on anything I'd cycled before, including the descent of St Gotthards Pass in Switzerland. Across a tiny little one lane bridge at the bottom, then a lot straighter up the other side. This one was so steep i pictured Elke trying to ride up it. She'd commented on a hill in Java that she'd scaled - ("My front wheel wouldn't stay on the road"). It was so steep i understood why there was FA trucks coming through that way, i reckon a lot of them wouldn't have made it.



And struggling to do 5km/hr was no way to outrun this big black boo-boo cloud that was hovering above me too. I could look out to the horizon in places and see blue sky with white whispy clouds but i had the dropper. A few heavy showers had me soaked through. The cycle shorts became uncomfortable, and the wet shoes were the worst. While trying to bustle off the side of the road to get some shelter from the weather I must have run over a dead gorse frond - enough to give me my first puncture in NZ fack it.



After eating lunch in Tauranga, i was unsure weather to stay or push on, finally riding half a k northwards before turning back and settling into the most expensive backpackers in town. While checking in, the girl behind reception, who had been in London at the same time I first got there, had told me i'd taken the right road as the other one was indeed v busy with trucks. She also gave me a $10 discount for fixing a flat tyre on her own bike. Luckily she'd reminded me that i had one of my own to fix so it worked out very lucratively for me.



People are still loving the whole Santa image I've got happening, if they're not yelling out merry xmas, they're tooting their horn and giving me the thumbs up or a wave. Apart from the couple of young boys from the land who demand a present. When i ignore them i get a "Well you might as well fack off back to the north pole then"( in a heavy Maori accent)!






17-12-08 141 Kms to Miranda.


By the time I'd stuffed my face with Subway for breaky and was ready to 'blow the joint', along came a light shower to give me something to think about. It was like that most of the day - raincoat on, raincoat off. Not enough to seriously soak me unlike the downpours of yesterday. I sat one out though, leaning up against a power pole. The showers were cold, mainly due to them being thrown at me by wind almost as strong as the ride inland from the east coast on the south Island.



Yesterday when I'd fixed my flattie, I'd noticed how thin my rear tyre had gotten. No wonder the gorse went through it. Today, 5 Kms before Katikati; BANG! Popped it. Managed to patch it up with the old plastic water bottle walls to get me into town where I tracked down an old boy with a lawnmower shop, the only dude in town that sold bike tyres so was more than happy to fork out the $25 for yet another cheapo Asian job. But jesus, like my camera facking out, it shitted me in that respect, only 2 and a half days to go. Ol' mate had compressed air there for me so that saved a whole heap of energy. He was on for a yarn and kept blabbing on about some 80 year old local lady that's cycled here there and everywhere.



I got to Waihi for lunch and hitting highway 25, I remembered it wasn't the first time I'd cycled this road. I'd done it on a boy's brigade cycle tour when i was almost 1/3 my age now, back in '85 that was. I reminisced as i rode through the Karangahake Gorge, where my old 10 speed broke and i had to ride the Company's spare old fashioned 3 speed piece of shite, riding over every bit of glass i could find to try and give it a flattie so i could ride Ryan Macaress's spare BMX. And also as we rode across the long boring Hauraki plains two young local boys in a paddock beside us tried to show off how good they could wheel-stand their motorcycle and flipped it over backwards. We all laughed as loud as we could to inflict maximum embarrassment on them.



The Karangahape gorge, beautiful and as scenic as it was (the road follows a river all the way through the gorge), was a little on the danger side of things in places, about a foot high concrete nib was all that was there to stop traffic going off the side and dropping down into the river below.



I was getting the bog standard photos of my bike parked beside the big L&P bottle at Paeroa when 2 German girls also wearing xmas hats saw me so came over for a photograph of, and with, me.



Ngatia high school, more reminiscing there. Our college used to do an inter-school sporting event against these guy's. In 1987 when i was in the first 11 boys soccer team, we went down here and got our asses kicked something like 8-0.



Tired as hell from fighting this really strong wind all day, I rolled into the Miranda Hot Springs and Holiday resort, the asking price for a tent site was $20. I cant just go paying people whatever figure they dream up in their head, to me it has to be 'worth it'. This appeared not to be. So I cycled on around the estuary on the Firth of Thames and found a little rest area off to the side of the road. Its great, when it got dark I could look across the inlet and see the distant lights of Thames about 25kms away. With no-one around, and my last night before going in to the big bad city, I thought I'd do a little naturism and went for a walk (about 10m) away from my tent in the nude. Very peaceful here apart from all the bird calls broken up occasionally by my farts.






18-12-08 105 Kms to Auckland.


Nice and flat to start with, and great views around the water, until the road cut inland, cutting across towards Kawakawa Bay. Then it got so incredibly hilly. I met another dude from South Korea just leaving Kawakawa. Crossing paths, i bore him the bad news. "Ohh wess, this countwy vweawy hiwwy"



He'd ridden down from 'The Cape'. Anyways, I quit my crying and tackled these monsters of hills, being motivated by my relevant position to the 'finishing post'. I get to the top of one such hill and there it was....the City of sails. The sky tower was like a tiny little toothpick away off in the distance, obviously a few hours away just yet.



I get a text from Jackson who'd headed into the city earlier that day and reckons riding in Auckland city traffic 'has got knobs on it'. Yeah he was right. But I thought back to all the tretcherous cities that I'd ridden straight through the guts of, all the way from London to here and put the thought of getting squished by one of the big trucks or righteous drivers aside. After stopping and asking a few of the locals for directions to the city centre, I found myself in Queen St hunting out backpacker accommdation by about 3pm, and shortly after, gazing up and taking photos of the monstrous Sky Tower from right underneith. It was a bizzare feeling riding my bike around the city, one of those things that, if anyone had told me when i was younger that I'd be doing this, I'd have been seriously worried about myself.






19/12/08 Auckland


I hang out in Central Aucks and grab a few photos of the central city, plus sit in a couple of bars down on the waterfront. Jon & Carrol have had some sort of work function on tonight and meet me in a bar afterwards. Jon's pretty pissed up from the free booze so doesn't last long which suites me fine as i have finally got one final push to the post to ride tomorrow.



20/12/08 115kms to Warkworth.


It was a nice easy idle down the full length of Queen St to the Ferry Building to put my bike on the ferry to get across to Devonport on the North Shore. I met up with Jackson who was also heading north out of Auckland today.



A couple of really strange feelings occur as i start my ride. This is it, the last day, the last ride of my twenty five and a half thousand kilometer journey across the world. I start to think of all the people I met along the way, the brainwashed religious people, the countries I'd crossed and their customs, the scary bits, the challenging bits, the lonely bits and the bits with Elke, the scenic bits, the boring bits the hilly bits and the flat bits, the over crowded jam-packed cities buzzing with absolutely chaotic traffic, and the quiet rides down country lanes listening to the silence of pure nature. So many memories to remember, i hoped i didn't get knocked off my bike and killed today, fack no thank you very much, but that was all i could do - hope.



Again I got that unreal feeling while riding along East Coast Bays Rd, and later i joined up with State Highway One (for the first time since Taupo). I'd been blasting up & down this stretch of road since i was 4, every time in a car, & even that seemed to take forever (when you drive a Vauxhall Chevette) and here i am riding it on a bike. Nuts!



Thirsty work. So we pulled into the legendary Puhoi Pub, 20 kms from home. It's almost as much of a museum as it is a pub. Eric was there with a couple of coldies lined up waiting for us. We slurped them back and Jackson stared at the memorabilia that's been on the walls since the 19th century, while I told Amigo, the friendly local bar manager of my travels. He flicked me a free Puhoi Pub singlet. Cheers Amigo!



Out we headed again for the final push towards the post. As i imagined, climbing Schedeways Hill was almost as dangerous as any of the roads I'd crossed along the way, except for maybe a few poorly lit tunnels in Turkey, Georgia & Iran. I announced to Jackson that once we'd reached windy ridge, it was mostly all down hill now, and it was. Can you imagine what 'no more hills' feels like after riding from one side of the world to the other?



We stopped just outside Warkworth for some posey photo's with the town sign, then rolled down the hill, past my old college, a single victory lap through town & into the Bridge House where a bunch of mates, including mum & dad were waiting for me. I head inside to buy a celebratory bottle of Champers. The hot young bar-maid asking "Did you just win a race or something"? "No" I replied, "I've just been on a really long ride".



I've got to mention that this final blog seems pretty biased towards talking up New Zealand as one of my favourite countries to ride through. I feel pretty stink about bagging some of the other countries that weren't so enjoyable, but I'm calling it the way I saw it. I'm just so thankful i caught the video of that kid on the BMX riding his bike across the USA which inspired me to join New Zealand in the South Island. That country is one genuinely beuatiful land and it did seem so hard to make progress at times because of all the photo opportunities along the way. The Germans seem on to it, they're here in their droves and all for good reasons. NZ - It's fantastic, It'll grow on you.

So there it is everyone, thats how to ride a bike from one side of the world to the other. I hope you enjoyed reading my blog / dairy entries. Maybe one day I'll turn them into a book (in which case I'll let you all know so that my sales will at least get into double digits). I'm open to your opinions on this and would much appreciate you all letting me know if this whole blog bores the crap out of you as i can't really be arsed writing something for months and months if it aint worth reading.

Maybe in the near future I'll put together some kind of summary, a synopsis of each country, something with a few more statistics in it or whatever you superfans suggest. Until then, enjoy your day jobs and thank -you for letting me share this gigantic adventure of mine with you.

All the Bez
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1226494740/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1226494740/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1226494740/tpod.html Tue, 09 Dec 2008 02:54:19 -0500 Getting on my bike outside my front door in West London and seeing how far i can ride. (Not a horse or a motorbike).

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entry & travel map

Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

When the plane finally come to a halt in Australia, I unclipped my seatbelt and, as i had an isle seat, I sprang up to grab my bags out of the overhead storage compartment incase the couple sitting beside me were in a hurry to get on with their day. I looked down the isle and noticed hardly anyone else had moved. This was unexpected, quite the opposite to the usual hustle-bustle and mayhem when the 'fasten seat belts' sign disappears. Being at the front of the plane almost everyone that was 'in on it' was staring at me. Fack! I must have missed something. What were those announcements the Garuda Indonesian pilot dribbled into the microphone in inaudible poor English something about fog? I sat back down and waited for the mystery to resolve itself. I overheard Big Brutus in the window seat saying to his wife "i can see a sign 'Welcome to Katherine'". Oh facking great! It was supposed to be a 2 hour flight into Darwin. Did the pilot get lost?
It was the first time I've ever been on a diverted flight. For those of you that haven't, you ain't missing much. We were instructed to remain in our seats for over 2 hours while the plane sat on the tarmac getting refueled, waiting for the fog to clear in Darwin. My 2hr flight had stretched out to 5 or 6 bum-numbing hours but the extra take-off and landing went fairly smoothly.
I headed into the city with a few hours to kill before meeting Brody and his new bit of hot Norwegian erotica. I had a bit of a shopping list (road map, sim card, food supplies for the outback) and was supposed to pick up my gas cooker & kit from the post restante service at Darwin central post office. When i got there I learned that they only keep mail for 1 month before 'returning to sender'. This is now 5 months on so i missed it by a long shot.
Brody was my first mate I'd met since the day i left London exactly a year ago. It might have been a bit hard to swallow if I'd know the truth; 'I wouldn't see any of my friends for a whole year' when i set out on this hair-brained idea, but i was comforted with several unfruitful plans to 'meet up' here and there. So it was bloody good to spend time with him (and the very charming 'Norway') and we set about exchanging travel stories over a fair few bloody cold beers. Brody's boss happened to own a massive catamaran yacht which was up on a dry dock getting re-furbished. A bit dusty inside but both nights i managed to sleep soundly inside it. Brody introduced me to his workmate, Sam. We went to an Irish pub on Thursday night. Sam was an absolute pool ace and liked to make money in the weekends by betting $50-100 a game against the boys from the mines. After a successful win he bought a round of flugals, we dropped them on an empty stomach. I had to head out the next day so went home at 10ish. When i left him he was playing for $50. Vertically challenged, with eyes rolling backwards, he's asking "Am I on reds or yellows?" and "Who am i playing against?" and "Is there any money on this game?" Good luck with the gambling/pub pool career Sam!
My first day's riding went fairly ok. There was a special cycle path through the trees about 100m off the main road for the first 20-30km. I think insurance companies should post a spy out this way at night time. Talk about insurance jobs - burnt out cars everywhere. Plenty of hills later on wasn't quite what i was expecting, nor was the end of my day. $15 for a place to put my tent in the Adelaide River Caravan Park, and when i had it erected for the first time since Thailand, and blew up my inch thick mattress, i collapsed on it outside my tent for hours, feeling like shite.
Riding was canceled he next day as my condition hadn't improved. Off to quite a bad start. Things didn't improve much on the way down to Three Ways either...
I had visions of the outback being dead flat. Not so. I also had this theory that the heat of the desert would create a massive convection current, the hot air rising, sucking in cool air from the coastline. Not true. I put it down to poor research, but i soon learned from all the 'Grey Nomads' of Australia's seasonal winds. This time of the year they just roar across the country from a south-east direction, pretty much the opposite direction i needed to go to get to Brisbane. If the hills weren't pissing me off, the wind in my face was. The further south i got, the colder it was too, almost strong enough to blow my nose around to the back of my head, which would have been a good thing because it would have stopped me from worrying about it dripping on me with this bad head cold I'd developed. I was putting all my effort into the pedals and cracking a massive 12-15kms/hr, getting nowhere. If that wind had been on my back, I'd be sitting on 35-40 clicks all day long. Averaging 15km/hr was no way to get across a country this size with F.A. to see along the way. I could really feel the pressure mounting as i had to get to the Sunshine Coast to meet a couple, who strangely wish to remain anonymous, who i haven't seen for 3 ½ years, by the 24th. Changing directions at Threeways wasn't gonna be anything to look forward to either, it would just come at me from my right instead of my left.
Fack it! I decided to chop some distance off by getting piggy-backed the 640kms to Mt Isa. I made inquiries about jumping on a Greyhound bus but it was gonna be at least $150. Thats 3 times the figure i had in mind so they missed out on my custom and i decided to hitch. I'd found out the night before hitch-hiking's illegal in this country but my rebellious streak tells me that law applies to everyone except me. My first ride is with a couple of grey nomads (retirees) towing a caravan, big enough to fit my bike in, behind a Toyota Landcruiser. Michael's a Kiwoz (was a Kiwi, now an Ozzy), been here since the early 70's, and Trish is from Brisbane. They get me to Barkley Homestead where they invited me to camp with them for the night. It was 3pm so i politely declined and decided to stick my thumb out again. Again i get picked up by a couple with a huge caravan in haul of a Toyota Landcruiser, again he's (Harold) a Kiwoz, been here for 40 years and Daphny's from the Briz. Is this the only combination of holiday maker that pick up scruffy looking worn out lazy cyclists? It gets dark 200km before Mt Isa so we pull into a free camp on the roadside for the night. While I'm getting the last couple of tent pegs in, Harold announces that "the chef's invited you over for dinner". Ah! F'n sweet dude! Pasta, veges and a melt-in-your-mouth steak were followed by yoghurt with peaches and a hot cuppa. This beats the crap out of pedaling hard all day, getting nowhere in the icy wind, and rewarding my efforts with spaghetti sandwiches, washed down by strange tasting locally sourced water.

The next day they dropped me off right outside the tourist information centre in Mt Isa. I got the shits with this place because if the camping grounds weren't full, they were dead expensive. Hello Queensland! I loaded up with groceries and a stomach full of Maccas and headed out into the mountains ('hills' in Kiwi) and did my first night of free camping. A little bit scary because i was obviously in a cattle paddock but had no idea where they were, or if they were big angry bulls just released from the My Isa rodeo or other.

I pump up my tyres before hitting the road this morning. It's the first squirt of air they've got since Darwin and very much needed it. I ride straight through Cloncurry, stopping only to fill up my water bottles from a tap behind the local Woolworths and carry on out the Matilda highway. Late in the afternoon Michael and Trish pass me and pull over to see how I'm going. I'm about to explain how great things have been going now that I'm on track due to covering some serious ground by cheating, when Michael says, "Whats wrong with your tyre?" Oops! I must have slightly over-inflated it this morning. It was bulging, worn to the canvass, with a big 'zig zag' all in one spot. "Hmmm, that ain't gonna get me too far". They offer to give me a lift another 50km to a roadside free-camp and then take me on to a town to get a new tyre tomorrow but in a moment of absent mindedness and a slight guilty feeling of already sneaking a lift 640kms, i declined. As they drove away i realised it wasn't the best one of the two options i had. Dammit! Too late now, i deflated the rear tyre (not a proper touring tyre, just a standard Asian cheapo from Bangkok. It had plenty of tread left and had survived the jagged Indonesian roads due to being on the front, but obviously had a bad reaction to over-inflation) to try and get a few more k's out of it and decided to catch up to Trish and Michael tonight so i could scab another lift with them in the morning. When the clouds went away, i could see my shadow was already massively long. Slightly worried about the situation, I dug deep to try and cover the last 50kms before dark. In reality, i didn't have a shite-show and ended up completing the last 20kms in the dark, plenty dangerous, something i really try to avoid but drastic situations call for drastic measures. I finally arrive and get my tent up under torch-light.

The next morning I'm up mighty early and pack my tent so as to not 'miss the bus' (i really wanted to be able to coil up a massive steamer in the paddock alongside before any of the other campers were even awake). I'm inspecting the poor state of the tyre, and the inner tube which is now exposing itself through the hole when a trucker comes over from his road train for a yarn. I explain my dilemma and plan and he says, in an almost demanding voice, "Chuck it on the back of the truck and jump up there in the cab, I'll take ya to Longreach".

Sweeter than f'n sweet dude! I'm now bouncing along the crappy narrow Queensland roadways in a massive roadtrain (trailer number three stacked on top of number two, with number one being full of empty beer kegs) listening to stories of life on the road as a trucker, effortlessly watching the boring brown farmland pass by as it takes a lashing from that relentless icy headwind. We pass a fellow cycle tourist going the other way; "Ahh whats that stupid f'n idiot thinking? Riding across Australia on a bike, what a f'n mooron! Yeah me and Graham (as his name just happened to be) had a laugh that day.

"Anyone out there tell me where there's a bicycle shop in Longreach?" he asks over the CB radio. "BP service station on the main rd" comes the answer without any delay. Graham wants to take me all the way to Brisbane with him. I can imagine he well enjoys the company on these long hauls (Darwin to Brisbane) and for me it's an effortless fun way to beat that headwind that's been bringing leaks to my nose and a frown to my crown. But i remind myself that it's a cycle tour, and getting these rides definitely takes away a certain degree of the satisfaction from the achievement. So he drops me outside BP, "Best of luck mate". The only tyre in my (bikes) size is another crappy Asian import. I buy it and before I've made the 5km ride to the camping ground, I've had to put it on as the Bangkok banger has blown.

Queensland is overrun by caravans and motorhomes from Victoria & New South Wales this time of year. Everyone's escaping the freezing temperatures from down that way so there's not a hell of a lot of room left in the campgrounds here. Tonight i get instructed to put my tent under a clothesline. "No problem there but what about this big ring of chairs around the outside?" "Don't worry about that, it's just a sing-along from 7 to 8pm". Later; I'm making my tuna and tomato sauce sandwiches while some 'singing cowboy' strums away on his guitar as oldies that have had enough wines but can still remember words to songs, stand up and join him. Sure, all the seats are all taken up apart from the one I've spilled tuna oil on, but there's no moshing though as my tent's pretty much taking up the whole 'would be' moshpit. After a pretty good version of Johnie Cash's (cycle tourist appropriate) 'Hemorrhoid song', ('Burning Ring of Fire') and the 'Australian compulsory' 'Waltzing Matilda', the concert was over and the 20-strong crowd of 'grey nomads' dispersed without any hint of trouble.


14-08-08 112 Kms to Barcaldine. At least my washing was dry when i woke up this morning and none of last night's concert goers had nicked my panties or anything. I had a good nights sleep despite the cold. The camp manager reckoned it got down to 2 or 3 deg C the previous couple of nights.
Just a short ride today but yet another shitfight with the wind. I Passed the Qantas museum, stopped for a few photos but didn't go in, same with the machinery museum at Ilfracombe.
After 23,000kms I'd finally decided to invest in a rear-view mirror. I needed it because of the road width, and the number of road trains. When there wasn't so much traffic in the Northern Territory, they'd do a massive sweep around me over on the other side of the road, but now i felt i had to keep a close eye on them. Unlike their Asian counterparts, they're very reluctant to use their horns. I certainly respect their size and presence on the road and am happy to run off into whatever lies on the roadside a thousand times rather than get splattered just once, but i need to know when to fold, and when to hold.
Kind of a cold overcast day today, still fighting that f'n headwind, its really tiring riding and I think I'd be kidding myself if i said i was enjoying it. And there's no fooling anyone else either; Some dude pulls out from an intersection in a ute. He can see me struggling so the cheeky bastard yells out "You having fun mate"?
One of the things that used to keep me going when i first started was the 'Whats around the next corner or brow of the hill' philosophy. But now I look up ahead miles in the distance and see the road disappear over a brow, not so keen to get there to see what the road does on the other side because i know it'll be another 5/10 km of exactly the same boring thing. Painful stuff.
I made it 99.9% of the way without a flattie today, I'm just 200m from the camping ground when my front tyre pops. Bugger! Now my front tyre's got a hole in it big enough for the tube to show through. I patched it with the plastic tray from a packet of ANZAC biscuits. It's very temporary. I now realise i should have bought 2 new tyres but because I'm that close to home I'm stupidly trying to make things last. Rather an irrational philosophy because what am i gonna do when I'm finished anyway? Buy new stuff for it. The roads here are certainly to blame as i find out. They're just so stony, they've worn the spiky bits off my new tyre already and they make the riding a lot harder, i feel my speed increase as soon as i hit the smooth tyre-worn patches from the traffic.

As the traffic slowly increased the closer i got to Highway #1, so did the roadside rubbish. Diabolical! My mind kept flashing back to the words from the Tasmanian gent we met in our first night in Cambodia and how impressed he was with the cleanliness of the New Zealand roadsides. In contrast,it seems to be something Aussies just don't bother with out here. Empty 'Ice Breaka' iced coffee bottles lay in their hundreds along every kilometer of roadside. Maybe they pride themselves on the tidiness of their cars interior over here, or maybe they think it's already littered with dead skippys so it don't matter. Yep, not quite as many as empty bottles but many an overgrown rodent has succomed to the front bumper of night time traffic over here. I think taking population density into account, the litterers are probably worse than Indonesia.
Keeping my head out of the gutter was the trick though, trees varied, and the birds that flew through them were a spectrum of colours and a symphony of chirps.
I finally got a little bit of wind on my back cutting through the Great Dividing Ranges as i neared the east coast as it funneled through the hills. I even raced against the rain on my last day heading east into Rockhampton, where i met Chuck & Pam & little Daisey. We got heavily involved in the piss that night, Pam finished a whole glass of wine, Chuck knocked back a stubbie of mid-strength, and, as usual, i doubled his effort.
Time to head south on the home stretch to Brisbane/Brisvegas/The Vegas/The Briz. The roads as busy as they'll get here, a lot of the trucks not really giving me much room at all. 'Pie scoffing whore-hiring roadside litterers i thought'. About 70kms north of Maryborough i noticed my new cheapo Asian tyre had bulged and hemorrhaged just like the last one. Hooo shite, the original front tyre also had the tube showing through the canvas. I'd put this on in the middle of Iran & rode most of the way from there with it so got good value out of that one. But it was certainly two new ones for me as i tracked down the bike shop 5 mins before it closed after having that uneasy feeling in my stomach (it's gonna blow any second now!) the last 70km or so.

I got to Maroochydore for a couple of weeks R & R with the two anonymous people, 5 floors up in a beach side apartment. I got my own room overlooking the sea, and delicious home cooking popped on my lap each night in front of a TV, unlimited access to a fridge full of beer, which i made good use of. This was what i dreamed of on those long lonely tiring rides through strange lands in far away places, at last, a small (or big) taste of home.


I had a wedding invitation to attend Karen & Dereks wedding in Brisbane in a few weeks time but not much to wear to it. One of the anonymous people donated a large sum of money (my first donation since Elke's mum shouted us to the Singapore zoo) to go buy a new set of presentable clothes for the occasion. As unfamiliar with the price of everything here as i am, i treaded cautiously (as ya do when ya haven't worked for over a year) splashing out for a haircut which I'd rather not talk about, and $22.50 for some imitation leather shoes. That would have been it for the day but on the way home i found 'Vinnie's', a charity shop, and really went to town, maxing things out at about $16 but getting a couple of dress shirts, one with a matching tie, some Quicksilver trousers, and a nice warm sweatshirt to replace that dearly loved yellow & blue cycle jersey as seen in my earlier photos, which had tragically fallen off the back of my bike onto SH1 somewhere south of Gin Gin. "Sweet shopping dude" I said to myself, pocketing the remaining $450 change.

Onwards to the Vegas and i caught up with Frankie & Sascha & their little Esme whom i am a godfather (only the most sensible specimens on the planet get nominated for positions as such). She's 5 now so thats about how many years it's been since I've seen them. Frankie showered me in his home-brew beer while Sascha whipped up a culinary delight in the kitchen.
Next stop was Anne & Matt's house, just in time for his brothers 21st drinks & luncheon. Caz, a 3rd flatmate from London was there too and we went out into the city a few times to reminisce on the crazy days of London life.
Heading west across The Briz, i called into Shan's flat (another friend I'd met in London quite a few years earlier) and dotted down for a couple of nights to say hello and get a further briefing on Vegas life.
Out to Chapel Hill to meet Karen & Dekka, as mentioned they're getting married in a few weeks so i end up sticking around for a while. They're running a successful plastering business so not only did they give me a place to call home for the next few months, they gave me a job, brought me back to reality, i was mainstream man! Up at 4:30 to make a stack of sammies, off to make a 6:30ish start, mix up some plaster and carry it round to the plasterers all day long. Clean up at about 2 and a beer in my hand at home by 3-4. Too easy, stress free living, although i might say, it's the first job I've ever had where there is the possibility of getting the sack for NOT nicking stuff off sites. Soon i had enough money to buy my workmates car, a '95 Holden SW called Greenie.
No one gets married without a 'stag do' or 'bucks night' as they call it over here which was a pretty good piss up, a pool competition, then the standard strip club routine, then off to a bar in Fortitude Valley. Everyone home unscathed by the next morning but feeling a bit 'dead'.
The wedding went equally as well; the Friday afternoon Derek's dad shouted us all a round of golf, so i took along my #7 Iron to make it somewhat worth while lugging over every single hill for the last 24,000kms. Lost a fair few balls that day. Stayed with Eric & Jodi in a resort apartment they'd rented for the week so (This is all happening back up on the Sunshine Coast) I got yet another lesson in parenting as their two rather loud boys took a fair bit of controlling. The weather was pretty great for the wedding on a beach point, a little windy but the newly weds got through it all ok, Karen was looking way hotter than Derek. Back to the golf club for reception, plenty of humor among the speeches, and beer flowing like the tide. Sat next to the Rt honorable Sean Cavanagh because Danwick did a no-show (a suspected all night hell bender was speculated by all who hadn't heard from him), and found out after a bit of conversing that the girl on the other side of me is Rhombus's sister. Small world, thats why i rode it. Great wedding.

So with the newly-weds away on their honeymoon, I've now got a whole house, 3 vehicles and a poodle called Milly for company, oh, and 6 tropical fish to try to remember to feed. 'And this is supposed to be a cycle tour' i kept telling myself.

One week after Karen & Derek's wedding, its the Kak-man's 40th birthday. Tammy, his girlfriend mounts a massive surprise party for him in a function room in Currumbin Valley. We managed to trick him into thinking we were going to dinner at Dracula's but this boy was easily fooled. Was great to see the astounded look on his face when he walked in the door to find 50-100 friends and family all burst out cheering for him. Unfortunately there was no display of the famous Kakkking we've all grown to know him for, but there was rumors that his mum walked in on The Pig getting something polished in the girls toilet by his wife later that night.

My Bro & Gherkin head over to Surfers Paradise for a holiday so i rock on down to see them on a steaming hot Sunday afternoon. By the time i get there, it's clouded over and started drizzling, worse, Greenie coughs and splutters to a halt as Chris comes out to meet me. I'm sure everyone likes to have a little pride in their friends and family, but here's us meeting up for the first time in three and a half years and i turn up in a car that cant go anywhere because i thought the 'no fuel' light meant 'low fuel'. I blame it on doing 24,000kms without having to bother with the shite.

We sit in a bar that sells $2 beers all afternoon. I later end up in an Irish bar with incredibly slippery barstools, so slippery that i slide off while on only my first beer, in front of a few Irish dudes who don't hesitate in paying me out. Embarrassing.

I had one of my most enlightening, inspiring moments in my life while in a pub one night in Briz. I was sipping on my beer on the fringe of the dance floor when Bob Sinclare's 'Feel The Love Generation' song came on. Nice song, but jesus the video to it had some impact, you know the one, the little school kid that skips school for the day and rides all over America on his BMX bike. I stared at the big screen, mesmerized, started thinking "how cool would that be?" until i woke up and remembered that I'd done something even cooler (unless it was all just a dream, and sometimes it certainly seems like it was). That was it! With that flash of inspiration, I'd decided to fly into Christchurch instead of Auckland, besides, I felt kinda guilty about chopping 1200kms off my tour in Oz and this would make up those 'missing' Kms. The intention was to fly into Auckland Airport and ride the 100kms or so north to my final destination, but now I've decided to make it hard for myself again... It should be a nice 2-3 week trip taking me up to Xmas time which will be a pretty good reason not to jump straight into a job.

It seems Australia's much publicized obesity problem has bitten me. When i arrived at Maroochydore, i was weighing the same as when i left school 20 years ago, but the three months or so of indulgence here have taken their toll and i will now be carrying an extra 8-9kgs up the hills of New Zealand. The skeketor is no more!

Stella is Karen & Dereks 18mth old daughter. A bundle of joy to them, and after being a bit stand-off-ish at first, she resembles pretty much the same to me now. After a few weeks of getting used to the strange 3rd adult in the house, she would ask me for pushes on the swing, lead me by the hand for a walk around the yard, or just climb all over me when I'm laying on the floor in front of the tele (much to Dereks relief as it would save him getting belts over the head with the TV remote while he's trying to sleep on the couch).

The thing i find most disgusting over here is paper in the toilets. After one has a crap, one's expected to smear the remaining amount of shite around their arse with toilet paper. I could sit there all day trying to get it as clean as i could in Asia (using water) but in reality, I'm just thinning it out to a few microns of unnoticeable thickness and that's even trying the scrunch method. I've heard other travelers say "It's 2007 and their sewage system still doesn't cope with flushing toilet paper down". I've also heard it enough to believe it- Asians think Euro's are disgusting because we 'smear it around' and i have to hand it to them here, they're 100% correct.

Well thats a brief summary of my tour of OZ. Not really a recommended place to cycle as the 'things to see and do per kilometer' are very low. And that seasonal wind, that was what really broke me, not the country and all its vastness itself, although for expression's sake, i'll call it 'the country that broke me' (due to my own lack of pre-research on the place). But what about the people? Fantastic, great to roll into the camping grounds at night and have a laugh with the traveling retirees, great to be able to speak English to everyone again, and i do maintain, in general, that the Aussies seem typically laid back, friendly, and humorous, despite being a pack of Dingo raping Kangaroo fackers (and second best in the world at rugby league).

Hope to have a bumper Xmas edition on Aotearoha for you all to enjoy soon!

Bless,
Graham

]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1220863320/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1220863320/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1220863320/tpod.html Mon, 08 Sep 2008 21:52:54 -0400 Getting on my bike outside my front door in West London and seeing how far i can ride. (Not a horse or a motorbike).

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Kuta, Indonesia

Hi everyone, here's the blog i was meant to do while in Bali, my ride from Jakarta to Bali. It's about 6
weeks overdue. I was just so busy in Kuta... sorry.

Leaving Jakarta;

Me bloody body's been moaning all day. 4:30am, the alarm goes
off...moan moan moan, it doesn't wanna get out of bed. Me glutoids
have been sore for a few days now but really start letting me know
about it today. After only 100km me thy muscles get in on the act and
start moaning with pain. "Harden the fack up". I've been
doing this for almost a year now and really expected my body to be
used to it by now.

But if you think i got problems you should see the homeless people
on the side of the road. They are black from not washing, covered in
grime, always barefoot, their clothes torn to shreds just barely
hanging off them. Hair is typically one big mess. Worse than mine.
Always matted or dread-locked. They're usually picking up rubbish on
the side of the road, to see if there is any food left in the wrapper
thats just been thrown out of the car window. Or they'll be carrying
great sacks of empty plastic bottles over their shoulder which, i
assume they get a little bit of money for when they drop them into
recycle centers along the way. One lady wasn't doing much. Laying on
the grass facing the road, fully naked, hands between her legs.
Facking Jesus! For a second I didn't now what to do, then i decided
to do what everyone else was doing, ignore it. It would definitely be
a 111 call if back home in NZ.

And then there were the other group of
people with even bigger problems. The hundreds of men walking to or
from the local mosque, prayer cap on, and prayer mat slung over their
shoulder, off to pray in their thousands to some god that doesn't
exist because someone told them there is a god and the suckers
believed it, went along with the story without even thinking about
it, just like a new recruit in the army obeying his commander like a
puppet.

With only 30kms to go, i get a young fellah pull up alongside me
and starts talking in near-perfect english. Emam is studying English
at university, so was on for a chat. I'm only the second foreigner
he's ever met. So he rides his motorbike slowly in front of me for
the next hour so he can help me find a cheap hotel, which he does.
While i move in, he goes for a quick prayer then we head off down for
some CFC together. Afterwards, he takes me to a photo shop and gets a
picture of us both together. Instant friend, just add nothing.



12-07-08 198 Kms to Pekalongan.

Cirebon is a pretty big city according to my map, which, to me,
suggests that it would have Mc Donalds. I cant believe the
'McDonalds monster' that i have become but there is only so much rice
a guy can take. There's no doubt that it's shite food but its indeed
the calories that i need right now, and in terms of value for the
rupiah, its stands up pretty well in court. I'd travelled the 60 kms
on one bowl of milo balls or whatever cereal and milk this morning,
so i was really looking forward to sinking my teeth into the fillet
of fish, as it was gonna be. I couldn't find the big M so started
asking locals, who kept sending me back the way i came. So i
ping-ponged up and down this main street 4 times after asking 6
different people, one of who had perfect English. In the end i asked
two policemen in a booth, and finally found out why i was getting the
run-around. There ain't one. I couldn't believe it but i took the
coppa's word for it and got directions to get me back on the main
drag east, thinking fack all those useless bastards that were too
ashamed to tell me their city doesn't even have a Mc Donalds, or fucm
for being too useless to tell the difference between McD's and KFC,
where i kept getting sent to, down one end of the human ping pong
table.

The riding was pretty hard today with the strong cross wind quite
often blowing straight in my face. There were plenty of opportunities
to slipstream slow moving trucks but I'm sure the dust stirred up
from all their tyres and their exhaust fumes had a lot to do with me
getting the sore throat and head-ache in Sumatra. Besides, the road
was quite often lumpy as fack for fairly long stretches, justifying
my decision to nominate this country for the worlds roughest roads.
Interestingly enough, i noticed the last 60 Km had concrete
distance markers all the way, at every 100M. Fack it was tough work
counting down the last 35 Kms with these things every hundy,
especially with the road being as crumbly as it is. I'd much rather
they fixed the road, get it smooth, rather than know how far one is
from Pekanlongan to an accuracy of 100m.


Eman was there to meet me this morning 25 kms into my ride as i
passed through his home town. He gave me a copy of the photo we
walked 50 (500)m to get taken last night, with his contact details on
the back. I still cant understand why this simply doesn't happen with
hot chicks. The curse of religion aye, i'm sure they'd all want a
good hard shagging like natural human beings if they hadn't been
tainted with Islam.

People are still wanting their photo taken with me. One starts the
photo session (with permission) then all the others join in. The
session doesn't usually finish until i move out. Some people don't
even ask. I look across a restaurant or wherever and they pretend to
be texting someone on their mobile, just coincidence that the camera
lens is always pointing my way i suppose.

I couldn't help but notice the amount of rubbish piled upon the
roadside in places. I figure it's proportional to the amount of
traffic on the roads in this country. I'd heard it's pretty hectic in
terms of traffic volume on Java, they weren't wrong, it could almost
be described as a constant stream. But the roadside shite has
definitely got to be put down to the attitude of the people here.

Elke was progressing across Java at her own pace and i was only a
days ride behind her when she joined the main road towards Bali. We
agreed to ride the last few hundred kms to Bali together. She sent me
a rather uncertain text message which i assumed her to be riding
ahead of me. She'd actually been waiting for me all day out the front
of her hotel and the moment she went to the shop for more phone
credit was the moment i must have ridden straight past. Typical. But
we met up later on that afternoon and pushed on to a really small
town that looked really big on my map. Only one hotel, ten times the
price of what we normally pay so we found ourselves sleeping in the
small but adequate 'prayer room' of the local police station that
night. Officer Muhammad Boney running us up to the local restaurant
in a police personnel carrier and refusing to let us pay for our own
dinner. Top bloke that officer Muhammad Boney.

The next day Bali Island finally came into sight. It was close, could
almost swim across to it but a dirt cheap ferry ride did the trick.
We pushed on to Medewi surf beach, which was one of the rockiest
beaches I'd ever seen, the 'beach' only being braved by the keenest
of surfers.

Oh how times had changed, with me exhausting myself in a final
surge to finish my riding in Asia, Elke was certainly spending a lot
of time waiting for a very tired skeletal boy to catch up. I got a
real feeling of what it must have been like for her in the early days
when i was pushing her so hard...

Nothing had changed by my 8th straight day of riding. I
was literally limping into Kuta behind Elke, inspired by the fact
that the riding was almost over for another 12 days and the
excitement was mounting slightly as it got closer to beer o'clock.

We felt pretty cool turning up in a tourist thriving town on
heavily laden touring bikes, but by the time we'd checked into
separate hotels, it was clear that no one gave a fack about 2 plebs
on bikes, you have to have a surfboard under your arm to, not only be
cool here, but just to be here. Arguably the surf capital of the
world? I've never seen so much wax concentrated in one area this much
before. Every second motorbike had a surfboard rack attached aside it
which became something to watch out for while browsing the narrow
crowded streets of Kuta beach. Only uncool people like ourselves ride
bikes here.

Over the next 10 or so days we met up, sat on the beach, watched
some stupid Harecrishner parade fack a perfectly good sunset, drank
beer, and just generally hung out there without surfboards. We did
though make genuine inquiries about getting surf lessons, Elke being
keener than i was as, i thought, without any body fat insulating me,
the water to be bloody freezing there.

I rather embarrassingly put Elke in a black T-shirt with a silver
fern pennant on it and took her into a popular sports bar to watch
the All blacks beat Oz in the rugby, which didn't happen. Me and a
whole bunch of other Kiwis left there not in the highest of spirits.
What really got me pissed off later on that night was a scooter ride
down to Mc Donalds. Full throttle down a narrow street only a couple
of of meters wide with plenty of side streets threatening us with
possible death sites really didn't make me all that happy. I
expressed my fear of dying when the rider let me off outside Mc D's -
yelling at him to never ride like that again with tourists on the
back of his bike, giving him a bit of a tap on the back of his helmet
and walking off deciding he wasn't worthy of the $1 i was meant to
pay him. He retaliated by chasing after me swinging his helmet and
cracking on the forehead. I threated to call the police before
calming myself down with some ice creams. What a bad day.

Kuta seemed to be rife with pub violence, one could count on a pub
brawl almost every second night, some people seeming to join in just
for the hell of it, without any life-threatening motorcycle rides. It
was ugly, not quite the Kuta I'd remembered of 6 years earlier.

Another thing that had changed since i visited here last was
obviously the two Bali bombings. It was great to see the place had
made a full recovery since then, there are certainly more people here
now but it was slightly uncomfortable to sit in a busy bar on the
main street with the thought in the back of my mind, quite often
floating to the front, of the possibility of another bombing. A lot
of the drunk youth seemed immune to the thoughts, which i think is
terrific, they're not letting the party pooper wankers win their
religious based fun-spoiling game.

There was however a memorial monument to remember the lively fun
loving people who had their lives taken from them here, doing just
as i was, but weren't so lucky. Quite an extensive list of names, but
when i think of each one as a tourist, a person just like me, it left
a bit of a lump in my throat. I took a couple of photos then waited
for Elke quite a way down the road. I'd been putting this
hard-hitting visit off for as long as i could and i certainly didn't
enjoy being there.

It wasn't all about bumming around in the bars though, we hired a
bike one day and headed up into the mountains for a few scenic
photos, feeling the temperature drop to shivering conditions with the
altitude.

On cleaning my bike for the plane flight into Darwin, i discovered
a hairline crack in my already replaced rear hub. It was tiny so i
ignored it and hoped it would go away....

I said good-bye to Elke at the airport at midnight which wasn't
easy after being in each others pockets for the best part of 5 months
now and i tried to imagine riding Oz without her behind (or in front
of) me.

Hope to update you all on my Oz adventures soon...
Be good like me.
Graham.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1188236460/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1188236460/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1188236460/tpod.html Mon, 08 Sep 2008 21:46:01 -0400 Getting on my bike outside my front door in West London and seeing how far i can ride. (Not a horse or a motorbike).

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Venice, Italy


]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1214143200/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1214143200/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1214143200/tpod.html Sun, 22 Jun 2008 10:16:33 -0400 Getting on my bike outside my front door in West London and seeing how far i can ride. (Not a horse or a motorbike).

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Batam Island, Indonesia

Hey dudes, today i saw Elke off at the Singapore airport, she's flyin direct to Jakarta to go solo from there.
And me? I went and got a ferry boat to Batam Island, it 'Hangs off the underbelly of Singapore like a leech'. - L Planet.
Tomorrow I'll attempt to get a ferryboat ride to Pekanbaru on Sumatra ( The Big northernmost Island of Indonesia for those of you too lazy to consult your world atlas).

I bhooked my aforementioned ticket from Bali to Darwin on July 30th so if anyone's keen on planning a beer in Bali with me; you can call or text me on the Indonesian number ; 0812 70389121. But i think from overseas you might have to go ; +6210 1270 2538 9121. Try me!

It's my new Indo number for the next 6 weeks (to cover 2700kms and down 2700 beers in Bali).

Rock!!!!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1213385160/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1213385160/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1213385160/tpod.html Sun, 22 Jun 2008 09:55:06 -0400 Getting on my bike outside my front door in West London and seeing how far i can ride. (Not a horse or a motorbike).

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Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia

Hi all,

Sorry about the last 3 blogs being so long and boring, and sorry for this one being just the same. I was gonna try and keep this one a little more brief but then i thought ‛Fack it', I'll do as i please.

Thanks for all the feed back from my last blogs everyone called Froggie. X

I'm now in Koala Lumper getting pretty embarrassed about how long this trip has taken me. I thought i did pretty good, racing across the face of the planet, until i hit S.E. Asia and then took it pretty easy. But now i have only two countries separating me from a massive ‛rideabout' in the big red desert and i can almost smell the kangaroo pies and XXXX from here.

I dunno what happened to my initial plan of having a pint every 1000 kms, if this was the rule I'd have had to have cycled to the moon and back by now, and admittedly, I've poked a few more McDonald's cheeseburgers down my throat than I'm proud of.

So what's it all mean? I've spent shitloads more than i originally intended.

So after finishing a rather leisurely stretch of island hopping on 3 of Thailand's best east coast islands, I've decided to pull finger, and try high tailing it. We did pretty well, getting to KL on daily averages of just over 150kms and because it's a predominantly Muslim country, I've decided to be sensitive to their religious beliefs and go alcohol free here. Oh, and because the beer costs way too much. I think I'll pick the skill up again in Indonesia though.

So i think I'm about to book a flight out of Bali on the 31st of July (into Darwin) to give me time to ride to Singapore, ferry boat to Sumatra, across Java, and maybe a week or two in Bali to have a bit of a relax before the onslaught of around 3000kms towards Brizzy So if any of you lads are keen on a coldie with me on Kuta Beach sometime in the last week or two of July, I'll see you there. You'll be the first person i know that I'll have seen all trip, since i left London all those moons ago.

Elke has been a little champ on her new cycle since Bangkok, but after Singapore, we're going our separate ways. She's done plenty of research on Indonesia, and got the following reply from one cycle tourer pro - suss it;


I've just returned to Bangkok after 2 years living in Indonesia... which
is to say, I've studied the problem, ah, in-depth.

Java? The short answer is that isn't any good paths - the roads being full
of cars, pollution and speed demons.

So in fact, having cycled it once, I'll never do it again....

It's possible the far west of lava is OK... not so many people, but then
that won't get you to Bali.

The only way through is either Jakarta to Surabaya and on to banyuwangi,
or through the center - Jogya etc, but whichever way you go, you're going
to hit BIG TRAFFIC.


Re "alone, female" etc, I wouldn't worry too much in Indo - it's pretty
tame really... and remember, if there's no hotel or losman, just stay in a
brothel - which may sound outrageous to you, but honestly, they're often
the best places - lots of company, often quite cosily decorated, the
girls look after you well and are pleased for the distraction.... I stay
in them in Indo by choice - no joke! and really, believe me, I'm not
talking about the sex; they really are good places, strange as it may
seem.... I must write an article about it all for the site sometime.

OK, let me know if I can help any more... yeah, Indo, it's a trip! :)

Yeeeeehaaaaa, Whorehouses all the way! Do you wanna buy a bike and come join me Whit?

So here's an outline of the last couple of thousand Kms since Bangkok (BTW my odo is now 20 km short of 18,000km, so I'm guesstimating I'll have 25k kms under my belt by the time im all done);


Leaving Bangkok

Again, up to our old tricks, the 4am alarm clock. I'd said to Elke the night before ‶If it's raining at 4am, we're going back to bed (The forecast was for about four or five days of rain), hoping like hell that there was rain. No cigar.

I thought it was a little embarrassing dressed up like ‛Sport Billy' riding past the few stragglers in Siem Reap. This was ‛same same' times twenty. The boozers were still happily chugging down jugs in abundance in most of the hotel pubs we passed on our way to Mc Shat for breakfast.

By the time we stuffed down the debatably delightful Mc Donald's, we'd hit the road by 6 again, just as things were starting to get light.
It took a couple of hours to get the fack out of a city that size, maybe I could have cut that time down if I'd realised a little earlier that a new Ipod mini-speaker I'd put in my handle bar bag was tugging on the north seeking point of my compass needle.

Later...
The skies blackened, the temp plummeted (down to about 27 i reckon). It looked like we were in for an on-board wash so we stopped for lunch at 12 sharp and scoffed down a rice dish and a drink each for $3.

The only sign of rain was that the roads were wet 5 k south of where we had lunch - dodged it all, luck was with us today, apart from the rashy groin i got from my new cycle shorts.

One thing becoming more of a problem is the willingness of dogs to flare up at us again, almost Turkish-like. I was luckily riding not too far behind Elke (She's hard to keep up with now on her gleaming new machine) when one large Doberman looking mutt gave chase and tried chewing on her new waterproof pannier. Elke was cruising along with her ipod on, oblivious to the dogs amusement she'd become. I had to put on the big angry voice and start waving old No7 (golf iron) to make it realise it was being a bad doggy.


13th May

When the alarm went off at 4am this morning i found, to my delight, it was raining outside.″What shall we do″? Asked Elke. ‶Go back to sleep″ We'd had such a shat night sleep that I was hanging out for a few hours more. 2 ½ more i got.
I gave Elke puncture repair lessons today as her new machine suffered from impotency of the front tyre overnight, just to add to the delay.

We had to search the streets high and low for something to eat, plenty of stalls about but not knowing whats available and ordering something in a town where English is scarce.... We found noodle soup, Viet style, just like the old Pho Ba but pho something else as it was with chicken not beef. This left that hungry, unfulfilled sensation in our stomachs so at about 9ish, we explored the shelves of a 7-11. Elke discovered ‛make your own hot dogs' for B22. I sampled one. It was good. I can see these becoming the staple in the next week or so.

Mid afternoon, i saw what I'd been expecting to see for a long time, almost preparing myself mentally for it. A snake sliding out in front of me. I stopped and yelled at Elke to stop, which she did, a good 2 meters short of it. I took photos as traffic rushed by. Each time a vehicle went past it would pull its head back in a sort of evasive ‛side-step'. It was still determined to cross a rather busy road and who am i to argue with Jake. Didn't even make it to the centerline when a motorbike gave him some tail trouble. Dance, gees it could dance, looked to be in considerable pain though. As it limped back to our side of the road we noticed it had a rigid section just behind its head. It curled up under my bike which I'd laid down in my haste to get camera happy. He was just a smally though, under a meter long and surely with the fight taken out of him so i carefully lifted it off him and made off down the road without getting bit.

With all the delays and facking around today we weren't gonna make our 160Km goal so we re-adjusted our destination to this national park, which we even had trouble making to there before dark. Again I'm struggling to keep up with Elke speed demon when we're in a hurry at the end of the day.

We could have dropped into one of seemingly hundreds of beach resorts along the way but they're expensive, and more importantly, Elke's been dying to go camping ever since we met. The weather had been cloudy, no rain all afternoon so conditions seemed favourable...

I got the tent up just on dark, then it started to rain. It was a 3km ride down to a restaurant for food. Glad it was there or we'd have had to live off the land for the night.


14th May

Wow! What another supershat night's sleep last night again. Two people and all our bags jammed in a tent, no fan, a few mosquitoes, only one thermarest (mattress, for those of you who live in a house) and sweltering hot. No opening the zip (door, for those of you who live in a house) as more mozzies would swarm in and eat us alive.

Main event of this fairly boring standard day was Elke getting a flat tyre, right at the worst possible moment. As we rolled off the road into a paddock to fix it, it started to rain which made for a pretty quick inner tube swap and re-inflation time.

The rain was warm enough for me to not bother with my raincoat, yet heavy enough to puddle on the road. One truckie got the stiff finger from Elke the bad-ass biker girl when he drove past with 9 of his 18 wheels creating a tidal wave out of the accumulating water, dowsing Elke totally. Totally funny to watch.

Wearing sunglasses indoors, at night, or when the sun ain't shining hard is deemed ‛trying way too hard to be cool' in my books, so i take mine off. A few minutes later a small (as they are) fly flies (as they do) into the corner of my eye and gets stuck there. It disappears right down the passageway to my nose so i try flushing it down with some of Elke's contact lens solution and blowing it out. No boggie. I pull my bottom eyelid down enough to fold it over my cheek and look to one side while Elke the exploratory surgeon digs the little bastard back out with a cotton bud way too late, he's way dead. No way he was gonna go down the plumbing lines and out my nose, what was i thinking?


15th (Day off) (I'm sore)

We pissed around most of the morning making little adjustments to our bikes and fixing Elke's punctured tubes. I'm on holiday mode so nothing was happening fast today. For example, by the time I'd packed up my tools and looked at the time, it was 4 o'clock.

Last night we'd been casting our eyes across the water to some land on the other side of the bay. There were a couple of places lit up like something was happening there. ‶They must be big holiday resorts‶ I said, speculating that, ‶That must be where all the other tourists are hanging out.″ We rode around the bay and across the bridge to find all the lights were a fishing wharf. Barely interesting enough to snap a photo of but i took one anyway.


16th

We stopped for lunch while one heavy as hell shower lashed away at the thatched roof shelter of the tiny family restaurant in front of a family home. Nasty stuff to get caught in if there wasn't any shelter around. We covered our share of hills today, nothing nasty but slightly more than ‛gently rollimg' hills. I was struggling to keep up with Elke again so by the time the second nasty downpour hit us, we'd taken cover under separate shelters.

I was about to make the most of the stoppage time by snacking on a packet of biscuits but was soon joined by a fat schoolboy on a motorbike. This dude looked like he could really eat so i thought I'd see how many biscuits he'd eat if i kept offering them to him. The experiment was just about to start when a second equally sized school kid rolled in on an identical motorcycle. The raw materials bill just doubled as the brothers, both technology students at the local college, helped me demolish a packet and a half. Almost as amusing as watching Anna-Nichole-Smythe eat a whole pot of ‛Ben & Jerrys″ on a TV host show one time.

We ate dinner with a random German traveler we'd met outside the guesthouses. He'd just come from New Zealand, done a working holiday there, absolutely loved it, (familiar story) worked on the vineyards in Blenheim for the minimum wage of $13.50. Very respectable. Things have changed a lot in the last 5 years since I've been mainly absent from there.

Our plan was to ride to Ranong and cross into Myanmar, for a day or so, just to refresh our Thailand visas, get another 30 days so we don't have to go rushing things. We saw a sign in a travel agent advertising ‛Visa runs' with a private company for 1200B, inquired about it and pretty much booked it on the spot. It included a shuttle bus to Ranong, a ferry ride to a Burmese island resort, a one day Burmese visa, (they're a little funny about handing out visas, especially to much needed foreign aid workers after the May 08 cyclone) and the return trip, leaving at 1PM and returning by 7. This would save us a day of back-tracking as the islands, one of the tourist highlights that we wanted to experience are off the east coast.


17th

The shuttle bus ride was pretty full speed. A full-on race driver behind the wheel had us there in a couple of hours, in plenty of time to catch the ferry to ‛The Anderman Club'. A privately owned Myanmar Island. The immigration formalities on both sides went fairly smoothly and although they simply held on to our passports on the Myanmar side, we received every travelers ultimate trophy, the immigration officer's rubber stamp.

It was kinda weird being there, less than two weeks after the storm that killed (whatever the final death toll is), devastated the country, and astounded the rest of the world by the way the military handled the situation, refusing foreigners permission into the country. Weird in the sense that we were here on this privately owned Island with one of the flashest resort buildings on it that I've ever seen; pool, bars, casino, hotel, restaurants, neatly dressed staff everywhere, and not a blade of grass out of place. There was definitely some back-handers going on here, the heirachy enjoying the finer things in life while the masses wait for a sack of rice to get dropped to them so they can eat.


To Ko Tao Island

The car ferry was the smallest one i ever seen, maybe room for 4 cars or so but not with all the building materials and food supplies that were crammed on. It must have seen better days. They had about 20 beds made up to sleep in inside so we got a few hours kip, the rocking motion of the boat helping me doze off after we were out of the river mouth.

Elke hit it off quite well with Sali, the Spanish girl, she loves talking Spanish at every opportunity. Sali offered us her bungalow floor for the last few hours of the night but when we saw the hammock outside her beach front room, we just decided to sleep, one in that and one on the sandy beach below it. Elke was a little scared of dogs but we had a couple that hung around us and barked their heads off occasionally at the wild dogs that roamed past. One of them taking an early morning bath as it got pushed right into the tide and jumped on by one of our ‛guard dogs'.

By 7 it was light enough to have a bit of activity so we went to a cafe for a good morning shit and some breaky. I then decided it would be a great idea to head out 3km to the other side of the island for accommodation on the basis that it's remoteness would provide great value accommodation, immaculate bungalows at cut-rate prices, the remoteness being no problem for us, having bicycles.

How wrong can a guy get? After scaling an almost vertical hill climb, we had to descend into Ao Laouk Bay down an unsealed dirt drive-way that Elke couldn't even ride down. We turned up in a lather of sweat to find prices starting from B600 to B1500. Couldn't wait to get out of there but it took well over half an hour to back to the top of the hill, only just barely managing to wrestle my bike up in stages, then having to go back down to help Elke with hers.
We got a clean-as room with a shared bathroom for B200 just around the corner from Sali's bungalow, settled in, then took a bottle of Johnie Walker, which we'd bought duty free from Myanmar, and some cold cokes down to the beach.
Shortly after, Sali and her Scottish boyfriend, Graeme turned up. Was a Scottish guy not gonna drink Scotch whiskey? Hell no. That was pretty much us for the day. A series of swimming (piss breaks), talking politics, and talking shit until the sun went down.


19th

When I'd fucked up with my Laos border visa and Elke had decided to return to Hoi An to see me, she'd forfeited a free scuba dive that was part of her ‛learn to dive course'. She'd made inquires about doing a couple of dives last night while i was in a drunken stupor. The boat left at 6:45 for a half days diving. I was in no condition to jump up and out of bed with her to meet this deadline but I'm a man of my word (sometimes) and Elke had voiced her concerns about the whole nervousness of it all and going out on the boat without knowing anyone. I'd said ‶I'll come too and go snorkeling while you're diving″ I'd just managed to get there in time but by the end of the day I had no regrets.

Like white-water-rafting, as soon as your head goes under for the first time, it takes your hang-over with it, and when there's a whole plethora of tropical fish to stare at, as they stare back at you in ‛fish amazement', ‶ooh my head hurts″ doesn't come close to registering as a thought in your head.

The coral was not so colourful but jesus the fish were, something i cant see from my bicycle seat unless things are going horribly wrong. Last time i went snorkeling i was amazed at my buddie's ability to hold his breath and dive down a few meters to get close ups of the sea floor. It was out of the question for me with light asthma and general un-fitness. But the warm water here and the fitness earned from 16,000Kms of pedaling allowed me to keep going deeper and deeper (once I'd got the hang of holding my nose to kill the extreme pressure pain in my ears). I stayed in the water as long as i could, returning to the dive boat by 11am. The water was clear here but there was no way i could see the bottom... unless I dived down, which i did. All the scuba divers were popping up all around with their tanks on their backs. ‛Tanks - smanks' i thought kicking my flippers as hard as i could to get down there. It took a while to get down, and a bit of energy to do so, so i didn't fuck around down there trying to pat fish, pick up coral or urinate in my swim shorts. I pulled a nice smooth U -turn and headed back up for what seemed like eternity, not holding back on velocity at all. The water finally got warmer as i neared the top, puncturing the layer of air above with such vigour that my waist was well out of the water as i sucked in a much needed breath.
I asked one of the dive instructors what the depth was beneath the boat. 15.2M was the answer which surprised the hell out of me, I was thinking 6M or something.

It's the day before the legendary ‛full moon party', some kinda mass piss-up that every other traveler we talk to asks ‶have you been to one″? We gotta hit one up just for the notoriety. We hear that accommodation gets pretty scarce there with the influx of other revelers so decide to use the afternoon to take the ferry x kms south to Ko Phangan. The Tickets are B350 each but the price for a bike is B500.
Fack that i thought. We'll take the wheels off our bikes and carry them on as luggage. It worked well and saved us the money but i seriously had second thoughts about whether it was worth it or not dismantling it in the hot sun, sweating like a mother-fucker while over hearing some fast talking dive instructor chatting up one of his students over a cold beer.

The stress and rush was all for nothing as the ferry was delayed for an hour.

Re-assembly at the other end wasn't any less stressful as the sun was getting lower and lower and we had 10 Km to ride down to the ‛happening' end of the Island. We should have cut the journey in half an hour if the roads was flat all the way. It wasn't. It got that hilly and steep for the last 3 Km that it was almost impossible to just push the bikes up the hill. We persevered and got there in the end.

Before we had a chance to inquire about any such bungalows, some European lady on a motor scooter told us that everything was booked out but she knew a place for B500. We agreed to follow her to check it out. It wasn't ideal for cyclists as we headed , once again up pretty steep unpaved roads with deep drainage crevasses in them. We get to the bottom of a ‛travelator' type thing, a home-made cable car that runs up the side of this mountain, about 200m at roughly 30 degrees, on two steel rails at maybe 1-2 km/hr. Primitive but effective (for 3 people). At the top there's a restaurant, a shack with huge balcony with two hammocks and loads of cushions looks pretty relaxing but no resting yet. This would have been a good training run for Sir Edmond Hillary. Another 50-100m of steps cut into a cliff face and we reach the owners shack. I'm considering my ability to ascend to these heights under these conditions in an almost legless state. Another 50m up from there and we reach the bungalow. Very rudimentary. Corrugated iron roof, gaps between the rafters and top plate, wonky as fuck floor, holes in the mosquito net, two massive 30cm long gecko-lizards and wooden slats where the glass is meant to go in the louver windows. What a shit-hole for 500B. The view was great though so we took it. What seemed like an hour later we had our bikes up at the restaurant, our bags in our room, and the geckos singing in our ears.

We ate dinner at the restaurant overlooking the mystery of what was below us, the lights and sounds of a small town that goes absolutely bonkas once a month.

We could see the fire stick-twirlers and the crowds start to gather on the beach, maybe rehearsing for the biggy tomorrow night. We were in need of an early night and slept through most of the doof doof music that was substantially loud despite being a good kilometer away.



20th

We browsed the streets and found a bar to get comfortable in, the Outback Bar. A bit of BBC on the big screen, a couple of feeds, a movie, then it was time to go mountaineering (home) again as we still had a couple of bottles of duty free to deal to.

We showered and went to get dressed which was when i discovered how long it had been since I'd organized any sort of washing. It was a case of wearing the least smelliest shirt out tonight. Hopefully everyone will be too off their head to even notice, including myself.

Swinging in the hammock slung between the poles supporting one end of our shack, we dealt to half a bottle of scotch and washed it down with plenty of Coke while we discussed the world and all its problems.

By 9 we were descending down the mountain at a breakneck 1 Mph on the cable car platform. The doof doof music growing in volume as we neared it. We got all night to listen to that sort of shit music so we headed to the only bar in town with live music. It was fabulous. Everyone was dancing on the bar, tables, chairs, and a few sensibles (us) on the floor. I explained to Elke about the Kiwi / Ozzy bars i used to frequent back in London. They'd have such a party atmosphere happening inside that, it didn't matter how many ‛primers' you'd drink at home or on the bus on the way there. Once you walk in the door and hit the wall of energy being exerted by the party goers, you'd feel instantly sober. The same thing happened here, but hearing covers of ‛Crazy Train' and ‛Run To The Hills' got me into the swing of things pretty bloody quickly.

The band must have wound up at about 1am and everyone had pretty much the same idea - down to the beach where the ‛Full moon party' was happening.
People were everywhere. The guidebook states that 8,000 people turn up to one of these in the off-season (now) and around 30,000 in peak season. The beach was packed so i found it hard to imagine that this was running at roughly 35% capacity. If i couldn't have found amazement in the shear masses of people, then the sound systems were quite something else. About 10 different parties all happening on the one beach, most of them jammed in the southern corner. I figured it would be a mish-mash of sounds with all these piles of speakers interfering with each other. It wasn't the case. Stepping a couple of meters to one side would switch channels so definitively.

It was great to see everyone having a good time, dancing away, pilling off their heads but thats not really my scene so i found couple of square meters of spare sand between the crowds of ballistic legs and got to work on a sandcastle. Those that weren't pilling were buying ‛buckets'. Kids little plastic beach buckets with a handle, full of crushed ice. They'd come with a variety of fillings such as vodka & red bull, whiskey & coke, tequila & whatever etc... I managed to secure a leftover one and form a base layer of 16 castles with it. Quite a few others joined the construction team, mainly English i think, as they sat around talking, not doing much work. Things were interrupted on the second layer as someone stole our bucket and it took a while for a replacement one of a similar casting to be located and transported on site. It seemed to take hours for completion and as soon as we got the flag (an inverted empty plastic water bottle) (usually dead expensive in London nightclubs, but evidence that ecstasy was being taken in abundance) implanted on top, a stupid English 16 year old came and kicked it in. I guess she was showing off to her two friends so when i went to have a word, the ‛impress your friends' game continued. My hair band got ripped off and thrown to her mates and a game of ‛Piggy in the middle' quickly ensued until Elke came to my rescue and wrestled it off one of them while i subdued another one, asking why they felt the need to go around annoying people rather than helping them have a good time. They went a few meters away, regrouped. I thought they were really gonna be spoilt little English bitches and get a whole group of guys to beat the crap out of me but instead they came up and apologized for their behavior.

Maybe they'd learned something tonight and were gonna dedicate the rest of their life to making others happy. Ahhh.

An hour or two later the sky was starting to turn from black to dark blue then just got paler and paler so we started heading home, weaving our way through the masses of pogo-ing bodies when someone grabbed Elke by the arm. It was Jill the Scott (again). She was supposed to be in Laos somewhere but had met up with a whole bunch of Israelites and started following them around. She didn't stop dancing while her and Elke talked and i didn't want her to think i was too cool to dance (even though i am) (way too much so) so i eased into the rhythm of things too. It was more of a constant stumble-and-recover cycle than dancing but i think i bluffed my way through it for half an hour or so until it was time to vacate the beach.

It was well light by the time we were back up in the hills looking down on the carnage that remained below. The music was still full-noise but the numbers had dwindled. I ignored the lot as soon as my head hit the pillow.

As soon as all the hype of the full moon party was over and people left the island, the bungalow prices plummeted so we made the most of it and landed a luxurious little pad down near the beach, 2 mins walk to town - no hills. Sweet.

The remaining days we spent on the Island were a real holiday. Lying on the beach, a few beers at night, and a sleep in each morning. We hired a motor scooter one day to go exploring the island, the gradients of some of the roads were even too great for the bike to reach he top with two people on. Elke did a little bit of up hill walking.

We'd also bumped into a Chilean guy called Roberto. We'd met him in Si Phan Don, again in Siam Reap, so this is the third random meeting we've had with him i a third country. We'd last spotted him in a bar in Siam reap, on a date he was with a girl from New York. The date had gone really really well, so well in fact that he'd started following her all around the region, with a chronic case of what we refer to as ‛cock-steer'. We arranged to catch up with him later on that night and had a beer or two over dinner.

All this salt water was starting to make my hair go manky. Put a comb through it? Yeah right. Elke somehow talked me into a trip to the hairdressers. She couldn't even put a comb through it after giving it a damn good shampooing. ‶Sorry″ i said as her comb got snagged in it and she looked at me helplessly. She cut off a little more than i asked for but shit she did a good job. I was thinking how lucky i am that i kinda sorta need this chop in Asia where my hair's compatible with their styling techniques. I imagined sitting down in a barbers chair in Africa and having them wondering what to do with a skull without any fuzz on it.
Jesus she got it silky smooth though. My sunglasses and hairband just kept sliding right off for the next few days until it became manky again.

On the 26th we'd decided we'd worn this island pretty thin. We'd previously had quotes to get our bikes across on the ferry to Ko Samui for 50B extra, which i thought was ok compared to the hassle we went through of dismantling our bikes in the hot sun on the last ferry trip. Elke had a moan at the fat guy, which is usually my job, to try and get them on for free. It worked. We just bought two tickets, no one mentioned the bikes and we wheeled them on without any one saying anything. Victory.


Ko Samui Island

We got off the ferry and rode around the northern tip of the Island. Elke had researched accommodation on this Island and wanted to find somewhere quiet and close to a beach. Lamai came up as the favorite on the list. It was hard for me riding through Chaewang, which appeared to be where all the action was, Geezers sporting white sports shoes and bad sunburn everywhere. This place was just generally busy, it even had a cheap imitation ‛Walkabout' pub in it which i later found out wasn't so cheap. It's somehow satisfying asking the price of a beer and turning my back on them and walking out shaking my head without saying anything when they're blatantly over-charging.

Onwards to Lamai Beach, a little more expensive than Ko Phangan but we found a beach side shack, slightly better in quality than the one up the hill on Ko Phangan but half a stones throw from a sweet ass beach.

As we'd discovered on our way to Lamai, this Island had it's share of hills also, so motor scooter exploration was a full days adventure on this one. It had rained pretty heavily the night before so some of the remote roads were a little boggy. I got stuck and covered the bike in mud while spinning the back wheel trying to get out. Damn, that'll have to get cleaned before it goes back. Some dude in a truck yard saw me outside filling a beer bottle up with water from a puddle and waved me over saying ‛free clean'. Thats what i love about the Thai people, they're genuinely friendly and helpful. Scabby Vietnamese would have definitely had their hand out here.

The lookout points were not so shit-hot on this island but there was definitely that sense or satisfaction of climbing rapidly up the steepest of hills with just the twist of a throttle.

We had a few beers in a bar one night and got yakking to an American couple who had just arrived from Ko Phangan. They had also hired a motorcycle there but had been pulled over by a random police check point, unfortunately ol' mate had a joint in his rear pocket. He spent the night in the slammer but reckons he came out of it all laughing as he wasn't in jail and is now free to go and earn back the fine. ‶how much was the fine″? We asked. US$2,000. Yeah laughing! He wasn't so happy when telling us about having to cut Australia out of his travel plan though.

One thing that was becoming a major problem for me was the blisters I'd received on both of my second toes, from the flippers i wore while snorkeling (very deep). I knew they were irritating me at the time but i was having way too much fun seeing fishies seeing me. These blisters had become infected and weren't looking too good at all. A pool of puss sat in a gaping hole that had opened up. A trip to the pharmacy for some detol and fusidic acid cream seems to be halting the advancement of the holes.


01 June

The alarm must have gone off a couple of times and been put on snooze by Elke because i didn't stir ‛till the 4:20 re-run of ‛di di da diiiiiiit'.

It was only just getting light by the time we headed up the road for a couple of hot dogs from 7-11. There was an absolute European bum sitting outside, maybe not much older than i am, swigging on a bottle of beer. He'd obviously been drinking the whole night through and didn't want to stop when all the bars had, so, just buy the cheapest beer in town and drink it right outside the door. Some people have high hopes in life. I looked at him and his mullet and wondered what had reduced him to this embarrassment to travelers and i wondered what he thought of us, ‛what the fuck could they possibly be up to'?

It was nice and light when we reached the ferry terminal at 6:30. Just in time to buy the tickets and get on. Almost the last ones on, by the time we'd tied them up to a pole, the drawbridge was up and the ferry was reversing out. The scenery was quite tranquil as we sailed past a whole host of protected islands across flat water but we were more interested in the inside of our eyelids.

We awoke far too soon to the sound of the (assumably) massive marine diesel engines easing to an idle as we approached the mainland once again.

The riding was good in the early stages, we hummed through jungle, farms orchards, coconut palm plantations all in the first hour.

About 10 kms from Nakhon Si Thammarat i noticed no Elke behind me. There were massive thunder claps and lightening up ahead so i pedaled on a bit till i found a shelter to wait for her. 5 or so minutes later i was turning back to look for her. I'd only just started riding when she turned up on the back of a ute waving away like Queen Elizabeth on parade. Flat tyre. Some nice ladies had seen her pushing her bike and taken pity on her. Id been teaching her to fix punctures lately but she hadn't done one from start to finish herself, so... this was the test, I supplied the puncture repair kit and said ‶I'm gonna start eating this packet of fruit Mentos, you can have whatever is left over when your ready to go again. She got 3.

We rode another 10 mins when those thunder clouds delivered their promised goods. We sheltered for close to an hour before i wrapped my shoes up in plastic bags once again, to bear the remaining half hour of light rain.

What a cock i was, not only looking ridiculous, this facking town is supposed to be (i got the idea from someone) 7 Km long but only 300m wide. I decided we couldn't miss the hotels we wanted to find so dissed Elke's claims of seeing signs to the train station (just around the corner from our hotel) and took her the whole 7 Km to the souther end. Yep, she was pretty unimpressed with that effort, another 7 Km back to the northern end and she was almost too tired to choose a hotel room.


2nd July

Bit of a shit night's sleep last night. Elke woke up with a headache which i didn't have any Panadol for. ‶Drink heaps of water babe, you're dehydrated″ i said as i rolled over ad went back to sleep. We'd had a 1.5l bottle of water each beside our bed before we went to sleep that night. I awoke to the sound of Elke heaving up in the toilet. Thirstily, i fumbled around for my bottle of H2O. Gone. ‶You ok Elke″? ‶No″. ‶Have you eaten some dodgy food or somethin'″? ‶No, Bluuuuuurrrrrgh! Wuuuuuuur! Its just water coming out″. That explained the thief in the night, she'd drank her whole bottle of water and half of mine. Now every body can relate to the humour concerning the bodies inability to digest corn. Funnily enough that was exactly the last thing she had to eat last night so it was a sign that nearly all the water was out. I went on to explain that the body only has the capacity to process so much water at once, the rest just gets passed straight through (or back out, as in this case) multiple frequent small sips rather than binge drinking of water. We only had an indicated 99km ride on our hands today so when the alarm went off, we endured another 2 hours of alarm beeps ‛till somethin' past 6.

A slight short-cut had us briefly getting lost out on a back-road, through the smallest of villages, a cosy little railway town, one of those places you could swear you're within one of the first 100 whities to ever pass through. Even the narrow country lanes were impressive smooth works of tree canopy enclosed shade. Getting lost - try it sometime.

Dinner tonight wasn't cheap. We'd stumbled across a steak restaurant serving NZ beef and had to have some. We were toying with the idea of crossing the border tomorrow into Malaysia and still had around B600, so for the first time in ages, we got the sensation of having ‛money to burn'. We didn't go bankrupt though, when we ordered a second dish and it still hadn't showed up after 45 minutes (the first round came in 10 minutes), we paid the bill and left, dumbfounded that they'd either forgotten about it or didn't say anything about it when we left.


3rd. Into Malaysia.

Elke, bless my little researcher, had found a travel warning of her ‛Rough Guide' regarding South Eastern Thailand. Many of the provinces there are subject to violence and had fallen into ‛Martial Law' (whatever that means - it was tempting to go there just to find out). Therefor many governments have issued travel warnings advising their citizens to stay away from these areas. This usually means that my travel insurance doesn't cover me here, as was the case in Georgia, Azerbaijan and Iran (Bollocks to the rules). But in this case it's easy enough to go around, so we turned off the main drag (Highway 4) at Rattaphum and took the 406 down towards Satun. Violent cants, go get facked, you're not taking me and Elke today!

The Yank we'd met in the outback bar in Ko Samui had explained what all the trouble was over. Muslims. They want an independent state, from the southern tip of Thailand all the way up to the ‛8 km zone', the skinniest part of Thailand. Wow. I'd heard people say before that ‛they are the most intolerant people of all the religions'. I blame all religion for differentiating mankind.

And as we got further south, Islam was clearly in our face. Mosques, head scarfs on the women and prayer caps on some of the men. They're nice people here though, as we head into territory not frequented by approachable travelers, everyone had a smile and a wave for us. Warming.

We ‛d decided to get to a turn-off 16 km before Satun and make a decision whether to ride through Thale Ban National park which has a border crossing with Malaysia, or head just past Satun, and catch a ferry around the land and into Kuala Perlis, Malaysia. We had plenty of time on our hands, hitting the decision point at 1 pm, so decided to go see a whole array of wildlife that live there, such as Tapirs, Malayan Sun Bears, Clouded Leopards, Barking Tree Frogs and a variety of butterflies ‛as described in the brochure'. We saw a few butterflies, heard what we thought was the barking tree frogs and if a Tapir is a giant lizard,then we saw a couple of those too, no leopards or bears to incite a bit of defensive golf club swinging thankfully.

The border crossing went without a hitch, it was a bit untidy on the Thailand side, 100m worth of street stalls with shit laying everywhere, not such a great first impression for travelers crossing the other way. That don't concern us, ‛we're outta there'.

We told the Malaysian border official that we were planning on riding another 45 Km to Kangar. ‶Very far″ he says ‶no (fucking) problem″ i say. ‶Oh, but the mountains″ he says. I'm thinking he's having a laugh, pulling me pud, until we hit the hill, and she's a beauty too. Not too big though, maybe a half hour hard-out slog.

Before the hill, I'd led us both a couple of kilometers down a dead-end path. I blame it on the new map. The ‛Rough Guide'. The cover of it rates itself pretty highly, nicely self promoted. Someone needs to point out to these pricks that a large scale map doesn't mean you should get a small one and simply enlarge it, leaving it mainly detail-less. The nightmare begins when one starts using it for its sole intended purpose, to guide you. Rough.

This hill was so steep that, going down the other side, i hit a new personal speed record of 82.1 km/hr. Fast man!

We then proceeded into Kangar and for the first time since somewhere in Cambodia we had to track down a hotel to stay in without a guide-book to lead us there. No worries for seasoned travelers such as us.


04-06-08 147 Kms to Georgetown.

The plan for today was to do a nice 120 odd kms to a city called Sungai Petani and see how we feel there. Our bodies are now aching after 3 days riding following 2 weeks of blobbing out like useless people.

Elke wasn't feeling all that good by the time we got there but i announced that we should push on anyway. What a bossy bastard. I figured it would save us finding a cheap hotel in a city (without a mention in a guide book) again, getting up and riding the remaining 35km in the morning. Lump it out in one big haul is my mentality.

By the time we'd popped out of the other side of the city we only had 29 kms left to cover and that time just came and went. Occupying our minds was the abundance of traffic here. These west coast roads seem really busy and the constant sound of traffic in our ears makes me look real forward to finding a lesser road to ride somewhere.

The cars remind me of home. Plenty of boy racer type set-ups, cheap cars with mags and spoiler kits. Neat.

So we've finally limped into Butterworth, the port town for Georgetown and are following the road signs to the ferry terminal when we get to an over-pass clearly labeled ‛no bicycles'. We aborted at the last minute and rode up on the footpath, looking dumbfounded for a couple of minutes when an Indian looking guy with a really weather-beaten looking face on a motorcycle stopped at a red light and asked us what we were up to. We explained and pointed to the sign. ‶Follow me″ he said, ‶I am staff″. When the light turned green, we followed in hot pursuit, across car parks, under bridges, over railway lines, through gaps in steel barriers, the good ol' staff entrance! He pointed to an office and said ‶tickets there″.We'd popped out in front of the car and motorcycle we, right by the draw-bridge for rolling on and off the boat. Sweet! We were counting our blessings wondering what we'd have done if ol' mate hadn't come along and rescued us when the ticket bloke says 140 Ringotts (RM) please. Fick me! Thats 5 times more than we paid for our first nights accommodation in Malaysia! We stared at each other dumbfounded, then asked where is the ferry thats only RM0.60? ‶Aaah this both way he said, 1 Ringot and 40 sen please″. Laughter as we realised our mistake. How could we think it was 100 times the going rate? Maybe the heat, the exhaustion, tiredness had fried our brains.

We headed towards the cheap backpacker accommodation and were about to check out our first LP recommended guest house when some dude came and handed a card describing ‛SD Guesthouse' just a little further down the road. ‛Free wifi and internet and safe place for your bikes' he stammered out in his sales pitch. Normally i ignore these ‛pricks' but this sounded good and was close so no harm in checking it out i thought.

Upon inspection, i found it was pretty average so we sat outside trying to decide which one to inspect next. The LP didn't really have rate any of the others as superstars. I was facked, feeling a bit faint and couldn't be assed with anymore inspections, so we moved in.

While walking the streets at night, sussing out possible places to have a scoff, i saw the silhouette of someone in flip-flops and board shorts, another traveler i assumed, approaching us from the other direction. I thought nothing and looked away until i heard him and Elke erupt into excited greeting exchanges, it was Roberto. Again. We just keep running into this guy randomly, four different countries now. Wowee man!


5th & 6th Georgetown.

I could have done with a few more hours sleep but we got up at about 10 to go do some sight seeing, after a delicious brunch in an Indian restaurant. They placed these huge washed banana tree leaves down on the table in front of us and just spooned the food out of the various stainless steel buckets onto the leaves, which we ate off. Unique.

The sightseeing was going fairly ok. We'd whistled our way through 4 of the 6 sights we'd selected, gave the fifth one the arse as it had an entry fee and was just a Chinese temple which, I've seen enough of in Asia already.

On the way to the final point of interest we passed a bike shop so turned around and went in. It was well set up and had everything. The European accessories were quite pricey so i stuck to the cheap Asian imitations. 4 new brake shoes, some gel pads and handle bar tape while Elke splashed out on a puncture repair kit and tool kit. She'd previously been using mine while learning to fix a flattie, now she'd be independent.

I'd changed my brake shoes in the hot sun outside so got hot and bothered, not really in much of a mood to see the last landmark or whatever it was that i missed out on so we headed home but got lost but found the massive shopping mall, with McDonald's Sweet, ice-creams and a couple of hours of air conditioning.

I'd initially planned on avoiding the west coast of Malaysia because of the monsoon season here, but Elke, research-master-second-to-none, had found that someone had written on the internet ‛you can almost put your clock on the monsoon rains here, usually between 4 and 5 pm each day. Luckily for us, they've been a little later than that and we find it quite refreshing walking the streets in the rain, umbrellaless, looking for some tasty street food for dinner.

We call into the 7/11 on the way home but unfortunately they don't sell hot dogs in them in this country. Boo hoo.

When the alarm went off the following morning at 5am, we both decided we could do with another days rest so turned it off and went back to sleep. When we did finally wake up, we had a pretty relaxed day; food, emails, route planning, snoozing, and more food, second time around was back at the ‛nice' Indian restaurant in a suburb called Little India. This time i noticed the sign; ‛No Spitting', which bought back all the horrible memories of a nation covered in blotches of that red slobber. The worst bit was the bill, they'd chucked some things on the table which we didn't order, then charged us for it. Elke noticed a couple of things that were priced higher than on the menu so we had waiter boy up about it. And apparently the extra stuff is ‛just what they do', and the menu; ‶we have new prices, that is old menu″. I didn't even need that to remind me about the deceptive way scum-of-the-earth Indians operate. I hope i can stop saying bad things about those cants one day. But i doubt it.


7th .

Big day this one, off to a good start, me and Elke sitting outside the 7/11 in the dark, munching away on cereal and drinking yoghurt's while Elke's throwing down some magie pot noodles.

We got the ferry back across without anyone even checking our tickets while we gazed at the vehicular route; a 13 Km long, 200 m high bridge linking the Island, Palau Pinang, with the mainland.

A couple of hours later we'd burnt up all the calories cereal, yoghurt and noodles had to offer so we stopped in at a roadside restaurant and ordered up a delicious as hell, cheap as hell meal and chatted to a young brother and sister duo running the joint. I'm guessing that being between two towns, they just don't get foreigners too often, if, at all. They both had perfectly good English so we had to answer all sorts of questions, especially ones on funding our ‛vacation'. And why i wasn't married just yet, the cheeky buggar reckons I'll be a 60 year old man walking my 3 year old daughter to school. I replied with the good ol' ‶No worries, no hurry″.He had a Man-U shirt on so i had to congratulate him on their league trophy victory last season and warn him that Everton will kick their ass next year.

We got to Taiping and it started to rain. That was it, on with the plastic bag over-shoes. The rain didn't really ease up all day, and in parts got alarmingly heavy. All the motorcyclists were taking cover in the somewhat rural bus shelters, not us, on with the show.

We found where the Malaysian Army trains its cadets, passing hundreds of them wearing dark blue combat gear and big black boots, holding guns, marching along roadside and deep in the palm plantations. What can you do with a whole bunch of 18 year old boys holding guns? Nothing but smile and wave and give them a few hellos while passing by, hoping none of them are suffering from mental illness. Elke ended up saying exactly what i was thinking; ‶Graham, i don't feel comfortable riding past all these young boys holding weapons, what if one of them is in a really bad mood?″ We passed the last bunch of them who were waiting in a bus shelter and the guy on the end of the line was the one who wiped the smile off my face, pointing his gun at us in a rather threatening manner. What a cant.

Elke could have done with a couple of those big black boots though. She went for a squat in between the palms, wading through the long grass, and came out with a couple of leeches on her. One she found immediately and pulled off, the other she found 15 mins later when we stopped for a snack in a bus shelter. She managed to pull it off and chuck it on th concrete floor. It was a lot bigger than the last one.... until i stood on it and a whole pool of Elke blood spilled out. Resilient little fukkar though, he crawled away, original size, like nothing had happened.

We found a KFC near our hotel tonight. I usually hate the shit but it was gonna save us trying to order something in a local restaurant with the language barrier thing happening so we headed on in. While eating i realised i had my ‛KFC' shirt on, A picture of two chickens standing in front of a bill-board of the Colonel with the big chicken saying to the little chicken ‶So he's the one who killed your dad?' I asked Elke to take a photo of me with the KFC counter in the background. I turned on digital camera No 4 (for the tour), and nothing came up on the LCD. Hmmm, this seemed familiar, a very similar problem to my last Olympus that i bought in India. I think after i bought this one, i justified my purchase of a second Olympus by saying something like ‶what are the chances of it happening to two Olympus's in a row?″ Well now i feel kinda stupid. It must be a common fault with the Olympus brand. Oh well, no use crying over split beer, i should be able to pick up camera No 5 in Kuala Lumpur.


8th June

It was a struggle to get out of bed this morning, and after all that effort, we get downstairs to find it still raining and Elke's bike has yet another flat tyre. She's susceptible to to them because the rubber on her tyres are so thin. When i lift up one of her wheels it seems to weigh half he weight of one of mine.

After KFC again for breakfast, we're riding along in the light rain and a good ol' headwind comes out to meets us keeping our efforts to under 20Km/hr. Should we have stayed in bed today? The traffic got busier and the road got boring, across vast rice paddy fields, nothing to see, going nowhere fast.

Things did improve in the afternoon though, the rain stopped and the road grew into 4 lanes to cope with the ‛helluva flow of traffic', a massive percentage of which seems to be boy racers. Very high fashion here to have a black bonnet, no matter what colour the rest of the car, & maybe a matching colour coded spoiler kit. I'm wondering if they've got the trend from those fast & furious movies or something, and also whether its hit a note with all the young dudes back home.

By the days end the wind had swung around and was pushing us along a little, and it did indeed seem a good idea to head out this morning despite the signs telling us otherwise, and with a fairly boring 145 Kms behind us, it felt good in the knowledge that Kuala Lumpur is only 70 something kilometers away. Sleep in tomorrow!

Reaching destination this early allowed for an excellent siesta on a big soft comfy bed. We woke up just in time to go out and get some dinner, 9pm on a Sunday night.


9th Into Kuala Lumpur.

We got out of bed when we woke up, - no alarm - it was blissful, alas, we got up at 8ish anyway. Half the reason we were so keen to get out of bed was the knowledge that we only had a short ride ahead of us today.

Leaving the coastline road (of which never once gave us even a glimpse of the water) we encountered hills inland which we quickly demolished with our enthusiasm for K.L.

My map has the city absolutely riddled with double blue lines which indicates expressways everywhere. We chose about the only way in according to the single red lines. The road got bigger than i ever imagined it would, we may as well have been on the expressway, going by these these 3 lanes of speeding traffic roaring past us. It took us along a massive overpass a good km - plus long. I was so worried about the ‛motorway traffic' i put my helmet on for the first time since somewhere in India.

Between the speeding trucks and boy racers, i managed to get the odd glimpse across the urban crawl to the central city and could quite distinctly see the Petronas Towers and communications tower in the distance, and the excitement mounted.

I'd recently been thinking i had puncture proof tyres, the new ‛clowns tyres I'd bought in Bangkok were heavier than my old touring tyres, mainly due to the thickness of them, and not having a single puncture since, led me to believe this.... Until we'd just got off the overpass. A hunk of something so big went in that all my air rushed out within 6 or so tyre revolutions, no warning. Could have been dangerous, could have happened half a k earlier, leaving me to either fix it or push it on a 300mm strip between the white line and the concrete barrier. So I'm comparatively happy about it.

The combination of a 1:800,00 scale road map and my guidebook's sketchy inner city map got us to where we wanted to live for a while without any wrong turns at all, great success!

There was time to get in a bit of sightseeing / city exploring due to our fairly early arrival time, but not much point in it if you ain't got a camera to remember it, and share your experiences with others. So after we made a fairly bad decision of checking into a rather cramped guest house, we got directions to a massive shopping plaza, camera shops galore, all i had to do was decide which one i wanted, then go round and get the best price, which is exactly what i did. It was fucking hard work leaving those Olympus's alone though, they appeared to be by far the best value, as in cheapest for the degree of specifications, but maybe their price reflects their quality. To keep a 5 x optical zoom with 8 Megapixlels, i had to go Pentax, no AA battery jobs here, rechargeable lithium ion job, with separate charger and lead, the exact reason i sent my first camera home. Oh well, I'm learning. Bon voyage camera #5.


Kuala Lumpur.

We both woke up this morning a bit grumpy, 100% due to a crap nights sleep. Our guide book had stated that quality budget accommodation is hard to get in KL, they're not making that up. What seemed the best value for RM60 was in a guest house that had been running for 3 days. With expectations of spick, sparkling newness we actually got the smell of new paint, a plastered bathroom wall - no tiles (yet), plumbing and wiring that had been done by the fat useless cant sitting behind the reception counter, and the ‛slap it together quick so we can take money off tourists' theme had been carried out in the walls too. No ceiling under the floor above us so just stop the walls at the underside of the joists and leave a big gap for all the noise from reception area to head straight on in. Oh yeah, and we got tiny little hand towels for bath towels. Cowboys to the hotel industry.

We moved out the next morning, fuck that eh bro. Settled into one for RM85, bit of a budget breaker, especially seeing as it has no TV and a walk past reception gets us to a shared bathroom. Otherwise, it's flash as hell, plenty of room to swing dead cats. Elke was emotionally attached to it and insisted she'd ‛shout it'.

So hotel and camera sorted, i circled a few things on a map that I'd worked out I'd like to see, and with Elke as my tour guide (she's been here before too) we made short work of it, returning home before dark as the skies were threatening us all afternoon. Not the most colourful photos to be taken on my new camera but it encapsulated the menacing monsoon clouds we've come to deal with most days.

The highlight of our second days sight seeing was a trip up to the viewing platform of the Telecom Tower, maybe not quite the right time to go, after dark, but after i worked out how to adjust the Iso settings on my new camera, i got a few good pics looking down on even the tallest surrounding skyscrapers, until my battery went flat. It was enjoyable putting my camera away and just gazing out at the expanse of amber street lights fading off into the distance in all directions. It got me thinking how man, of all mammals has made his massive mark on the face of the earth, and whether we'll ever stop. Will all this one day be overgrown to be rediscovered like early European explorers did at the temples of Siam Reap, and Macchu Pichu? I looked out and wondered things like ‛there must be millions living down there, and thousands of cities of this magnitude around the world, wow, human beings man!' And looking down on the place from almost a birds eye view, i thought ‛out there somewhere, statistically speaking, there must be some serious crime going down'. I pondered for a minute as to what percentage of the population is into that sort of thing and was about to go down the track of ‛the necessity to weed the crims' out and contain them, separate from the rest of us, to allow us to live without them pissing us off when Elke snapped me out of it. I could have sat in an inspirational place like that all night and thought about modern civilization. What is it with altitude provoking thought anyway?

The next day also had a rather spectacular, although similar sightseeing highlight, the skybridge, 41 floors up, linking the two twin ‛Petronas Towers'.

Although we were only half way up, we were still looking down on all the surrounding buildings, bar the Telecom Tower. Blue skies with light whispy white clouds made for a lot better photos than what I'd have got hitting this one at night.

We decided to apply for a 60 day visa for Indonesia while here, not because either of us intends to stay quite that long, it'll just take the rush out of things and save us having to do a ‛visa run' to another country and back, which will easily cost more than the US$55 we paid for them, as would paying a fine, and would certainly beat possible imprisonment from overstaying. So we rock on up to the Indonesian embassy, park our bikes and i get told I'm not allowed in because I'm wearing jandals. ‛That's no way to impress potential visitors to your country' i thought as i waited in the hot sun outside with all the other blokes wearing jandals, for Elke to go in with my passport and do all the paper work. Anyways, a day later we had our 60 day visas in our well traveled passports, not a lot of spare pages in mine now.

Yeah, the authorities are pretty tough in this next bit of planet. Elke bought herself a guidebook for Indonesia and read out an extract to me, stating that ‛recently various groups of Australians had been given 20 year sentences for drug trafficking, and they were the lucky ones, the accomplices. ‛Those found with the contraband strapped to themselves in the airport got sentenced to death by firing squad'. Hmmm, not much of a holiday that one, all that sand, surf and sun there to be enjoyed, and they have to dress up with a bag over their heads and wait until the lights go out. Fun times.

Elke's starting to make plans to continue riding on her own after i go my separate way in Indonesia, she's a brave girl, bound to do well. So she's spending a lot of time down the road on the internet, organising flights and routes, while i sit in our hotel room, logged onto some nearby cafe's wifi for free, doing pretty much the same thing, trying to guess at my length of travel in Indo, and book a flight out at the other end, as part of the requirements for entry to the country. The price ranges are quite incredible for the 2-3 hour flight from Bali into Darwin, none of the low cost carriers doing the flight directly, and wanting to more or less charge per kilogram for the luggage - not really a cycle tourists dream. Garuda seem to do the trick for AU$330, but other than that, the rest of the quotes start at around $900. Where's the justification?

Hmmm the luxurious guest house hasn't turned out much quieter than the other brand spanking new shithole. The Cafe two doors down comes nightclub by night, and with the Euro ‛08 finals on TV each night the fans un-contained excitement either wakes me up or keeps me awake until the very late early hours. Ahhh, its all in the name of the worlds greatest sport though.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1210326120/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1210326120/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1210326120/tpod.html Fri, 09 May 2008 05:45:12 -0400 Getting on my bike outside my front door in West London and seeing how far i can ride. (Not a horse or a motorbike).

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Bangkok, Thailand

27-04-08 162 Kms to Aranya Prathet
Weird as hell waking up and going for breakfast this morning. We headed into a 24hr cafe right in the thick of the nightlife scene at 5am. Bikes fully loaded, dressed like cycle pros (sort of). There were some pissed up freaks on their way home, some still in the bars, and some coming into the cafe. It was quite a relief that none of them came and talked to us in a drunken stupor, I don¡¯t think I could have handled it all that well at that hour of the morning.
We had a fair idea from Elke¡¯s research, and speaking to others, that the road to the border was a little rough. I laughed, it was perfect up to the turn off for the airport then fifty meters later, it became narrow and cruddy. Later on, it got worse, turned to dusty compact clay, quite lumpy. We were just starting to get miserable when an old Chinaman cheered us up.
He was riding the other way on one of those compact fold-in-half bikes with about 16¡å wheels. He had all the gear though, including a dynamo in the front hub to power his GPS. He was about 60 and only spoke a few words of English but had these ‛business¡¯ size cards printed up with his details, trip outline, and general friendly attitude written all in English. A true Chinese legend. He took photos and videos of us while trucks and taxis roared past stirring up dust, and even gave Elke a hair clip. Sweet! We¡¯ve never seen anything ‛made in China¡¯ before. The gesture along with his constant smile was all gold though.

We had lunch at the 2/3rds mark in Sisaphon where the road became like glass. A sheet of near new glistening tar-mac. Soon after we stopped to talk to a couple of German retirees cycling the other way. We were way overdue to meet some more cyclists so 3 in 1 day was a nice compensation.
While having a quick rest on the side of the road i spied a snake in the dry brown grass. I¡¯d seen heaps of ‛baby¡¯ sized snakes squashed on the road before but this one was well over a meter long. Who¡¯s gonna provoke it now that Steve Irwin¡¯s not around? Yep, I am. I grabbed my camera out of my bag but taking my eyes off the snake was the last i saw of it. No photo, no ‛crocodile man¡¯ impersonations. I probably shouldn¡¯t have been down there anyway as Elke pointed out, there¡¯s still loads of uncleared mine fields around this country.
The glassy road lasted about 30Km then it was back to the clay. ‶We could do with some rain to keep the dust down¡å commented Elke. Within the hour the skies were growing dark and lightening was flashing not so far away. A little water is nice, but there were plenty of stretches still slippery as hell from yesterdays rain (It¡¯s the start of monsoon season). With the help of Mr Ropey we made it just outside the Cambodian border town of Poipet. Raincoats on, we made it through puddles almost deep enough to float our bikes in, in the crater filled road of the township. This was one untidy place, a disgrace to Cambodia for visitors arriving through the border. It must really suck for those coming here from Thailand ¨C a real leap backwards in creature comforts. By the time we got to the exit gates of Cambodia, the rain was hosing down, a chaotic scene as our last impressions of Cambodia.
A strange set-up these two countries have got here. Between the two borders are a whole host of duty free shops- nothing unusual, but I've never seen a whole bunch of semi decent casinos jammed in between two countries boundaries before.
How pleasant it was arriving in Thailand. Smooth roads, roadsigns, general tidiness everywhere. But I've been through enough of these now to know that each country (bar Cambodia) usually makes border areas or airport access pretty impressive. We'll see if they keep it up. From what i can see, i think they will, for a really solid example; 3 small pots of ice cream here is less than a dollar. Oh sweet heavenly ice cream lord.


28-04-08 85 Kms to Sanam Chaikhet
We had a lazy start today, a bit behind the programme. We found a Vietnamese restaurant for breakfast but they didn¡¯t serve rice or noodles. Fucm. I¡¯ve done my time being around those scabby bastards anyway.
We then bought a Thailand road map from the 3rd bookstore we tried. It seemed like we¡¯d been facking around in Aranya Prathet all morning. We had been. It was pretty close to 11am by the time we seriously started riding. The last few riding days we¡¯d done, we would have smashed out a hundy by now.
We went on to do not even a hundy today. A head wind made the effort doubly hard, and the scenery between towns was pretty facking boring, so although the road was in such a good condition compared to yesterdays rough ride, it was a pretty uninteresting ride.
As the afternoon went on, again the sky grew darker, this time the monsoon rain was accompanied by a strong as hell head wind. No fun today so we started asking around for hotels and called it quits when we found this resort style thing. We got a bungalow on the edge of this huge man made lake thing. Pretty cheesy actually, we wondered if the 500 Baht price tag, over double what we paid last night, was for renting the room for an hour or for the whole night. The old lady on reception had no English so we played charades for about 10 mins trying to ask the price and what we got for our money.
After we moved in we found what we got for our money ¨C a life sized wall poster of a naked couple getting busy on a beach. Cheese on toast with extra cheese and parmasen on top of that.

29-04-08 176 Kms to Bangkok.
We¡¯d planned on taking it nice and easy today too, getting at least close to Bangkok so we could split tomorrow up into arriving on the outskirts, then negotiating the city streets and find a descent budget hotel in the ‛lively¡¯ backpacker district of Khao San Rd.
An early start coupled with the wind blowing us along instead of hindering us gave us an easy 120 Kms under our belt by the time our bellies started yelling out for more fuel.
The call actually came from Elke that we should push on, ‛all the way¡¯. All the way it was. We washed up somewhere in greater Bangkok by 4 pm giving us a couple of much needed hours to find our way down to Khao San Rd.
We arrived there just on dark, pretty much soaked thanks to our 3rd consecutive daily monsoon dosage. It wasn¡¯t the coolest image to have rolling into a side street crammed with tourists and associated hotels, restaurants and cafes etc.
Cold and soggy, Elke minded the bikes while i checked out the first half dozen hotels, reporting back each time that they¡¯re either full, have no bicycle parking, or ‶the place is a shit hole¡å. One time i came out, she¡¯d struck up a conversation with one of her fellow countrymen who had just bought himself a bike and was gonna head off north in a big 3 month loop around S.E. Asia, with his backpack on his back, and a small bag on his rear rack with over 20 books in it. Hmmmmm. We had to move on but arranged to meet up with him in his hotel restaurant for a stern talking to later on.
Just as we were about to make a move, two more cycle dudes turned up. They had a reservation (for bicycle parking, apparently) in the hotel that had just told me ‶no bikes¡å. We looked at each other quizzically and tried to work out where we¡¯d seen each other before. He looked familiar but i could have spent hours working it out. So after another minute of pondering, he told me the answer; he was the (French, i thought) dude trying to get his girlfriends bike fixed when i walked out of the bike shop in Hue to find that Viet bitch trying to steal my lunch bag off my handle bars. We sniggered at our initial meeting circumstances but moved on rather rapidly to fill each other in on our journey since. They were also both Belgian (France Belgium Same Same but different) so now our dinner table for tonight consists of 4 Belgies and 1 Kiwi.
We almost decided on one of the shit-hole hotels but tried out ‛one more¡¯. Not cheap but what a sweet deal ¨C a proper lock-up room for our bikes, air conditioning, and a room on the ground floor ¨C no stairs to hobble up after a hard 3 days ride. Four Sons Village ¨C you rock!
The dinner went fine, dirt cheap street stall food, absolutely delicious spicy curries washed down with a couple of beers later on in a busy as hell, yet fairly quiet bar. Cool Belgians, they all spoke perfect English for my thicko benefit, but the real winner of the evening was Marro. What an education he got on cycle touring. We convinced him that riding with a back-pack on your back aint the way to go and that carrying 20 plus books is like out nerding even the most astute of college library nerds. He postponed his departure date for a day or two until he ‛gets with the programme¡¯ and follows some of our recommendations.

30-04 to 10-05 2008 Bangkok.
My bike¡¯s been deteriorating quite a lot lately. The chain has stretched so much it¡¯s worn the rear sprocket a fair bit. 16,000Kms has almost worn the leather cover off my ‛Biolink¡¯ gel saddle. The left pedal started to seize and roll under my foot about 70Kms from Bangkok yesterday. I hoped it would limp to Bangkok without jamming up completely. It got there. The chunky treaded front tyre which i¡¯d bought in Laos was inefficient and had to go. Our guide books had mentioned a couple of descent bike shops in Bangkok which we tracked down. I was going on a shopping extravaganza.
There was some flash new bikes there, trendy aluminium framed jobs all glossy and new with shiny black clean tyres and quick-fire 24 speed gear changers. Elke had decided she was enjoying riding by now, even with superbastard cracking the whip hourly. While superbasted was pondering over whether to buy two tyres (with racey red sidewalls) or just one in Sports Cycles, she¡¯d got talking to the English speaking salesman. He¡¯d pointed out to her that the reason she¡¯d been getting such bad neck pain lately was because of the length of the frame on her existing bike. I¡¯d had it adjusted as best as i could but those handle bars were on a one piece head-set and couldn¡¯t be adjusted anymore. It was a long bike in proportion to the rest of the size of it.
Elke was toying with the Idea of upgrading and i was in a head spin over the selection of stuff here so we went on to another bike shop called Pro-Bike. Took us facking ages to find this one and when we got there it was dead expensive. However they had Shimano SPD (clip-in) pedals which i needed full stop. 2700 Baht came down to 2000 after asking for a discount.
We needed to go think with a clear head about what we really needed to buy but instead we went to a bar and got pissed.
The next day we went back to Sports Cycles. I bought a whole lot of shat for my bike, Elke ordered up a new ‛Merida¡¯ or something for herself, with adjustable head-set, 700c wheels, and we gave the sales man a whole list of bolt-on toys for Elke to play with while riding along (bell, trip computer, bar ends, map holder, handlebar bag etc).
Hugh, the American war vet I¡¯d met in Hue had given me the name of one of his mates who owned a couple of bars in an area of Bangkok famous for it¡¯s sex shows. Cool. We went along in an air conditioned Taxi (when you get a driver to put the meter on you know you¡¯re not getting ripped, unlike the sucker tourists which use tuk-tuks). Arriving at Patpong-1 we had to push past a whole of bunch of touts trying to get us into ‛Super Pusseys¡¯, and find a joint called ‛Goldfingers¡¯. ‶Why did you call it Goldfingers¡å? I asked Randy. Randy,Hugh¡¯s mate and the owner of this dimly lit bar (a large room with seats around the edge facing a dozen scantily clad girls gently undulating around poles on a central stage) gives instructions to one of his barmen, who lifts up a massive wood-carving the size of his chest, a fist with the ‛up yours¡¯ finger fully erect. ‶That¡¯s the goldfinger that¡¯s been in this bar for the twenty years that I've owned it¡å He said, then added ‶Over the years I¡¯ve seen that finger disappear, she took the whole thing in, and she wasn¡¯t a Thai girl either, some over eager traveler¡å. Well, I didn¡¯t quite know what to say to that so i just said ‶You sound like the kind of bloke that can tell me where we can go to see a good ‛ping-pong¡¯ show¡å. I explained my rather expensive delemah in Amsterdam (a whole sex show without a single ping-pong ball being fired by any means) so after a couple of beers Randy had one of his ‛assistants¡¯ lead us up to a ‛second floor¡¯ bar. Free entry and the drinks prices weren¡¯t all that bad either. Similar set up to downstairs but way bigger, louder music and flashing lights. Oh year, and the girls on stage weren¡¯t doing what the ones downstairs were doing either. Some girl was walking around playing a game of ‛pick-up-hoops¡¯. The ‛pick-up-hook¡¯ wasn¡¯t being held in her hand. Nor was a pen being used to write something on a piece of paper for some other tourist on the other side of the stage. A bunch of balloons were being popped, one by one, by darts being fired at them. Not too sure how that worked. Something to do with a naked lady laying on her back in front of them. What a crazy place! Why don¡¯t girls get into a bit of this leisure activity back home? Crazy enough? Fack no! Next thing I¡¯m getting handed a ping-pong bat without a table tennis net in sight. I may be young, but naive i aint. I know what this is for so i shuffle over to a bar stool where Elke¡¯s out of swinging range. She reckons she¡¯s never seen me so happy, like a kid with a new toy. I replaced my excitement with concentration as i prepared myself for the big match, a few warm-up stretches and a couple of practice swings. The flashing lights made it hard to focus on the job in hand, kind of a strobe effect allowing me to see half the trajectory but guessing the other half. That explained the 3 or 4 that i missed but the rest... With no net to hit it back over i treated it more as a game of cricket, smashing some clean across the stage into the audience on the other side, some up into the lighting rigging one towards security guards on the door, and then got the bat confiscated when i fired one back close enough to be ‛caught and bowled¡¯. Good times. Sorry boys, i only managed to pick one ball up off the floor for souvenir purposes before the floor sweeper came along and got the rest. I did however get hit in the foot by a banana flying from the stage a minute or two later but thats no kinda souvenir for any one.
We finished the night off with a few drinks across the road at Randy's other bar, ‛Superstars¡¯, a shitload of girls crammed on stage, again wearing swim wear. Even though they had some good rock music playing we didn¡¯t stay too long, there¡¯s only so much excitement one can endure in ‛One Night in Bangkok¡¯.
Bicycle maintenance day today. After breaky Elke started cleaning hers. Mine took a little longer as it was dirtier. And i got heavily involved in a few cold bottle of beers to try and counteract the extreme heat. We only had one of the locals inquire as to what we were cleaning them for, and when the word got around that one of them was for sale, we had people coming along every half hour or so, test riding it. It cost Elke US$142 about 6 weeks ago but had over 2000Kms on the clock. So Elke was really hoping for about $30.
She¡¯d popped down the road somewhere to see some other returning / departing cycle tourists equipment for sale and when she returned, her bike was gone. Someone rode it away before 2Pm for 2500 Baht which weighs in at $80. Because it looked so good compared to all the other shat heaps of bikes we see around this area, and because it sold so quickly, we feel we could have got a little more for it but it was a deal where both parties were happy chappies.
My day wasn¡¯t going so well however. I snapped both my tyre levers trying to get this cheapo chunky tyre off my front rim. Some bored local dude came along trying to be helpful but in his attempt to lever it off with a square - shanked philips screwdriver, snapped the valve off my inner tube and mutilated the edge of my alloy rim. I had to sand it smooth again then i think the beers were really starting to kick in as i cut the wrong end off my new chain. Damn! Oh well, i¡¯ll grab another one tomorrow when we go to pick up Elke¡¯s shiny new machine. Time to call it quits for the day.
We headed by boat into a central shopping area called Chid Lom to meet one of Elke's friends and had a few beers. When she had to go home, we went to the Bangkok division of the ‛Hard Rock Cafe¡¯ for a couple, just to say we¡¯ve been there. I¡¯m a bit dubious about these places anyway. Although i love hard rock music, these guys frequently play ‛soft rock¡¯ and charge like a wounded bull.
We walked in and asked for a table for two and the waitress showed us a whole lot of places that we couldn¡¯t sit or didn¡¯t want to sit. I took it upon myself to find two sets at the bar with a good view of the live band, who were really going off with some improvised lead break, and cast my eye over the menu. At the bar in our hotel, we¡¯d been getting 650ml bottles of Chang, a local beer, for 50 Baht. These guys were selling a 300ml bottle of it for 135Baht. ‶We¡¯ll have one and then we¡¯re out of here¡å I said, not wanting to waste my unassisted effort of claiming the two bar seats. Elke sat this round out and went to the toilet. I got the beer, the bill, then put my 140 baht in the leather bill folder and handed it over expecting my 5 Baht change. It came back with 140 change. Sweet, they¡¯ve facked up i thought, shoving the money back into my pocket. I looked at the bill again to see if they¡¯d given me the drink i¡¯d ordered. Oooh! The dirty bastards! They'd wacked on a 7.5% ‛make us happy¡¯ or something charge, then a 10% ‛piss you off¡¯ tax charge amounting to 158 Baht. Cants. I really like to be told how much the beer is and then pay that much, not have someone say ‶didn¡¯t you read the fine print? You owe us more money.¡å Once again, it¡¯s a principles thing here. Elke came back from the loo and i explained the situation. ‶They¡¯ve taken rock¡¯n¡¯roll and used it to fack me over.¡å By now they could see i was bothered about the bill and i could see them out the corner of my eye passing the word around to each other. ‶There¡¯s not a facking thing i can do about this so i¡¯m gonna make it really difficult for them to get their money¡å. After explaining the principal of telling someone the price to charge, and not hiding surcharges from the customer, the fact that they¡¯re the only pricks in Thailand doing this, and that they should get their menu changed, they suggested they should call the police. ‶Yes, please do¡å i said, ‶so we can tell them what a pack of cants you are¡å. ‶Ok, wait here¡å (by now we¡¯re outside the front door) the manager said. Elke grabbed the money out of my hand and threw it on the ground in front of them and said ‶We¡¯re not waiting, lets go¡å. They chased us down they road a bit, about half a dozen of them and the ugly lady-boy manager trying to tell us that they are the police. It was starting to get a little scary by now so i gave them the other twenty baht which i clearly didn¡¯t owe them and told them that every other Thai person we¡¯ve met have been really good people but they were the biggest wankers we¡¯d ever seen.
Back in the bike shop the following day, i got the urge to buy a second red-walled tyre along with the tube and second new chain in two days. Gees i felt like a cock telling the sales guy that the other chain was fine, i just cut the wrong end off.
Elke had a rear rack fitted but hadn¡¯t decided on her new panniers. Deluxe waterproof ones for 3000 Baht or the standard ones for 1300. In the end she went for the shiny waterproof ones. She now has a bike and rear panniers that make me jealous. If only they were slightly ‛same same but different¡¯, maybe i could switch them over in the middle of the night while she¡¯s asleep. With my bike still missing a chain, pedals and a tyre, we had one bike between us. I was not gonna let Elke double me home on the back through the thick Bangkok traffic on a bike she¡¯d ridden up and down the footpath twice on. So i did the pedaling (while she sat side saddle on the back), clicking through the rapid fire gears, they work great and are a real treat for hands after a sticky throttle type gear shifter.
I got home and finished off my bike, putting the second red-walled tyre on it and, what i thought would be a good idea, a new white leather gel seat. Elke now calls it a clowns bike and i cant really argue with her over that one, it looks ridiculous, the only happy thought i can get is that it will be hidden by my ass but only while riding.
Topping every night off with a few beers and a stroll down Khao San road, to look at all the alternatives, freaks and plain weirdos (all western travelers), we¡¯ve been finding it harder and harder to get out of bed in the mornings. So we made a real effort to do so the morning after we got our bikes sorted. Off to see some Buddhist temple complexes, or Wats as they¡¯re called here. Talk about architecture, these things are facking amazing, the intricate detailing that has gone into them. Some of them covered in millions of pieces of tiny mirror or coloured glass, similar to the Persian Mosques in Iran. I walked around three such Wats taking photos about every 10 seconds, everywhere i looked there was a photo to be taken.
First was Wat Phra Kaeo which had some sort of emerald Buddha inside it that we weren¡¯t allowed to photograph.
Next was Wat Pho. What for? It has an enormous reclining Buddha, I think its about 50m long but really hard to get a good photo of as the old boy¡¯s jammed between two rows of pillars. Similarly, i walked around the 20 Acres of surrounding courtyard snapping up as many pics as my imagination would allow.
Last on the short list of 3, we crossed the Chao Phraya River to scale the rather steep stairs of Wat Arun, kind of a spier shaped temple that you can climb up and admire city views from, which i did of course. We washed that day¡¯s sightseeing down with a few coldies and some ice cream.
Well, its strange how one paints a picture of a city, based on information gathered from various sources, has a pre-conceived idea of what it¡¯s gonna be like before they actually get there. The painting on the back side of my brain was of a place in shambles, another Mumbai, the roads gridlocked with traffic, tuk tuk drivers virtually pushing you into their machines and hi-jacking your journey to a silk or gem shop. I thought there¡¯d be dudes dressed as ladies everywhere, homosexual western sex tourists grabbing them by the stalk and leading them back to their hotels, dirty old men, sex tourists and so forth with a few local prostitutes hanging off each one of them.
There¡¯s only a hint of my expectations visible to the areas I've explored. The roads are busy but are in good order, flowing traffic, and people obeying the rules. The tuk tuk drivers are definitely there in abundance ‶Hello tuktuk¡å is all you hear walking down the road if you¡¯re ‛Farang¡¯ (foreign). We¡¯ve uncovered the reason for this though, they know they can charge (and get) well over twice the going rate for a ride if you¡¯re unwary (a sucker dong).
I¡¯ve seen a couple of those lady-boys, or transvestites as they¡¯re known back home. One of them was a tour guide in one of the temples we visited. They¡¯re normal here, no one even batters an eyelid at them. But it does leave me damn curious how i can hear so many other travelers (and one good mate who shall remain anonymous)(you know who you are you dirty little fakkar) that tell stories of someone they know (or so they say) that ‛accidentally¡¯ took one home by ‛mistake¡¯, and when they found out they ‛got rid of them¡¯ (or went along with it) when they are clearly scarce in the places we been hanging out at. I¡¯ve even seen on the news this week that Ronaldo, the Brazilian football star, fell to the same plight.

The only thing that¡¯s been remotely in line with what i expected is the number of old men hangin with pretty gorgeous young Thai women. I¡¯ve seen enough of this sort of pairing off to start to notice a pattern here. The blokes with these sexy little Thai girls seem to be either old, fat, ugly, or undesirable to women in our society in someway or another, the ones ‛left on the shelf,¡¯ a lot like myself. There¡¯s hope for me yet!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1209200760/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1209200760/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1209200760/tpod.html Sat, 26 Apr 2008 06:05:02 -0400 Getting on my bike outside my front door in West London and seeing how far i can ride. (Not a horse or a motorbike).

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Siem Reap, Cambodia

04-04-08 102Kms to Pakse

The mornings ride was a bit more of the same as yesterday, a steady but constant climb upwards. Elke's knees were still giving her real problems and my patience was giving me problems. I was finding it really difficult to ride slow enough for her to keep up. Any slower and I'd fall over.

The main thing that was stressing me out was worrying that Elke would burst into tears the moment I tried to approach the subject of putting in a little more effort. I asked if she was working up to heavy breathing. I suspected not. My fears were correct, she snapped back. ‶I cant exert myself because my knees are too sore″.

Her bike wasn't all that big. We already had the seat adjusted up to the ‛max height' mark on the seat post. ‶Let me put your seat up about a centimeter″ I said. We did and it worked. An hour later and she'd picked up the pace a little enough for me to grant her a ‛C pass'.

We approached Paksong and the road flattened out. There were guest houses and restaurants and a sky becoming darker and darker by the minute. We could have ducked into a restaurant and waited to see what the weather had in mind for us but we were feeling good, especially now that we'd encountered our first bit of gravity assisted riding in a day and a half, so we stupidly decided that we'd try and duck under the clouds before they shat on us. We were picking up speed with our enthusiasm to beat it. So were all the villagers walking along the side of the road, breaking into what could be described as a canter of panic. Rightfully so too. The thunder wasn't in the distance anymore, the air temperature plummeted and icy drops of rain started to splatter us.
20 seconds later we were under a shop canopy, a wooden shack, a typical Laos house with a few snack foods and drinks for sale out the front of it. The canopy, a meshy type fabric was for keeping the sun off. The rain started to drip straight through it as i fumbled around in my panniers for my raincoat. An old lady, the head of the house beckoned us in out of the rain as a teenage boy was boarding up the doorway with a series of vertical wooden slats that slotted into a groove, top and bottom - no doors here. It was dark inside - no electricity either. Elke sat on a mat and started communicating with the family in a series of gestures along with whatever English our hosts knew. It soon became too loud to hear anyone inside. The water started dripping through the old corrugated iron roof, nothing disastrous, more of an inconvenience. I peered through a gap in the slats. Hailstones were flying across the road horizontally. ‛That could have been painful' i thought. How facked up was that decision to try and beat the storm when we could have been eating hot noodle soup in a restaurant up the road?

Half an hour later the noise died down, as did my fear of the roof lifting off. The hail turned to rain which eased up itself so we thanked our hosts very much and decided to do what we should have done an hour ago, went back to the restaurant, ate and re-assessed the weather. By the time we'd stuffed our bellies full of a couple of servings each, plus a couple of tubs of ice-cream from the cheap restaurant, the storm had passed.

We pushed on, and on, and on. Smiles all the way from the 50Km downhill ride. The air temp feeling notably warmer as our altitude fell. We were slipping off the Bolaven Plateau, stopping briefly at a fairly unspectacular waterfall 2km off the main road.

Something we hadn't seen since Hoi An started to appear - other tourists. We were kind of excited to see them and gave them a smile, a wave, a hello, and even a ‛Saabadeee' One particular couple gave nothing back. It was weird. Were they Jews? After having compulsory waves with the hundreds of locals we constantly pass by, nothing from these two sour-pusses.

Yeah the 50km down hill was nice, almost too nice, i didn't even want to stop for a pee, so i didn't. ‶Elke, look at me!″ That was cool i thought, not too proud to say ‶Ooh that's disgusting, put it away″. She just laughed. I don't think i got any blow-back on my right-rear pannier.

We arrived in Pakse in plenty of time to sample a few of the hotels there, none of them really coming up to expectations based on previous hotel experiences in this country. An older English bloke who introduced himself as Simon, saw us on the bikes and came up with a recommendation, which we liked and therefor checked into, the best of a bad bunch.

We caught up with Simon later on in an outdoor restaurant. He was a ball of information on the S.E. Asia cycling scene, been coming to Laos for years now and just riding around watching the country rapidly evolve with new roads, bringing other developments and opportunities for locals. He described the progress as colonization, with the keen business sense of the Vietnamese and Chinese snapping up the first obvious money making opportunities.

I'd read in a book on cycle touring, before I'd embarked on my journey, that there is a forum on the Lonely Planet's Thorntree website, which fellow cyclists can ask and answer each other's questions on the matter. It states that ‛many of the people you correspond with on this travel forum will indeed be the same people you will cross paths with while riding around the world on your journeys'. The topic came up and and we told each other our membership names. Yep, i was talking to a regular poster, Simon Hill. I'd read many of his posts and even found him joining in the topic of the cracked Rolhoff Speedhub situation me and a bloke called ‛Big Dan' were having while i was back in Baku, Azerbaijan. Was it just the beers we were swigging back that made this meeting seem surreal or not? This cycling legend could have been anywhere in the world but he's sitting here in front of me. The book was right.

After the few beers we had I'd seen the two unfriendly tourists pass by so i gave them the biggest friendliest ‶How ya goin'?″ with full Ozzy accent, something I'd heard before which had impressed me that much that i use it all the time now. I think i got a glance and a nod from them. Hostile relations are improving.

There must have been some sort of curfew back at our guest house because the outside security gates were locked. The beers I'd swallowed helped make me think that the right thing to do was throw stones on the roof, shake the shat out of the steel gates and yell out as loud as i liked. All this commotion had no effect. I scaled the gate but that didn't help Simon and Elke get in and nor was it gonna let me into the locked up reception area. I think i clowned around in between gates for a few minutes before remembering the room over in the corner where we got told to park our bikes in. Sure enough, tapping on the glass window awoke the dozy bloody security guard. ‶Jesus, was the hash that strong?″ I asked.


05-04-08 129Kms to Khong Island.

We got away nice and early after being served by the most unhappy, unenthusiastic waitresses on the planet. It was an upmarket job recommended by the ‛Lonely Planet'.

Simon had mentioned we'd encounter a headwind today. He was right. Bloody good that ol' boy. So the going was pretty slow. I tried to introduce the concept of slipstreaming to my apprentice but she didn't grasp it, or the importance of it. Probably because it's logical and she's a woman. ‶It's cheating, I want to do it all by myself″ she went on.

I also tried explaining the importance of a good cadence (the RPM of your feet), keep them spinning fast with less load on your legs when you've got bad knees, ‶Change up and down through your gears when your bike speed changes but keep your tootsies spinning at a good rate, like mine″. No this was too technical for a new-comer to follow too.

One of the small towns we passed, Ban Thang Beng, had a guest house there but it was only half way through the journey and would have given me (and probably Elke too) a sense of defeat, so we marched on. In that same small town was a turn - off to Attapeu. Clearly marked with a signpost saying ‛Attapeu 116Km'. Goddamn!! We did more kms than that the day we got lost out there and aborted the mission. Returning to Attapeu and taking the sealed route around had taken us an extra 4 and a half days, an extra 300kms, with a 1500m hill-climb chucked in the difficulty pot for good measure!

The frustrating part for me is always trying to get to some place with a guest house before dark and with Si Phan Don (4000 Islands) a good 140Kms away, we had to ‶skid skid″. So I'm still at a loss to know how i managed to talk Elke into letting me put on the tow rope again when she clearly doesn't like it.

So when we met an American cyclist coming the other way she was well embarrassed that she'd been caught out with ‛ropey' attached. We chatted briefly, exchanged the ‛to and where from' stories, riding conditions ahead, and equipment set-ups before heading off. He also mentioned that there was a Canadian couple not too far behind him and to say hi.

That was it, ‛ropey' was coming off and getting tucked away in her basket, she wasn't gonna be seen by two more fellow cycle tourists like this. Unfortunately he'd just confirmed no guest houses until 10km before Si Phan Don so my stress level went straight back up as did our ‛required run rate'.

Elke actually pedaled quite hard after realizing this. She seemed to go a lot quicker when she'd get a couple minutes head-start. It seemed to take me ages of top class effort to wind her in when cycling in this format, and she was already mid conversation with the Canadians by the time I'd arrived on the roadside gathering. For some psychological reason though, it wouldn't work with me in the lead. I'd keep slowing down to try and let her get back in my slip-stream which, according to her, didn't exist, and each time a couple of minutes later, she'd be falling well back again.

I thought back to the difficulty i had keeping up with Charlie back in ‛Nam, and the immense effort i made to stay in his slip-stream, knowing full well that it was impossible for me to keep up without this world-except-Belgium known technique.

Maybe i stank (well, ok, I do) and she wanted to be ‛out of range', but this didn't explain her being almost out of sight, a spec on the horizon of roads that were long enough, when I'm only pedaling half pace myself.

When she finally caught up I asked why, when we needed to go faster, she'd decided going way slower was the best option. She either saw the humor of it or the frustration (probably not very well concealed) on my face, and let me re-attach Mr Ropey. ‶Ok, but only to teach me to find your slipstream″. ‶Yes of course″ I lied, and headed off with as much enthusiasm as Steve Irwin trying to catch some rays without any protection.

Facking amazing! She'd either found my slipstream or it was, as i suspected, a mental thing. Every time i looked back, the rope was slack and, because of the un-aerodynamicism of my fully loaded bike, she was pulling up beside me laughing on the slight down-hill runs. We made good ground in this format, the rope only occasionally tugging on my rear rack.

We were still a good 20 km from Si Phan Don. Daylight was starting to fade and we'd been following distance markers counting down a place called Khong Island for the last 100km or so. So we deciphered it must be a substantial enough place to accommodate accommodation.

We turned off the main drag down a dirt road to find a beach with a few long boats (wooden type canoes) and a price board written in English, with the prices painted over, and a local man standing there saying 15,000 kip ($2) each.

Swimming across the Mekong is not on so we said ‶yeah, ok″. 20 minutes later we were on the other side sampling guest houses, and for some strange reason avoided the first one at the top of the trail. I guess our mentality was ‛most people will stay in the first one they see so therefore they'll charge higher prices'.

After checking into one and showering, we went in search of a cheap local restaurant but couldn't find one so we had our choice of two touristy ones, side by side, on a massive deck overlooking the Mekong. The food was good but the funny part was the service. They tried to give us rice that we didn't order. We later ordered up more food, this time with rice, which we didn't get. ‶Two bottles of water and the bill please″ meant no bottles of water and the bill still not available twenty minutes later. They say this country is relatively new to tourism so it has to be expected and i wish them well in catching on in the near future.



06-04-08 16km Boat Ride Down The Mekong

We had a ‛sleep in' this morning being so close to our destination. I read my Lonely Planet to get the ‛go' with Si Phan Don. Under a heading ‛Don Khong' there were a few tips on getting there along with a few guest house suggestions and a mention of a couple of restaurants overlooking the Mekong, one of them ‛jazzed up with fairy lights and wagon wheels'. I reached over, pulled back the curtains, and looked out at the deck we were eating on last night. Yep, wagon wheels. We now knew where we were, where we wanted to get to, and had a new way of getting there. 16Kms down the Mekong river by boat.

A boat needed 5-6 people to make the price 40,000kip each, or we could ‛charter' the whole boat for 150,000. We facked around for half an hour deciding what to do when two Canadian girls turned up wanting the same deal. Sweet, four-up, 40k each, they hadn't thought of the idea of charging us extra for the bikes. Sometimes this ‛new-to-tourism' thing can work in our favor.

It was cool chugging down the river, snapping more photos than i needed to from a boat so narrow that shifting my bum millimeters to one side would cause a bit of a lurch. Great to say I've been on a boat trip down the Mekong but i think a ‛real trip' would mean from city to city somewhere.

At the other end we dis-embarked at the northern tip of Don Det island, got on our bikes, rode through a whole hive of activity (shops, restaurants bungalows, tourists etc) and started getting quotes on the bungalow accommodation situation. They started at 40,000 kip. We rode down the river trail for about 10 minutes where we found one overlooking the river for 15,000 Kip, less than $1 each. That's us! We were introduced to it by fellow travelers who were sitting in an open air restaurant to one side of the narrow dirt trail, or main road as it is known to the locals. They seemed like a fairly social bunch so after we settled in we went back and joined them for some food.... and then the laolao (similar to a weak vodka) got passed around.

We spent the afternoon and early evening drinking and clowning around with about a dozen people of all different nationalities. Boris, who's knick-name was ‛the minister of earthquakes' (knick-names must be longer in Slovakia i think) decided we were all spies, probing each other for vital information about their respective countries. Tanguy was a Frenchman who spent more time chasing the young kids around outside the restaurant much to the delight of the kids. Passers by weren't allowed to continue on their merry way until they had a compulsory nip of the laolao. They'd end up sitting with us for various lengths of time.

At 9ish (I think) it was time to head down to the beach where our boat had dropped us off. There were beach chairs there which i got comfortable with until some sort of local official came along demanding money. I thought it was for sitting on the beach but have since been informed that it was just for the chairs. I got off and let him take the chair away but not after I'd announced, in my drunken stupor, that ‶when people come to our country we give them things to make them feel welcome, look after them, not ask them for money all the time.″

Apparently the toll of entrepreneurialsm in separating the tourist from their money all the time had bubbled to the surface, and according to one particular witness, i said a few other things that i shouldn't have, had pretty bad memory loss, and staggered most of the way home repeating myself all the way. Laolao's the name, give it a go!



07 to 09-04-08 Hangin' Out On Don Det Island

It was hard to sleep off the initial hang-over. Loud as hell roosters would crow for a good hour around sunrise, soon after there would be the noise of excited children playing, yelling, screaming, the odd boat chugging past, plus, it didn't take long for the sun to heat up the bungalow. We were up before an impressive 10 o'clock each day.

The second morning we woke up there, we both got a nasty surprise, someone had reached in our window during the night, grabbed Elke's bag, removed her camera from its case, put the empty camera case back into her bag and placed the bag back onto the bed while we were asleep. Bastards! I was just thinking how relaxed everyone was about security here, how cool it is that all these travelers could come together and leave valuables in their room, without any hassles and what a thief's paradise it would make. Too good to be true!

Elke was depressed. I would have been too, that camera used to take pictures of a quality notably better than mine. She just wanted to lay on the bed all day sulking until i gave her a stern talking to, insisting that its not coming back, and its no reason to lay there doing nothing. ‶C'mon, were going to ride to the south of the island, cross the old railway bridge, (interestingly enough, the only bit of railway line the French ever laid in Laos while under their rule) and go swimming under the waterfall on the next Island down.″ A bit more moping around and she was on her bike.

There was a dude on the south side of the bridge selling tickets to enter the island which was the first I'd heard of it. Was he really a government official? Or was it one of the local's elaborate scams to earn tourist dollars. I was reluctant at first and pushed my way past but got the guilts from my performance down at the beach the night before and decided to fork out.

We found the waterfalls, a series of paths the Mekong had split into and was gushing over some rocks. Nothing too spectacular to view, the buzz came from climbing over all the rocks past the ‛danger' signs everywhere.

By the time I'd clambered back up there was another exceptionally flash touring bike parked at the top. It belonged to a Dutch lady who'd just lost her husband a minute or two ago. They turned out to be the two that Simon Hill had bumped into an hour or so before us in Pakse, cruising around doing a rather short rushed trip.

We found a massive whirlpool to the side of the river just down from the falls. ‛Strong current, no swimming' signs were there so of course we had to go swimming, obviously with great caution as swimming aint my forte.

We headed to the southern tip of the island where there was some sort of mammoth concrete structure maybe used for pulling large boats out of the Mekong back in the days of old. We'd hoped to get at least a glimpse of an Irrawaddy dolphin here but as we gazed out into the vast expanse of the flat, wide Mekong, we faced up to reality. Instead we saw 3 other tourists who'd come down from another direction. They explained the route to the North West and showed us some photographs of the ‛bridges' they'd traversed. This looked interesting. It was. The trail narrowed to a skinny little track which had us pushing foliage aside to get through so we were feeling pretty adventurous, more so by the time we'd carried our bikes across a couple of the bridges. By the end of the day we had a sense of achievement, some unforgettable photos, and memories of last nights criminal activity had started to fade.

The rest of the time was spent taking it easy, which involved sitting in a restaurant overlooking the water, sipping beer all day. One particular Ozzy lad had got so used to doing such a thing that he'd moved here and set up his own bakery - a novelty to western travelers on the island. It was a good insight to life on the island (it's such a weird expression to use considering it's a land locked country). He explained that the average wage is US$10-30 / month (I figure he's gotta be making twice that much per day). He explained about some of the other customs here like no jiggy-jiggy before marriage, and gave an example of a boy that got drunk, facked a fat girl from a dirt poor family, got caught in the act and was forced to marry her. There is a 10pm curfew on the island, sometimes enforced by the police, sometimes not. Kinda weird being told to go to bed by someone other than your parents.
Interesting place.


10-04-08 86Km to Stung Treng (Border Crossing)

The road to the boarder was brand-new. It was the lumpiest new road I'd ever ridden on. Some sort of Chinese sponsored set-up. One cant really complain when it's free.

We got a bit delayed at the Cambodian side, I had to apply for my ‛visa on arrival', thinking I'd be holding up our progress as Elke already had her pre-purchased visa. The opposite happened as it took the border control a good hour to work out what ‛employment not permitted' meant. They weren't gonna let her in thinking it meant she'd paid US$20 for a visa that would deny her access at the border.

It worked out fine after all as i got held up for about an hour as we'd arrived shortly after the masses in tour organized tour buses.

It was difficult coming into a new country, working with a new currency, a strange combination of US$ and Cambodian Rials. We were a little skeptical about getting ripped off for our drinks and water. Thoughtfully we'd stocked up on donuts from Ozzy boys bakery earlier this morning so food was one less thing to worry about. The second place we stopped for water and canned drinks, the lady could speak a little English so we got to ask a few important questions and got our first Cambodian language lessons.

Elke was busy having a chunder about 2 to 3 hours after the border crossing when the bus load of masses finally caught up and passed us. She'd been feeling a bit under the weather for the last couple of days so was doing well to make the progress she did.

We crossed the massive Chinese bridge just entering Stung Treng, a weird set up. Steel barriers across it causing us to lay our bikes right over to push them under. I was half expecting some guys hanging around to ask us for a toll. Lucky for them they didn't.

We arrived in good time (3pm) to find a hotel to settle into. Some of our ‛Don Det buddies' still waiting at the bus terminal for a connecting bus. There's room for argument here on which is the best mode of transport, especially considering they admitted to also sweating their arses off in an air-cond bus.

A brand-new flash-as looking tourist information center wasn't much help to us or anyone else being closed this early in the afternoon. We sniffed out a hotel anyway. TIC's - Who needs ‛em?



11-04-08 151 Km To Kratie

We loaded up on baguettes this morning before we left. Making our breakfast bill amount to US$12.

As we headed out of town we tried to take a road that would link up with the new route 7 highway. We got a good 5 Km out of town before getting scared and thinking ‛this must be the old road and decided to cut our losses and go back the way we came. It was 8:30 by the time we hooked up with the original highway we'd left the night before. We were off to an incredibly bad start when it was our first attempt at getting off to a good one, setting the alarm for 5 am. All that work down the drain.

A little later on we saw the turn off for for Stung Treng clearly labeled and one can only wonder if we'd carried on another 1 or ½ km if our short cut would have paid off.

Elke was going like a locomotive, driven by frustration i later found out. The question for me was why cant she go like this all the time? By midday the Belgium express was out of steam and needed a ‛siesta' under a tree in the afternoon heat. I'd given her another one of my ‛gentle' motivational speeches to get her on the road just in time so she was looking like a true cycle tourist when a real heavy duty Spanish cycle tourist came the other way. I think she has a big ego, doesn't like people seeing her with the tow rope at all.

Javi, the Spaniard had left Spain last summer too, had been through Iran and Pakistan and commented on the phenomenon of adjacent countries saying bad things about their neighbors, ‶then you rock on in there, expecting the worst and end up having a great time in every country″. A very open minded cycle tourist. He went on to say that he'd done 20,000 kms and only just had his first bad experience two days ago. He'd been off the road, heading along a river trail just north of Kratie. Some local men had befriended him, then started ripping open his bag. He explained that he was not a fighter so when they grabbed a book he had on top, he bolted, heading through the trees in the middle of nowhere as fast as he could for as long as he could, in plenty of fear that they would follow and find him.
He camped for the night, woke up the next morning, lost in the woods, not knowing which way was north or south, spent the whole next day unsuccessfully trying to find a road but successfully dodging all the land mines. He had to drink whatever water he found on the way, not saying whether it was from water holes or the Mekong. Ended up camping a second night, still lost, and had only just found a shepherd boy on a buffalo earlier this morning who led him to a road. We were the first two people he'd explained his ordeal to so in a way, it may have been a bit of therapy for him to help get over it.

Talk about equipment though. Javi had the most loaded bike I'd ever seen, complete with a flagpole containing a mini-flag of each country he'd been to. Quite a spectacle. I had enough nosy Indians crowding around me in India. I'm thinking my bike would have looked pretty facking pale in comparison to his and imagined what sort of attention he'd have attracted while there.
I got a photo of him on his bike and we bid him farewell.

Elke had discovered Mr Pumpy's website while on the internet and done her research. We knew there'd be no accommodation between Stung Treng and Kratie but there was something mentioned about asking a restaurant owner for somewhere to stay 50 Km from Kratie. When we got there it was 4pm and things didn't look too promising. It was a village alright but i certainly didn't fancy staying here. I was tired and energy drained. I calculated we could make it to Kratie just on darkness if we maintained 25 Km/hr for two hours solid. We'd previously been averaging 18 or so. I made the call. ‶We're gonna eat, then push on to Kratie. We found a guy who had a nice little restaurant, probably a bit too early for him to be serving up dinnertime customers but he was all smiles and went out of his way to serve us up two plates of fried beef, one with onions, the other with pineapple, and some homemade ice tea to wash it all down. We hadn't asked the price, we didn't really care, we just wanted food, fast. This guy whipped it up quicker than a British branch of Mc Shit and it turned out to be about half the price we expected.

To up this speed average, we had to pull out Mr Ropey. Surprisingly Elke didn't complain. She looked at it,for the first time in a positive light, saying something about it being a reward rather than a punishment. I just said ‶fack, I wish i had someone to tow me″ as i prepared for a two hour hard out slog. It was nice pedaling this late in the day, after the sun had gone down the air almost had a slight chill to it,only when i was covered in a layer of sweat.

I expected to really have to work hard to pull along a Belgian girl who'd tired earlier on in the day but again she surprised me this time with great power and stamina. Every time i looked down at the shadow of us expecting to see a taught rope, i saw it had a great sag in it. She was pulling something out of the bag here, something she'd been hiding from me since our first day's ride.

Not an enjoyable couple of hours ride, more so aiming for a sense of relief or achievement when it was all over. We reached the outskirts of the town just on darkness and covered the last remaining 7 Km or so by torchlight until the streetlights took over.
Wow, we gotta stop doing these big Kms we told ourselves.



10-04-08 Rest Day In Kratie.

That last two days was a bit of a shock to the system after our lazy days of nothingness on Don Det Island especially after i really turned the power on for those final two hours last night. My legs were saw and needed resting and besides, i was days behind on my dairy. Elke went out and did a bit of internetting while i stayed in the hotel room typing away as fast as i could, heading out only for food.

We walked past a bunch of Londoners who we'd met in a restaurant the night before. They were having a bottle of cheap wine to get their courage up a bit for Karaoke. They spoke of their previous nights experiences; They were taken there by some local dude from the restaurant we met them at. Upon arrival a whole box of beer was placed on their table. The local dude helped himself to it, shared it with his friends inside the bar and carried cans outside and gave them to people out there. No prizes for guessing who had to fit the bill. (The Londoners refused but they had a few generous Spaniards with them who insisted on paying). Upon leaving they were told it was US$1/hr, before hand they were told it was simply US$1, so I'm starting to see it as one of those tourist set-ups. A familiar travel story.

Today the group had been sitting in the sun in a hot Hotel foyer for 4 hours waiting for a bus that hadn't turned up. They'd been told it was involved in a nasty accident where 8 people had been killed. The same bus scheduled an hour or two after their one had already been and gone. I said to them, ‶I hope you haven't been sold a ticket on a fictional bus″. They didn't really need comments or suggestions like that as they were already having a cant of a day. With their backpacks piled up in a corner of the foyer, one of them had his solar powered Ipod charger in full use of the suns sweltering rays. They'd all been sitting around there the whole time, right beside them but somehow someone had managed to steal it from right underneath their noses.

I'm starting to paint a dark picture of Cambodia inside my head now.


13-04-08 128 Kms to Kompong Cham.

There was a few drops of rain falling as we ate breakfast this morning. The cloud cover saved us from sizzling for a few hours but when our sealed road turned to red dirt, we thought we could have done with the rain to keep the dust down. It was pretty bad, every time a car went past, we nearly choked.

But that wasn't as bad as what flew down my throat later in the day; a fly. I stopped and chundered but couldn't see it amongst the chunky bits.

We'd heard from other cycle tourists about a shortcut from Kratie to Kompong Cham by taking this road along the south / east side of the Mekong. It was to save a good 100kms or so and I'm into anything that makes life easier.

What also made life easier was a dude pulling up beside us on a motorcycle, Grandma and Grandpa on the back, and inviting us to his place for lunch. Normally I'm a bit shy on this sort of thing but i wanted to show Elke that these sort of invitations are a little more available to cycle tourists than the average backpacker. It was getting about lunchtime anyway, and although this is our 4th day in Cambodia, i still haven't found the groove of buying lunch on the move. We gladly accepted the invitation and were treated to cookies, cakes, deliciously ripe mangos, and rice and various meets. I would say that someone whipped up a treat in the kitchen, but Samphea, the 21year old lad who'd invited us, ducked out again for 10 mins and re-appeared with a whole stack of stainless steel pots that neatly centered themselves on the one beneath it.
We exchanged emails, thanked them no-end and moved on.

The road got rough, seriously rough. Massive depressions which must have filled with water in the rainy season had become a series of undulations keeping our speed down to 12 km/h along the flat at times.

Elke had a couple of spills, getting caught in the loose dirt to one side and dropping the bike. Later a girl was watering the road with a watering can to keep the dust down. Just as i was about to warn Elke ‶that might be slippery″ she found out for herself, both wheels straight out from under her. No injuries though, so pretty funny stuff from my perspective.

It's the Cambodian New Year's Eve today. They seemed to be celebrating in the same way we do (getting pretty drunk). Where they got drunk was what makes these cultural differences sooo interesting; erect a canopy across the road, source a sound system, dance, and... not quite presto. No you gotta ask everyone that passes through for money. Easy when you're drunk but a little intimidating for us. And when you don't pay, as we didn't, a hand full of talcum powder gets rubbed across your cheek, both if you dither, and all four if there's a whole bunch eager to leave white hand prints on our black cycle shorts.

The dirt road narrowed to a track, then became a mere trail weaving through small villages. Where the trail still hadn't dried out, and was still a bog, detours were taken around peoples houses and through their back yards. Nothing signposted of course the only thing keeping us on track were locals who knew we were the two most lost peddlers on the planet and would point the way without any dialect whatsoever. The trail met up with the Mekong late in the day and we really had to power on to reach Kompong Cham before darkness. It was a great relief to see the street lights of the Japanese built bridge through the leafy trees. I was just about to suggest trying to find some food, water, and somewhere to pitch a tent for the night.

We settled into this place called the Mekong Hotel, which our guidebook describes as ‛having hallways just beckoning you to have a game of frisbee in. It's not wrong, they're huge. An Aerobie ring would go good here too.



14-04-08 134Kms to Phnom Penh

Good to have a nice sealed road under our wheels today, although it got a bit narrow and a bit busy at the capital city end. With it being the second night of their new years celebrations there were plenty of ambulances rushing past, a few drunk adolescents coma'd out on the side of the road, and one horribly smashed up bike with plenty of police standing around. The New year had actually worked quite well in our favor as everyone had siphoned out of the city to be with their families out in the villages, leaving the city streets almost ghostly empty.
For the first few hours this morning i got this really weird sensation that we were going uphill all the way. I wondered if someone had put something in my drink, especially considering we were traveling down the Mekong.
The needle on my compass seemed to be swinging around all day too, this wasn't an illusion as the road kinda took a big loop around. I think the country is glad to have an infrastructure and not too concerned that it's not a great one. I can only guess that our destination was close to half the distance we traveled ‛as the crow flies'.
We encountered another cycle tourist crossing our path, German dude this time. He'd left Europe about the same time i did but taken a more northern route up through Russia and Mongolia. ‛All roads lead to Asia' when you're on a bike.
Today seemed to be the first day me and Elke road together without any problems, her first ‛typical' days ride. A ride I'd been promising her since her first day's nightmarish ride through that mountainous terrain. No hills and a smooth road allowed us to make good progress. We even found a nice shady spot by a small lake to have a good 40 minute rest in the afternoon.
The nicest thing for me today was hearing Elke say ‶I've got to stay quite close to you to make it easier to pedal″. Bingo! She'd finally discovered the illusive slipstream. Now we have this sorted, the rides are bound to become easier for both of us. I said ‶congratulations, you've just graduated″.



15 to 17-04-08 Phnom Penh.

To me, Cambodia was always most famous for having a song written about it by a band called 'the Dead Kennedy's';

So you've been to school for a year or two
And you know you've seen it all
In daddy's car thinkin' you'll go far
Back East your type don't crawl
Play ethnicky jazz to parade your snazz
On you five grand stereo
Braggin' that you know how the niggers feel the cold
And the slum's got so much soul
It's time to taste what you most fear
Right Guard will not help you here
Brace yourself, my dear
Brace yourself, my dear

It's a holiday in Cambodia
It's tough kid, but it's life
It's a holiday in Cambodia
Don't foget to pack a wife

You're a star-belly sneech you suck like a leech
You want everyone to act like you
Kiss ass while you bitch so you can get rich
But your boss gets richer off you
Well you'll work harder with a gun in your back
For a bowl of rice a day
Slave for soldiers 'til you starve
Then you head is skewered on a stake
Now you can go where people are one
Now you can go where they get things done
What you need, my son...
What you need, my son...
Is a holiday in Cambodia
Where people dress in black
A holiday in Cambodia
Where you'll kiss ass or crack

Pol Pot
Pol Pot
Pol Pot
Pol Pot
Pol Pot
Pol Pot
Pol Pot
Pol Pot

And it's a holiday in Cambodia
Where you'll do what you're told
A holiday in Cambodia
Where the slum's got so much soul
Pol Pot


I'm educated now. What the fack's an old American punk band got to do with Cambodia anyway?

Now I'm in Cambodia I'm starting to see what all the fuss is about. I've learned about a Communist Government take-over in about 1974 ish, The Khmer Rouge, a pack of really, really, really mean people, Lead by an absolute twat called Pol Pot.

While here in Phnom Penh, we visited what was once a school, but had been converted into a ‛concentration camp' by the Khmer Rogue, complete with torture tools and techniques that made Adolf Hitler's regime seem somewhat angelic by comparison. The Tuol Sleng Museum as the same building now is, showed a documentary about two young lovers separated by the Khmer Rouge, their story and how they tragically fell victim to the mass Genocide that was part of the regime.

Watching the documentary was a pretty unquestionably saddening experience, and then my brain's gotta go walkabout all over the situation that once was, and depresses me even more. My synopsis; how can the human mind go so horribly wrong, how can anyone think these atrocities are cool dude? Sadly enough, thats us, humans. Apparently that's how our minds operate.

That wasn't quite enough for this hard-as-nails tourist though, so the next day we're off to the genocide center. Sounds pretty bad, ‶where can i get some, or commit some genocide?″ It is one of the mass graves where an estimated 2 million Cambodians took their last breath of air. The lucky ones taking a bullet through the skull, when the bullets were all gone, the not so lucky ones were mowed down with an iron bar before having their throats slit. Nasty stuff.

There were also paintings of killing infants too; two soldiers, one gun, kinda the Cambodian equivalent of clay bird shooting.... Do i need to say more?

Ok, i will. Then there's the disturbing picture of the alligator / crocodile enclosure where fellow humans, hands and feet bound, joined the reptiles for lunch.

The big issue for me, surrounding the whole bloody mess is that, it was so recent. Anyone my age or older in this country was either part of it, or a survivor of it. Those that were involved in the administration, the torture, the executions etc, are still living amongst the families of victims, and people here are still waiting for justice.

I did a little beer swilling in some of the cafes of Phnom Penh but not enough to get drunk and make an ass of myself. It was hot, seriously hot in the city so i spent a little time trying to work out ways to make the room cooler. Opening the door to the balcony seemed most effective but let the mosquitoes in. I left a specially trained lizard with a flickering tongue and a hunger for mozzies to guard the door but he didn't do his job properly. Good help is hard to get these days.



18-04-08 169 Kms to Kompong Thom

For the first time on my whole journey, I set the alarm for 4am. We'd scored some Kelloggs Frosties and milk from the local supermarket which we hurriedly scoffed before hitting the road, with the other early birds, at an interesting 5:45 am. It helped that the city traffic was pretty sparse at that hour, but because of the lack of traffic, that made everyone think it was ok to run red lights so we had to really wake up now.

One red light we couldn't ignore was the sun rising as we head back across the same bridge we came in on. It was well worth a photo which i put my eagerness briefly on hold.

We'd been discussing doing shorter distances to try and take the stress out of getting to our destination before darkness fell, as we'd had a couple of fack-ups like that lately. That was until Elke got news via email yesterday that her friends Grandma had died and she'd wrote back that she was gonna do a massive 170 Km in her name tomorrow. We had the option of breaking that ride up into a 77Km leg and an 87Km leg but this was off now. Hence the early start.

Early start, early finish. Now with Elke's incredible new ability to hide behind me, sheltering herself from the brunt of the breeze, she's able go all day long, (although there were complaints about me choosing a hotel room on the 3rd floor in a hotel without an elevator), allowing us to roll into town by 3pm. This was after watching some poor local's house burn to cinders in a raging inferno, drinking coconut milk from a coconut that must have been in the sun all day, and stopping for a half hour smoko break (my call, I was facked, a bit of role reversal went on here) 6km outside Kompong Thom city.

Our total riding time (excluding stoppages) was 7:20 thanks to a slight tail-wind that allowed us to maintain an average speed of 23 Km/hr.
We showered,went for a bite to eat, then walked around the markets. Crap everywhere. This is one untidy town.

The highlight of the day was certainly the early morning start, allowing ourselves to knock out the 77km leg of the journey to Scoun by 9:15. Huh, i laugh when i think we'd considered making this a day's ride. This one's for you ‛Manu's Grandma', whoever you are.



19-04-08 150 Kms to Siem Reap.

Today's ride was pretty much like yesterday's one. Same early start, 100kms on the score board by 10am, everything downhill after that. With only 150 clicks to go today we completed the journey by 1:00pm.

Elke pulled another one out of her bag of surprises today, dropping in behind a couple of slow moving trucks and a motorcycle loaded to the hilt with rubbish sacks. It provided her with speeds of 38km/hr to help kill the last 20 km or so into Siem Reap. She got her advanced award today.

No rush to go hotel shopping at this hour, instead we found a nice open - air restaurant where we could sit, stuff our faces, and keep an eye on the bikes.

We decided to fork out $10 /night for a hotel with free Wi-Fi.
Sitting in a cafe reading a tourist information brochure, a girl came running up to us, Elke screamed ad gave her a big hug, it was Jill, Queen of Scotts, Elke's travel buddy before i stole her away. Her and a new friend joined us for pizza, then we went for a few drinks in a street aptly named ‛Bar St'. This place is a tourist mecca. I Dont think i've seen a concentration of tourists this big since Corfu. It was nice to punch back pitchers of cheap local beer in such a lively environment.



20 to 25-04-08 Temple Spotting Around Siem Reap

We took it pretty easy for the first couple of days. We seemed to be structuring our day around our next meal, doing F A in between. Then we bought tickets....

The debate was whether to buy a one day pass for $20 or a three day pass for $40 to see a whole group of ancient 1000 year old temples. I really expected to be quite bored of seeing the same thing after a few hours. It wasn't to be. Angkor Wat is one of the most revered temples on the planet so going to see it, I had high hopes, I wasn't disappointed either. I think the thing that blows me away the most is the labor that went into constructing these massive structures, millions of stones getting transported from miles away, then being stacked up to form these colossal structures without a single internal combustion engine, or any other piece of machinery to help them. Then, if thats not enough on their plate, they go and intricately carve and sculpture them. What we see today are 1000 years worth of weather torn ruins, so one can only let the imagine dash back to the days of newly completed structures and marvel at the spectacle of it all.

Buddhist Temples they are. Once again in the name of religion, through my ‛narrow mind' i see humans bending over backwards breaking their asses to try and please the gods in the hope of a better afterlife. ‶Yeah Vishnu or Vishna or whatever is gonna think we're the bees knees for building this in his/her honor″.

One of everybody's favorites is a temple complex called ‛Ta Prom'. It's been massively overtaken by the jungle over the last 1000 years or so. Massive trees seem to be growing out of the actual stones themselves. As i went about my semi-pro photography session i had to stop to pinch myself. This was almost like being in a fantasy land, nowhere else on earth am i gonna find myself in these surreal surroundings. This temple was the one used in a movie called tomb raider. Never seen it before but now I'm gonna have to to see what all the fuss is about. All I've heard of it are guy blabbing on something about a great set of tits on the main actress. I stopped for a moment to imagine Angelina Jolie or Alana Cockrot or whatever her name is running through the dim stone corridors, jumping over the massive stones that have become detached and fallen from the main structure over time.

Yeah, I was having a great time browsing through the temples, glad that I'd sensibly opted for the 3 day pass, and enjoyed every bit of it. Some of the Temples were even 30 Km away and well worth the ride. The great thing about the long ride was there were plenty of other tourists about that had taken the easy option and hired tuk-tuks, a two person trailer towed by a motorcycle. These putted along between 25 to 40 Km/hr which was perfect for us to slipstream. The bonus being you could have a full on conversation in English with the other tourists in them, until they slowed down too much on the outskirts of Siem Reap.

The shear number of temples, i thought, was gonna be the monotonous part of the sightseeing, but it was actually one of the aspects that contributed to the ‛wow factor' of the whole area.

A pretty impressive place it is, and the nightlife after a hard days sight seeing was equally as interesting. Now that i've been on a busy tourist circuit for so long, I'm bumping into loads of people that i've seen before so there's always someone different to have a beer with each night without having to talk to the randoms that just swarm the place after dark.

Siem Reap - see it before you die.

]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1209197580/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1209197580/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/goldenbez/my_experiment/1209197580/tpod.html Sat, 26 Apr 2008 05:59:16 -0400 Getting on my bike outside my front door in West London and seeing how far i can ride. (Not a horse or a motorbike).

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Siem Reap, Cambodia

Hi everyone.

Well, i thought I'd be able to make more regular blogs now with the use of a laptop on board but somehow it just hasn't happened.
To attempt at getting the job done here, I've just lazily tried to cut and paste my ordinary dairy entries so apologies if the story jumps around a bit too much or is a bit long winded and boring...let me know.

It's in two parts because this stupid goddamn website wont letme stick in as much writing as i'd like. They let me work the problem out for a couple of hours in an internet cafe. Wankers!

And if this ever goes to print, you gotta buy my book too, no just reading it for free on the internet ok?


Sun 9/3/08 126Kms Hue to Da Nang (Marble Mountains)

By the time I'd packed all my shit up and was ready to go, it had started raining. I thought about going back to bed for another hour or two and see if it had cleared up by the time i woke up but then i thought about how long I'd been bumming around in Hue, swilling beer in the DMZ bar and getting up at the crack of noon the next day. I was wheel-spinning, going nowhere, stuck in Hue, and had to get out.

The rain was slightly more than drizzle so it was the ol' plastic bag trick around each foot. I had accumulated a black one, a transparent one, and a blue one. Not even Buddha or whoever ‛the man' is in this country can make a pair out of those three, so ‛odd socks' it was.

A couple hours of eager pedaling and the rain eased off so i tore off my ridiculous very low budget overshoes. Then it started to rain again.

Hugh, an American ol' boy I'd met in Hue, who took me out to a flash as Hawaiian bar one night, had told me about the small (500m high) mountain pass I'd encounter before reaching Da Nang. He'd mentioned an 8 Km long tunnel under the mountains or alternatively, taking the pass over the top, A narrow windy road made dangerous by the sheer volume of trucks, and buses using the whole road.

I got to the toll booth at the bottom of the pass and managed to get info out of a lady who would have got an F for English (about two grades lower than me). ‶Yes bike through tunnel put on bus″. ‶What bus?″ ‶Go down there wait for bus″. Fack that i thought, that just ain't my style - sitting on an overcrowded bus in wet clothes while a looney bus driver spends an equal amount of time in both lanes overtaking everything else on the road, happily blasting away on the super loud air-horns all the way to Da Nang. ‶What's that road″? ‶It go over top, it very dangerous″. Ahh facking sweeeeet! Danger's my mate's kid's middle name and it keeps things interesting, and weighing in at 500m high, it's just a quarter the size of St Gotthards Pass i scaled in Switzerland. Remember?
Off i went wondering what she was thinking having explained the best way to get to Da Nang, and watching me do the opposite to what she'd just recommended. ‛Stupid bloody foreigners'.

It turned out to be perfectly safe now with all the heavy traffic being diverted straight through the tunnel. Hugh must have taken the pass in it's hey-day, when the emergency run-offs were constantly used by trucks with failing brakes. Now it was just me, a few motorbikes putting past and the odd car load of tourists.

The rain made me worry about taking photos as me new camera's not waterproof, and as I've already proved, Olympus's aren't very resilient. But the cloud and mist just made it plain difficult to get a half descent snappet.

Half way up there was what was once a nice family home, overlooking the great blue sea. Chuck an 8Km long tunnel underneath and it needs to vent, and that exhaust vent had to go right by this house. They cant win, it's the noise of the diesels struggling up the hill all day long or the deafening roar of the giant extraction fans sucking the fumes out. Half an hour (3km) later i could still hear it in the distance.

When I reached the top, I looked back at the sea miles below, then looked at at the sea on the Da Nang (south) side. I could have sworn there were different sea levels but i think it must have been the visibility, a lot clearer on the down hill side gave me this illusion.

I chatted to an older Canadian lady (she looked about 50ish) who had also conquered the pass from the other side by fully laden touring cycle. She was treating herself to a can of Tiger to celebrate her ascent. I'd have had a can with her if i wasn't in detox mode after my accidental binge session in Hue (or if she was about 20 years younger). (Ok maybe 5). Good to see someone that age still with the spirit of adventure, and also, having the metaphorical ‛balls' to travel on her own.

Hugh had also mentioned that this dividing range ‛split the weather'. It was weird, definitely drier on the other side, and as i descended i could feel the notable warmth, absent on the other side.

I stopped for a couple of bowls of noodles at a roadside cafe for US$0.50 a pop and, as I've been noticing lately, 15 mins later I got a burning sensation on the back side of my head and neck. It must be an allergic reaction to some of the spices, but it sure tastes good.

Rolling into Da Nang by 4 PM I had an hour to check out it's only attraction, as stated in my guidebook, the Museum Of Cham Sculpture. Not overly interesting, a collection of historical sandstone sculptures from the Cham civilization.

Up and down the riverfront i went, this place was tidy, very impressive. I was looking for a cheap guest house but found it had been turned into a restaurant. I also found, from talking to men sitting on motorcycles, that the ‛Marble Mountains' and China beach were only 10Km away. Power on. I hit the beach and slid south down a rather impressive two laned, palm tree lined road with bars, cafes, expensive hotels and there were holiday resorts being constructed everywhere. This place is on the go!

I got my photos of Marble Mountain and its pagodas nestled in amongst its trees then went down to China Beach, where that American TV series simply named ‛China Beach' was filmed. I never watched it but I'm getting a thin buzz out of being able to say ‶been there″.

‛Hoa's Place', the guest house where I'm staying tonight for a fiver (with a free leaky roof) is only 50 m from the beach. I checked in and got chatting to an Aussie couple, Widdel & Matilda, who are living here now, teaching English to the locals. They pointed out that Da Nang is the fastest growing city in Asia, understandable from what i could see, and that the whole coast has been sold by the Government to overseas investors and will possibly end up like Australia's Gold Coast one day. All in all, a pretty impressive place.


Monday 10/03/08 20km to Hoi An

It rained something chronic last night and was still going for it when i got up in the morning. It didn't phase me though as i knew i only had a short 20km ‛walk in the park' today.

Rolling into Hoi An looking for a hotel got my hormones jumping. As mentioned, south of the Hai Van Pass, the weather changes. It's hot here, resulting in girls wearing a lot less clothes, and girls there were. I nearly wore my eyes out, could have easily written off the machine due to the distractions.

I tracked down the hotel that Hoa from ‛Hoas Place' had recommended me. It was full so i went to the hotel next door, checked in, booked myself on a bus / boat trip to the My Son Temple Ruins the following day, then went out exploring, camera in hand, merging in with the hundreds of other tourists. Very mainstream i was, not the ‛novelty on a bicycle' anymore, just a face in the crowd.


11 to 19/03/08 - Hoi An

My guidebook blabbed on something about buying a ticket to see the Hoi An‛Old town', with money going towards the restoration of the joint. I was dumbfounded because i was in the old town looking around taking photo's of all the boring shat that everyone else was taking photo's of, like a facking robot, and wondering where or why one would pay money for this. I later found one of the booths down one end of town. All the tourist buses pull up there with all the people that have bought a package holiday, the retirees club. It was funny watching them get off, get herded to the booth, pay the money (probably nothing to them anyway) and go mingling with the backpackers who'd arrived in town on budget-arse local buses and found their way into the old town without even trying to avoid the entrance fee booths.

My second day of Hoi An involved getting on a bus at 8 am and going to see the My Son Ancient Temple Ruins, quite interesting thanks to a fairly good guide and a great restoration project that had been going on there. Despite the two full bus loads of tourists there i managed to get a few good photos without any tourists in the shot, the desolate ‛just discovered' look. I achieved this by either lagging behind or racing ahead - like a school trip but with no teachers telling me off.
One of the ruins was just that, beyond repair thanks to a bomb that got dropped on it by some plane in some war.

On my second night of being in Hoi An i rode past a rather lively looking bar on my way home. It wasn't mentioned in my guide book but i could see it was heaving with nightlife - the ‛Before and Now' bar. I took note and tracked it down the following night. I pulled up a barstool and sat at the end of the bar and was minding my own business watching some football on telly when, before i knew it, i was arranging to meet up with this girl from Belgium again in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

One thing that is worth mentioning is the number of Frogs here, not the water bound ones either, the Frenchies from France, the ones that eat snails and frogs legs for lunch and used to blow up Greenpeace ships moored in Auckland harbor and keep knocking us out of the rugby world cup. They have a massive association with the country through the early years of colonization and the French language can be heard in the streets as much as Polish has recently been the dominant language in parts of London.

Observing the local people from the bottom of my beer glass, as well as from the seat of my bike, I've definitely concluded that the driving habits of the Vietnamese are equally as careless as those of the Indians, the only difference being the lack of population, the low traffic volume which statistically makes the roads a lot more safer. They still pull straight out of intersections and side streets without looking, knowing that 99% of the time, there's nothing coming. Things are changing (growing) fast here though. But i do have to admire them for their snail pace speed, they're so tentative on them, often holding me up, and i compare them as opposites to all my friends with motorbikes back home - full throttle or no throttle.

Another observation i made while swilling a few and looking southward is the sox they wear here. They have a separated ‛big toe compartment' allowing them to wear jandals with socks, something considered pretty un-cool in our culture (unless things have recently changed since i've been away).

I spied ‛05' spray painted on the basket of a hire bicycle here one day and wondered if it was a tribute to our late ‛Brocky'.

And as i sit back and swill yet more beer from the quiet riverside cafes i get disturbed buy the number of people riding past on electric bikes. I've never had a crack on one of these before but i think the idea is to pedal and use a bit of power when you're struggling up a hill, or want to lay rubber taking off from the traffic lights. The pedals seem to be for resting their feet on. I've seen hundreds of these, not one of them getting used in bicycle mode. Lazy twats. They're not motorcycles!



Thursday 20/03/08 127 Kms to Kham Duc

So after spending sooo long in Hue, keen to move on, I'd found myself repeating my habit in Hoi An. In four days short of a month, I've cycled less than 150Km. Abysmal Graham.

A good filling bowl of ‛pho ba' (noodle soup with beef) had me gliding down highway 1 for a couple of hours before i thought about hooking a right to cut across the breadth of Vietnam and link up with the ‛Ho chi Min Trail'. My budget-arse tourist map shows a line running from east to west, all i had to do was figure out where. The map has all the tourist spots on it and not much more, about 5% of the places i've ridden through.
So i consulted the locals. The first bunch of men sitting around on motorbikes sent me back 5km up the road. The guy on the motorbike with a mortgage on that intersection sent me back the way i came, which i did before thinking ‛I'm just gonna have to try these roads out and see for myself.'

Highway 611 was a narrow bumpy lane that weaved through fairly populated villages out to the foot of the central highlands. It forked a couple of times but i did well to find a young lad that had reasonable English who sent me down the right track, finally meeting up with a nice quiet smooth road (QL14) that must have been the one indicated by my map.

Right as i started the wildly undulating hilly section, the sun came out. I'm guessing its at least 30°C. Dead facking easy for the locals, i've never seen so many people hanging from trees in hammocks before, and for me, i've never sweated so much in my life before. I lost count of my water consumption somewhere after my 5th 2L bottle. Lucky they're readily available on roadside stalls, negotiation still required.

The sunburn I'd received on the back of my thys a week earlier is now at the full blown itchy stage, adding to my soaking discomfort, along with a heat stroke type headache. Tough times.

Shortly before 3, i stopped in a breezy shady patch to fix a flattie. Well, sort of. Two dudes on a motorcycle stopped and one of them wouldn't let me touch my own wheel. I didn't mind though because i was semi-buggered and he seemed as if he'd done thousands of them before. Of course the hand came out when he was finished, asking for money (close ties with India perhaps?). I shook it and he started laughing all the way down the hill. Nice try man.

I then reached the Ho Chi Min Highway, A few more massive hills before the first town. Hotel, shower, feed, wash clothes, sleep, have another feed, patch inner tube, blog, bed.



21/03/08 114Kms to Ngoc Hoi (The Mountainous Ho Chi Min Trail)

A bit of a hectic day this one. Hills a slight understatement until late in the afternoon. Mountainous is a better description for the best part of the day. there's no mention of the altitude reached but i reckon it's nothing less than the Hai Van Pass just north of Da Nang.

Not quite the populations i was expecting out this way but who wants to be a hill billy anyway?

Yep, bloody hard yakka today, even when i came down out of the mountains it was a case of 5 mins up, 1 min down all day long. The head wind almost enough to keep me cool later in the afternoon but it was a shirt-off day earlier on.

Once again, i had no idea where i was on my map, in terms of distance to go. All i knew was, when there was a gap in the mountains on both sides, that was where the road to Laos turns off.

I had a companion for 30 or more kms today, a truck with a massive earth mover on the back. The driver had a lot of trouble with the gears not being able to change from 2nd down to 1st while on the go. A complete stop, slight roll backwards, brakes applied then into gear had them crawling up the 10% gradients at 6km/hr. I felt like speeding uphill sometimes, so when i wasn't grabbing on to the back, I'd fly past him and do 8km/hr. The heat inspired me to stop and take more photos today than i usually do so we crossed paths for hours.

I stopped to ask the driver about distances to the ‛crossroads' and he put a smile on my face when he told me 30km. 50Km later, no crossroads and no smile. I was rooted, sore, and almost had enough so was really relieved when it was signposted in a town 53km after his indicated estimation.

After expending that much energy today, i doubled up on dinners, rice in one street cafe and noodles in another. The noodles took the accolade.
I managed to find a money exchanger, a jeweler straight across the road from the hotel I'm staying in, thats one less thing to stress about at the border crossing tomorrow.

The things i stress about most are that I've lost my arrival / departure card, this is a new border crossing and I've had no confirmation from anyone that I can obtain a Laos visa there, in fact, the Lonely Planet says that i cant, and of course I'm worried about corrupt border officials using extortion to bum more money out of me than what i should have to pay. We'll see how it goes....



22/03/08 Border Crossing Balls Up

Getting on the road a tad before 8am didn't save me anything in terms of heat avoidance. The 20Km to the border was hot sticky stuff, more sweat stinging my eyes due to the up and downess roller-coaster ride of the roads.

At last the border was in sight. I stopped for a photo before proceeding through, fingers crossed.

I thought something was up the moment the immigration officer flicked through it asking for Laos visa. He stamped me out after a bit of optimistic thinking on my behalf but the Laos entry side of the crossing was as far as i got. ‶no visa on arrival (VOA) here″ was all i got.

So back in to Vietnam i went with the aid of a ‛canceled' stamp over my fresh ‛exit' stamp. I sat outside the border control for about an hour, helpless and astounded at my own stupidity. ‶What a facking moron″ I had the opportunity to get a Laos visa while in Hoi An but i was so sure that I'd read on Lonely Planet's forum that someone had crossed there and got their visa stamp without a hitch. It must have read ‛visa stamped'. The second lot of mis-information was from the hotel manager in Hoi An who also told me that i can get a Laos visa on the border.

Anyway this wasn't gonna help me now as i was hot and bothered and felt like a bit of a boo hoo. My options were to slide on down south a bit more and try and find a border crossing (with VOA of course) into Cambodia. A long ride on a hilly trail. Or i could just get buses back to the next border crossing north, who do do VOA's. A phone call to Elke, the Belgian girl I'd met just over a week earlier helped clear the mess inside my head. She suggested i slip back to Hoi An and get my Laos visa there. This was gonna ad days onto my journey and i was in a hurry to get to Siem Riep / Angkor Wat (Cambodia) to meet up with her again. When she suggested that she'd double back to see me while i waited for my visa, it somehow seemed to take all my worries away. Done deal. I left the border crossing amazed at my own stupidity but contented with the outcome.

I had no Vietnamese money left as I'd rationed the last bit to get me to the border, so now had to make the journey back with only a chocolate bar i had stashed away for such emergencies. Arriving back in Ngoc Hoi discovering there was no ATM in this town, i found a Danish couple who had just come through the border crossing and were looking lost, trying also to get to Hoi An. I took them to the jeweler-come-money exchanger so we all could get some dongs, and then we managed to catch a mini-bus to Hoi An together.

It was quite amazing driving back over the road I'd just ridden, even at 100Km/hr it took hours and gave me a really weird sensation of ‶wow, did i really ride this far over this terrain all in two days″? People keep telling me that I'm an amazing man and looking out the window of the flying minibus, I'm thinking I'm gonna have to start agreeing with them. Ha ha.

The driver had told us we were going to Hoi An but kicked us off in Da Nang, 30km north. I felt ripped off as my guide book states a 4Hr bus ride should be $6 max. I'd just forked out $19 for this one so i kicked up a massive stink, refusing to get out of the bus. It worked. He had to drive over to the local bus and explain to the driver that he had to take to take us to Hoi An for free.

I'm really starting to get sick of having round eyes and white skin in this country. They're arguably more money hungry than Indians, almost having the edge over them in manipulating money out of the white people. Entrepreneurialism it's called, or ripping off the tourist. A lot of the other travelers i speak to don't like the Vietnamese people and i can easily see why. They just seemed nice to me, probably because of my nightmarish encounters with the people on the land in the previous country I'd visited.

Arriving back in Hoi An I made an attempt to find a good hotel for the Danes. It was tricky as the town was hemorrhaging with people for some unknown reason. I got them into a sweet room in a central hotel for $12 (a deal i wished I'd got for myself), arranged to meet up for beer & dinner later on, then went and found myself a scummy hotel across the river for $9.

After we ate, i took them along to the local ‛happening' bar, ‛Before & Now'. Jesus this place was going off being Saturday night and all, the consumers were flowing out the door and onto he road outside. We managed to fluke 3 stools at the bar just as some drunk facks were leaving so we could sit down and become drunk facks ourselves.

I'd only managed to wrestle down a couple before some fat girl from Melbourne applied the ‛wedge' tactic, jamming herself in between me and my new mates. The conversation was pretty one-sided as i showed her as little interest as possible without being impolite. She had that horrible classic Aussie twang tone to her voice that some (not all) Aussie girls have, which i was not really wanting to listen to. (I once had a workmate explaining to me how he was ‛off' Aussie girls for life, as one had said to him ‶I'm on the rag tonight but you can do me in the shatter if you want″ with more nasal tone than an elephant with its trunk in a knot). ‶Who are you here with″? ‶These two Danish people right here″ I say, looking around the vastness of her, expecting an apology for cutting me off from them. Instead i got her life story, which would have been pretty impressive for someone that was interested. Her hands started to wander along my thy as she slurred away ‶Bla bla bla I'm a doctor bla bla life's been good bla bla bla lived the high life in Rome bla learn't to speak Italian bla bla blaa″. I looked over at the Danes who were sniggering away at her persistence despite all the ‛negatives' I'd been sending out (verbal and body language). Free beer is good beer but not when someone like this shouts it. ‶No thanks″ translated into ‶yer, alright″ to her.
I thought back to my younger days when i used to try mixing alcohol abuse with womanizing. I must have scared a fair few girls in a similar manor but was not one to waste what few words i had on someone totally uninterested.
I hoovered the beer back to synchronize the level with Rasmus's depleting glass in the hope it would be his last. It was, ‶We're off now″. ‶I'm coming too″ i said with relief in my mind but guilt (of not squaring off the round) in my voice. Fack it, there was no other way out apart from the classic ‛gotta go to the toilet now, and sneak out the door' trick. Her attitude went from full-on ‛chatting up' to ‶fack you kiwis are boring″ in about three seconds.

Outside; ‶Sorry for not helping you out there Graham, we could see your concern but thought it was funny″. ‶I didn't want to leave that bar but you guys leaving was the only life preserver afloat, so you did help me out...eventually″.



23/03/08 - 28/03/08. Hangin' In Hoi An (again).

Elke had planned on arriving in a day or two but last night i got a text saying ‶you're taking me out for breakfast tomorrow″. She'd gotten an overnight bus and was now waiting on the bridge for me at 6AM.

We spent the next few days wining, dining with the Danes, & laying in the sun down at the beach while awaiting my Laos visa.

With bikes as a common interest, we got talking to a restaurant owner who had a semi-flash one parked up outside. On inquiring where abouts he'd purchased it from, (Da Nang) Elke's previously mentioned dream of riding a few kilometers with me started to take shape.

The next day she was pedaling hard back from Da Nang to Hoi An while i lazily followed on the motorbike we'd hired again, twisting the throttle and occasionally flicking the gear lever. How easy was this? Should i have been using a motorbike all along? The constant engine noise wasn't all that pleasant, nor was the discomfort of the helmet or the fact that i sometimes enjoyed pushing the Honda 90 along at full tilt sometimes when i shouldn't have been, entering into a ‛danger zone' that part of me just couldn't help.

Yep, I now have a riding buddy, an apprentice, someone else who can appreciate first-hand the difficulties and personal rewards of what cycle touring is all about.

Back at base camp, I gave the small hotel forecourt the appearance of a bicycle repair shop as i adjusted the new bike to fit it's new owner, and adapted a basket to fit in front of the handlebars. We also found a way to strap Elke's backpack to the rear rack using motorcycle inner tubes. This is after I'd explained the importance of traveling lightweight and had her off to the post office sending 5Kg of shat back to Belgium.

Our stay in Hoi An became extended yet again as we now had to wait for her Laos visa as my Vietnam visa neared expiry. We got a 1 day prompt service for a bit of extra foldie, receiving it on Friday afternoon, leaving 2 days for me to get my ass out of the country...

I'd been in this town for almost 3 weeks now, once again, feeling like I'd become a resident.



29/03/08 The Bus Ride Back to Ngoc Hoi

We settled the hotel bill and bid farewell to our hotel ‛host family'. They'd looked after us so well, apart from trying to overcharge us on the bill, which i've come to know as standard practice in this country. I find it amazing that 100% of ‛accidental errors' are never in your favor when, statistically speaking, it should be 50%.

He'd told us the price of the bus trip from Hoi An to Da Nang. We rode the 1km to the bus stop and had the driver telling us it was double what we'd been informed. My temper surfaced. ‶Fack you Vietnam″ I said holding a fairly rigid second finger in the air as we discussed riding the 30kms instead. As we changed into our riding clothes, the bus driver lowered his price which kinda angered me even more as it confirmed his attitude of ‛rip off the foreigners'. ‶Get out of here you wanker″ I said, thinking i've been in this country too long.

We did the 30kms to Da Nang in just over an hour and arrived at the bus depot to find ‛no bikes allowed' on all the mini buses. I still don't know why we were sent over to the minibus terminal by the authorities, and got told ‶no big buses to Ngoc Hoi″.

While pondering over the situation i asked the herds that have nothing to do ‶where's the toilet″? They were all mighty keen to guide me into one particular building, after shaking the dew from the leaf i came out to find a ‛staged' man handing over a 5000VND note. They tried to get me to pay it but i wasn't interested. The lady followed me over to my bike kicking up a stink. This typified the Vietnamese attitude towards money and foreigners. Yep, definitely time to leave these people.

After facking around for a couple of hours and getting absolutely nowhere, while guys on motorbikes had numerous attempts at charging us 600,000VND for the trip back to Ngoc Hoi, we decided to just start riding and try and wave down a bus passing by. I'd had plenty of offers from the bus conductors hanging out the doors of other buses passing me all the way down the main drag from Hanoi, so the theory was certainly there.

We turned off up highway QL14B, the road heading east, towards the Ho Chi Min Trail and found a whole bunch of locals sitting in a shady patch with bags, obviously waiting for buses. We joined them and about an hour later a bus came to our rescue. I'd cunningly prepared a bit of paper with pictures of a bike and a stick figure and underneath I'd written ‛2 people, 2 bikes, Ngoc Hoi, 350,000VND', hoping to get the ride for 400,000. It worked, the suckers played right into my hand and we were on that bus, bikes on the roof for 400,000! Bonus - the on board Karaoke but we were unfamiliar with the words so didn't join in.

It's sometimes a little stressful arriving in a town after dark, not knowing if there's accommodation available at all but i was totally 'laxed over this one being second time round. We settled into the same hotel, different room and i took Elke out for some $1 noodles at my ‛fav restaurant'.



30-03-08 139Kms to Attapeu

The ride to the border crossing was the same as i remembered it. Hot and hilly again. Aaaargh this was my punishment for being such a numbskull regarding my research on the visa situation at this border crossing.

The actual crossing was uneventful, i don't think they even recognized me as ‛the bozo who'd come here without a visa' a week earlier.

What was on the other side was even sweeter. Miles and miles of downhill. We must have been at quite an altitude in Ngoc Hoi. The fun was not to last though as, in the grueling heat of the day, the narrow but fairly quiet windy road wound up and over a couple of mountains. Poor Elke. Her first days riding and she has to encounter this. I felt sorry for myself riding through this landscape let alone an unfit - untrained Belgian girl on her first day.

She surprised the hell out of me though with her effort. I'm forever calculating my possible speed and the distance left to determine whether or not I'm gonna reach my destination.

I was starting to worry as the second killer of a hill, which didn't let up on it's 10% gradient for a couple of hours was rightfully taking it's toll on both of us. Elke was almost dead. ‶Graham, I'm never gonna make another 40Kms like this″. ‶It won't be like this″ I said. The really challenging part for me was to find the right words to motivate her and keep her from giving up. ‶We'll stop up there in that shady patch for 5 minutes, then you ride to the top as slow as you like, just keep on riding″.

I yelled back to announce the news of reaching the summit. ‶See, i told you it wouldn't be like this all the way to Attapeu″. I was rewarded with a smile as we coasted down the other side at 40Km/h.

When we reached the bottom it flattened out - and luckily, it stayed flat. We were both so relieved to see the lights of the new bridge which put Attapeu on the map just a few years earlier. We found a hotel and ate $10 worth of food between us, then topped it off with ice cream.

I remembered back to my first day. It was about 130Kms from London to Dover, mainly flat, and I'd aborted the mission and tucked in at Canterbury after 120 something Kms i think. Wow that seems like so long ago now. But double wow at Elke's first days effort.

I explained to her that although we'd knocked out 140Kms, we'd probably used about the same amount of energy as if we'd covered 180kms or more along a flat stretch of road. She wasn't listening, she'd fallen asleep already which didn't allow me to explain that i like the toilet lid left in the ‛male' position.



31-03-08 Resting in Attapeu

After yesterdays massive effort, it was unanimously decided that we'd take a day's rest (and find a cheaper place to eat).

I went to replace the chain on my bike with one I'd picked up in Vietnam. It had a picture of a mountain bike with deralier gears on the box so i expected I'd have to shorten it quite a bit. It was too short and too wide so i had to abort the mission and throw my old one back on.

We then went to check out the rest of the town. There was fack all to see apart from some markets selling fruit and vege, and another section that was reminiscent of a swap-meet back home, that is, a lot of people selling a lot of shat that no one would ever want to buy. Low sales volumes all round.

Down the other end of town we found another ice-cream lady so we ate there until the rain came bucketing down - monsoon style, which was a good excuse to stay and have another liter tub of the heavenly stuff.

When we finally did get back to the hotel, we found rain all over our bed. We never touched the window, it was already opened, so we didn't feel too bad about asking for another room which we got.



01/04/08 120Kms To Nowhere (and in the possession of a good map without knowing it yet....)

Wow what a balls up today. We tried to take ‛highway 18' West of Attapeu but got horribly lost. It was one of those days where I'd have been a lot better off not even getting out of bed. Here i am 14 hours later back in the same bed, red clay dust over my panniers, I'm tired and sore.


I had my first accident today, jamming on the brakes to avoid a dog that had run out in front of me, my front wheel skidded out from under me on the dusty gravel road. I was going down but somehow managed to un-clip both feet and ‛bail out' letting my bike hit the road and me managing to stay vertical after a bit of a recovery stagger.


Taking directions from locals is now a ‛no no'. The language barrier far too great to discuss concepts such as ‛shortest route', ‛how many kilometers?' ‛highway/road 18'? The reason for asking for all the directions was a)no signposts, and b) the serious lack of a descent road map. My guide book has a single-page map of Laos with a few of the main highways on it and my Vietnam map runs over into Laos - no place names and showing a few less roads than my guidebook.


We basically cycled all day down an unsealed clay road. It had several wooden bridges along the way, some of which were so wonky due to being almost washed away, but the locals were still using them, and whats good for the locals....


The road came to a river without a bridge. We put our bikes on a makeshift boat, two traditional dug-out wooden canoes with a whole lot of boards running between each hull. $1 got us a one way trip across. On the other side the road simply got further and further away from civilization, more of an access road to the irrigation system laying directly beside it. It became apparent that we'd lost highway 18 somewhere along the way.


We started backtracking the whole 20km back to the intersection that we suspected threw us off, and started down what we guessed was the correct route. 200m down the way - bang! My front tyre blew out. Dam! No worries though, i jumped on Elke's bike and pedaled back a couple of km to a village while she sat in the shade and minded my invalid piece of machinery. What luck, the first tyre i looked at was a 26″x 1&3/8 or so it had embedded on the sidewall. Less than half an hour later i was back with a watermelon for Elke and a tyre for me. Although it was stamped as a 26 inch, it was way too large, about 28″ in diameter. Bottom!

I managed to patch up the old tyre by cutting up a plastic water bottle, making a ‛patch' and sticking it on the inside of the tyre to stop the tube ballooning out. It worked.


It was now 4:30pm and we were about 40km from Attapeu and had no idea of which way to go so we decided to bite the bullet, do the dash back to Attapeu, try to get there before dark.


In our rush back Elke throws out the anchor to try and avoid a rooster on a suicide mission. I slam my brakes on for the second time today to avoid her and have the front wheel sliding all over the show again. By now i've got my jandals on and i put a foot down to save myself and end up with it folding up under my foot. Again - no injuries. I've almost caught back up to Elke again as I'm crossing a narrow wooden bridge. Right at the end my wheel gets caught between two boards running the length of the bridge and i almost run down the bank on the other side. I'm not having a good run lately and wonder if Elke is cursing my journey.


With about an hour to go there's thunder and lightening up ahead in the distance and i well imagined us getting back cold, wet, and in the darkness. It wasn't to be, as Elke's enthusiasm was again amazing. We rolled into town dry, with just enough light to find our way to the the shop with all the ice cream and treated ourselves to one before heading back to the same hotel and got checked in by some annoying drunk fack that knew a few words of English , repeating his favorite one about 50 times - ‶ok″.



02/04/08 86 Kms to Sekong

A pre-ride inspection found the small ‛blowout hole i had in my Vietnamese front tyre had opened up into a tear of a size that couldn't be ignored. I tried all the bike shops in Attapeu but found the same scenario every time; Thai ‛Deestone' brand tyres stamped 26″ diameter were in abundance but no bloody good to anyone with a 26″ wheel. I wondered if it was a mass manufacturing fack-up in Thailand and if they'd decided to get rid of the worthless production run by chucking the lot over the border into neighboring Laos.

All i could do was let as much air out of the tyre as possible and put my front panniers and handlebar bag on the back rack.

After yesterdays balls up, we decided to stick to the main road today, - Highway 16, which we sampled the first 5-6 km of yesterday as a start to our getting lost. It was a massive loop up north and around to get back down to the southern end of Laos but at least it was a sure way, with big villages / towns on the way.

All day long we're yelling out to the kids ‶sabadee″ (hello) and getting a warm reception back. It was a nice change from everyone yelling out ‶Hello″ in Vietnam but I'm wondering if tourism and subsequent education in these parts is still in its infancy. Most of the kids give a greeting, a smile and a wave. Others, not too familiar with the sight of foreigners or what to do just stand there and stare until we wave and say hello, then the smile breaks out and comes the warm response and i think how things might have been for the early European explorers. How can cultures fight against each other after such a natural warm initial ‛we're all humans' response?

It was nice riding such a comparatively short distance today. When we crossed a bridge and saw kids swimming in the river below, the kids in us wanted one too.

We weren't as brave as the kids though, we wore underwear in the water and we were too big to jump off a branch and pull up in time to avoid hitting the bottom in the few feet of water that the kids were jumping into. It was nice to have time to stop along the way and do these things though.

Arriving in Sekong, food and accommodation were on the list of priorities but finding me a tyre that fits was also a relief. It's a hellishly chunky one, an off road tyre, not so efficient but better than nothing and also better than one that had a plastic bottle stopping the inner tube bulging out.

We're now lounging around in our hotel room and Elke starts reading my guidebook. She finds a section dedicated to southern Laos with a more detailed map of the region. Oh fack!I honestly didn't know it was there! If she was paying me to be her cycle tour guide, I'd have gotten the sack by now. With this map, we could have easily showed it to locals yesterday and found our way down the shortcut, route 18. Shat happens and tomorrow we'll persevere with our ‛long cut'.



03-04-08 51Kms To Tha Thaeng.

A nice easy half day today. Riding along, the gentle rises and falls turned into one gentle rise - no fall. We were kinda expecting something like this as Lonely Planet mentions something about a 1500m high ‛Bolaven Plateau'.

Elke's knees started to give her problems. I rode as slow as i could, facking around as much as possible but she was still falling behind something chronic. As we gained altitude the air temp dropped, it was as cool as it had been in a long time so i felt like really applying the power to the pedals.

I remembered back to when i first met Sylas Cullen, the bloke's room whom i took over the lease of when i moved into my flat in London almost 3 years ago, and probably the guy who triggered my brain into toying with the idea of riding from one side of the world to the other. Him and his girl were doing a small charity ride. Small as in 15,000Kms from the southern tip of Chile to the equator line in a country aptly named ‛Ecuador'. I once asked him ‶what happens if she cant keep up with you?″ (politically incorrect, I know) Sylas replied ‶We'll take a tow rope and I'll tow her along.″

Elke went for a squat in the bushes as i hooked up an elasticized rope between our bikes, ‛this was going to be beneficial to us both, and a bit of fun' i thought - she'll be sitting back there like the queen of Belgium, laughing and waving to the village people we pass by on the roadside while i strain my guts out getting us to the top of this plateau.

I was just about to mount my bike when i looked back and noticed out the corner of my eyes, tears streaming from the corner of hers. Oh shat! This is a pretty familiar occurrence to me. I don't think I've ever had a girl hang out with me for more than a few weeks without making her cry somewhere along the way. I must be some kind of superbastard or something. I laid my bike over and went to fix things with a hug and the usual apology for being such a bastard or whatever it is that i am to the opposite sex. It turned out that she was so worried about making me angry by not being able to keep up.

The hug and a kiss partly did the trick but explaining that i wasn't getting angry over our (lack of) progress was the main point that restored a smile to her dial.

We pedaled on, i hoped the rope wouldn't be all jerky like when trying to tow cars. It went smoothly, which allowed me to ponder over Elke's fear - my anger. What is it for? Why do humans have it? Are we born with it, do we genetically inherit it or is it something we subconsciously learn from our parents, like language, leadership, greed, sharing, respect etc? Can it be controlled or stored up? When should it be displayed and who should be the audience of someone's uncontrollable fury? I don't facking know, one would have to study psychology for all the answers but... what i think about displays of anger? It's ugly. Often unresolving, and 99% of the time, unnecessary. I think people just make asses of themselves having these temperamental outbursts and i know that they loose all of my respect.

We unhooked the rope 5Km from town so Elke would still look cool as we rode on in. The town was big enough to host a couple of guest houses which we discussed staying in over lunch. We needed to rest her knees and i needed time to edit and sort the photo's on my memory card, so we decided on a nice early day (1:30). We showered, then had siesta.

To be continued... go see part II.

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