Unsurprisingly no breakfast was included with our room in Ang Thong, so we headed straight onto the 309 early Friday morning. Most the main roads in Thailand have concrete kilometre markers, which are okay for the fact that we know we are in the right place but as you slowly pass each one, counting down to your destination, it can be quite draining.... 45...44...43...42....you get the picture. We are passing each marker every 5-10 minutes, it doesn't take the mathematical genius that is Uncle Nigel to work out we aint going very fast!
We just about reach the 20km countdown, Steve looks over his shoulder and Jo is wondering aimlessly in the distance. Steve cycles back 10km to see what's wrong, as he approaches Jo a Thai lady has pulled up along side her in a big shiny mpv and jo is wheeling her bike into the boot of the vehicle...she had a flat! Well she had been trying to get a flat since Pattaya and there is only so much glass you can cycle through before you hit the jackpot.
Steves bike wouldn't fit into the boot, so we unloaded all our bags as Jo and the mysteriously friendly Thai lady drove on ahead. Finally Steve could break the 10km per hour record set by Jo as he raced on following the mpv in the distance. The kilometre markers seemed to whizz by, and Jo was more than happy, feet up in the ladies car. But only 5 km ahead, to Joannes disappointment the lady pulled into a garage on the side of the road. The friendly Thai lady explained to the mechanic what the problem was and went on to pay the man 20 bahts for his troubles, feeling very embarrassed, but extremely thankful we watched the mechanic at work.
He located the puncture and only having the equipment available for a scooter proceeded with a hacksaw to fix the tube. The Thai lady was a teacher and had to leave for a seminar down the road, she asked for our addresses, so we gave her Martin and Heathers! (Sorry guys we were scared) and just before she went she also tried to buy us some water. No more than 10 minutes later, after watching the mechanic set fire to the tube and giving Jos bike a full service we were back on our way.
We stopped just one more time, about 10km outside Sing Buri at a local Cafe/Bar. We spent a good hour relaxing in the sun, watching the cows pass by and the children play around us.
On reaching Sing Buri we passed a few hotels before we saw a sign for the Sweet Home Hotel, which was on the right side of town for our onward journey. We decided to go check it out. The middle aged Thai lady quoted us 500 bahts for the room, which we thought was a bit steep, but in the midday sun we were in need of a rest so we took it.
Now the Sweet Home Hotel is more of an Ameican style motel which you see in the movies, the type usally located in Nevada or somewhere like that. In fact most of its clients probably rent the room by the hour. The room had air-con, cable tv and a private bathroom which was definately to our liking, but it also contained quite a few mirrors which had multi-coloured lighting surrounding them...see picture above!
We spent the afternoon watching the Star Movie Channel, small soldiers and a rip off of Con Air starring some American rapper named similar to a Lipton-ice drink. In the evening we cycled back into Sing Buri looking for a restaurant to eat at, after turning down the KFC we headed to a groovy open aired bar just a km from our seedy room.
We spent the next 4-5 hours amusing the locals as we downed our bottles of Chang Beer and played cards. The waiter finally asked us if we wanted to eat around 7 and approached with a menu written solely in Thai. Luckily we had already made our minds up what we wanted, pad Thai, the equivalent to beans on toast i suppose, but no beans and no toast. Luckily he understood us as we inaccurately pronounced our pad Thai 'new a guy' which we believe to be Chicken. Later in the evening there was a live band, who slipped in Sweet Home Alabama, just to please us Farangs.
We retired to our Austin Powers style pad, to watch a re-run of Reading hammering Norwich 4-0.
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