"Keep going..."

Bathroom of our home-sweet-home for tonight. Our guest-house is right on the beautiful ocean gulf. Resting on a picnic table outside our room, I was enjoying the seabreezes and the disconcerting sound of our toilet draining directly into the ocean. 

Today we bicycled around Ban Bang Phra Reservoir and are staying the night on the coast at Sriracha. We'd hoped to get a substantial distance east, but our map lacked road names for the little guys, and we ended up doing a "day rider's" loop around the reservoir rather than traversing distance, thanks to misreading the map and becoming lost. But neither of us are particularly bothered--that's not the Thai spirit--which gave us an opportunity to visit these Chinese temples on an island nearby.

This picture does not do justice to the wows.

Inside the temple--felt as festive as a merry-go-round, as inappropriate as that is.

Last night we had more sea creatures, rice, and baby cabbages for dinner.  

Mmmm, squid creature tentacle beard.

After the meal, I got up to pay Mr. Restaurant. He asked me in basic English where I was from, then how old I was. Looking up at me after these answers, he observed appreciatively: "you high." Then he told me how high he was (1.6 meters). His wife came over to marvel at me as well, and gestured around her face: "bee-you-tee-full" she said. 

I left full of seafood and happily laughing about this exchange; trying to take notes in the moment for better travel writing, I brought out my little book (thank you dear Anurag!) and started jotting while walking. I strode my head directly into the pink rear-view mirror of an extraordinarily colorful bus--I'm high enough for that evidently. Buddy Lissy and I laughed ourselves silly over that one. 

Bicycle bliss ocean breeze. 

Roadside, mid-morning heat and mind-burning sun, two girls peering bemused at insufficiently labeled map. 

Buddy Lissy: [looking up from map, giving directions] "Keep going then...keep going." 

Sandra: [in response to this] "I ate all the bananas by the way." 

Happy New Year!!

"Oh good," I thought hungrily as we pedaled from our guest house this morning, "plentiful breakfast stalls with delicious fruits!" But upon closer peering, these were alters set up for the Buddha for the new year. Oh well.

Today was a world smelling of universal incense, sounding of jumpy exploding fire-crackers, and a-glow in golden flowers. Happy Chinese New Year, celebrated with vigor here. Maybe that's why people were lounging happily outside houses, congregations of large brown beer bottles on tables (at 9am!). Car grills were decorated with flower bouquets, paper orange lanterns stretched over the streets. Yellow flowers were everywhere, and I joined in the festivities by draping over my handlebars some flowers and ribbons I rescued roadside.

Instead of eating someone's alter for breakfast, we stopped at a traditional food stand. I was served a plate of rice, a large slab of chicken hot off the grill (sensible to check that meat comes right off the heat), and a small baggie of unidentifiable vegetables. Bamboo? Some sort of unripe fruit? "I have no idea what this could possibly be, so I shall eat it." Travel-eating is exciting, delicious, and sometimes--as in this case--surprising and disconcerting.

The chicken was not just basted in spice, but infused with it. I wasn't eating meat; I was eating a protein spice packet. While I consider myself quite eager in the adventurous food department, eating chicken for breakfast is just too far from my fruit, yogurt, and granola security blanket. The vegetables were saltier than even my sweaty biking body wanted to deal with.

Mr. Crocks-Shaped-Like-Chicken-Feet, a man amongst a group of beer-imbibing Thais at a neighboring stall, approached our table bearing another plate of chicken. "Chicken! Free!" he announced happily. I felt rude not eating it, but it too was cryingly spicy and I simply could not calm the conflagration in my face.

So instead we asked him for directions to the next town. We showed him our map, and soon we had an entire Directions Committee for ourselves, as all his friends joined in too. "Mapmapmap! Map! mapmap!" was the chorus and we had a flurry of arms waving southeast and a deluge of helpful, incomprehensible Thai. So we set out.

The riding was less bad than yesterday: no construction at least, and in some places the traffic let up. Enjoying the lanterns and the flowers certainly brightened the ride. Also passing things like an alter surrounded by probably a hundred small zebra (zebra?!) figurines...

Then! Then we rolled down a hill and the WATER, the gulf!, was visible. I made a lot of noise then. Blue water under the hazy heat, coconut trees--woo!

We're staying near the coastal town Chon Buri, at a "locals" beach. I spent the afternoon lounging in those color-party beach chairs and padding about in the sand. Currently working out our route for tomorrow. We've been riding short distances these days, to break ourselves in.

(I love hearing from you readers! I'm glad you're following!)

Photographs: a Gulf of Thailand Beach town

Bang Saen Beach chairs all a-color.

Sunset into the Gulf of Thailand.

My lunch of sea creatures and greens. Squid, shrimp, scallops, and something white, tissuey, and seaweed-esque. So fresh and delicious.

Our bikes in the common room of our guest house here. They are watching TV apparently.

First Day Bicycling

This day has significance: the first day of actually pedaling the bicycle! Also the first day I've ridden in months. That has been the longest I've gone without riding for years, actually. Usually not more than 3 days go by when I don't ride my bicycle.

But here I am.

Weaving out on the bike from our Bangkok alley this afternoon felt unaccustomed: I was more loaded down than I've ever been (have to carry all my belongings for some time!). Buddy Lissy and I threw ourselves into the Bangkok traffic and biked the raging 6 km to the train station. That experience was certainly the most cars I've ever shared a road with before. We rode on the far left side, because they drive on the left here. Especially unnerving were the motor-scooters coming towards us on the wrong side of the road, in addition to the motor bikes and tuk-tuks and buses and trucks and cars and more motor bikes passing us on the right. I felt invigorated to finally be on a bike again, completely overwhelmed by the swarm, but thrilled to be part of this mass of human transport.

Then a hot train ride for an hour to get fully out of the city (50 cent tickets, 3 bucks for the bike). After some time the tall cement buildings gave way to corrugated shanties, then to suburban blocks, then finally to: RICE FIELDS! I gawked at the brilliant green of those rice paddies: stretching out expansively like corn fields in Indiana. Piercingly, gloriously, refreshingly green.

Where the train dumped us (Chachoengsoa for you Google-mappers) left us about 40 km from the coast, so off we pedaled towards Chon Buri (our first "destination"). Our first leg! How exuberant!

But alas and alack, the road was horrendous. 

The worst biking experience I've had, next to the windy snowy bitterly cold one in Idaho. We were on a highway and trucks clashed by so loudly Buddy Lissy and I had to shout to each other. Motor bikes and cars slammed along as well and exhaust was heavy. There was a shoulder but construction was also happening there, so sometimes we rode over the torn-up rusted red soils, which were waiting for new pavement. Add together dust, grit, unexpected gravel patches, and HEAT, and a green-tea frappe at a little gas-station was heaven I had yet to imagine.

But we had a vigorous cheering section as we bicycled. Trucks chirped their horns at us, cars rolled down their windows and yelled out "ooo ooo!" or "wow!" Women at their food stalls rubber necked us, grinning broadly and waving or thumbs-upping. This wasn't harassment and it wasn't hawking; this seemed more like "look at those white girls on bikes! Go and good luck!"

The sun began to set and we didn't get to Chon Buri so we pulled off to find a road-side place. We're staying in an "expensive" hotel ($15 bucks for shared room), complete with toilet paper, nice towels, and hot water, none of which the Bangkok guest house had. This hotel is off a quiet side-street in a traffic-choked strip of a town whose name and objective I do not know, but there are lots of young people and the map said "vocational university." Compared with Bangkok there are NO other white tourists here, and no signs with Roman characters.

I went out walking after a beautiful cleansing shower and for the first time in days I could see stars! I bought some anonymous balls of meat on a stick (passing on the squids on sticks or whole crabs) and found this here internet cafe.

Grateful for our first day of bicycling and ready for tomorrow, with hopefully better roads.

I am very happy to be here.

Latitude Gratitude and other assorted nuggets

• Latitude Gratitude: when one feels extraordinarily grateful to be not in the northern USA but instead sufficiently warm with easily accessible tropical fruit.
  
• I bought a cold bottle of Leo Beer yesterday, because it had a tiger on it and astrologically I am a Leo. I opened it with my pocket knife and padded through the evening alleys back to my guest house. It felt a little like New Orleans, being able to wander around outside enjoying an open beer if you like. It was in your honor Uncle Greg.
  
• The only time I've seen people rushed and flustered so far in this city was getting on and off the water taxi. Yes, there is a boat here that plies the river (morbidly disgusting water) and carries people faster than through the traffic-y streets. The long thin diesel-coughing boat sloshes towards the pier where passengers wait. The boat lurches forward and back to get in stepping-on distance and you have a hurried moment to tip on board before it plows away again. A youth with a piercing whistle communicates with the captain, messages I'm assuming to be "slow", "forward", "backward", using numbers of whistle-chirps. The view was fascinating from the river: birds balancing on plant material and piles of trash, tremendous monumental hotels (I've been living in the backpackers ghetto, essentially, where you can stay for $8 a night, so these seemed like a different world), rusted corrugated metal dwellings on stilts in the water. Then our boat clunks to another pier-bashing stop and we sway off. Sure beats the car traffic. Plus boats are in my blood.
  
• Buddy Lissy brought our laundry to be washed yesterday ($1 per kilo) to one of the hundreds of little houses that have washing machines displayed on the sidewalk--the equivalent of laundromats here. Later I was walking along an alley and, laughing surprised, "hey! that's my shirt!" hanging on a rack to dry on the sidewalk. Hello too, undies. :)

Would You Rather?

If you've ever been around pre-teen boys you may have been coerced into playing Would You Rather, a game where you have to choose between "would you rather eat a snake or a spider?", "would you rather be freezing cold or burning hot?", etc.

I happily irritated Buddy Lissy last night, as we folded items into our bags, making up a Bangkok version.

Would you rather:
...smell urine or cigarette smoke?
...have dirty Teva feet or filthy exhaust face?
...be bothered by a taxi driver or a dress vendor man?
...listen to Karoake or cats fighting?
...have rats or cockroaches?

Care and Prepare Day

Yesterday was Care and Prepare Day for Buddy Lissy and me: our last day in Bangkok and we visited the dentist and had massages and also bought a Cambodia map planned out our first leg.

Because we are on a bicycle trip, allegedly, and we finally are ready to begin pedaling! I will tell you about our plan (my mother leans forward expectantly) but first about the other things.

The dentist: 
The office was the size of a large dorm room, and Buddy Lissy and I ducked in and asked if they had appointments available for a cleaning. "Now?" asked Mrs. Desk and before I could establish myself I was being shown behind a curtain, sat in a chair surrounded by three Thai women, and had towels laid over my face. They cleaned and polished and I was told I had no cavities. I paid 600 baht (equivalent of 20 dollars) and was on my way. They charge you 700 baht if you're dirty.

The massage:
Never having had a massage before, whether Thai or not, I had no idea what to expect. But for $4 an hour (!!!), how could I possibly not have one? A group of Thai women greeted Buddy Lissy and I from inside, and we took off our sandals, had our feet washed (I made a sound of delight and Mrs. Hands laughed as she scrubbed), and then padded upstairs into a series of mattresses smelling of menthol under dim lighting. We were given boxy cotton garments to wear and a cup and saucer of tea. Mrs. Hands began on my feet and measuredly worked her way all the way up to my scalp.

I've never been touched so thoroughly before by a stranger, and I was aware of a certain mental release I was going through to relax, become vulnerable, and enjoy sensations. This was massage-meets-chiropractor: she lifted my legs and pushed her knees into my hamstrings, pulled all my toes to crack them, turned me over and pushed heartily into my back, twisted my back using her own body as leverage and the room resounded in spinal cracks. The women quietly chattered good-naturedly in Thai, their sound lulling like birdsong. I wondered what they might be talking about, "this one is so long! White people are so tall...." or maybe, "well, mine has very interesting shoulder muscles...maybe she's worked on farms."

The plan: 
We've been in Bangkok 5 days, and while these five days have felt like an entire season, it's time to leave the fruit vendors, choking traffic, and beautiful earring-shopping behind. I bought probably a pound and a half of road snacks in eager preparation, unidentifiable yet I trust in their deliciousness, for about 3 dollars. Black sesame balls, something yellow hairy and sticky which I hope is pineapple candy, banana chips.

Bicycling out of Bangkok would be a few brutal hours of anonymous contorted traffic-clogged roads. Instead we are hopping on a train this afternoon for a small town outside the city to save ourselves. The town is, um, Changtoawanawanalalala, or something similar, on the east side of the city.  From there we will bike south and east along the Thailand coast to the Cambodia border. I expect this will take us 4 to 5 days. Internet has been plentiful and fast in Bangkok ($1/hr) and I expect at least some internet along the coast, but do not fret if you don't hear from me every 24 hours. I love writing and posting photos, though, which is why I'm taking a chunk of time this morning.

Bangkok scenes

A particularly tall and colorful Bangkok street.

This goddess kept very entrancing fish.

Signage makes me laugh

Valve packages: please handle with care.

Marcia, looks like you should wear that mask if you are planning to knit.

Because chedda tastes bedda.

Wallful breakfast: on eating out

This morning for breakfast I had "Wallful with Banana and Mango." Maybe the best wallful of my life because it had sesame seeds resting in its little square holes and the banana tasted like a flower. I had it with fresh coffee, frothy on top as if it were a cappucino but this baby was just straight coffee. I felt approximately 8 feet tall after drinking it, 'twas so strong.

The restaurant, like many restaurants here, was the front of someone's house and the matre de, server, cook, barista, and bus-boy were all one person. You sit on their front porch, or adjacent to their living room, at a tiny table with a TV nearby (always on). You ask for the toilet and you weave through the miniscule kitchen and duck into the little bathroom. The floor is wet, because the whole bathroom is also the whole shower, and toothpaste and brushes recline on a rack on the wall. There is no toilet paper but you'd pocketed some of the flimsy pink napkins from the table. A garden hose is looped near the toilet for a wetting butt spray, should you choose. You deposit your pink paper in the wee waste basket,--not in toilet!--rinse your hands under the showerhead, and poke back out through the house.

I continually stop and rejoice and marvel: I am in Thailand!!!!

Fascinators

 I have a grab-basket of unrelated, yet fascinating, sentences from these days in Bangkok. Please excuse the unrelated nature of this, but it'll be like wandering through the astonishingly diverse markets here.

• Bangkok is so smoggy that even this intense tropical sun does not feel burny on my skin. Looking at skylines is like looking through gauze.
• I am becoming quite adept at clapping, and even single-handedly grab-killing, mosquitoes. Some of them might be named Molly, here, which is short for May-lalala, so I am being extra vigilant! (Shari: thank you for your bug stuff!)
• At a few different restaurants now, I've heard background music of: American Christmas carols.
• There are house geckos: little plastic toys that squeak and dart around the walls.
• Bangkok is crawling with French tourists, identifiable by their cigarettes and men carrying shoulder purses. 
• We stopped at the Indian Restaurant-Tailor shop-Cocktail Bar-Visa Specialists (it amazes me the lack of delineation in businesses here) to check on the state of our Cambodia visa processing. Mr. Nepal, who we'd organized coordinating our visas through and who had been smoking a duct-taped hooka the first time we talked with him, was deeply asleep in his desk-chair, his arms behind his head. Bollywood advertisements played on the TV and eventually he woke up.
• Fish sticks in Thailand are fishes grilled over coals with sticks stabbed through them. I ate a catfish-relative yesterday, complete with little whiskers. It was flaky as a croissant and mmmmm-fully delicious and came with a wee plastic bag of spicy sauce, which left my lips vibrating.
• Passing by so many beauty parlors advertising eyebrow and eyelid tattooing. (no thanks)
• At the protest sites--among the camping tents and people in Thai national colors--you can buy lacy underwear, use a bathroom in a truck with metallic purple lug-nuts, and eat grilled bananas.
• Streets are snake-like and, while they are mostly in English, signs often are lacking at street corners. Our map is insufficient and we've spent no small amount of time poking blindly around for orientation. This is a world where "take the next left" is meaningless. "Is this Ratchawithi (Ratatouille) Street?" "Nope, I think we're on "Ratchaphrarop (Ratcha-Prop-Prop)" "Or maybe it's Somdetchaophraya (Some ditch and fry ya) road...ARG" comprises much of our conversations. 
• Everything I've consumed here, from the plastic baggies of papaya for 45 cents to the plates of noodles with greens and seafood, has been astonishingly delicious. "This is the best papaya I've ever had," I remark every time. I eat mounds of noodles like I've a focused starving child. I eat unrecognizable things on sticks and am astonished by their divinity.

What Monday looks like.

Taro Balloon. It's purple. Found, photographed--but not eaten--in a little French bakery. 

At the used bike shop: successfully found Buddy Lissy a bicycle today! Unlike me, she did not fly hers here. Finding a  bicycle in Bangkok has been a fascinating treasure hunt. More about this later. 

Engines much? 

Ducks. I had part of one for my dinner. 

The green is "water mimosa" and I don't know what kind of vegetable that is but it tasted like green beans. The red is a type of hot pepper which I don't know either, but it is a Thai Hot Flash. I ate a whole one, curiously and ignorant, and was soon fanning myself. My face felt so spiced that the flare went just about to my lymph nodes. Wow. 

A small grieving

Dear all, I did not write yesterday because I had been looking forward all day to the beautiful and fascinating series of photographs I was going to post for your viewing pleasure.

And then, the computer corrupted them and between the computer and me, they were deleted. I lost all love of life for a little while and could not post. Even just a few days of photographs here, and I snapped some gems. Photographs to me capture a place and a feeling and are delicious fun to share. A closet-sized shop of Golden buddhas. A man at the protest sleeping in a hammock, his face hanging open and his skinny elbow jutting out. A cat sleeping in a wok at the market. A menu, mostly in Thai, but for a few English gems like "Fried Fry and Vegetables."

But now those photos are only words.

Unperturbed

"You're heroes!" exclaimed a British lad we'd been chatting with at Sweety's Big Cocktails (just over 2 bucks for a frozen pink mai tai, oh mai!). We'd just shared what we were doing here: biking from Bangkok to Hanoi. "Nope", I countered, "we're heroes when we're done. We're idiots now."  Yes, our main objective is the biking, but we are still spending time in Bangkok getting ourselves ready for this. Buying maps, combing incomprehensible streets for alleged bike shops, stocking soap and toothpaste for 40 cents.

Being in Bangkok has me wordless. Both the diversity and the strangeness of what I see and smell is mind-boggling. But I itch to try and capture it. The city is busting out in four dimensions with activity. Everything is happening everywhere: food sellers and motorbikes and children and cats and dogs and police and potted plants and exhaust and golden buddhas. But I have not seen any aggression, no one is hurried, no one is busy, but combine this concentration of humanity and overall it seems busy. But really, individually, the word I would use is "unperturbed." 

Like the grayed old man drifting along on his rust bicycle in flip-flops at dusk, just about invisible, on a blustery road. But he was not hurried, he was not anxious.

Crossing these roads is also fascinating. Taxis and buses and motorbikes blow along in a seemingly impenetrable force. There are places reminiscent of cross-walks: white paint stripes on the road, but this is not Seattle, where you put a foot out and everyone obligingly slows down for you. Here it is a game of Frogger. But again, watching locals navigate this, nobody seems concerned.

Here's how it works. You stands expectantly at hopeful crossing location, looking left and right, then checking across the ocean for hopeful others. Eventually some join you on your side, and others congregate on the opposite. The traffic zooms along, disregarding, neon pink taxis studding the flow. At first this felt very hopeless to me. But--and this is the amazing part--once a critical mass of pedestrians has accumulated, and without any seeming acknowledgement of timing, everyone just pads into the street at the same time and the motor bikes lean around you, the buses slow down imperceptibly, and everyone gets across.

It's like a choreographed dance where everyone has a part but it's actually not choreographed.

Labies and may-lalala

Yesterday I got some rabies and Japanese Encephalitis.

The vaccines themselves are much nicer than the diseases I reckon. Do not be concerned. ;)

I'd researched getting these in the states and the series of rabies and Japanese Encephalitis would have cost me about $280 a shot, and I needed 3 rabies in a series.

I went to the Thai Institute for tropical diseases and, gloriously, for about $20 I got my shots (plus a $2 doctor's fee). Let me tell you about the experience. It's the every-day navigations like this that I find so fascinating in other cultures: in some ways a better window into a world than hopping aboard a tour-bus.

So Buddy Lissy and I hoofed off across the city, walking along tree-lined streets, threading through tiny alleys, dodging motor bikes, crossing train tracks, passing papaya and mango vendors. We arrived at the clinic (a new shiny tall building) and tiny nurses in crisp uniforms and statuesque white caps printed me a little "hospital card", laminated, with my name. (why?) We waited briefly in a set of tidy chairs, and then were shown into a doctor's room. Mr. Doctor spoke excellent English, with an almost in-traversable accent though, and I was so grateful to be able to consult with someone locally, in my language, about the true risks of malaria, rabies, and other such exciting tropical novelties.

Mr. Doctor patiently explained about may-lalala and mosquitoes; the risk is actually quite low here, unlike other may-lalala prevalent areas like Africa. He counseled we should be more worried about Japanese Encephalitis, because unlike may-lalala, it is untreatable, and you will die a tortured death.

Then we all hopped our hands on our arms, miming dog bites, and discussed labies. With a three shot series, you only need two booster shots if you are bitten. And this is protection for life. Mr. Doctor considered the risk of labies low, but I decided to get the series regardless, because I could do it for about $30 bucks, instead of $850 in the states. Strike while the vaccines are cheap, as they say. They gave me a little paper booklet, with the dates for the next vaccines in the series and the brand of the vaccine: easy to show to the next Thai hospital 7 days from now.

Then I was sent down to the cashier, where I paid, and then to the stock counter, where I was given 2 vials which I carried back up to the doctors. A lovely nurse gently stabbed me up, and I was on my way.

Buddha shop

I passed a shop full of massive golden buddhas yesterday. I'd never seen anything like this before. And then I passed another. And buddhas sitting on the sidewalk, shining away. Buddhas wrapped in plastic. Standing buddhas. Sitting buddhas. So much gold; it was like walking past so many sunsets.

I'd walked all day and hadn't seen any buddha shops, then boom! a whole street of them. It must have been the buddha shopping district.

(will be writing more later, but have little time left on internet now)

Thailand sights first day

Tofu salad for lunch. Fresh dill, crunchy seaweed, lovely fresh leaves. And an entire block of tofu? Uff.

Our guesthouse is easy walking distance to the river and a charming park.

I can't tell the difference between streets and alleys.

A wiring nightmare of telephone and electric wires. (Dad!)

My first day in Bangkok: padding about with Lissy, enjoying, smelling, tasting, watching, buying a garden of a pair of flowered pants. More Pad Thai than I could eat (for 60 baht = $1.80). A gleeful bag of papaya, eaten on a stick. Sunset at the river, a huge set of speakers playing music for the park-goers.

Seemingly requisite for travelers to tropical areas, studded with jet-lag: I became wide of eye and weak of knee and had to charge off to the loo. But a small price to pay for being in such a fabulous place. I'm loving Thailand so far.

Flying and flapping

Air travel is mind-boggling. We become accustomed to it: pile into small space, engines rev, butt gets corrugated for a while, then file out and ta-da! you're in some new land.

But this neuters the manifestation of the extraordinary distance between, say, the snowy northeast and sunny smoggy Bangkok. I have come an astonishing distance--heck I even moved through time as well as space--, into a new culture, new air, different plants. I am reeling gently and incredibly grateful.

I feel the zing of that autistic experience of every input being novel, overwhelming, exciting of curiosity, surprising, funny. This is a very alive way to be, to be a foreigner in a foreign land.

.......

The flight leaving Buffalo for Chicago was delayed by 2 hours, and I was not keen on missing my connection to Abu Dhabi. I missed a connection this past December and it was a miserable experience. That charge of need and impatience, wholly specific to airports, flooded through me once we rolled into Chicago.

I want to write to you about The Race.

The gun went off; I tailgated the men on the gang plank into the airport and then--free from behind them!--flapped off, flat out, towards Terminal 5. The International Terminal. Of course, being expansive Chicago OHare, I not only had to go through to another terminal but also exit security (because of international flight). Oh horror and bother. Exiting out the airport was like walking off a pier, "NO!", but I was single-mindedly following signs for Terminal 5. I slapped and panted, flying past ladies tamely rolling along their suit-cases.

I felt very alive. Pounding escalators, crashing through automatic doors: finally to the security for Terminal 5. Only to be turned back to the ticket counter, "you are missing the three dots on your ticket."  Whatever; I charged back and forth as needed.

The stakes were high. I had a meeting with no cell-phone in a large foreign airport with my Buddy Lissy and thoughts of missing this 13-hour leg would be a logistical nightmare.

Flapping through the terminal, this odd cocktail of enjoyment and panic was in my veins. My lungs hurt. My feet pounded. Suddenly in my path was a Gift Shop. "Through here to gates!" a smartly dressed man routed me. Through the brightly-lit perfume displays and glittering duty-free jewelry I charted. I dodged shopping ladies, zipping down a back aisle. I was laughing too--this homespun girl stampeding through all this wealth. I ran to my gate, though I didn't need to check the number. A throng of colored turbans and beautiful dark people formed a wide line. I turned my sprint into a prance and pumped the air. MADE IT. The beautiful people turned and looked at me, askance: who was this white running weird?

.....

Blessings: I had two empty seats adjacent me on that long-haul leg and slept a proper 7-hours, all comphy, lying rather than reclining, extra blankets a nest. Other blessing: Madame Checked Baggage did not charge me over-size for my bicycle box.

Now to explore Bangkok! And to eat some proper food. I've had a lot of dinners recently, as that was the appropriate meal for the appropriate timezone I was flying over, but I'm ready for something not-dinner.

(any and all comments appreciated! I love hearing from you)

Bangkok Arrival

Local street kitten begins unwrapping my bicycle box.

I have a traffic jam of sentences; I don't know how to start. Like the traffic jam that is the city of Bangkok. Here's a few: I've arrived! I feel the thrill of tropical plants and street vendors and foreign faces. Taxis are neon pink and the airport ladies room stall was entirely purple. I'm writing this from the little guesthouse in Bangkok: free internet. Mr. Taxi Driver (we needed a Big Taxi for the bike box) unloaded my (increasingly frail) box onto the curb and immediately this kitten scampered up and batted away at a flap of tape. I met my Biking Buddy Lissy in the airport, at our designated meeting place--in this foreign land, no cell phones, no Plan B--and I was a flood of gratitude to see her again. I'm spinning. I'm in Thailand! It's tomorrow here, by the way, for you westerners you. Tomorrow is very nice; you'll enjoy it.

I think I shall organize myself and write a proper entry soon.

Greasy fingernails

My dad finished his dinner with a clutch of wire tires in his fist. We laughed at him afterward, but he hadn't realized it at the time. He'd plowed off between the omelet and the stew to fetch me these wire tires to pack for my bicycle adventure. You see: my Dad gave my bicycle a complete over-haul before this trip and packing just-in-case wire tires was the final bit.

I have to stop and think which way to turn screws; "you certainly didn't get these genes" he points out politely. "There is a better way to do that" he indicates as I'm ineffectively dancing around with a bolt.

So I'm grateful as twins that he spent a whole day with me, changing brakes ("take a break Dad" --WAT?-- I said as I handed him the brakes package), re-wrapping handlebar tape, fitting a brand new tire, gathering me tools to take. He took so much extra time to find metric screws so I didn't have to carry a second type of screwdriver. That is empathetic efficiency at its greatest I tell you.

My bike stood proud and eager, all greased and tuned, and then we dismantled her again and grunted her back into her cardboard box. I was given Bike Reassembly 101, so through a fog of jet-lag entirely across the world I might re-create a bike out of this heap of disconnected handlebars, seat, wheels, and frame.

Dear cargo handlers with Etihad air, please be gentle.

My brilliant father. (can you spot the hip waders?)

One bike box. Not my carry-on.

Prologue

When I travel I become hungry for writing--to relive my experiences, to revel in describing luscious rich smells and sights. I've opened a new platform for this current adventure; I had been blogging on Livejournal but that feels rather college freshman now, and Blogger is obligingly user-friendly and slick.

The skinny and sunburned is this: I've finished a master's in Soil Science, I am at one of those junctions in life between closing the door and opening the next window. So there is no better time to pack my bike and some good sunscreen off to Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

YES I am going with a friend so just un-twist your knickers.

The rather unshaped plan is this (the only crumb I can manage for you logistics lovers you): fly into Bangkok on January 24th, spend a week in the best shopping best hotels best medical clinics worst traffic, then head south along the coast, cross into Cambodia, eat mango sticky rice, stay at little lodges (no camping gear for us, thank you), apply more bug-spray, cross into Vietnam, slurp some pho, then pedal north up Vietnam to Hanoi. 

I expect this to be about 1800 miles?  If we do 40 miles a day this'll take us about 45 days. But days on the beach happens and tropical diarrhea happens and beautiful distracting temples happen, so who really knows? 

But the point of this is to move, to see, to explore, so I'm not worried about logistics.

Please do come with me!