kind of jubilee: 6000km are completed today
It is not only an internal problem when I wake up that early. Today, it had been very quiet around midnight, and at 1 a.m., I woke up with the feeling it must be morning, because people were shouting around and making work sounds that I associate with day time. This was for the next 3 hours, then it was more silent and then the “real” acoustic morning scenery began. That was at 5 and I got up. Again, I worked a bit and then I packed to leave.
At 6:30, I sat on the bike. This was not necessary, because today only 90km were to manage, but I wanted to make most of it before it gets hot.
I was going in a upper medium speed when a woman on a racing bike and an elder man on a touring bike overtook me. Just for fun, I wanted to keep up for a while and tried to stay in the slipstream. They were going with 30km/h and to my surprise I could cope with it. After 10km, Mr.G told me to make a turn to the left and I left them. After 200m, I should go right and then I saw that the streets would meet again and thought it would be fun to meet them again. The road had a worse quality and alone I only could do 26km/h, and this was hard. But to my surprise I saw the man (without the woman) in front of me after a while. He also saw me and stopped. But we couldn’t talk, he couldn’t speak a word English and I no word Thai. He went to a shop to have breakfast and I continued for a while.
Then, I also wanted to get some food and asked a woman with a pan what she would fry. She didn’t understand so I wanted to show what I meant and went to the side. And there was a roof and I hit my head so hard that I had to sit down. Even my neck was hurting from the impact and curiously, my lip was open, but not my head. She had no food, so I took a drink to sit for a while, refilled my water bottle and went on. I was ok again.
Because of the “race” before, this break was at km35 instead of 25 and so I waited to km60 with the second one. The man there told me that the soup was not ready but then he asked his neighbours sitting with their food in front of their house if the would have something and they brought me a white stew with some tofu, herbs and vegetables
and I was happy that his soup was not ready, because the alternative was delicious. On the way, I tried to get a better photo of those cranes with cows, but they are so shy that they always fly away before the camera is ready. So I made a photo of a slow tree covered with a kind of grass that was also growing on the ground,
Before I reached the hotel, I bought some tangerines
and I found a fruit beside the street that looked eatable.
In Thung Song, I needed a stop for orientation and this was at the side of a street shop selling some interesting things where I couldn’t tell if it is food or decoration. Some things were indeed not food, but I found interesting sticks that I wanted to try.
The hotel was nearby and at noon I was in my room! It was a nice and big one and the bathroom was good, too. I also washed my clothes, wondering about the wardroom that seemed to be made exactly for my needs.
I wanted to go to bed earlier and leave with the sunrise tomorrow, because it is a longer tour and in this case the morning hours are more important than otherwise. But there was a night market and I wanted to make a short round to find good food.
I bought a mango…
Then I bought fried noodles, good, and something that I supposed to be a kind of cake. It was maybe a sweet potato or similar. I would have got sugar and spices and the taste was neutral enough to justify it, but after a few bits I like it as it was.
Back at the hotel, first I tried to upgrade my bike mirror by adding some glue to the joint. The mirror always slips down and Gray’s foil that he had implied in Dubai, was only effective a few days, but I fear that the glue also will not help long.
And then, the mango. If there is a scale between 1 and 10, with 10 being heavenly, this one would get 5 for average. Even in Austria I had eaten fruits like this, who give you a slight memory of what a mango can be and can do.
I have to go on!