Simply cycling around
I could have had a nice sleep last night… Bloody dogs! This morning I’ve started a bit earlier than normally to make sure nobody would see me so this night was even shorter. I was only 10km away from my next stop so the morning ride was really short as well. Later this afternoon, I’ve done more than 50km as I was going mainly downhill. I arrived at Kaeng Khoi and found a spot in a large bare field where people organise a market.
Today, I’m finally reached on of these unavoidable highway that lead to the capital. Fortunately I know it’s only temporary. I’m not going to cycle straight to Bangkok but will kind of slalom. I still have 5 days to get there so I can take my time. This morning, I’ve found a detour until the next Café. This evening I covered 40km on the highway before I could get out and search for a quiet spot. Everything worked well until my “4 legs best friends” came in…
Today is the last day I’m cycling on a “quiet” road. It’s not quiet all day, there is still some big trucks but mainly it’s still enjoyable. I’m approaching the highway I left at Khon Kaen by doing a detour. Even before this city, when I was cycling on that same highway, the traffic was very light and the road very wide. There was no really big cities too so I didn’t feel I should absolutely another way. There was a lot of Amazon Café along this road too. But of course I’m getting closer and closer to Bangkok and the traffic density is increasing. It’s like a funnel and I can not really avoid it unless I do a huge detour. Anyway, I’ve got about 80km of highway coming, so in two days I will be able to get out of the traffic. Let’s enjoy this last “quiet” day then :-)
Today, I’ve been travelling from a good spot to another very good one! Lucky me :-) I stopped as usual at the PTT petrol station and worked on my website. Mainly that’s all I’ve done today, nothing fancy, just efficiency: Early cool ride, arrived at the petrol station, had a shower and washed my clothes, worked at the café, went out for lunch, came back at the café until 5pm, enjoyed evening ride and wonderful sky, found a great spot for the night, cooked some noodles, had a “one litre shower” and slept deeply. And especially, no dogs bothered me! Perfect!
As planned, I cycled this morning towards the next checkpoint. Until now I used to travel from remote place to remote place and stop during the day in Café but now I’ve broken that pace. That’s why this morning I cycled directly all the way to the next stop so later this afternoon I will be able to sleep between petrol station again. Except that, that next petrol station had a very nice spot again. At the back of the area, behind the buildings, next to a lake, out of the noise and close to the toilets, there was a very clean shelter with benches. How to resist? I didn’t :-)
Finally, I’m not going anywhere today. Yesterday the rain cut off my motivation to leave. I’m still on schedule anyway and this spot is good. I will spend all my day here and might stay even another night before leaving tomorrow morning.
When I set up my camp yesterday night under this construction I thought: “I must remember to take a picture from above tomorrow morning. I might be nice”. So that’s why this :-) And then I thought: “An animated gif would look even better”. The gopro helped because If I used the camera, I would have only 10 seconds to run down a flimsy ladder, jumped in the hammock and… Well, it would have been too short as you imagine. So I’ve used the GoPro and its wifi connection paired with the phone. Things become a lot easier then :-)