I cycled to Kirstenbosch the long way to remember Peaches and to meet a group of his friends & family. Its amazing how one person can unite so many people. We will always remember you my friend.

The ride to Paarl was approximately 75 km, there was a strong wind blowing in what felt like all directions. I completed the ride in 2,5 hrs which is approximately 30km per hour average.

In the past 12 years I have not been as diligent about stretching and only done it occasionally. This year I would like to change some of my bad habits and replace them with a more disciplined approach to sport and work. First step is to start my day with stretching as opposed to going straight into work. Today was my first step towards this!

I wanted proper coffee as I had not had a coffee since Koh Tao on the 4th January. In my search for a decent cup of coffee I randomly bumped into my Austrian friend Christian who had arrived in Bangkok at 6am that morning after a long bus trip.

I was super stoked to see him as it meant I might actually have something to do for the day. We caught up on what had happened since new years party on Koh Tao. Christian had literally not moved from Koh Tao and met numerous cute women, not surprising.

After getting a coffee, some Mac Donald’s and having a wander around the Khaosan market, we decided to head to Chinatown to explore that part of Bangkok. We caught a tuc-tuc to Chinatown, but everyone in Bangkok was gearing up for Chinese new year the roads were congested. We could have walked to Chinatown in much the same time frame as it took the tuc-tuc to get there. It was however very comfortable and interesting doing it by by tuc-tuc.

We stopped for some noodle soup and a few small snacks along the way while walking through china town. My plans of going to the aquarium had gone out of the window, I was not keen to deal with the inevitable traffic through Bangkok from Khaosan to Siam, so we made the most of Chinatown.

That morning Christian had told me all about a place near the palace that he bought some tiger balm style products. Thai / Tiger Balm was on my shopping list, so we managed to flag down and tuc-tuc driver for the return journey and somehow communicated to him where to find this Balm that Christian had purchase in the morning.

Christian was meeting a girl he met on the boat across from Koh Tao who was also Austrian like he was, he couldn’t remember her name, so I had to ask, her name was Flora. At the same time we found Flora we bumped into a climber who I had met in Tonsai over 2010 December with the name Marcus. The 4 of us hung out, munched some food and drank beer.

Christian had to catch a plane, Marcus had to catch a bus and so did Flora, so after everybody headed out I decided to take a walk to the Tattoo place to see if anyone was there. I found Aun and a friend of his called Nick. We hung out and started drinking as Aun was of duty, tattoo place was closed. We had a great time sitting and chatting about all sorts.

The tattoo guys had to leave and head off to meet girl friends. It was already pretty late, so I decided to check out Khaosan road and see if I met any more random peeps. I did meet a bunch of crazies, so I bought more beer and continued drinking.

Eventually I lost the various crazies I had met and decided to head back to hotel. On the way back I bumped into Kumi the Japanese lady I had met at the trance place a couple of nights before, she was with another Thai woman who was super friendly. I thought why not sit down, chat a bit and then finally hit the hay. Such interesting people, we sat chatting for ages.

After a long last day of Khaosan adventures I finally hit the hay at around 2:30am.

I awoke at 8am despite the fact I went to bed at 4:30am after a crazy Khaosan night. I knew I had to meet an old friend of my mom’s Pat for coffee, so my brain told my body when to wake up. I shower, took a shit and shaved in an attempt to look semi-presentable, it didn’t help the suitcases under my eyes from lack of sleep for days on end

I met up with Pat, we took a walk around Khaosan, went to sit down for a coffee and chatted non-stop for 2 hours. She told me that she was excited about the chinese new year because it was year of the dragon and thats the same as the year she was born. I told her that I had bought a little ceramic dragon in the north of thailand that I wanted her to have. Went went back to my hotel for the gift, she was delighted! I love making people smile, we walked around a bit more and then I said good bye.

I took a nap, because I knew I had to be ready for my tattoo by 3pm. I made sure my leg was cleanly shaven and not sweaty before leaving the hotel. Grabbed some Subway “healthfood” and headed over to the Himmapan Tattoo shop. I was a bit early, so I while I waited for the tattoo artist to prepare I caught up on emails.

First the tattoo artist finished the detailed thai letters, that wasn’t too painful, but once he got started with the solid black border the pain seriously started! It took about 2 hours to finish the tattoo, during this time I tried to some pictures of the progress! It was looking great all the way through, at the end I was delighted with my new tattoo! I posted a picture to facebook back home for friends and family, everyone loved the design!

After getting the tattoo I decided to go chill a bit before heading out for the night. I slept some more and kept cleaning the tattoo every couple of hours. I went out to Khaosan road at about 10pm and while wandering around I randomly bumped into a friend from back home called Sac. He was touring the South of Thailand and said I actually forgot he was in Thailand, so it was a nice surprise. We grabbed a beer and then bumped into a dutch guy I had met the night before called Elmer.

The three of us walked around drinking beer after beer until I suggested that we try the trance bar called Ooze Bar. I finally found it earlier that evening, but it was fairly quiet. When we arrived it was also quiet, but we decided to hang around seeing it was midnight. Sac had an early start and still had to catch a taxi back to Sukhumvit, so he left. Elmer and I continued dancing until the place started closing down. We drank my first bucket of the Thailand trip! Great music and more people with serious vibe started arriving! I was in my element with psytrance playing, yippeee!

I headed back to my hotel pretty late, maybe 3am and hit the hay.

I woke up feeling tender again after drinking a number of overpriced beers at the ping pong show, I was barely recovered from the Autthaya evening out and felt somewhat sleep deprived. I didn’t have a clue what there was to do in the Sukhumvit area, but what I did know is that things only started around 11am and much later, so not much to do.

I started off the day chilling in my luxury room blogging, facebooking and catching up on some emails. Then headed down for some breakfast, which was a delicious omelet made Thai style! I am definitely going to make Thai style omelets at home going forward, so easy and tasty. They had instant coffee so I avoided the coffee. I have not had a coffee since the Cappuccino baker on Koh Tao on the 4th January.

I packed up and decided to head out at 11am after doing a quick walk around the neighborhood and found nothing was open. I arranged a metered taxi with the help of the bell boy, I only use metered taxis because the non-metered guys screw you every time.

The taxi dropped me at Khaosan road and that signified the start of my next holiday journey! Very exciting even though I knew I would be heading home soon, which is not a bad thing after 5 weeks of seriously great holiday. I walked around Khaosan and saw the business of the area. After checking a few different places for single bed rooms I decided to try find spot a little way away from the madness.

I eventually found a place called Rambuttri Village Inn that had a single room with toilet, warm shower and air on for 630 baht per night, SOLD! I was relieved because some of the places were pretty shit and I didn’t want to downgrade from serious luxury to slums.

After dumping my bags, I set off to look for the tattoo place and a tailor. I was trying to find Mr Yui, a guy referred to me by a guy I met on Koh Tao who was tattoo’ed to hell and back. I couldn’t find the place I was looking for, but did find Himmapan Tattoo. I got a really good feeling from them and decided this was the place. I chatted to a guy called Ahn about the design I wanted, he helped me by designing the tattoo in photoshop first, then printing it and sticking it to my leg to get an idea of what it would look like. I was pleased and booked the tattoo session for 3pm Thursday.

Next up I had to find a tailor to make my pinstripe suit. I spoke to the tailor next to the lobby for my hotel and the tailor said 9500 baht, seemed ok. I thought I would get a comparative price, I found another place and spoke to the guy about what I wanted, he quoted 5750 baht. The workmanship looked same as other tailor so I went with Mr Lucky Tailor. I already had my first fitting that same day, which I thought was kind of impressive.

I hung around the tattoo place because I was alone and somewhat bored. I like to meet people, chat and engage otherwise I feel lost. The people at the tattoo place were really friendly, they allowed me to use the Internet, which was great because everywhere else was going to charge me or I had to eat there to use the Internet. I spoke to Ahn about the Ooze bar, he had never heard of the place and didn’t seem to know what psytrance was either. He did take a walk with me to try and find the place, we had no luck.

As night came on the area became more and more busy, I figured I was bound to meet some random peeps at some stage. As I walked around Thai guys constantly offered me ping pong, it became very old very quickly. I saw 3 chicks being offered a good price as the guy said but it was same price I paid, I laughed and told them that. They were friendly, so we started chatting. Two of them came from New Zealand and one from Australia, which was great cause I generally get along well with people from there.

We missioned around for a while until we found some break dancers, these guys were amazing. The 4 of us watched for a while until they decided to head off to bed. I wasn’t keen to go to bed again so I hung around absorbing the madness. I bumped into 3 funny guys from Australia, England and Holland.

The Dutch guy had a skateboard which seemed to attract attention. There was a young Thai girl and a midget Thai woman selling roses, they took a liking to the skateboard and gave us the roses to sell. So there we were selling roses to westerners, what a laugh. I hung around with these guys for a while getting progressively more drunk until 4:30am when most things had stopped selling alcohol and I headed off to bed.

I woke up drunk, not even hungover, grabbed some breakfast and packed my bags. We headed off on our bikes, I was really sleepy considering I had about 3-4 hours sleep. Our firsts top was the Buddha head inside a tree, looked interesting snapped a picture, but after seeing maybe 4-5 temples per day for the past 9 days I was over temples. We got to one spot, I simply handed my camera to one of the people on the tour and said take a picture for me.

Our last stop in Autthaya was to feed some elephants and take some pictures. Afterwards we headed off to the Queen’s Palace for a bit of a history lesson. When we arrived at the Palace that signified the end of our cycling for the day. We headed into the palace, Woody gave us a tour and history lesson. Our guides were so knowledgable! After we finished the palace tour we went for lunch before our 1,5hr drive to Bangkok.

We arrived at our Bangkok hotel called the Majestic Grande Hotel with 25 floors, that’s almost the height of the highest building Cape Town, OMG! The hotel is in the Sukhumvit area where loads of westerners stayed in loads of hotels. Bangkok madness begins!

At 5:30pm we met downstairs in the lobby for before heading off to the starting point of our night tour. We were now on MTB bikes, before setting off we needed to attach lights and have a briefing on what would be happening. We slowly worked our way around the Chao Praya river, we went through small street alleys, past more temples, got a history lesson and stopped for food at the 24hr flower market! Crazy that a flower market will stay open 24hrs, Bangkok is amazing that way, it’s truly the city that never sleeps.

We ended the tour at the Grand Palace, where we met Pow and Mr Charlie our drivers. We said our good byes to Mr Tee and Pow. The Woody and Mr Charlie drove us home. Tom, Lue and I decided we were going to hit Pathong where the Pussy Ping Pong bars were.

It’s quite overwhelming seeing all the lights, we got harassed by loads of people trying to sell us tickets for the ping pong bars. Eventually after walking around a little we just went into a seedy little bar, sat down and ordered our free drink with our ticket.

The first woman was on stage and she started pulling out a string with flowers, it just kept coming out, our jaws dropped and we couldn’t believe. We saw a woman open soda bottles with bottle caps, balloons being burst with darts, candles being blown out, horns blown, OMG we could not believe what we were seeing.

We headed out of that place once near midnight because the same acts started being rerun, they had reached the end of their list of tricks. Got a lift back to the hotel and crashed for the night. So tired after previous nights dancing and drinking.

At 60km we stopped for a refuel session. We now had about 30 km left for the day and an open road for 25 km. I asked Mr Tee if we could push on at our own speed, so Svenning and I gunned it down the highway in 35 degree heat. While waiting for the others we were dripping with sweat! It was a real stinker of a day, wow the heat was bad.

We saw our 3rd reclining Buddha for the day in the Autthaya ruins, but as I said its all the same after a while. I wanted lunch and a beer. We headed to lunch and it was a wicked meal with some Chang to wash it down.

We checked into the Krungsri River Hotel after lunch. I had a swim and a bath. Caught up on blogging, work, Facebook and chatted to my wife. At 5pm we headed out for a river sunset tour, great way to see the city. Such a beautiful sunset falling on various buildings, seeing Thai life along the banks.

We had some dinner and speeches about the tour. I was labeled the cat whisperer and joker. Hahahahahah…. Funny shit! After dinner we all headed back to the pimping hotel we were staying in, the others wanted to have a drink at the hotel bar, but I thought I would hit the town.

I went outside looking for a Tuc-Tuc and found our 1 driver Pow who was keen to head to town and drink. One problem, he didn’t really speak English. This was going to be an interesting night! We sat down at the bar the Tuc-Tuc driver dropped us at, then we ordered some beer which came in a 3 litre container! OMG that’s huge!

Conversation was challenging, one of the bar ladies helped me translate some words so I could kinda communicate with Pow. We found out where a night clubs was. The club only really got going at 11pm, so we sat drinking and chatting.

When we got to the club there was a Thai rock band playing, they played for a while then some commercial music came on, I was throwing shapes all the way through. We order a bottle of whiskey somewhere along the line and drank a shitload. The Thai rock band came back on but this time with other people singing.

Sometime near 3:30am I said to Pow we gotto go, both of us needed to be up and ready in the morning by 8am to leave on tour. I got to hotel close to 4am and passed out cold.

The first part of the day was slow and boring. We made a few stops, the first interesting stop was the Chun Buri river. We got to feed the catfish, they were mad big. Couldn’t believe them, got a video of the fish slithering over each other for the food.

Back on the road through some very rural areas that we could clearly see had been hit by the floods. The houses along the river banks were mostly geared for the floods, but considering the height of the flood lines everyone would have been affected negatively. Not sure where people put their vehicles and bikes, but houses were mostly on stilts so protected to a degree.

We stopped for lunch at a little restaurant across from the bird park, every but me decided to skip the bird park. I was super keen so I decided to do the park with Woody our guide. Svenning waited for us because he knew that he would get to ride a decent consistent pace afterwards. I got to pet some 1 meter catfish, saw an Emu, finally saw a “For Real” bird, saw a number of horn bills and generally enjoyed the experience.

We had approximately 50 km left for the day and the group was nearly 1 hour ahead of us. We got going and help a steady pace until we hit the dam, not much to see, but still interesting. We kept riding against the wind at a steady 30 km per hour, which meant it tired us out. Svenning hung on to our wheels and we pulled him along in our slip. Woody said he needed some fuel, drink and muchies, so we stopped at a petrol station. Back on the road for the last 20km, we pushed hard, but we’re starting to feel the grind in our bodies.

We caught the back markers of the group and arrived a couple of minutes after the rest of the people. The hotel was nice, nothing as fancy as the big before. We checked in and first thing I requested was a massage. I had a midget shower, was funny because the shower head was in line with the middle of my back. The the massage lady arrived, I asked for an massage, but got a thai massage, seemed nobody in Sing Buri spoke very much English.

Massage ended around 7:30pm and I headed down to the lobby to meet the others for dinner. We went out for dinner to a local restaurant. Food was great and we got ice cream for desert!

I got back to my room just before 10pm and decided to have an early night, was tired from the last few days riding and drinking!

The day started riding slowly at 7:30am. We had a fairly uneventful ride until we hit an area that was smokey due burning of the sugar cane fields. The roads were wet, the one stretch of road had what looked like oil and water in the shoulder area. The guides suggested we move out of the section, just as they said this Svenning slipped and went down hard in front of me. I knew I was going to fall, now it was a matter of how to deal with the crash. I couldn’t brake hard because I would slide, he was right in front of me, so I rode into him and on impact I unclipped pedals, let go of handle bars and prepared myself for the inevitable tar I was about to hit.

Svenning and I were a little shaken up, he cut open his face badly with his glasses and grazed himself. I was just slightly bruised. Svenning is one tough man, he got cleaned up and they put him in the car for another 20min until we stopped for some snacks and drinks, then he requested to get back on the bike as the bus was boring he said.

Back on the road. We were riding painfully slowly, but considering we had just had an accident going fast was not an option. The area we were riding through was not very pretty, mainly due to the burning of sugar cane fields. There was smoke, dust, sugar cane trucks and generally kak surroundings. I really hoped things would change, I figured they would.

We had a couple of stops for snacks and drinks. At 100km we stopped at the monkey mountain where there were loads of monkeys. This was our lunch spot. While we waited for lunch we tools some photos of the monkeys feeding on rice that had been put out for them. Pretty funny shit, I watching this one male scratch his huge red balls much like I scratch my balls. hahahahahah….

After lunch there was about 5-10km of road with a few turn offs before we could open up speed and really start riding. When we moved slowly my arms and arse hurt, but when we moved at decent pace it didn’t hurt. My legs were feeling great! Anyways, we eventually got to an open road with loads of potholes. We started opening up the speed, but 10km in we got two snake bite punctures caused by hitting potholes. Mr Tee quickly fixed the punctures and we were back at it. I time trailed to catch the others in front, then when we caught them we stopped for snacks and drinks again, oh well, was fun to finally push hard.

After a quick pit stop we got on the way for the last 20+ km. Mr Tee, Svenning and I worked to get her to push the speed up, we were doing about 35-45km per hour on the flats. nice pace and that meant the km’s flew past. We arrived at our hotel around 5pm. Long day in the saddle!

We checked in, went up to our respective rooms and the first thing I did was have a shower. Have gotto say that the shower and bathroom was one of the best I have ever experience. The shower is definitely the best shower I have ever had in my life, two shower heads with different options. WOW!

I did some blogging, but happy hour was calling and dinner after that. Such a good day!

Our first stop was a clay pottery place, that specific area was renowned for the pottery. It was pretty lame stuff though, not really sure what half of it was meant for. Oh well, different people different tastes. We refueled and got back on the road, there was a sign just after saying 56km and seeing we were on a straight highway road I asked Woody if I could up the pace. He came with me and we worked together.

Our next stop was a place called Otop and they specialized in making deep fried chips out of pretty much anything. We went into the factory to see how they made the products, got to sample a bunch of them and then buy some if we wanted. The guides bought a selection of goodies for us to snack on over the next few days.

Back on the road, a sign said 46 km to go and I decided to keep the pace reasonable. This time Allan and Svenning came with us so we continued at about 30-35km per hour. The km’s started to drop quickly, the road was straight and I wanted to get where we were going.

Woody stopped us at a marble factory where they made various marble carvings. I found a granite mortar and pestle for making chilli paste like we learnt on Koh Chang. I also bought some egg cup holders. The purchase cost all of 480 baht about R130. My shopping checklist was nearing completion.

We headed back down the road to the Kamphang Phet. Our pace was constant, I was happy. It had been painfully slow at the start of the day. We stopped in at the old Kamphang Phet city ruins for a bit of a look see. There was a museum and a bunch of ruins to see. The museum was interesting, but the ruins seemed much like the day before. I cared more about getting lunch than anything else at this stage.

After the ruins we rode into the new city and arrived at our hotel around 3pm. We ate lunc, drank a beer and then headed up to our rooms. I had a bath, shave, brush teeth, general clean up. then hit some work and the blogging from 4-7:30pm.

At 7:30pm I headed down to meet the rest of the tour group for our dinner, which was a surprise. We were set to do some exciting activity in the city. We all got on the bus and headed down to a restaurant on the river Ping. Good solid dinner, afterwards we would be taken for this activity.

We stopped next to the river Ping and the activity was for each of us to let our own floating lantern fly off into the distance with fireworks beneath it. The idea is that you let all the bad things in your life fly away, it’s bad luck to pick up someone else’s lantern after it lands. I let mine off and watched it fly away, such a great activity for the group.

While everyone else was letting off their lanterns I struck up a conversation with some Thais sitting near by. They poured me a whiskey and so the chatting began. The others finished up letting their lanterns go, they were ready to head back to the hotel, so I was going to say my good byes to the people I had just met and one of the guys gave me a Buddha amulet as a gift. This was really kind of him, they consider their amulets to be very important. I decided to stick around with these peeps and drink more whiskey.

Eventually they decided to leave the the riverside and head into the Kamphaeng Phet town for more drinks. I joined them as I figured it would be interesting. It was hard to communicate with the group as only two of them spoke broken English and I spoke about 8 Thai phrases. We went to a Thai bar called Boomerang, they ordered a bottle of Hong Thong whiskey and some soda. We commenced with drinking, chatting and general good times. I was very conscious of the fact I had to get up at 6:30am latest, so I headed off from the bar at 11:30pm. They gave me a lift back to my hotel which ended up being 500m down the road and around the corner.

I popped into the 7eleven for a quick ice-cream desert, before heading to bed and was asleep by 12am.

The first highlight if the day was stopping at a local teak wood factory in a small village just outside Uttaradit. The area is known well for its teak wood work. The small village that we went to collaborate on making the teak furniture and souvenirs. We got to walk through their factory and see how they made the furniture. Afterwards we headed into their show room to purchase gifts and goodies. I both my mom and wife some teak jewelry boxes along with some little gifts for friends.

We continued riding to the first temple ruins just before the Sukhothai old city ruins, the temple was called Wat Chang Lom which means circular elephant temple. We munched on some food and had a few non-alcoholic drinks, I continued to feel somewhat sorry for myself

We headed off to the old city ruins. I was kinda getting excited, this was one of the major highlights of the tour and the ruins were a UNESCO world heritage site. We rode past a temple with a massive moat around it, then shortly afterwards we rode through the entrance to the old site where the walls of the old city started. Shortly after passing into the city we found a little factory for making ornamental ships, which we had seen all over at markets.

We arrived at the main part of the Sukhothai ruins. There was a market next to the ruins and restaurant, but we would go to that afterwards. Everyone headed into the heritage site. The ruins are best seen on a bicycle, there were roads around the ruins, so we cycled around stopping off at each temple to take photos. Woody was great, he kept explaining everything to us in great detail.

After about more than an hour of missioning around the ruins we headed out to get some food at the restaurant. The food was pretty bad, not often I say that about Thailand, but it was actually horrid. I finished my dishes and went off to the market. The market had a bunch of items on my checklist of goodies to buy. I bought a painting, wood carvings, wooden tea spoons and a bag for barbs.

Next we rode back to the hotel which was about 20km away. The general pace was really slow, which was fine as I still felt hungover. Before going back to the hotel Svenning took me to show me the Chinese temple he found. The architecture was very different, quite interesting to see the diversity.

I spent the afternoon relaxing, catching up on email, blogging and generally resting after a tough few days. It was good to be in the same hotel again as it meant we were not rushed, just what the doctor ordered.

Dinner was at 7:30pm and it was a special dinner because Gehard one of the people on the tour was celebrating his 71st birthday. He was a really sweet man and I had enjoyed chatting to him during the tour. Mr Tee and Woody organized a coconut cake for him, a gift and the hotel owner also gave him a special scarf as a gift. The dinner turned out to be a really get session. We finished up outside with sparklers and merry times.

I went to bed at about 10pm exhausted.

Our first stop was still inside Uttaradit city realm at a Buddhist temple. I made an offering to Buddha and said my prayers. Woody the one guide explained interesting facts about giving offerings and helped me understand what the customs were. I felt really moved by this experience and actually quite emotional. The Buddhist people have lovely beliefs, warms my heart.

We started riding again, but stopped shortly afterwards for animals pictures, group photos and more interesting facts from Woody about the Thai farming techniques in the rice paddies. 1hour into the ride we had done about 10km of that, but it was fascinating.

We finally got onto some open road and Woody was with me this time. I asked him if I could open up and start pushing the speed a bit. He said yeah sure and he would ride with me. Note that Woody had been a pro cyclist in his day, now 46 years old. We were cruising on flat stretch for about 15km at about 40km per hour for majority of the time. RAD!

We had a pit stop for refueling. My body was feeling the previous two days and it felt like food wasn’t touching sides. We got going again, we were in pretty rural area and I stuck with Woody because he kept explaining what everything was, just so interesting to learn about Thai culture in the way we were.

The rest of the ride was fairly uneventful. Everyone was pretty tired, self included. We were headed towards Sukhothai new city for 2 days / nights. Everyone was looking forwarding to this. Svenning and I we’re a bit bored with the pace, so we worked together to push up the pace. The last stretch of road we kept at least 35km per hour for about 20+ km.

We arrived at the hotel and it was gorgeous. Everyone was hungry, so before checking in to the hotel we headed out to a little restaurant for Sukhothai style noodle soup and pad thai. Yummy food, but we all wanted to get back to the hotel and swim.

I booked a Thai massage before dinner, the woman was pretty good, but Thai massage is not an easy massage, pretty rough and my muscles were tender. We headed off to dinner in the town at about 7:30pm. The dinner was not the best, we all agreed the food was odd. We had chicken with skin, pork with bone, catfish and other strange things.

After dinner was finished I asked about a market in the town I thought it might be nice to get out and see the local market at night. I went on my own. I walked and walked and walked, but saw no market. I went into a 7eleven to buy a beer for the walk. Mmmmmm, starting to get drunk.

While trying to find the market I bumped into the only westerners I had seen in a few days other than the group. The 3 guys I met randomly were from Melbourne, Australia. I asked them what they’re were up to and they said heading to a bar. I joined them and we chatted on the walk. They arrived at the bar and decided to order a bottle of whiskey, not a glass. We proceeding to smashed the bottle of whiskey in 30min flat.

We sat around chatting about where we were from, what we did, the usual getting to know each other stuff. I realized I had to get up early, it was getting late and I was feeling pretty darn drunk. I made a hasty exit and walked home. On the way home I found a street ice cream stall at the market I couldn’t find before, bought myself three scoops of ice cream on a cone, yummy.

I got back around midnight I think, don’t really remember the last part of the walk. Good times!

We left Lampang at approximately 7:45am. Shortly after leaving the town of Lampang stopped off at a ceramics factory to look at some of their wares. The area is specifically known for its ceramics. We went into the factory, we got to look at how they make products and see everything from the raw ceramic product to the finished fired painted product. Next we went to their show room to purchase some little ceramic figures. I bought some gifts for myself, friends, family and my wife, the total was 400 baht about R100 for 8 pieces.

The route we were on was breathtaking, we were riding through farming areas with all sorts of different crops. I stopped regularly to snap random shots of whatever caught my attention. Despite having ridden hard on day 2 I was feeling super strong, looking forward to the hills.

Hill number one was called Ban Mai, before we got stuck in we had a food and drink break. Mr Tee and I went head to head and pushed it up the climb. Nobody rode with us, the nearest rider was Svenning. We stuck together up the climb and finished together, I knew we had another 3 climbs after this one. The downhill was mad fun, not sure what happened to Mr Tee, think he waited for the group to make sure everyone ok. I was pushing up to about 70+ km per hour I think, hard to say without a monitor. I recorded most of the downhill with my GoPro HD camera.

Once I got to the bottom I eased off as I didn’t want to get too far ahead. I started snapping pics of all the different crops, every half km was another amazing photo opportunity. I eventually saw a cyclist in the distance and it was Svenning. We joined forces and worked our way up the the second climb.

I taught Svenning a trick I had learnt ages back. I never ride a hill in a big gear because I am not strong, instead I drop to a low gear where I spin. Every so often I drop a few gears and get out of the saddle standing for about 50-100m to break the spinning. This method worked wonders for me and he started getting the hang of it.

We were alone peddling away, so we continued having a phat rap about all sorts. It’s sounded like this guy Svenning was pretty damn hard core, he was mainly a paddler and loved his kayaking. Fascinating listening to passionate people.

After 2nd climb we had another food and drink break before the 3rd climb started. The 3rd climb was set to be a mutha-fucka. I decided to go it alone and push as hard as possible. The temperature was really heating up, my head was boiling, but I gunned it hard up that climb. Feeling like a champion! The downhill was good fun too, again I recorded it on my GoPro.

On the other side of the 3rd climb we reached an area that was well known for furniture making. I was way ahead of the rest so made some stops at some local furniture places, amazing products, but way too big to ship home.

Our lunch stop was next to one of the largest reclining Buddhas in Thailand. Lunch comprised of a spicy noodle salad and noodle soup. After eating we all headed across the road to see the buddha. I have honestly never seen such a big Buddha. Easily could have been longer than 100m maybe even 200m, hard to get perspective of something that big. Beautiful temple, snapped pics and headed back on the road.

Next we had a ride through the country side heading towards our last climb of the day. We pushed hard, but is time it was Mr Tee, Svenning and myself working together. The climb was not massive, but it was still enough uphill to make it a challenge. I paced most of the way, but made sure we didn’t loose Svenning. He hang on like a trooper, 62 year old rock star if you ask me. We stopped for snacks and drinks at top of hill 4. The downhill was awesomeness, recorded it and made sure I was careful because there was a lot of road works, sand and fairly dangerous obstacles.

Waited for Mr Tee and Svenning once things flattened out a bit. We had about 40-45km to go, I sat on the front and pushed speeds of between 40-50km per hour as we had a slight downhill. I broke Mr Tee, he told me to ease off. We finished 25km in no time flat and waited for the rest at a petrol station.

The last stretch we eased off and rode as a group. We arrived at our next hotel in a Uttaradit around 6:30pm in partial dark. Long day in the saddle, the group was broken, amazingly Svenning and I still felt great, but tired as we had ridden hard.

Dinner was at 7:30pm at the hotel.

After the hotel I went out to see the town. Nothing to see though, no tourists in site. I figured let’s get a massage, but couldn’t find a massage place. Eventually after walking for ages I found a place that had massage on the sign. Strange place, crap massage, little disappointed and headed home to go to sleep before midnight.

Immigration opened at 8am, so I figured if I arrived at 7:45am I would be early enough to get into the queue. The immigration office was exactly like South Africa, dunno why I thought it would be different. I decided to skip the visa extension and pay the fine. Fuck that, too much effort, I don’t care anymore.

I asked the the tour driver to take me back to the group so we could start the tour. I arrived around 8:15am and we set off shortly there after for our first serious day of riding. We had 130km ahead of us, one climb and would end in a city called Lampang.

We rode through Chiang Mai in much the same route as the first day when we did our warm up ride. We headed out towards the farm lands. People were getting to know each other and chatting. I seemed to get along with the Danish guy Svening really well, he was a kayaker who had been kayaking the world circuit in his younger years, pretty fit guy.

I stopped along the road a few times to take shots of the local farm lands. I saw a dam with a guy floating on it picking something, Woody (guide) said that he was picking morning glory. We had been eating the veggie in a number of dishes during the course of the holiday. We also saw long beans, bananas, Thai eggplant, rice paddies and some fish farms which were interesting to see.

Our first pit stop was at a Buddhist temple along the way. The pace was fairly easy going until this point because we were not on straight roads and had to stick together. After refueling and snapping a bunch of pics we headed off.

Our next stop was another temple, this temple was much older and Woody explained a number of interesting facts about the Buddhist temples. We spent quite a bit of time at this temple, prayed to Buddha and donated some money to the temple.

The next stretch was set to be straight road and the guides allowed me to head off on my own. I decided to put foot and seriously push some high speeds. The one old dude Allan decided it to try give it a go with me, we were pushing 40km per hour when he dropped, I kept going until I hit a cross roads. Wow it felt good to be pushing the speed on a road bike. I had forgotten what was like to ride like this, surprisingly I was feeling super strong even though I had not trained on a bike in 4 weeks.

I hit an intersection and waited for the others. Mr Tee joined me and I decided to test his it riding skills. I pumped it even harder than before to check his break point or how strong he was. We were riding through such beautiful landscape, I saw so many things I had questions about and asked him a few questions. He got annoyed with me because I was speaking while we were riding so hard, his words were “no talk when fast ride”. I chuckled and pushed on. He sucked my wheel and didn’t do much work on the front. Either way I was loving the riding.

We had a pit stop, much fruit, food and drank plenty fluids. The temperature was slowly rising, we were feeling the heat, but the great thing was it wasn’t humid, thank goodness! I kept pushing hard, but not top speed this time, some other people joined us and we stayed together. I basically sat on the front doing most of the work, which was fun actually.

The old dude Allan decided to attack us, the game was on, next Mr Tee attacked, we kept attacking and going for it until we hit a highway. Next was the climb we were told about in briefing. Mr Tee and I dropped the other pretty quickly, then next thing I looked back and he was 50m behind me. I was hurting a bit, considering we still had the rest of the climb and another 45km before we got home I decided to ease off.

After we got to the top of hill it was pit stop time again. The first person behind me was Svenning, I was amazed at this guys stamina and strength. Then came Lesley the Alaskan woman and after that the rest of the peeps hit the top in drips and drabs. Allan who was 72 and had been attacking hit the wall, he was dehydrated and feeling the heat badly.

After refueling a bit we headed down the mountain to the elephant sanctuary and rehabilitation clinic. We had lunch there and afterwards went to feed the elephants. Snapped a million pics of the baby elephant and mummy elephant. Aaaaaah sweet, happiness.

We were quite far behind schedule and the guides were concerned we wouldn’t make the hotel by dark in Lampang. We pushed on to Lampang, the sun started setting but we decided we were close enough to just just make the hotel before complete darkness fell on us.

We arrived at the hotel at 6:40pm in pretty much darkness. The guides said we would have dinner at 8pm and we would travel to the on horse drawn carts. Lampang is known as the cowboy town. he horse drawn carts were a real novelty.

Dinner was next to a river again and we had a live band playing cover songs. It was hilarious listening to the cover songs. We had a fabulous dinner, the food was yummy. We stayed at the restaurant for a couple till 10pm.

On the way home I asked the guides to drop me at the market. I bought myself an AngryBirds tshirt cause I been playing tons of Angry Birds this holiday, I was very happy with my purchase. I headed back to the hotel we were staying in, on the way back I made a stop at 7eleven to pick up red bull for my vodka drinks. I bought a Chang for the walk back…. Mmmmmm… Chang o’clock at 10:30pm.

On the last stretch I stopped off at Kem Tattoo and had a phat chat session with some local Thai peeps. Really funny guys, they were listening to Slipknot and pouring me large SangSom drinks. I proceeded to get really drunk with the guys. I taught the guys how to say “Aweh”! I love Thai people, so friendly and easy going.

After getting fairly motherless with the Thais I really did head home and got to sleep sometime after midnight.

I woke up fairly early and didn’t want to disturb Jonathon and his girlfriend, so I took the oppertunity to plan some work for my LightSpeed team back home. Felt good to plan some work.

Once Jonathon woke up, he came down stairs and we sat catching up for a while. He is in the US Airforce and had been working in Chiang Mai for about 28 months. In this time he had learnt fluent Thai which is extremely impressive to me.

His Thai girlfriend came downstairs and joined us. I had asked them the night before if they could help me construct a Thai phrase for my tattoo I want on my calf muscle. The phrase I gave them was “Leave only footprints and take only memories”. There is evidently a similar Thai phrase or saying that the Thai people use, so we researched it and found the letters. Jonathon printed it and his girlfriend said the phrase while I recorded her voice on my phone.

Jonathon said he could drop me off at the Imperial Mai Ping Hotel where I would be staying for the first night of the cycle tour. He also helped me find a place to have my legs waxed, he left me at the waxing place and we said our goodbyes. What a big help Jonathon had been, without his help I would have struggled!

After a painful full leg waxing I headed back to the Imperial Mai Ping hotel for a cycle tour briefing. Mr Tee and Woody were our tour guides., they explained roughly what would be happening each day for the next 11 days along with a host of warnings and our they gave us tshirts.

We started our warm up ride at 2:30 and headed out to a nearby area called Baan Wai that was known for its wood furniture. The day was set to be about 45 km, I was not quite sure what to expect. Most of the people who were on the tour were 50 plus except for one couple who had not really done a lot of cycling.

I was a bit worried I would be bored with the pace, but Mr Tee said to me that he raced road biking and would make sure I was able to go fast when I wanted. We slowly meandered out of Chiang Mai at a leisurely pace, which was fine seeing it was just a warm up ride.

We stopped for pictures along the way whenever needed. We quickly moved out of the city and into the more rural areas with rice paddies. I am very interested in farming Thailand, the floods, general life so I asked lots of questions. the guides were very informative and I got a good feeling about the coming days.

The idea was that we would stop every 30km for snacks, drinks and a breather. Seeing it was a short day we only had one pit stop. We stopped at a wholesale furniture place with spectacular furniture. I specifically noticed a swing chair that we first saw at Klong Proa on Koh Chang, the price was amazingly cheap for such incredible workmanship and quality. To ship this home would be near impossible and costly.

After some tasty snacks and much needed drinks we continued with the ride and back to our hotel. We arrived back at the hotel around 6:10pm and were told that dinner would at a restaurant in Chiang Mai. We left at 7:30pm for the restaurant in a mini-bus. The dinner was fabulous, we were next to a river and the setting was just magic.

It was good to engage my fellow tour members, there were some interesting people on the tour. I was very happy and looking forward to the rest of the tour. We headed back to the hotel around 10pm.

Once back at the hotel I immediately headed out to the Chiang Mai night bazaar. I got a little shopping done, the market was fairly large so I knew it would take a while get through it all. I was done by 11pm and headed back to the hotel. On the way back I got a foot and leg massage in for 200 baht / 1 hour, so cheap it’s hard to believe.

Hit the hay at just past midnight.

The boat trip passed in no time and before I knew it we were walking up the pier. We were staying at a place called Save Bungalows. We knew it was not far from the pier and it was great because all we had to do is walk 5 min to check in at reception. Our plans were working out perfectly so far as the room we book was not fancy, but just what we needed for the next few days during the trance festival.

Our friends Elzette, Lea and Ilandi had already arrived on the island a few days before. Our friends Braam and Zuzka who had been on Koh Chang arrived a few hours before us. Our other friend Jason was arriving on another ferry in the afternoon. While waiting for Jason to arrive we hired a scooter and went off to the very commercial beach called Sairee beach to kill some time.

While we were waiting for Jason to arrive I bumped into Christian who is an Austrian friend we met last time we visited Koh Tao for The Experience festival. Christian was waiting for a friend who was arriving on the same ferry, so we all waited at the ferry together.

Jason was the first person off the ferry and he was staying at Save Bungalows so we went to get him booked in. While Jason was settling in I took Barbara to buy some new clothes and grab a bite to eat.

Jason had a friend staying in Chalok Baan where we stayed the year before, so we took the scooter for a ride and had a beer with his mate Mark. We wanted to all hook up for dinner as one big SAFA group, so we picked a place to eat and made plans to meet that evening.

Facebook became our main communication tool to get hold of the girls (Elzette, Lea, Ilandi). We arranged a meeting spot. I had not met Ilandi and Lea yet, but Elzette was an old friend of mine from Paarl. It was super once we all hooked up, I could tell we would make a great party unit for the next week!

Dinner was fantastic, but most of us were tired from traveling so after a few more drinks we headed home for some much needed sleep. The next day would be the start of a 4 day trance festival and our New Years celebrations.

Next stop we headed to Nan Massage for a back, neck and head massage.

Feeling relaxed, we headed back to our cottage to pack the last of our stuff. I had one more open water swim. Just before getting a lift to the ferry I snapped one more shot of our little bit of paradise and a shot of Mr Pom and his wife who cooked such amazing food.

We set off from the pier on a speed boat for main land.

Next we caught a taxi to the Trat airport to catch our Bangkok Air flight to Koh Samui.

We landed spot on time at Samui airport, then we caught a taxi to the Big Buddha pier where we would get on a boat to Haad Rin on Koh Phangan.

On the ferry over to Phangan we met some crazy Aussies.

We got to our room at Pink Bungalows after a long days mission for some well deserved rest
.

Our last day on Koh Maak was a good one. I started my day at 6:30am because I went to bed at 8:30pm the night before. I woke up with a ton of ideas for 2012.

After the brain storm session I went for a 1 hour run. Felt so good while I was running. When I got back we decided we needed to go for a phat breakfast.

After breakfast we went to the Nam Massage place too a couple of days before. I got a back, neck and head massage. Afterwards we were chilled and ready for our kayak mission.

Before heading out on our kayak mission with Helene we all had a decent meal. I had Tom Yam seafood, which was just heavenly. Good food makes the experience.

The 3 of us set off to Koh Rayang with the tri-kayak. Not as long a kayak as we did in Koh Chang, but still a solid paddle.

Once we had kayaked around the full island I jumped off the kayak in the deep water and did a solid 40 minute swim back to Koh Maak. That was my toughest and most scary swim ever. Once I got to shore I chilled hard.

We had some whiskey sundowners, then Helene, Barbs and I had our last dinner. What a tasty meal. Afterwards we all hit the hay. Good day, good times. Wooohooo.