We have just recently finished another five days of biking, this time through the flooded, flat expanse of central/northern Thailand. Enjoy this brief explanation and the pictures to the right!
The first day we started from Ayuttaya, an old captial of Thailand with amazing ruins, leaning brick reminders of a once glorious age. We started out early that morning, when the grass was still wet from the dew the night before, and the air, too, was wet and quiet, muffling the sounds of clicking bicycle chains. From there we biked over 80 km to Sing Buri, a bustling town with cheap internet and a loudspeaker which screamed through our hotel room's ratty screen window the festivities of the local Chinese population. Dan read Tolkein (we are reading The Twin Towers together nightly) in a strained voice which we heard only in the spaces between the loudspeaker's calls.
It was raining the next morning, hard, when we got up at 6:00, so we went back to bed , dragged ourselves out of bed 20 minutes later to more rain and headed into it. We biked under thick clouds and pelting rain all morning and watched the river swell next to us. It rose gradually, as we noted by the makeshift wooden walking bridges which seemed to sink as time passed. We followed the river for 80 km in the morning; but in the afternoon the sun burned through the clouds and rain, and we veered away from the river and onto a four-laned highway where heavy speeding trucks whizzed by blasting their horns, and after 40km we couldn't remember why it was that we were biking. We arrived in Nakhon Sawan exhausted and heavy-pedalled, a tiredness complimented by the itinerary we faced the next day--140km--longer than we had ever gone before. Finding a hotel in Nakhon Sawan was made easier when a 14 year old Thai boy led us with his British English (thanks to a British tutor in town) and his shiny yellow motorbike directly to our fourth floor rooms at the Matuli Hotel. (It seems that the cheapest rooms are always on the top floor. Climbing those stairs once to check out the rooms and then again with all of our luggage and sometimes again with our bikes is TORTUROUS!) We walked to the night market which was (unfortunately) near the river and therefore flooded. Thais splashed through the muddy, sewage water with flipflops and smiles and we turned around and found a Pizza Hut, a treat we indulged in only once before on this trip (but why do I feel I need to apologize?!) It was delicious and we more than got our baht's worth at the salad bar buffet. The hunger of these four bikers' stomach is insatiable!
We woke the next morning at 5:30, got on the old bike seats, spoke few words to each other, and looked only ahead. 140 kms. I had no idea how to even break up that hugeness into a manageable mental chunks! Surprisingly, the day went quickly, smoothly, quite different from what we had all anticipated with such dread. Realizing this day, too, would end with us intact, we found ourselves eventually able to engage in conversation along the way. The flooding here was worse than the day before. It was as if we were riding between two massive lakes. Treetops and the occasional tin rooftop stuck up out of the water.
We arrived in Phitsanulok (still trying to remember all the syllables in this one!) at 3:00 and in good spirits, congratulating each other for the accomplishment. After a cold shower, we headed for a recommended curry restaurant where the owner offered us spoonfulls of ALL the curries and soups and others to taste before we ordered. We would have been satisfied with only the samples!
The next morning we got up late, read, wrote emails to you all, visited a temple which houses, according to legend, the second most precious Buddha statue in Thailand. (I wonder how many of these there are). It was quite a tourist spot for travelling Thais, however, and numerous couples and singles paid for the Polaroid service which advertised pictures of "You and the Buddha" provided by a yellow-jacketed temple employee. In the afternoon, we got on the bikes and cycled 60kms (piece of CAKE!) to Sukhotai where the flooding was at the worst we've seen. Many of the guesthouses were closed due to high waters, something we didn't find out until AFTER cycling/wading through knee-deep waters to one recommended. (When we arrived at the entrance of the bungalow, it was all the owner could do not to laugh at us, knee-deep in waters asking if she had any rooms available. She calmly told us she had been closed for the last 15 days. When we asked about the recommended guest house down the road, she let out a great laugh, raised here hand to just below her chin and said, "BIG flooding!" They are all quite good-natured about this natural catastrophe which seems to happen every year in monsoon.) Eventually we found a place to stay, a beautiful (and more importantly, dry) teak wood guesthouse built on stilts along the river. The next morning we woke to a furious down-pour, but it was short-lived and we were able to bike only a few hours later than planned to the beautiful Sukhotai ruins (see pictures for detail). This town was lovely and peaceful and we could have stayed longer but we didn't and now we are in Chiang Mai and enjoying it as well.