
The official biking part of our journey was officially scheduled to end in Luang Prabang . The plan was that once we reached Luang Prabang we would assess our timeframe and either ride to Vientiane or get a bus back to Bangkok.
Our indolence in Luang Prabang was like a sticky slime that we just couldn‘t shake. We schlepped from one annoying situation to another. Ruined shorts after an oily massage mishap, lazy songthaew drivers who preferred to sit around playing cards rather than drive us anywhere for a reasonable rate, interrupted internet service, useless travel agents, not even the rain was good dramatic monsoon rain, it was just dreary and intermittent. We didn’t ride our bikes anywhere other than to the bus station and to get breakfast. We were tired, fussy, anticipating the end of our trip, Danielle’s bike was on the fritz, we both had relentless gas.

It’s a challenge when we arrive in these bigger, touristed cities. Everyone’s got an agenda, the tuk-tuk drivers carefully paint the names of the local attractions on the side of their vehicles encouraging the frenzy. Caves, waterfalls, villages, everyone’s going in droves to SEE. To TAKE PICTURES. But we’ve been passing waterfalls along the way for days, discretely picking mystery meat out of our meals in remote villages and once we finally make it to a city we just want to wash our clothes and then sit still while we watch CNN and HBO and have a few beers.

Of course we wanted to see the Buddha statues in the cave too but even Danielle didn’t have the energy to fight out a good price with the boat operators. Plus, I didn’t feel like filing into the cave in a line of other people who look like me, armed with a camera ready to capture the REAL BUDDAH CAVE. I wanted to pretend that I’m different.

But I’m not. Do I really want to eat rice gruel squatting on a tiny stool in an ally near a motorcycle repair shop while a naked baby crawls in the dirt beside me? Not really. I’d rather eat crepes and with a fork and knife under a bamboo hut along the Mekong River. Are there alternative eating opportunities in between these two experiences? Sure. I’m feeling dramatic. But I can’t help but feel sad about the fact that to me, Luang Prabang felt like one big promotion for happy hour buy-one-get-one-free Lao Lao cocktails and all-you-can-eat sandwich stalls specializing in PB&J. I was disgruntled. Dissatisfied with the idea of tourism. Wholly unimpressed and slightly depressed about what we, tourists, have done to dismantle real places everywhere and reassemble them as we prefer to experience them.

And as I said, we chose not to do much. But if we had fought our way into multiple Wats and lined up to take pictures of the novice monks going about their quiet lives or taken a boat ride up the river to see the caves would it have been any different?
In any event, we bussed it to Bangkok in a two fold V.I.P. bus escapade that culminated in our being dropped off an hour before dawn somewhere near Khaosan Road (the backpacker ghetto) in the rain, both our bikes mangled beyond belief, and as usual, swarmed by tuk-tuk drivers.
It’s become clear that this is when we’re at our best. Toss us in a situation like this, make sure we’ve had close to no sleep, and we’ll be sure to get right down to business. After fishing all our panniers from the pile of filthy, jumbo sized backpacks (our 2nd V.I.P. bus was jam packed with scantily clad 20 something year old backpackers who were covered in mosquito bites, two of whom were nearly beaten to a pulp by me around 2 am when I saw no foreseeable end to their inane chatter) we each began the assembly process. The tuk-tuk drivers in Thailand and Cambodia are unlike their Vietnamese and Laos counterparts; they love to help us. Once they realize we don’t need their services we are all released from the cycle of haggling and harassing and suspicion and free to become friends.
After the crowd cleared, the remaining tuk-tuk drivers took it upon themselves to assist us, our very own pit crew. As I mentioned, our bikes were wrecked during the journey. My forks were so bent my wheel wouldn’t come close to going back on and Danielle’s steering wheel (still, “handle bars“ does not come naturally) was at a 35 degree angle. My tuk-tuk drivers flipped my bike upside down, pried the forks apart until the wheel went on and then fussed with my fender until it didn’t rub the tire. Danielle’s team helped her stabilize her bike so she could align everything. They then held our bikes and passed us our bags and nodded approvingly while we loaded up. The assembly process is always a big hit with bellboys and tuk-tuk drivers. They love how easily everything clips onto the racks.
After an emergency sidewalk pee break, we headed off into the dark, slick streets. By the time day broke we were in Hua Lamphong station and had two tickets for the 9:20 train south. We had a delicious breakfast of spicy fish curry soup for 75 cents each followed an hour later by some genuine Dunkin Donuts Munchkins. This is what I love about Bangkok, somehow it retains its sense of self while simultaneously embracing things western. Like New York, It’s full of tourists but it doesn’t care. Unlike HCMC and Hanoi where the tourist quarters felt almost fenced off from the rest of the city and it was a struggle to find anyone willing to sell us anything for a non-inflated price, Bangkok is a breeze where anyone can ride the trains and river ferries hassle free for less than 60 cents and no one stares at us as we walk by.

Crossing back into Thailand was like riding a V.I.P. rocket ship straight to another planet. From the time we crossed the border we were stunned by the flash. We had no idea how accustomed we’d become to dirt, thatched huts, and inadequate lighting. We crossed a man made line and suddenly mini marts, oversized gas stations and real curbs and street signs lined the highways. Adding to our disorientation was the fact that this was the first border we’d crossed by bus, instead of on our bikes. It’s incredible to think that less than three months ago, when we arrived in Thailand we were amazed by the chaos, the filth, the inadequate lighting and now here we were reveling in how civilized it seemed.

OK, now let me tell you about our bus. The V.I.P. concept is huge in Southeast Asia. Menu items, hotel rooms, buses, really anything can be deemed V.I.P. The term is so widely used that it goes simply by “Vip“ and has been watered down to mean anything from a free bottle of water to a room with a real toilet. One of my favorite pastimes, second only to reading aloud to Danielle the laminated hotel rules and regulations page found in every room (full of stipulations like “Inflammable, explosive, and radioactive materials strictly not allowed” and ”Criminals, ex-prisoners, lepers and prostitutes forbidden from being in room of guest” and “If you choose to take the man or the woman who is not the husband or the wife of you to the room for the love making you will fined and locked to the prison by the laws of the place.”), is trying to figure out what features deem a hotel room/mode of transportation/restaurant menu item Vip. Is it the stickers on the window meant to emulate doilies? Is it the durian flavored noxious Twinkie like thing a shoeless man passes out to each passenger 3 hours into the trip?
In the case of our bus from Vientiane to Bangkok the Vip factor could have been so many things. First of all it was a true double-decker. Finally, my bus dream come true. Two levels, a staircase, this thing was a complete monstrosity. We booked our tickets in Vientiane with a man named Ham who at first seemed to immediately hate us and then just as suddenly, without reason, loved us. As we left he spread his arms, smiled widely and said, “I give you best seats on bus. Number three. Number four. You enjoys.” Ham didn’t lie. We sat on the second floor just above the driver. A panoramic view and more leg room than we could stand. After the foul Vip bus we took from Luang Prabang to Vientiane (where the toilet door was about three feet tall and once pried open revealed a bathroom too with a three foot ceiling and a toilet that flushed out onto the floor) this bus was a gem. It was bug free, had clean (ish) blankets, showed a quality movie (in English), never offered karaoke, and arrived at our destination an hour early.

So, our bike trip was over, but after so much time it turns out we couldn’t give up the dream so easily. We decided to take the train a few hours out of Bangkok and then ride the rest of the way down the Malay Peninsula to Chumphon, where we’d get the ferry to Koh Tao.
So, back on the train again with our bikes in tow. It was reminiscent of our very first train ride, from Bangkok to Prachinburi back in April before our big adventure began. How far we’d come. That first night our train arrived in Prachinburi 3 hours late, after dark. Other than our spin around the park by Danielle’s house in Boston, our bags loaded with canned food and books to simulate our future reality, we had never ridden our bikes fully loaded until that fateful night. We got off that train and spent what now seems like hours assembling everything. Desperately trying to balance our bikes while the handle bars spun around with the extra weight and the little benches we were leaning against tipped over and sweat poured. Not only had we never ridden fully loaded, but we also had no real experience riding on the opposite side of the road, or in the dark, or in Southeast Asia for that matter. We also had no idea where a hotel might be. I was NERVOUS. I wondered if we were really capable of doing this, if we were completely naive, if we had gotten in over our heads. As we headed out of the train station and merged into traffic, my bike wobbling precariously side to side while I tried to control it with shaky hands, I heard Danielle behind me like a crazed cowgirl yell out, “This is it baby! Ride! Ride!”

Two hours into the trip we were both nodding off when a fat man dressed in dirty clothes that smelled faintly of urine essentially sat on top of Danielle and proceeded to torment us with his savant like knowledge of U.S. geography. Using Boston as his jumping off point, he loudly spewed out sentences like this for about forty minutes, “Oh, Boston! Good! Number one! Harvard University! Cambridge. Connecticut. Rhode Island. New Hampshire. Vermont. Maine. Oh Boston, Massachusetts! New England! Number one!”
We still had a minimum of two hours until our stop if we didn’t poke our eyes out first. This was a third class open air train car. Our ticket cost a little more than $1. We stood out. I got up to go to the bathroom and on the way back to my seat multiple Thai people (4) nodded toward our new friend , scowled and quickly shook their heads “No.” He was really, really loud. Were they mad? I didn’t understand.
Back in my seat, our friend was still going. About the time he made his way to the Plains states the nice man who we had talked to on and off before Captain Geography sat on Danielle, discreetly passed me a note that read, “Do not let him help you with your luggage when you are getting off the train.” Creepy, but this was great news. Not only did this note justify our serious distaste for the dirty man, it also gave us license to be as unfriendly and straightforward with him as we pleased. A few minutes later I looked up at the nice man and smiled to thank him and he gave me a stern fatherly look and nodded at our friend who had made his way all the way to New Mexico.
Danielle wasted no time. She told him flat out that he needed to move now because she and her friend had to rest and he was being too loud. Who IS she? I was proud. He didn’t even put up a stink. He moved and the nice man smiled approvingly.
We’ve developed strategies for dealing with disembarking public transportation. We’re always careful about our bags, but the note made us even more careful. Each of us has 4 bags and a bicycle to keep track of and as soon as the doors open everyone surges in both directions, people push to get on as others push to get off. We really throw a wrench in things when we join in the rush holding our bikes vertically, pushing as aggressively as everyone else. When the train came to a stop we each carried off our four bags and I stood with them while Danielle elbowed her way back on the train and got our bikes. Within minutes we were ready to roll out of the station and our big, dirty friend disappeared. I wish the nice man knew how much his note meant.
So when we got off in Hua Hin we were approximately 275 Kilometers from Chumphon and we had two days to get there. We average about 100/day so we knew we had to ride at least 45 kilometers that day if wanted to make the next two bearable. We’d been traveling for almost 24 hours at that point and had very little sleep but we were excited to be back on our bikes. We hit the rode and less than an hour later when we were surrounded by nothing but pineapple plantations the monsoon of all monsoons hit. They come in fast and we’ve learned that a lot times the darkest most terrifying skies produce nothing but a drizzle, but even after days and days traveling outside here with nothing to observe but our surroundings and the weather patterns, we have no clue how it works.
We observed the sky turning darker and darker, saw the wind thrashing the palm trees, heard the thunder in the distance and then cringed when great bolts of lightening ripped through the dark ahead of us and still we pressed on. Really, what were we supposed to do? Pineapples provide little protection and there was nowhere to stay. We road as far as we could, singing, laughing, eventually shivering until we pulled up to the first hotel we saw and walked in literally so much water all over the floor that we had to stand in the doorway to negotiate a rate. Needless to say, we only got about 35 kilometers that day.
We dried off and settled in for the night. The hotel restaurant was the only alternative to pineapples and the menu featured an entire page devoted to crap. Fried crap. Crap soup. Crap with noodle. Every day we are treated to menu mishaps. Frish and ships, stricky rice with eeg, no name vegetable. Fried crap wins the award.

Fast forward two days and we eventually made it to Chumphon. Where we boarded a cargo ferry at 11 pm and though we were promised air-conditioning and beds, we slept on a mat on the floor in a sweltering room with at least 35 other people. Right in front of a Buddhist monk Danielle killed a cockroach with her shoe on someone else’s sleeping mat (double bad behavior as a good Buddhist kills nothing and regards shoes as vile).
Koh Tao was outstanding. We snorkeled and floated for 7 days. We’re not ready to go home and we are so ready to go home. It feels like we just left and it feels like we’ve been gone forever.

