Back in Thailand – Feb. to March 2006

Back in Thailand

We flew back to Bangkok in mid-February, leaving the house early Monday morning after the winter’s biggest snowstorm and catching our Thai Airways flight out of JFK airport in NYC. It was New York’s biggest snowfall ever on record (26.9”), and it was a bit strange to leave in freezing weather in over 2 feet of snow and land 17 hours later in Bangkok, in 92-degree weather. We had flown over Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Russia, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. Pretty cool, because we caught glimpses of a lot of white land down there.

So we’re back in our sandals and shorts, swatting mosquitoes in the heat and humidity, and eating papaya salad, fried noodles, and sticky rice. We knew we were back in Bangkok when, our first night back, at the Suan Lum Night Bazaar, our fiery meal was served by a pretty ladyboy in a micromini skirt to the sound of choreographed Thai pop and rap artists on the front stage. We knew we were back when I could see over the heads of half the population and when men proposed taking us to sleazy sex shows in the Patpong district.

But it’s good to be back in Bangkok. It’s a great city, if you can forget about the traffic for a while. We had planned on staying for less than one week – just the time to obtain our visas for Laos, to clean up our bikes and outfit them with new parts, to patch up our bags that were eaten by termites in Laos, and to waterproof and treat our tent, mosquito net, and clothing with anti-mosquito (anti-malaria) products. Unfortunately, that time has been extended quite a bit. Stephane accidentally left our credit card in the ATM machine, and although it wasn’t stolen, the card had to be cancelled and a new one ordered and shipped from home.

It’s now been fifteen days in Bangkok, and we’re still waiting. It hasn’t all been a waste. An International Film Festival was held in the city during the ten days that we were here, so we got to see quite a few American and foreign films – perhaps the last movies that we’ll see for the next six months.
Then we visited the Weekend Market, which is a crazy labyrinth of a market in which you can buy not only sculptures, handicrafts, clothing, jewellery, and kitchenware, but dogs, snakes, rhodents, and lizards. We checked out a few of the malls, some of which seem to come straight out of a futuristic film. And I treated myself to a Thai massage and a foot massage from a sexy Thai man – so waiting here hasn’t been all bad!

But we are anxious to start biking again. Our time is limited before we have to fly back for Jen and Seth’s wedding. So any extra time that we spend here will lessen our time spent in Tibet and Nepal. Plus, we’ve been sedentary for way too long – we’re impatient to get back in the saddle again!

From Bangkok, we will take a bus not to Vientiane, as we originally thought, but to eastern Thailand to bike about 400 km. along the Mekong River to the Laotian capital. Although this will prolong our distance a bit, we think it will be advantageous to get our legs back in shape on rather flat road before we hit the mountains just north of Vientiane. So the next leg of our trip will be following the Mekong on the Thai side of the border….