One consequence of yesterday's conversation is that we will be accelerating our trip a little bit. With that in mind, we've crossed off a couple of destinations in Cambodia. Instead, we decided to head the 200 or so miles to Siem Reap. Seam Reap is best known as being the home of Angkor Wat, a huge temple complex which we visited during our last trip. But this time, we won't visit Angkor Wat, we will instead see some of the more outlying temples on a day trip from Siem Reap.

After another breakfast of fruit, coffee, and baguettes, we showered and loaded up the bikes. With fingers crossed that my fueling problem was solved, we pulled out of the hotel at 9:00 am. Leaving Phnom Penh was hectic and slow. It took us about an hour and a half to cover the first 26 miles, but fortunately, the traffic soon got much lighter. The little bit of rain we've had over the last couple of days seemed to go a long way toward greening up the countryside since it didn't seem as brown today. The roads continued to be busy and occasionally potholed, until we reached the junction with Highway 7. Once we turned west to stay on Highway 6, the road surface got better, but the road did get noticeably narrower. There was some crazy overtaking by oncoming traffic, but in general, it was a good ride.

As we got closer to Siem Reap, the scenery changed.



It became much greener and we rode next to lakes and bright green rice paddy.



The day did get very hot, and we stopped several times for water breaks. We didn't seem to mind the heat as much today, since we knew what awaited us once we made it to our hotel. We arrived at the Angkor Friendship Inn at 3:30 pm. We stayed here for five nights during our last visit, so we knew about their pool. When we arrived, Sophia, the manager, recognized us from our last visit. We dumped our stuff in the room, put on our bathing suits, and jumped in the pool. We spent an hour or so splashing in the water before getting a shower.

Later, we went out for dinner at a little restaurant in the old market, where we had many lunches the last time we were here. As we were finishing our food, another couple sat down at the table next to us and said, “Aren't you the people riding the little bikes in India?” Excuse me, are we now internationally famous? No. we actually met this couple and her parents in Hampi at Christmastime. The four of the would come to our guesthouse to have breakfast in the restaurant upstairs, and we spoke at length with “the mom” about traveling in Africa. It is a small world.



Apparently, Fabian and Tanja recently left her parents in India and came to Bangkok with their bicycles. They are going to do some riding in southeast Asia while Tanja's parents continue their now more than five-year round the world bicycle trip. We had a pleasant evening chatting with them about our respective trips before we said goodnight and went back to the room.


215 miles in 6.5 hours. My bike is running great, and Re's new chain seems to have solved her problems.

Since our guesthouse includes breakfast in the room rate, we walked downstairs and had eggs, bacon(!), toast, and coffee. After finishing a second cup of coffee, we returned to the room, put on our gear, and headed out on the bikes. Our destination for today was Koh Ker, which is a temple complex approximately 80 miles northeast of Siem Reap. This used to be one of the most inaccessible temple ruins in Cambodia, but the guidebook said that the area had recently been de-mined, and a new toll road had been opened. The difficulty with the trip today, is that the new road doesn't show up on our several year old map and is also not found in my GPS. Instead, we have some vague directions to ride east of town on Highway 6 and then turn north at Dam Dek. I understood that Dam Dek was approximately ten miles east of Siem Reap, so when, at the ten mile mark, we spied a likely looking road, we turned north. Signs on the road said that it would eventually lead to Anlong Veng, but they didn't mention Koh Ker. After 20 miles or so, Re beeped her horn and signaled to pull over. She was concerned that we were not on the right road, and she was correct. The toll road was supposed to start in Beng Melea, and a quick look at my GPS showed that Beng Melea was in fact, about 15 miles due east of our location. It also showed that the road we were on was Highway 67, and that about seven miles south, we could take Highway 66 to Beng Melea.

We made a U-turn, headed back south, and shortly found ourselves on “Highway” 66. The road started out promisingly enough, it was two lanes wide and was hard-packed dirt and gravel. The hard-pack did not last long. We soon found ourselves on a road that continued to narrow, and the road surface was now largely two to three-inch deep sand.



We slithered and snaked our way down the road and then came to an area of deep mud in the middle of a field. We continued on, and a short while later, we came to a very rudimentary bridge that crossed a narrow stream.



The bridge surface was only inches above the water, and it was made out of scrap lumber and half-rounds of trees.



Since Re's lighter, I sent her across first. At least we wouldn't have far to fall. Prior to this bridge, there had been tire tracks left by four-wheeled vehicles, but after this bridge, there were only motorcycle tracks in the dirt.



The highway also narrowed to a single lane and wound its way through people's fields, past their houses, and occasionally, through the trees. We weren't making very good time as we bumped and bounced our way over the sometimes hard ground and slid our way through the sand washes.



In the trees, we came upon another bridge that was a little scarier than the last one. It was made entirely of half-rounds of trees, but the ravine that it spanned was eight to nine-feet deep. This time, I elected to go first, and when I pulled out onto the center board, I was dismayed when the board flexed downward under my weight. But, I hate to backtrack, so over it I went. Of course, it held. I am sure that dozens of motorbikes cross it every day.



Maybe a mile farther, we came across a small pond where the road should be. Not sure that we wanted to tackle this on our little bikes, we backtracked to see if there was an alternate route. No luck, there were streams on either side of the road, so we either had to go through, or we had to backtrack all the way back to Highway 67. I may have mentioned my aversion to backtracking.



We scouted the water and could see that there were some motorbike tire tracks in the mud, but we could not tell how deep the muddy water was in the center. The right shoreline looked like our best opportunity, but it was choked with trees, brush, and some prickly vines. I walked out part way and removed some of the dead branches that hung into the water while the mud sucked my boots in. The water didn't appear deeper than ten inches or so near the shore, so we decided to go for it.



After giving Re a quick pep talk about water crossings, I jumped on my mighty Symba and crawled toward the water. For the first 15 or 20 feet, I was able to stay reasonably close to the shoreline but then had to steer into deeper water to avoid some tree limbs sticking out from the shore. I didn't stop to measure the water depth, but I did hear the eerie sound of my exhaust system being completely submerged. I leaned back in toward the shore and promptly got hung up on a tree limb. The limb was about 1.5 inches across and had either been broken or cut off. It was stiff enough to stop my forward momentum, and as a result, my front wheel sank farther into the mud. I stayed on the gas the entire time, as I reached over with my left hand to move the branch. Re said the rooster tail was impressive, but that she had stopped taking pictures in anticipation of having to help me unstick my bike. Once I was free of the branch, I was able to drive the remaining ten feet up onto drier land. Before Re made her attempt, I fought my way back to the offending limb on foot and pulled it out of the way. That seemed to help, as Re made it through without bogging down or having to detour into the deeper water.

Once she was on drier land, we assessed the next obstacle. Between us and the road was a muddy area approximately ten feet wide, with a small stream running through it. My attempt was unsuccessful and my rear wheel got stuck in the stream channel. I tried to power my way out, but instead, sank the rear wheel up to the swingarm in the mud.



I got off to assess the situation and had to laugh when I saw my bike standing on its own and the stream running through my rear wheel. Re lent a hand, and we were able to pick up the back end enough to shove it onto firmer ground. The ground was too muddy for me to risk getting back onto the bike, so instead, I started it up and walked it to terra firma. When it was time for Re to try, I walked behind her bike and was able to help lift the rear wheel through the stream and muddiest areas.

After another relatively dry and sandy section, we came to another shallow water crossing, and Re decided to show me how it is done. We continued down the single-track road and came to another muddy area with a number of streams running through.



We picked the driest and shallowest areas we could, and made it through with no problems.



Then, we came to another scary, narrow bridge, but this one was actually made out of cut lumber (so it has to be better, right?)



After this last bridge, the road got even narrower, and then we came to an area of rice paddy. Just when we thought the road couldn't get any less road-like, the tire tracks we were following veered up a ramp and onto the narrow, earthen dikes that separate the paddy. The ramp up was about two feet wide, ten feet long, and rose a distance of at least four feet. I hit it first in second gear and did not make it to the top. I could feel the bike lugging and opted to roll backwards down the ramp. I kicked it into first and told Re to do the same. The ramp was tricky because from the path, you had to turn left onto the ramp, ride up the ramp, then make a slight right onto the dike. Once up on the dike, I found myself on a narrow strip of dirt approximately two feet wide and at least three feet above the surface of the surrounding fields. I stopped to watch Re not make it up the ramp. As she neared the top of the ramp, I saw her bike slow drastically. Oh no, someone forgot the first rule of motorcycling: when in doubt, gas it. I could see the panicked look in her eyes when she reached out with her feet and found air. Not wanting to see the inevitable outcome of Re's latest encounter with physics, I instead, found a place to put my kickstand down, shimmied off the bike, and turned to see Re standing next to her Symba.



Fortunately, she was fine, and the bike was too. After taking the, “look what I did” photo, we got the bike upright and walked it up the ramp.



We continued through the rice fields for another mile or so before rejoining the single track that eventually led us to the paved road near Beng Melea. A check of the odometer and the watch revealed that it had taken us about two hours to cover the last 20 miles. It was a fun ride, but we were now both very tired and soaked to the skin.

We turned north, and after about five miles of lovely pavement, we reached the tollgate that led to Koh Ker and Beng Melea. Since it was another 50 miles to Koh Ker, and it was already after noon, and since Beng Melea was only two miles away, we decided to visit it instead. We paid for the admission tickets, rode through the tollbooth, and a couple minutes later, parked our bikes at the entrance.



Beng Melea is another Angkor-era temple complex built in the 1100s with the same layout as Angkor Wat.



The temple here is massive, and while some of it remains intact, much of it is just a jumble of gigantic, carved stones.



We walked around, climbed over, and took many pictures over the next two hours. By the middle of the afternoon, we were both thoroughly hot and tired, so we trudged back to the bikes, put on our still damp gear, and headed south. This time, we took the sealed road all the way back to the pool. After soaking in the water for a while, we queued up photos to load to Smugmug and then walked out to dinner at the market. Re had amok with chicken, and I had the “Cambodian taco,” which is really more like banh xeo. The restaurant was having a special on draft Cambodia , so Re and I enjoyed a few before calling it a night. Between the exercise and the libations, we should sleep well tonight.


105 miles in about 6 hours. By my count, this completes day 225 of the trip. So far, our daily expenses have totaled 12,908 USD for an average of 57 USD per day.

After yesterday's exertions, it was a slow morning. Both of us awoke with sore hips from too much paddling in the sand. We eventually wandered down to breakfast and then back up to the room, where I worked on some writing, while Re washed our muddy, smelly boots. While she was at it, she also washed our helmet liners since they were nasty too.

We decided to take a break for lunch and headed downstairs, where we found Allen and Maureen, an Australian couple doing missionary work at a local orphanage and school. We had met them briefly on the day we arrived, and they were most interested in our trip. After chatting with them for a few minutes, we ended up heading out to a lunch place they knew. While we ate, we talked a little about our trip, and they told us of some of their adventures too. Currently, they are volunteering at a local orphanage, where they are putting in an extensive garden and some orchards to help them become more self-sufficient. Before Cambodia, they spent a couple of years in Papua New Guinea, and they had some interesting experiences there as well.



After lunch, we said our goodbyes, and we returned to the hotel to sit by the pool and so some writing and relaxing. Once we'd had enough sun, we went back to the room to spend some more time planning and researching our post-trip plans. Later, we went out for dinner at one of the fancier places that specialize in western food, where we both had some excellent pasta and garlic bread.

Our goal for today is Battambang, which is Cambodia's second largest city and is located about 40 miles south of Siem Reap. Unfortunately, the Tonle Sap lake is also between Siem Reap and Battambang, so the ride will actually be more like 100 miles. To try and avoid the worst of the heat, we got up early, had breakfast, and got ready to go. Since it had been 350 miles or so since we put on Re's new chain, I decided to check the tension and give it a lube. Her chain was slightly loose, so I gave it a quick adjustment. I haven't check the tire pressures in a couple of days, and was surprised to find that Re's front tire was down to about 19 psi. Normally, we run 30 in the front, so 99 pumps later, she was good to go. The other tires were all down 2 to 3 psi, but other than that, the bikes were ready to go.

When we pulled out of the parking lot at 9:00 am, it was already hot. The ride itself was easy, but not too scenic.



We did see some water buffaloes up to their necks in the mud, but that was about it. We rode west, and then south, coming within about 25 miles of the Thai border. For some reason, I felt a strong pull to go back to Thailand, but there were a few things we wanted to see in Battambang before we left. It's funny to me that on our last trip, I didn't care for Thailand that much, and yet, this time, I keep being drawn back to it.

Shortly after we turned south, Re slowed and pulled off the side of the road. I pulled over to wait, and when she caught up, she said her bike had made “that funny noise” again. She has reported a kind of whistling or whirring noise a couple of times during this trip, and the first time it occurred was our very first day in Oregon. We swapped bikes so I could listen for the problem, and I did hear it this time. It seems to only occur when we ride faster than 45 mph and is a loud whirring that seems to be coming from the front wheel area. The sound does not change when the front brake is applied and only goes away when the bike speed drops below about 5 mph. This is the third time it's happened in Cambodia, and the only other time was in Oregon. My first guess is that it's wheel bearing related, but I don't hear any other groaning or whirring under normal riding conditions. Our front tires are getting close to needing replaced, so I will inspect the bearings when we have the front wheel off. We are carrying one complete set of front and rear wheel bearings, so at least we have the parts if that is the problem. Other than the noise, both bikes are running very well. The new chain seems to have solved the problems with Re's bike, and my bike seems to be getting even better fuel economy.



About 30 miles from Battambang, we stopped for a lunch of bamboo tubes full of sticky rice, black beans, and coconut. We arrived in Battambang at around 1:00 pm and found a very swanky room at the Royal Hotel. While I took a break and enjoyed the A/C, Re walked out to find some fruit at the market for us to snack on. After planning tomorrow's activities, we took a walk along the riverfront and found some dinner.


115 miles in about 4 hours. Between Re's loss of air and bearing noise, I think we'll be changing front tires soon.

We are really only in Battambang for one thing: the bamboo train. The bamboo train is also known as the nori (apparently, a French word for lorry) and is a homemade train car that runs along the old single track rail line left over from the French occupation. We have read that you can put small motorbikes on the train and take them along on the scenic ride also. This morning, Re went to the market and came back with fried dough, fruit, and iced coffee.

After showering and getting on our gear, we hopped on the bikes and rode to the “train station.” The station is located down a dirt road outside of the city and consists of one old building and a collection of bamboo trains.



The trains themselves are nothing more than a 6' x 10' bamboo platform that sits on two, old railroad trucks and is powered by a small agricultural motor that drives one of the trucks with a v-belt. The v-belt is manually tensioned by the train operator to provide drive. The fares are set by the tourist policemen and appear to be non-negotiable.



We paid our 12 USD for a private train ride and then two guys picked up our bikes by the footpegs and slotted them onto the train.



A quick picture later, and we started rolling down the tracks. Or, more accurately, wobbling down the tracks.



The track has been unused and unmaintained for many, many years, and the rails are no longer straight or level. The ride took us along the tracks towards Phnom Penh and through the agricultural countryside. I couldn't reach my GPS, but I would estimate that our top speed was less than 10 mph, which was plenty fast when you consider that we were sitting on an open-sided bamboo platform barely a foot off the tracks. The most interesting part of the trip was when we met two different oncoming trains. The rules of the tracks are that the less heavily laden train must get off the tracks to allow the other to pass. Since we had motorbikes, we won both times.



The trains slowly come to a halt, the passengers disembark, the v-belt is unhooked, and the whole platform of the train is lifted off by the convenient carrying handles.



Then the trucks are removed, the winning train passes, and then the losing train is reassembled and continues on its way. This trip was actually even more fun than I expected it to be, and Re and I immediately started plotting as to how to get one of our own. How many miles of old, unused tracks are there in the US? Could you use a Symba as the motive power for one of these things? Hmm. After about an hour, we came to the end of the line, where our bikes were unloaded, and we reluctantly bid farewell to our bamboo train. If you ever find yourself in Battambang, this is one ride worth taking.

Since we were now well and truly out in the middle of the countryside (if you don't have motorbikes, you simply ride the train back into town), we followed the dirt road through the fields and farms back to Battambang. The other sight we wanted to see was Phnom Sampeau, which is a mountain with a temple complex about ten miles south of Battambang. We followed the GPS directions and soon found ourselves at the base of the hill. When we were flagged down by the parking attendants, my GPS said we were still more than a mile froom the top of the hill. The parking attendants insisted that we were not allowed to ride up the hill and that we had to park our bikes. I gestured at all the other motorbikes and cars that drove by, but apparently, farang can't ride up the hill, because of course, there are handy motorbike taxis for you to take. Grr. Instead, we locked our gear and helmets to the bikes and walked up the hill under the noon sun. As my dad would say, only mad dogs and Englishmen... . We slowly trudged up the hill and eventually made it to the top. We stopped to see a wat partway up the hill that had some cool caves attached before reaching the Was Phnom Sampeau at the top of the hill.



Here we were treated to panoramic views of the surrounding countryside and some pretty temples to boot.



We also climbed down the steps to the hidden valley at the top of the mountain. I don't know how many steps it was down into the valley, but it seemed like twice as many on the way back up. Between the heat, humidity, and all the walking, we were both well and truly knackered. We decided to take a break and eat a watermelon before we walked back down to the bikes. For our return journey, we took the steps down the mountain, of which there were supposed to be more than 1,000. Once we made it back to the bikes, we were hot and tired. We rode back into town to cool off at the hotel and work on Thailand plans.

Re and I have been trying to figure out where our trip goes after Thailand, and we have definitively decided to cross Australia off the list. When talking with Allen and Maureen at lunch a couple of days ago, they confirmed what my research has shown: that Australia would be a very expensive end to the trip. They told us that hotels are a minimum of 100 AUD per night. Camping I n an organized campground would be a minimum of 20 to 25 AUD per night, and petrol is currently 1.70 AUD per liter. Ouch. These costs, coupled with the long distances we'd have to cover and the general pain in the assness of getting motorbikes into Australia, led us to the conclusion that we will not be going “down under.” The problem with this decision is that it significantly complicates the Indonesia portion of the trip. We can cross by boat from Malaysia to the island of Sumatra, Indonesia and ride down the island chain to West or East Timor, but then what?! Originally, the bikes would cross to Australia from East Timor by boat, but if we aren't going to Australia... East Timor is a long way from anywhere else with a major international airport. The only possibility I can find that doesn't involve riding back up the Indonesian islands to at least Bali is putting the bikes on the Perkins ship that runs from Dili, East Timor to Singapore. The ship ride and our flights to Singapore would be a significant amount of money, and then there's the problem of temporarily importing the bikes to Singapore. Singapore is notoriously expensive for everything, and that includes temporarily importing foreign registered motorcycles. It would apparently cost us hundreds of dollars for the privilege of immediately riding our bikes the less that twelve miles from the harbor in Singapore to the Malaysian border, or we would have to figure out how to get the bikes from the port to the airport without importing them. Consequently, Indonesia's position in our itinerary is looking less and less certain. If we strike Indonesia from the list, it now, strangely, doesn't leave us with much trip left. To make matters worse, we are both feeling a little homesick and a little like we want to get on to whatever our next adventure is. It's a confusing time to be us. One possibility that this does open up, is the chance to see the Formula 1 race in Malaysia next weekend. We attended the race two years ago. It was a fun time, and Malaysia has the cheapest F1 ticket available. There are two problems with this possibility. The first, is that the racetrack is more than a thousand miles away. The second, is that we currently have two month Thai visas in our passports that cost us 40 bucks a pop. We certainly don't want to waste our visas on a four day ride to Malaysia, when we could get a free 15-day visa-less entry, just by showing up at the Thai border. We don't know right now if we could just take the 15 days and save our visas and return to Thailand after we are finished touring Malaysia. We'll find out tomorrow! Since we were both thoroughly confused but feeling like we'd come to a bit of a conclusion, it was dinnertime. We walked out for another dinner of Khmer food, which was good, but not great.


30 miles in 2 hours.

We had a repeat of yesterday's breakfast in the room this morning and then hit the road by 8:30 am. It was a relatively boring ride back to the border at Poipet. It was again, hot, and the roads were kind of busy, but we made it to the border by 11:15. In contrast to entering Cambodia, exiting it was no problem. Poipet has long been a notorious rip-off zone on the Cambodia side, but no one asked us for a single bribe, and everything was taken care of very quickly. The Thai side was another kettle of fish. While there were no bribes solicited, we did wait in line for almost two hours to get through Immigration in the hot sun. The best news of the day was that Re was able to explain to the Immigration officer that we wanted to save our two-month visas, and instead get stamped into Thailand for 15 days. The officer reconfirmed what Re was trying to do and said that would be fine. She stamped us both in for 15 days, so F1, here we come! Customs, on the other hand, was a breeze. The TM-2 and TM-4 documents that I didn't have when we crossed into Laos turned out to be no problem when reentering Thailand. A friendly Customs agent filled out the paperwork for me, and the only fee on either side of the border was 40 Baht (1.33 USD) for photocopies of our Carnet documents that were attached to our new TM-2 paperwork. After the documents were completed, we only had to wait about 20 minutes before all our paperwork was complete and we were free to go. The bad news about this process, was that it was now 2:30 pm, and it took us 3 hours and 15 minutes to get through the border.

Our original destination for the day, and still our destination, was Ayuthaya. Ayuthaya is a picturesque city about 50 miles north of Bangkok and was one of the original capitals of Thailand. There are lots of old temples in the city, and the city is notable in that it is surrounded by a natural moat. But none of that really matters, since we're going to Ayuthaya so Re can see the elephants. We still had 160 miles to go, so we blasted out of the border as fast as 7hp can. Since we were racing the sun, it really wasn't a very enjoyable ride. The eastern part of central Thailand is flat, boring, and mostly agricultural. It was however, much greener than Cambodia, and the roads were excellent. We did run into a rogue thunderstorm and rode through the rain for about 1.5 miles. On the other side of the rain, the sky was much more overcast and made for a cooler, more pleasant ride. The sun was finally setting around 6:30 pm, and we still had 31 miles and a fuel stop to go. We normally refuel every 100 miles, but since the carb work in Phnom Penh, we've extended it to 110 miles between fill-ups. Tonight, the 110 miles occurred two miles short of Ayuthaya. So we stopped to refill under the street lights and then rode the short distance to the backpacker ghetto. Tonight, our guesthouse found us, since we could not find the one we were looking for. While we were stopped, consulting the GPS, a lady asked if we were looking for a room, and it turned out we were parked in front of the Toto Guesthouse. They had a good room for a decent price and gated parking. Sold. We unloaded our gear and then walked out to find dinner. The place we found appeared to be mostly a drinking establishment, but their menu sounded good, and their prices were right. A little trepidatiously, we ordered Penang curry and Massaman curry, but were more than pleasantly surprised when our very delicious dinners arrived.


265 miles in 11.5 hours. Over 3 hours at the border, but it only cost us 1.33 USD, and we saved our 2-month visas for later!

Ahh, it's good to be back in Thailand, where you can just walk two blocks to the 7Eleven for yogurt, coffee, and cereal. But the tradeoff for the convenience is that even though it takes less time to buy, it's not as good as freshly fried donuts, half a watermelon and real, strong coffee. But we were in a hurry this morning, so it was worthwhile. After a shower, we loaded everything on the bikes and rolled out before 8:00 am.



We made the ten minute ride to the Elephant Kraal, and suddenly, elephants! The elephant kraal is a restored version of the wooden stockade that was used for the roundup of wild elephants and as the former training site for the war elephants. Now it serves as the home to rescued elephants who are used to give rides to the temples in town. The best part about the kraal is that it is free to visit, they only charge 50 baht if you want to take pictures.



Of course, we bought the camera permit, and while I was doing so, a baby elephant found Re to play with. Most of the elephants are penned or chained, but for some reason, this little guy was out running around. The young ones and their mothers are kept in a separate area, and you can buy a basket of cucumbers for 50 baht (1.66 USD) to feed to them.



After a few minutes of being pushed around the yard by the baby elephant, Re bought a basket of cucumbers and fed the young ones and their moms. At one point, I was a little horrified to see half of Re's arm inside a juvenile elephant's mouth. She was laughing, but the 8-year old mahout (elephant trainer) was looking a little concerned.



After Re exhausted her first basket, we got a second one and made the rounds again. The baby elephant was hilarious, because he didn't want any cucumbers, but did attempt to nudge and push us away from the others as we tried to feed them.



He also tried to squish us against one of the fences a couple of times. No malice, he was just having fun, and so were we.



We walked around and looked at some of the adult elephants as well, some of whom were being washed.



We also stopped to admire the oldest elephant we've ever seen. Re could have stayed all day, but after nearly an hour, I had to get us back on the road, since our ride today looked to be about 330 miles.

At 9:00 am, we waved goodbye to our new friends and headed south. I was a little concerned by the GPS directions today, because they appeared to take us to the ring road around Bangkok that we couldn't get on last time (due to being on two wheels). The ride today was warm, but not brutally hot since there were clouds blocking some of the sun. after a couple of hours, we got to the entrance of the ring road, and as we feared, no motorbikes were allowed. Crap. I flicked on the “avoid highways” option in my GPS, and our 330 mile ride suddenly became 380 miles. Double crap. The next several hours of riding were no fun. We were off the highway and on the surface streets riding through Bangkok. I had hoped we'd skirt the edge of Bangkok, but no such luck. We rode directly into the center of Bangkok and eventually found ourselves staring at the bridge near Hualumphong train station that we'd climbed over and past the barbed wire to avoid backtracking when we were searching for a camera many weeks ago. Triple crap. At least that means we were near the river, and the bulk of Bangkok would soon be behind us.



Once we crossed the river, we came to the entrance ramp for Highway 35. Yay! Open road! Then we saw the “no motorcycles” sign. Quadruple crap. It was about noon, and we still had a lot of miles to go. We spent the next 30 miles fighting our way through traffic on the access road that parallels the 35. Sometime after 1:00 pm, I spied a McDonald's a few miles before Samut Song Khram, and we pulled in for lunch. I checked our mileage and determined that it had taken us over four hours to cover the last 90 miles. I didn't figure that we could safely make it to Chumphon, so we went inside and had a Big Mac extra value meal, super-sized. As we sat and enjoyed the A/C, I looked at the map and figured we could make it to Prachuap Khiri Khan before 6:00 pm, and maybe that should be our new goal. Re said, “**** no. They have khao mok khai in Chumphon.” She did make an excellent point. They do have excellent khao mok khai (KMK) in Chumphon. KMK is a Thai-Muslim version of chicken biryani and is one of our favorite meals in southern Thailand.

The rest of the afternoon was the worst kind of riding for our little bikes. We were finally able to get on the 35, and then took it to the 4, where we turned south. This was all highway riding, and our bikes are underpowered for making time on this kind of road. The scenery was basically scrubby, deciduous trees, some palms, and fields. Not ugly, but not pretty either. In the middle of the afternoon, Re's bike made the bearing noise again, and once again, we were riding north of 45 mph. We swapped bikes for about 50 miles, but I kept our speeds around 43 mph, and we had no further problems. I need to investigate this, just not today. When the sun went down around 7:00 pm, we still had about 80 miles to go. I like many things about our Symbas, but our headlights are not one of them. I've been spoiled by the headlights on several of my previous bikes, including my Moto Guzzi 1100 Sport, VFR750, and especially, my V-Strom. The weak Symba headlights are made even worse by the fact that our jerrycans cut off the bottoms of the beams.

Regardless, we made it to Chumphon by just after 9:00pm, and through sheer dumb luck, found the Suriwong Hotel, where we have stayed a couple of times. The KMK restaurant is just up the block, so while Re went inside to register, I walked up to see if they were still open. To my dismay, they were cleaning up. Seeing me standing in the doorway, a woman came over and asked what I needed. I asked what time they close and gestured to the clock. She said 9:00 pm. I must have looked sad, because she asked what I wanted. I replied, khao mok khai, and she gestured to the back of the restaurant where they were bagging up food and said they had it, and I could get it for takeaway. I happily ordered two to go and returned to the hotel with dinner in hand. Re had us booked into a room, so while I parked the bikes and unloaded the gear, Re walked to get some Changs, since nothing goes better with a Muslim meal than a nice, cold . When she returned, I had everything in the room and we collapsed on the bed to eat. Our butts are killing us. It hurts to sit on the bed. The other news of the day is that we broke the 20,000 mile mark of the trip, but didn't want to stop to take a picture in the dark.


379 miles in over 12 hours. Our previous high mileage day of the trip was 375 miles from Sterling, CO to Belleville, KS. Wow.