Gingerly pedaling the heavily loaded bicycle the first hour east out of Bangkok, my Surly Long Haul Tucker, my touring bicycle, my ‘Beatrice’ and I are at the start of long relationship. Tom, my boyfriend and I look ready for anything and I weighing in at 120kg and Tom at 170kg we certainly could be carrying anything we could need. My flute, yoga mats, Tom’s mandolin and tennis racket, drawing pads, some artists supplies, a shamefully large collection of adaptors, chargers, devices and plugs are the less practical culprits. But as we keep telling ourselves and others, ‘This isn’t just a holiday, this is life!”
At 8:30am we set off for the Cambodian border or ‘Kam-poh-CHEE-a’ as the Thais call it, from Sukhumvit road with 6 days before my Visa expires. It’s a leisurely ride over 6 days, that’s for sure. About 220 km, 4 hours by bus or depending how many kilometers you can cover in one day by bike, between 3-5 days. But Tom and I are novices so we’ll be taking it slow.
All the novelties of ‘slow-travel’ creep into awareness. The seasonal fruit in road side stalls, stops for dried and fresh mango, fresh coconuts and coconut ice-cream. Unfortunate strays as leathery roadkill. The smells of anaerobic garbage rotting in monsoon ditches plunges into the nostrils, the assaults are random and frequent just beyond the outer Bangkok area.
For a stretch of the ride I began peering at different property’s monsoon ditches to see how they would use it. Monsoon ditches are the highway equivalent of the nature strips and front gardens of suburbia. Some are neglected and havens for road side littering others are tended and sometimes marginal household farming areas. However, along the highway the more aesthetically minded patrons plant brightly coloured red, orange, pink and yellow Cannah Lillies to filter the run-off and absorb flooding during wet season, as well as bananas, morning glory and lotus.
Then kinds of Farms and crops appeared by area. First, on day one its aquaculture and shrimp farms, then day two: mangos, then by day three: cassava, eucalyptus plantations for building and dusty forest regeneration on fallow land. By the end of the first day, with plenty of pit stops, we made it the near-by small city of Chachoengsao, about 35 km away. Pleasurably tired, without any particular pains we crashed in our motel bungalow feeling satisfied that we completed our first day of riding. By day two we pushed our distance to 40km. On Day three we did a comfortable 50 km in 3 hours. Our legs and knees getting warmed up to it. I am beginning to appreciate a feeling of strength and
fitness and a knowing that I can and could go anywhere I want.
The long stretches on the dusty and isolated, oven hot tarmac makes me doubly glad for our water supplies and 'First-Need' pump operated water filter. The feeling of independence momentarily strikes me as a double edged sword as I fleetingly consider the unpleasant possibility of unreachable heat exhaustion on an ill-considered and unprepared stint- I pushed the irrational fear away, and encouraged myself with the thought that we gladly avoided that fate with our planning and journey in densely populated Asia.
I expect that this journey we are embarking on is and will bring up many unrecognized insecurities. Survival fears, basic, primal and reptilian. Who'd have guessed that riding a long, dusty isolated stretch of road could trigger a similar feeling to that of a swim away from the shore line in a dark ocean at night. The optimism of beginning a new adventure is largely overwhelming and thoughts like the prior barely graze the surface of my awareness as I see the next HWY sign stating our distance from the next town.
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