“Somewhere” to Uthai Thani

One fall off the bike, one snake on the road, lots of highway riding today and pizza, Thai-style

We got off to a slow start. About 6k into the ride we were presented with a dirt road to tuen onto. We’re not falling for that again, we told ourselves. The bikes get filthy, we get grimy with all the red dirt, and there’s almost always dogs. So, we backtracked and ride back to the beginning to start over. Once on the main highway (yeah, sometimes we gotta take those!) we pulled over to the side to consult the map and somehow, some way, I managed to fall off my bike again, and injure my wrist again. Twice in as many weeks! Fortunately the lady we’d been talking to was able to provide ice for my throbbing wrist. We had been talking to her for a while. She’d seen us at the roadside looking at our map and walked over with a baby to meet us. We are quite a novelty here, apparently. She wanted to get a picture with us. We’ve had a number of people wanting to get their pictures taken with us. We feel a bit celebrity-ish!

It was a rather uneventful next 90km during which we saw very loooooong stretches of flat roadway, banana groves, rice fields, mango trees, and a variety of small modest villages. We rode through some countryside and nearly ran over a rather large, menacing looking snake. It was curled up on the roadway but looked quite alive, and we didn’t want to stick around to snap a picture.

Sometimes we take highways. Not itty bitty ones like highway 2, but big ones with big trucks exceeding 100k per hour, like the 401. But at least here inThailand there are a lot of road users with scooters and small motorcycles so there is always a very wide shoulder provided where most of the two-wheeled traffic makes its way. So we actually feel relatively safe riding the main highways. They are however, noisy and there’s not much in the way of interesting things to see. Only one nasty dog encounter today!

We were starving by the time we checked into our hotel. It’s easy enough to locate hotels with maps.me, but in practical terms it becomes a challenge actually locating it in person. There’s rarely English on a sign, and that applies to resorts. Tonight’s accommodation took a very long time to locate and we’d been standing right on the street in front of a laneway that led to the hotel and we didn’t even know it because the sign was in Thai.

After checking in, we went for pizza (it was a stroke of luck to find that place!). Not sure what to expect when they took our order and asked if we wanted cheese on it. (Really? Cheese is an option?) then they asked if we wanted sauce (again, really?). In any case, it arrived and by “sauce” we discovered they meant ketchup which nicely decorated the top in a pretty swirl pattern. But it was tasty, we were starving, and it went down fast!

And now we are in a city called Uthai Thani (usually unable to remember city names, we just kept referring to it as Uma Thurman all day) about 200km from Bangkok. Not sure where we’re headed next, but every day is a new adventure.