By Eric.

We place the ride from Chai Nat to Nakhon Sawan in the top 10 of all our days on bikes. It seemed like every other car that passed us waved, honked or gave us a thumbs up. If we started feeling tired, someone inevitably waved excitedly and cheered us up. And like everywhere, kids yelled the loudest. Soccer games halted so the players could run towards us yelling "Hello!" or just yelling.

The Indonesians had also yelled energetically. But the Thai enthusiasm was different. The Indonesians yelled at us while the Thais yelled to us. In Indonesia we could have been a couple of chimpanzees on bicycles and received the same response.

About 20km out of Chai Nat we arrived at the small town of Manorom on the Chao Phra Yai river. The map showed a bridge here. But as we approached the road came to a T. I saw cars driving up a small dirt path between buildings so I looked down the road thinking I might see a ferry. Nope. I didn't see a bridge either.

We asked a woman and she pointed to the same dirt path. I looked again and this time saw there was a sort of a ferry. It was really just a 15-meter square dock with attached by rope to a small tugboat.

We rolled onboard with a bunch of motorcycles and about 20 passengers. Then five or six pickup trucks and cars squeezed on. During the voyage across the river, about 1km, a man came by collecting the fare. He didn't charge us anything.

The river was wide, muddy and shallow. Like the Mississippi we couldn't see past the row of trees on either side. The Chao Phra Yai has cut a wide valley and no hills can be seen from the river at that point.

Their docking technique was interesting. The tugboat, about 20 meters ahead, headed straight at the dock at full speed and turned at the last minute. The "barge" we rode actually seemed to accelerate as it swung towards shore downstream from the dock. As kids we called this maneuver "cracking the whip" when we connected sleds together on big hills.

As the barge headed toward land below the dock, the tug headed back toward the river and upstream. This cocked the barge at an angle and pulled it upstream, level with the dock. It hit the dock hard at an angle. I saw the whole wooden ramp of the dock lift up several inches and shiver as it received the blow. I thought they had really screwed up this time.

But as I watched I realized that the maneuver was actually an impressive practiced plan. The impact stopped us completely and rotated the barge in alignment with shore. Two two-foot protrusions in the barge fit like puzzle pieces into recesses in the dock. The tug dragged the barge around until it fit snugly and we unloaded. The whole procedure took about 20 seconds. That's way faster than the fastest docking we ever endured on BC (British Columbia) Ferries. But I don't know how many times the dock can take that thud.

Since the barge handles only maybe 12 cars per hour, the road on either side had almost no traffic. Also it was tree-lined so we had shade. The biggest hazard for the next 20km was caterpillars. For some reason they have a compulsion to cross the road. We kept running over them. Some must make it though, because butterflies flew everywhere. One even flew down my shirt.

We had lunch at Uthai Thani, another wonderful little Mayberry town like Chai Nat. We passed one traffic circle with sculptures of elephants marching around the middle, and another with a hand holding a giant fish. Joan bought a rice bowl and went off to the post office and mailed it. Sounds simple but normally when we buy stuff we end up carrying it for three weeks before we get around to mailing it.

We didn't want to leave and probably would have stayed the night at Uthai Thani but we were on a tight schedule to get to Laos before our Thai visas expired.

Nakhon Sawan was a much bigger, busier town than we expected. The main street runs through blocks and blocks of five- and 10-story buildings. Lots of traffic and activity. Joan was excited because she saw a stop that sold lots and lots of flashers (Joan is a bike visibility fanatic. (Joan: We're still alive, aren't we?). Looking closely it seemed that most of the shops sold industrial stuff. One little street front shop contained huge piles of husky truck differentials. Another shop sold used dashboards. The shops that sold flashers were a disappointment. The flashers were actually for cars and motorcycles, and so required a 6- or 12-volt system.

Among all these industrial "shops" were a few restaurants and a "Future Kids" --an American chain that I guess produces whiz kids. They let us use their computer to check email.

Our hotel turned out to be good but when they showed Joan the room the lights were off and they couldn't turn them on without going back to the lobby and throwing a switch. It reminded Joan of a tour of Kodak she once had, where the whole tour was in the dark (light-sensitive photochemicals everywhere). They eventually threw the switch and we took the room. The woman who ran the hotel had lived in Philadelphia for several years.

We couldn't find fried eggs anywhere, so I had a local standard, rice gruel and pork balls. Joan refused. She got something at a bakery. Bakeries are common in larger Thai towns and usually pretty good.

We rode north to Phichit that day. We started to see hills in the distance to the east but the road, now following the Nan river, stayed flat. We passed rice padis, corn fields and other fields all day. At Bang Mun Nak we split a delicious watermelon for lunch while sitting on a wooden table along the street. We stopped at a bike store where we found an English-speaking shop owner. We bought a few reflectors.

All the way through Thailand, I had been admiring these particularly aptly designed bicycles we saw all over the place. They all had a rear rack with a motorcycle-style padded seat on it, and footrests attached to the rear axle for the rear rider. The footrests folded up when not in use. All the bikes were "women's" designs--no cross bar. They all had big front baskets and some had a baby seat between the handlebars and the driver's seat. The store owner said they were built in Thailand and called the "Crocodile bike." He said they cost about US$25 for a kid's size and $50 for the adult version. He was shocked we thought that was cheap.

This is very close to the "Costa Rica Bike" I wanted to design after seeing the Costa Ricans trying to adapt mountain bikes to handle two passengers, and watching little kids try to ride adult bikes with cross bars. Someone should export the Thai Crocodile bikes to Costa Rica.

next: We meet Team Zen.

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