We both felt awful that morning. Trying to find a train to Trang was actually a delaying tactic because we didn't want to ride. We both walked around in a fog that comes from not enough sleep. When we realized the train option wouldn't work, we resigned ourselves to riding, promising ourselves we would ride only 80km or so.

Fortunately the terrain remained flat. After sweating hard for the first 20km I suddenly felt better. In fact I felt great. But Joan still felt lousy.

We had a good stop at Thasala. We met a young guy named Thammarat. I didn't realize til later that his name was the same as part of the name of the town we had just left, Hahkon Si Thammarat. Thammarat was a pig farmer who liked to run marathons. He has done several in Thailand and wore the light T-shirt and shiny jogging shorts a marathoner wears.

He talked anxiously to us and his English improved a little as a result. We spent several minutes trying to figure out that he was telling us his friend ran in the Boston Marathon in 1996. He showed us photos of himself and friends crossing the finish lines of various races and getting trophies.

He said he liked "beat-oven" (Beethoven) and Mozart but also modern music. I played my horn (Scotland the Brave and Yesterday) and he clapped enthusiastically, like all my audiences in Thailand have (what a great country).

He said he liked old, classic sorts of things. We sat talking to him at a concrete picnic table in front of his parents' minimart. He apparently lived in the oft upstairs. We could see old gas lanterns and antelope skulls still wearing antlers mounted on interstate-sign shaped plaques. He liked Harley-Davidson, BMWs and some British motorcycle.

I had been trying for days to explain to Joan why Thailand seemed somehow American to me. As we talked to Thammarat I began to put my finger on it. Thais like American culture even more than Malaysians and Indonesians. For instance, the Thai national car is a pickup truck. It is the most common vehicle on the roads, other than a motorcycle. The only difference is they ride with four or more people ride in the back, and sometimes install sun-visors that shade the cargo/passengrs in the bed. Some people modify the suspension to make low riders.

Also there's a big fascination with the U.S. Southwest/desert culture here. We see lots of Western bars with antlers mounted on the walls. Harleys are big too, even though there aren't many here. The Thais like to talk about them.

Other little things feel American. Thais may drive on the left, but their light switches go up for on (it's down for on in NZ, Australia, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia). The power sockets are the same as American, even if 220 volts come out.

(Joan: We later learned that Thailand was a sort of resort for American GI's during various wars, so that may explain at least the Western bar fad.)

I was convinced that afternoon that my sudden improvement in health was due to the unusually bue sky. We rarely get a truly blue sky. The haze, not necessarily from forest fires, might just be normal in humid weather. It makes the sky a whitish blue most of the time. It felt good to see clear, clean blue. We had a great blue sky day when we did the Jungle hike in Borneo and another great blue sky day the day we rode out of Bukittingi, Sumatra. But those were the only two days like that since Australia.

The scenery also improved a lot as we went north. We got into some gently rolling, largely wooded hills. Far better than the ugly pools of the days before.

We wanted to stay at a place near the ferry to the island of Ko Samui. It became one of those days that will never end because it turned out to be much farther than the Lonely Planet guidebook led us to believe. (Joan: the LP Thailand book is actually pretty good, except for distance estimates and a complete lack of information on roads between towns; they assume everyone is getting into town by bus or taxi, which I guess is almost always the case). Some days, every time you see a sign indicating distance to the next goal, it's about 20 percent further than you expected.

We ended up at a bungalow on a gorgeous beach at Nga Phlao. But since Nga Phlao turned out to be 30km further than we thought, and still 25km from the ferry terminal, we now refer to any vague and incorrect info in the guide book as "another Nga Phlao."

We got lucky in the morning. We arrived at the Khanam ferry terminal about 15 minutes before the boat left. If we had missed it we would have had to wait another four hours. The boat carreid cars and passengers. This makes it easy for us; we can just roll the bikes on board and bungee them to something on the side of the car deck.

We loved the boat ride. It lasted over an hour but we wouldn't have minded if it had been three hours. For the most part the Gulf of Thailand is calm. It's as if it's just too hot for even waves to expend energy. We watched the cliffs go out of sight and the colorful fishing boats come into view, then leave again. We watched longtail boats zipping around checking traps. Some of the longtails had huge V-6 engines on the long shaft. The engines moved up and down, or left or right, as the fishermen steered.

All of this watching and the gentle rock of the boat hypnotized us.

Right off the boat we stopped at a bakery for a great brunch, complete with a lemon milkshake. Our plan had been to catch the next boat to another island, Ko Pha Ngan, because we had read that Ko Samui is over-touristed. But somehow, feeling really good after our meal, we decided to give Ko Samui a chance. Twenty-four hours later we were back at the bakery, drinking milk shakes wiating for the ferry to Ko Pha Ngan.

Ko Samui is over-touristed.

We rode halfway around the island the first day--about 30km. We climbed a few short but really steep hills, the kind you only find on islands. We passed several out-of-the-way resorts that we probably would have liked just fine, but ended up at La Mai beach, probably the worst place on the island. We planned to stay a few nights so we didn't want to be at one of the lonely resorts off on its own, because then we would be stuck at the same restaurant for every meal.

We tried but failed to come up with a cute name for places like La Mai. It's what we imagine Fort Lauderdale to be like during spring break. (Joan: neither of us has ever been, so this may be totally wrong). Basically, La Mai was like a lot of tropical, tourist-driven beach towns we've seen--Puerto Viejo de Talamanca on the east coast of Costa Rica, and Tuk-Tuk on Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia, to name two.

Only La Mai is worse. It's nothing but a strip of bars, crammed together on a dusty narrow street. It's not even in a Thai village. It was just a sandy place near a beach until sometime in the last 30 years. Now it's like a midway at a county fair. All the carnival rides, funnel cake booths, and games with curious looking old men trying to rip you off suddenly appear in a grassy field outside the grandstand. La Mai is an adult carnival, full of prostitutes, that never ends. (Joan: I kept thinking of it as the fair where Gepetto told Pinocchio not to go).

I felt bad just being near it. The beach is nice though, and we had a few nice swims. Also we liked the beach restaurant at our hotel. Unfortunately our bungalow was really hot so we hardly slept. We checked out early the next morning and rode the last 25km around the island back to the ferry terminal at Na Thom. Thankfully the ride had only one long, shallow grade and none of the steep stuff.

We had to wait at Na Thom for five hours. We used the time to check email, check out a used book store, and sip lots of shakes.

Next: Ko Pha Ngan, the start of our recovery

Thailand Main Page  World Trip