Thailand 2024

Happy end of winter, beginning of planting season and gateway to summer.  It sounds like a few of you received the holiday cork postcards we sent out in November 2023.  This year we may just send out a holiday email and see if it arrives in time.   We are happy to write that we had another successful winter bike tour in Thailand.  We left Peniche on a morning bus for Lisbon with the tandem packed securely in her cases.  We arrived in Thailand only a little jagged.  We were staying in a new neighborhood and found our new digs beyond our expectations.  We took two days to unpack the tandem, see friends from Portugal play music at a local Bangkok bar, find transportation out of the city and plan a route. 

While riding we decided that when we arrived in Tak we’d leave the tandem in the hotel and mini-van to our old home in Mae Sot.  We have ridden the mountain pass that connects Tak to Mae Sot numerous times in both directions and cursed the climbs, the heavy truck traffic, the exhaust, and the heat every time.  We told ourselves that with age comes wisdom and we should act like we had gained some.

We hadn’t been back to our Thai home in a couple of years.  We had a delightful time hanging with Maung Maung Tinn, Rose, Steph, Dave, Chuli and Yohar (one of our Myanmar health workers).  As they say on t-shirts in Thailand, Mae Sot was “Same Same only different”.   When we returned to Tak we were ready to ride. 

We rode from Tak to Sukhothai https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/574/ to Koh Chang, diagonally through Thailand.  Our goal was to ride through Khao Yai National Park https://www.thainationalparks.com/khao-yai-national-park on our way to the island.  It was a worthy goal.  At every turn in the park we were rewarded by some new site or sound, from hearing the great hornbills fly, riding through wild elephant poop and seeing wild deer and monkeys, it was the highlight of the tour.

We had not been to Koh Chang since Y2K when we were there with our eldest daughter.   The island had changed a lot.  The ferries were full of cars and trucks instead of unwashed backpackers.  The grass huts had been replaced by concrete hotels with fences, gates and guards.  The only thing that was the same were the 20% grades on the climbs.  We did manage to find a funny little resort to call home and stayed 5 nights. 

From the island we retraced a lot of what we bicycled the year before.  We went from beach to mangrove forest to beach to fishing village to beach to Bangkok. 

Riding into Bangkok is always thrilling as the traffic is so dense and the traffic lights are so long that nothing moves except the motorcycle taxis and us.  It’s an art form for Curt to navigate around cars, busses and weave in and about the motorcyclists while I hand signal our intentions without hitting anyone with my arm.   Thankfully they’re Buddhists, and know that hitting, yelling or honking will go on their permanent karma record so they allow us our space.   Safely returned to Bangkok, we visited with our Thai daughter, packed the tandem, ate all the food and got a massage daily. 

We arrived back home to cool rain and the World Surf Championship https://www.worldsurfleague.com/events/2024/ct/198/meo-rip-curl-pro-portugal/main

As always our home is open, you are welcome,

C’s