Day: The Thirteenth

Packed, paid, and ready for the scooter at 10.30. It's an attractive beastie, black, long and low. I dub it "The Luxo-Barge". There is space under the seat for two helmets, so I reduce my already minimal gear, and put just one of the two pannier bags I have with me in there. It saves having to figure out a way of protecting the nearly new bike's flanks from the pannier bag straps.

It takes nearly an hour for three staff members to map out a route for me across Bangkok and on the road south. The problem is we are on the north-west side and I need to go out the south-east side. I take three turns and immediately get lost. I make it a fair way in the general direction, but realise I could be hours asking people, but my accent makes it difficult for people to understand where I am asking about. In the end I flag down a moto-taxi (they are everywhere, bike riders wearing red vests, often with helmet-less ladies sitting side-saddle getting a lift. He guides me to the start of the road I need to take. It costs me B200 ($8), and takes about five years off my life! This guy makes a living out of getting thru Bangkok traffic as quickly as possible. In the half hour it took, had it been in NZ, I would have got at least forty tickets, been arrested six times and faced a firing squad. And it had started to rain...

I am now on the main road south. The first big place on the road is Chon Buri so this is what I have been asking for. Its about 55 km from where I now am. I know there's an expressway, but I can't use a motorbike on it. That's why it took the lovely people at the inn so long to plan my (long abandoned) route across the city. Not long after I start on the main route I see a sign for Chon Buri, and follow it. Next thing I'm up on the expressway...where I'm not supposed to be... The first toll booth I arrive at, all hell breaks loose. There's revolving red lights all over the place and a siren is blaring. I think "ok, we are about to play a new game; fine the stupid tourist". The lady in the toll booth just looks at me, aghast. An angry man runs over, yells at me in Thai and points to the next off-ramp. Whew, got off lightly.

When I get back down to ground level, I finally work out the signage. Green for low level roads, blue for upper level. Its an amazing road. The expressway is mounted way up high on single centred slender Y-shaped legs under the six lanes roadway. It's so high up that it haas to be at least ten, maybe fifteen meters above the ground. Directly underneath there are two lanes in each direction, with entry ramps onto these lanes every 1.5 km. In the middle there are links to the two lanes going back the other way. Outside those two lanes there are two more lanes that have all the feeding side roads, businesses etc. Bikes and trucks etc are all on the lower roads. This went on for more than 50 km!! The good thing for me about being under the expressway was that it was wider than the road I was on, and it was pouring rain. I stayed dry! Until it ended.... Then I got really wet.

Getting wet in a tropical country is a different  experience. The water is warm and in some ways it's pleasant. However, mix that with four lanes filled with thousands, trucks and overloaded utes weaving between lanes, and throwing up masses of spray, and its seriously scary. Add to that, after the end of the expressway, the traffic is mixed and the road is made of concrete with some damaged sections and lots of longitudinal seams. In a car this is no problem, but on a bike the tyres trend to get rut-bound in the seams. I only had the open face helmet supplied with the bike, so my glasses were covered in spray and road grit, making it hard to avoid the seams. With the heavy rain the road was a bit slippery, so I had three heart-stopping moments when the bike got into a seam, then crossed up and a got a bit sideways. Being completely surrounded by trucks meant that there were definitely times I questioned what I was doing.(!)

However, I got to the hotel I had booked via tripadviser. It's ok, half a block back from the beach, with a narrow view of the sea over a number of rough buildings. There's lots of seafood restaurants but the beach is covered with umbrellas, chairs and stalls. I had and very nice squid with holy basil at a seafood place out over the sea. Did I mention that it's my favourite Thai dish? (c:

I'll plot up here for a day or so, get some laundry done and then I think I'll go to Koh Samet, a little island nearby.