Bangkok to Aranyaprathet: 328 miles

For all the horror stories of Bangkok traffic, leaving the city was surprisingly easy and drivers, (even the city’s taxi drivers – who have a history of telling me off!), were all super courteous and gave plenty of space. In a town where some people are literally pushing their entire business down the road, I guess a bike is no big deal.

As I headed south, the Chao Phraya widened, buildings got smaller and a ferry spared me the expressway. The relative ease of my escape though would soon prove a false dawn.

I was aiming for the promisingly titled ‘old’ Highway 3 en route to Cambodia and Vietnam.

Should you go this way, rest assured it is old, (sitting in the shadow of a much bigger road), in all other respects though, it’s still pretty highway like.

The photo below is from a good section, but thundering trucks, construction dust, and a rough gravel shoulder were the norm and soon got me down.

On the map it looked like a coastal route but the sea was nowhere in sight. Maybe it had dried up, as in its place lay vast racks of pink fish and bright orange shrimp out drying in the sun. I was essentially riding through an industrial dehydrator. A bumpy one!

After 50km, the familiar colours of 7-11 were calling. I followed the light.

After reviving myself with air conditioning and iced tea, I got chatting to a friendly lady outside. She had a promo stand, selling some kind of miracle car spray, and was surprised to see a cyclist (I suppose most choose a better route!). She recommended I stop off at a temple over the water a few km down the road and packed me off with a small crispy squid snack, wishing me chok dee, ‘good luck’ as I pedalled away.

Iced tea and air con are one thing, but the morale boost from a bit of human interaction like this, or even from a simple thumbs up, is something else. Despite the crummy road, my spirits were buoyed!

The temple was a great tip too, the breeze and emptiness of the Thai Gulf a welcome back from the traffic.

Things also picked up on the road as I eventually wrestled free from the highway at Chumphon, striking out for a few kilometres on the city’s ‘ocean bridge’.

Given the bridge doesn’t actually go anywhere (other than back to the city), I wondered if it had been built as an elaborate ‘just for fun’ kind of project. If so, hats off to them, it was a great success, busy at golden hour with people fishing, jogging, snacking on dried squid (of course!) and taking selfies in the sunset.

Although nice, these distractions didn’t really justify the dreary road. What’s more, if I were to stick with Highway 3 all the way, I’d cross into Cambodia at the southern border; a less common route, sure, but one that missed out on the temples of Angkor and scruffy charms of Phnom Penh.

Time to reconsider.

I started thinking back to Chula, the man I went for coffee with in Krabi: ‘if you do one thing’, he said, ‘ride Khao Yai National Park!’ (now a good way off my route). He harked back to his cycling days there with great fondness, but put as much effort into joking about its cranky elephants – a bit of a worry if you’re on a bike.

After sleeping on it, I decided elephants were better company than trucks. I would hoof it back the way I’d come (though definitely on a different road!).

Dodging monitor lizards was more my kind of riding.

It was a long 95 mile day backtracking to the park entrance, so I looked for something to break it up. I noticed someone had added ‘Bat Temple’ as a POI on Maps.Me (my navigation app). I had to check it out!

A few monks sat chatting in the shade whilst the resident dogs did the usual rounds. If you didn’t look up you might not even notice the thousands of fruit bats casually snoozing en masse above. It was an eery sight, especially with the creepy shrine below, but also strangely comical with the bats fidgeting and squabbling constantly in their sleep.

A mysterious looking man with a magnificent set of eyebrows appeared. He kept squeezing my arm and doing impressions of dangerous animals when I told him where I was going. “Sua!” (tiger!) he hissed, squeezing harder.

I knew for a fact there were no tigers in Khao Yai!

In fact I thought the elephant stories were overblown too, so turned to the internet for reassurance.

Hmm…I decided to at least give the elephants a head start, setting off a bit later than usual. This sign at the entrance and the frequent piles of dung on the road made me feel I’d done the right thing.

In the end though the worrying was overkill. It was a Saturday and heaps of cyclists and day trippers were up from Bangkok, plenty early enough to scare any elephants away.

Seeing so many other cyclists was really strange! These guys were super professional, with lots of matching kit and carbon frames. Some were too serious to wave back, but the company kept me going as we battled it out against the crazy gradients.

I paused to check out Haew Narok, one of several impressive waterfalls along the way.

Impressive, but also powerful. Tragically several elephants drowned here just a few days after my visit (trying to save a young calf).

Here at the waterfall I was briefly adopted by an older Thai couple who took an interest in the bike.

The man below proudly showed me several photos of himself out riding (again – with all the gear!). They later caught up with me in the park cafeteria and insisted on buying me all kinds of snacks – including two hot dogs – which in Thailand come without a bun (snipped up in a bag with a stick instead!).

My cycling done for the day, I tried to organise a night safari with the rangers. This involved booking a truck, driver and guide – expensive! Luckily I met two girls in the visitor centre, (both doing placements at different embassies in Bangkok), who were keen to team up and split the cost.

We camped together and they helped us make friends with a neighbouring Thai group (who appeared to be doing some kind of non-stop BBQ challenge!). They were super generous and invited us to join them for dinner.

The Thai group were also helpful in the field of monkey security. Monkeys are such a problem in Thai national parks you are actually encouraged to leave your tent and bags open for the them to root through at their leisure (if you don’t, there’s a chance they might just rip right through your stuff).

This one had just polished off someone’s Pepsi and the other was running off with a sweet potato!

With the park closed in the evening there were no other vehicles on the road, making the night safari a little other worldly.

The guide scanned the forest for movement with a giant searchlight. It felt like a scene from a US sci-fi series – so much fun!

We would have been happy with the stars and novelty of a cool evening breeze, but there was soon some action as the guide picked out civet cats, hunting dogs and various types of deer on their evening manoeuvres. This was just the warm up though. A flash of grey in a small clearing soon transpired to be a herd of around 15 wild elephants on the move. I felt bad for disturbing them and expected them to disappear in fear of the light and motor. They seemed totally non-plussed though and carried on without any hurry. Now I was glad to be off the bike!

The next morning I decided to climb up to the highest point of the park. After giving the elephants another respectful head start (better safe than squashed), I stashed my panniers with a ranger, and set off up toward the Pha Diao Dai viewpoint. It was a real grit your teeth job to get there, even without luggage, so I was a little miffed to find two leeches tagging on for a free ride/meal on the way up.

As far as I can recall, you’re as well to let them drop off on their own, so I just ignored them and thought about how pleased I might have been in the medieval era. They don’t hurt, but they do have some kind of anti-coagulant which means you stream with blood for a good half hour afterwards.

The view was hazed out but I was happy to have conquered the bloodsucking climb!

On the descent I spotted a fun photo opp of some switchbacks – a Thai cyclist pulled over and we took a few photos of each other making our way down.

Aside from the gift shop and cafeteria, there’s no real commerce and not much traffic in the park, so crashing back to reality at the heavily commercialised north entrance was a shock.

The bizzare and sad nadir of all this was a group of captive elephants chained up ready for tourist rides just a few hundred metres from the gate. There’s also about 20km of faux-European themed hotels and restaurants, including a replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Pretty weird!

This Norman England themed number was called “Thames Valley”.

I was soon back in the countryside proper (thank goodness!), making my way east through a sparsely populated valley of lemongrass, sugar cane and dragonfruit.

Whilst buying some biscuits from a small shop, a neighbour came over and suggested I stay in this room next to his cow! It was only 10.00am, so I politely declined.

Mobile shops like these whizzed by, cranking out a list of what they were selling (or just the driver’s favourite music) as they supplied small eateries along the way.

After a while I was flagged down by a super nice lady at one such place, grilling some meat and steaming some sticky rice in the middle of nowhere. She spoke quite a bit of English, explaining that a British guy (also a cyclist) drops in every Thursday to teach her.

She wanted to practice and persuaded me to stay for some papaya salad. “He always has papaya salad” she said, “and tea, he likes his tea!”

‘Why not?’ I thought, not knowing she would make it at nuclear strength. She was totally unremorseful, telling me all about her family as tears streamed down my face from the chilli.

From here I made good progress and on a whim, sent a last minute request to a Warm Showers host in the border town of Aranyaprathet. I was only half expecting this to lead anywhere as I just got a one word reply to my message: “Sure” [you can stay].

I needn’t have worried.

Usually Warm Showers hosts are other cyclists keen to lend a helping hand or give something back after being hosted themselves. This lady, Dee, didn’t even own a bike but said she kept seeing foreigners struggle past her house (on the way to the border) with heavy loads so started to invite them in for a rest.

“Wow! They must be so pleased”, I said.

“No. They are very suspicious!”, she laughed.

She’d left a note on her gate with my name on it and I followed the path down to her beautiful wooden house, raised off the ground on stilts in the traditional Thai style.

Dee then cooked me the biggest and most impressive meal of the trip so far, banging on the whole time about what a bad cook she was. “You like it”, she huffed, “but Thai people wouldn’t even touch this, it’s not proper food”, (it was mega mega tasty!).

I spotted a giant shelf of DVDs and tried to impress her with my basic knowledge of Thai independent cinema. This was a conversational dead end, but it did bring up the Thammasat University massacre of 1976, kind of a taboo topic in Thailand, around which one of the films I’d seen was based.

From this we got chatting about former PMs Thaksin and Yingluck Shinawatra: what exactly did I think about them hiding out from the Thai courts in the UK?

Crikey!

She went on to spin Shakespearean tales about corruption in Thai politics and bogus rice subsidies, with anecdote after anecdote about contraband across the border, Pattaya bar girls double crossing their European husbands and the (in her mind) patronising snobbery of Thais that live abroad and criticise society at home.

We were up till midnight and might have stayed up later, if I hadn’t realised my shoe was missing (stolen by her dog!).

“This is very serious!”, she said,”it could be anywhere, maybe totally chewed up…”

Cue a torchlight search of the grounds / garden tour!

“This is where the tarantula lives”, she said, pointing down a hole, “have a look! My mum used to eat them, but they’re not really my thing”.

We found my shoe (phew!) and I collapsed into a deep sleep. It was so great to chat to Dee – she even invited me to stay longer! – especially so at the end of my time in Thailand. I had so many questions and she never ran out of answers and stories.

“I’m just following the king’s way”, she said, in reference to the late King Bhumibol. “If we all did this [look after each other], the world will be a bit nicer”.