Day 21, 22 and 23: Lang Suan, Chumpon and Bang Saphan

Day 21:

Fuck all happened. Alan got stranded in Myanmar but had no way of telling me he wasn’t coming back in time for us to ride to a new location so I sat around in my hotel planning the rest of my trip* while I waited for his return. My day had been so laboriously slug-like by the time Alan returned I was besotted with the idea of doing some hardcore exercise. Through an incredible feat of enthusiasm I managed to convince Alan to accompany me on a mission to find a badminton court. With the help of a fast talking motorcyclist with the eyes of a pimp and the wardroom of pensioner, we found this kind of outdoor sports spectacular.

I used my rapidly developing gesticulating skills to become embedded in a teenage futsal round robin. Alan, not a fan of soccer, abandoned me to impress the youths on my own. They didn’t pass much but treated all my successes with great cheers and encouragement. They were all shocked when I told them I was 25. I didn’t embarrass myself but I didn’t score either, which is a pity because I would have enjoyed the earthquake of hooting that would have resulted.

After I started drowning in sweat I left to join some old men in a hacky sack like game, sepak takraw. The aim and culture are the same, keep it in the air, be friendly and maintain some level of uncompetitive effort. The difference is the ball – it’s a hard, straw-tied sphere slightly bigger than a baseball which bounces a lot. As a seasoned hacky sacker myself I managed to do alright. Somehow the troupe of mysteriously limber old men were even more amused by my achievements than their teenage equivalents. Every successful kick was greeted with the kind of hollering I thought reserved for the moment when you find out magic is real. The old folk and I had a splendid time together. Here is a photo of our team.

 

Day 22:

So that new tyre I got just outside of Kuala Terengganu is about as reliable as a Zimbabwean dollar. I’ve had it for about ten days and it has already been punctured several times leading to the gradual destruction of my inner tube. As you can imagine it made for a pretty annoying day, which was made even more frustrating by a series of baffling miscommunications and idiotic decisions by me.

After the first two punctures were unsuccessfully patched by Alan and myself, I decided to hitchhike with my bike to Chumpon, the closest place that would have a bike shop (I’m still unsure if the thumbs up signal here means anything more than hey drivers, I just want to tell you, great job). After changing to a waving technique, I got a ride with a family lugging some goods in a big truck. I slapped my bike in the back and said Chumpon over and over until I felt secure they knew where I needed to go. My secuity was entirely unfounded – they dropped me in a small highway town about 10km out of Chumpon. I pumped my tyre as much as I could and rode around the town hoping I would find a handy mechanic before my tyre deflated again. Soon after I met an old man who looked like Bill Murray, he drove me to his friend’s place and we patched my tube up a second time.

For some reason instead of hitchhiking the rest of the way to Chumpon I decided to ride on my scantily patched back wheel. As my back wheel got closer and closer to the structural integrity of a sombrero I had to ride faster and faster. Eventually, consumed by sweat and hunger I stumbled into a bike shop but they didn’t have the inner-tube size I needed. One of the bike-mechanics there started to take my tyre off to do yet another patch job but his Trunchbull like boss told him not to help me. When she had tottered off to rip off some young kids the mechanic gave my tyre another pump and I gave him a handy tip and told him not to to give any to the dragon. He laughed and agreed sincerely – it looked like an abusive regime.

Anyway, dragon lady told me there was another bike shop near the ocean. What she really meant was ocean mall but the exclusion of that tiny word ended up with me riding 7km into the forest – again as fast as I could on a slowly deflating tyre – until a Policeman corrected me and turned me towards the mall.

–

Chumpon is home to the worst restaurant on earth. Essentially it’s a trap for moronic tourists who are so incapable of resisting home-comforts their willing to sacrifice their economic welfare and integrity. A meat pie here costs 300baht ($10Aus), which is about 260baht more expensive than everything else here. Unless I received a guarantee from a reputable food nerd, I wouldn’t even pay that much in Sydney. The food looked like it had been rehydrated from 7/11 scraps and everyone inside looked lonely and bothered. Worst of all was the woman running the joint, she was a small skeletal thing with a empty smile and pointy eyes. I can’t remember what she actually said to us when we walked past but I could see in her eyes how hungry she was to exploit me – no doubt she’s already fucking loaded and each new customer only counts towards pleasuring her twisted soul.

Right opposite rip-off town was a night market teeming with an eye-blisteringly appetising range of Thai snacks, each for around 15-50baht. What kind of tourist misses Western food so much to necessitate fuelling the lavish retirement of a gremlin? If your so home sick, go get some KFC or walk into the mall and get a steak or something, it’ll be, at the very least, cheaper.

 

Day 23:

These are the sentences I said most today:

“Is that a joke?”

“that isn’t even real”

“This is ridiculous”

“Oh wow, that is fucked”

Nothing bad happened, I’m just completely incapable of verbalising my admiration for beautiful landscapes.

Today was easily the most beautiful ride I’ve done here. It was as if some cosmic force had torn out the prettiest sections of the Blue Mountains and artfully placed then around some tropical beaches. Scattered between the mountain peaks and post-card beaches were idyllic fishing towns and incredibly manicured rubber-tree plantations.

 

Weirdly, it was all sparsely populated – every time Alan and I went for swim or rode out onto a pier to get a view we found ourselves laughing at how incredibly incomprehensible this all was. In most countries locations like this would be thoroughly exploited for their tourism value but this was just a normal place where normal people did normal everyday things. Alan and I were pretty much always the only people in the water.

Today was probably the hottest day I’ve had yet but we ended up riding over 120km because who the fuck cares if it’s 35 degrees when you’re in the ocean. ALSO there were bike lanes everywhere?! For like a quarter of the trip today we were leisurely cruising through bike lanes luxurious enough to fit a gang of pregnant hippos. The first bike lanes I see in South East Asia and they’re on a tiny rural road where there aren’t any cyclists?! ALSOOOOOOO we had a fucking excellent 2nd breakfast.

I’m pretty buggered now because 120km up and down a shit load of hills is a lot of km but man what a great day.

–

We rode past another, very overground, underground gambling ring today. This time the liberally teethed men were hustled around a tv under a small, white hanger. They were drinking coffee and making bets on Thai boxing. To their great amusement we got caffeinated with them over a few rounds of legal violence. They grunted and hooted like horny dog-men whenever there was some action. I tried to get Alan to make a bet but we were both to wussy to do it. Despite the grand reaction to our arrival, there was no fanfare when we left.

–

*my new plan is to ride to Battambang, Cambodia, before Alice arrives in Bangkok. I’m going to leave my bike there with Daisy and get the bus back to meet Alice. When the two of us get to Battambang I’ll pick up my bike again and take it with me to Phnom Penh. After Alice flies out I’ll ride to Ho Chi Minh.

Bonus material for those interested in the welfare of my bowels:
After a rather splashy day and half with a few dangerously close calls, things have returned to relative normality (constipation).

Extra bonus material for those particularly interested in the welfare of my bowels:
Having diarrhoea in a country that has squat toilets raises a difficulty conundrum. When squatting to go to the loo do you take your shoes off and risk having liquid shite splashed onto your naked feet or do keep your shoes on knowing there is a risk your shoes will get stained with poo? Feedback will be appreciated.

Day 20: Lang Suan

Alan told me he’s really slow. I didn’t believe him because that’s totally a normal thing to say to a stranger you’re about to ride over 100km with. We were both trying to suss the other person out and make sure they’re not a total gun and or a slothian slug from the slums of slowtown either. We didn’t ride very far today so I’m still unsure of how fast or slow he actually is.

Soon after we arrived in Lang Suan an election van drove past. The Thai elections are on soon (big event, more on that later) and the parties are campaigning. Unlike in Aus, where we are beset with pamphlets and the occasional misguided youtube video, here it’s just trucks and vans driving slow circles around villages playing apocalyptically loud dance music with politicians doing voice overs. They may be releasing ground-breaking policies with inspirational rhetoric but Alan and I don’t speak Thai so to us they bring about as much enjoyment and education as a party bus full of mindlessly drunk bogans down from Newie for the weekend.

Alan said he got stuck behind one of these vans on a rural road for over an hour. Now I believe him.

–

Today I had yen ta fo for lunch. It’s a bright pink, sweet and sour noodle soup made by mixing blood with fermented soy-bean paste. It probably sounds kinda freaky but, aside from it being a soup that’s sweet, it’s pretty palatable even to super conservatives. Despite that, I imagine It would be pretty hard to sell it back in Aus, not just because it’s pink, but because it has blood in it.

It’s such a pity that blood evokes such a revolting reaction in so many people because it’s a really tasty ingredient. It’s intensely savoury but not that meaty in taste, it’s also incredibly nutritious. I imagine that’s what potions from video games taste like – why could that ever be bad? Most people are already consuming it incidentally just by eating meat so why the fuck pour most of it down the drain, we should be drinking the rest of that tasty shit up. They wham it in all the dark noodle soups here and I have a mental fist pump every time I see a dollop go in. I love it.

–

Alan had to go to Myanmar today to sort out some business with his visa. At the bus stop we met a young Burmese brother and sister, Maa Maa and Peiw Peiw (no idea how to spell it, she made lazer-gun sounds when I asked her name. I have to believe her or else I’ll feel racist). MM was a 19 year old medicine student who talked like a machine gun with opinions for ammo. His sister PP, a primary school teacher, was chill. They were both pretty and charming – I demanded Alan get in with them on his bus trip so we could meet them in Chompong tomorrow. I just got a text from him, he pulled through. Good work Alan.

–

Why did I take a picture of the least colourful section?

Every town and city I’ve been to in Thailand has a market like a tide. The markets flow in and out of the town centre, inching forward and backward as each stall jostles for the next space or leaves for the day. Each one of them has it’s own regional produce and snacks and for Lang Suan that means sweets.

The afternoon markets here look like the flotsam and jetsam left over from a shipwreck of sea-faring alchemists. Everything is brightly coloured, artfully crafted and utterly mysterious. Tonight I went out among the alchemist’s menagerie to get myself some sugar. I was about done ordering what looked like some peanutty caramel rice cakes when up sauntered an old women whose teeth had been betrayed by the stain of a Kratom addiction (leaf and nut they chew which gives you a slight coffee high and makes your teeth red). Her daughter had just asked me if I needed a chon (spoon) when the wild-eyed old woman yelled at me.

“CHON!”

“yes, chon,” I said doing the charade for spoon.

“CHON.” Ok, alright spoon, spoon. Why is this happening.

“CHON PHARANG CHON.” That essentially means SPOON FOREIGNER SPOON! I didn’t really know how to react so I just bowed, said thank you and walked off as she yelled a whole bunch of other stuff. The others were laughing but I felt weird about it. Why did she yell foreigner at me? Maybe I should have let her know I understood what she said? Anyway, It was all pretty bizarre. The sweets were good.

Day 19: Lamae

When I arrived in Chaiya I ate at a pork noodle soup restaurant run by a lovely woman and her young daughter. I ended up going back three times (I haven’t been to the same restaurant or stall over this whole trip) just to chat with them. I went to visit them on my way out of Chaiya yesterday and they gave me some free iced tea and ice cream. They’ve invited Alice and I to come back to Chaiya and have hot pots with them for dinner. FRIENDLINESS SUCCESS!

–

I stumbled across a peculiar gambling ring today. On the side of the highway laying in a patch of red dessert was a gang of thinly teethed men surrounding a raised grid of bird cages. The cages had little sparrow like crested birds which were all fidgeting and chirping as if they were on avian Ibiza.

One man, who looked suspiciously like Dave Chappell, was watching a weight slowly sink in a bucket of water. Whenever it hit the bottom he would blow a whistle and some of the men would write things on paper attached to each bird cage. Another man, with facial hair like dappled sunlight (the most flattering way I could think to describe my own), told me it costs $200baht to enter and the winner gets $4000. I asked him what it is you actually win but his English was bad and he declined my invite to play charades. I had no idea – was it a race, a beauty pageant, were they all going to brutally peck each other to death? Nope. This, very overt, not at all underground, gambling ring was a singing contest. The bird that sings the best wins – owner, go collect your winnings. It’s pretty ambiguous right 0 what’s the criteria for best song? Loudness? Best melody? Most human sounding? No one could speak English so I never found out. There wasn’t any arguments, everyone seemed to agree who the winner was so I guess it wasn’t best melody. It was disappointed in the placidity of the whole thing. I mean C’mon, this is a backyard gambling circle! Where’s the passion, the glory, THE BLOOD!*

–

I had a real conversation today! It was with Alan Tay, another bike tourist. He’s riding from Singapore to doesn’t know where yet like me. Tomorrow I’m riding with him to the next small town up the coast. After that who knows. Maybe I’ll be with him for ages so I probably shouldn’t describe him as a vegetable like I seem to do with everyone else I meet. I’ll leave that part up to him.

Everyone Alan Tay, Alan Tay meet everyone:
Hello everyone, I’m a Singaporean doing my maiden bike tour. Glad to know Nick and I’m really happy to once again have a proper conversation. I look forward to our rides ahead of us. Cheers!
Alan’s blog – findalan.wordpress.com

I have no idea how long I’ll be riding with Alan. At first I was unsure whether we would ride together at all but then he said second breakfast and I knew I was onto something good. . . plus . . . I fucking love chats.

Alan has been riding on rural roads for most of his trip because his GPS system isn’t a shitty tourist map like mine. It sounds a lot better than the highway BUT he said he’s been chased by packs of dogs about 15 times. 15 TIMES?! WTF, HOW SCARY IS THAT?!

He has a big stick now. He doesn’t hit them, he just waves it like an angry wizard and they back off. He seems pretty relaxed about it all. Sounds fucked to me.

*I definitely didn’t want to see any blood – human or bird

Day 18: Chaiya

I decided to stay in Chaiya. A few things influenced my decision, most of all the opportunity to go to the local snack-town another two times. Other than that, I wanted to go to the beach again and I got in contact with another bike tourist whom I’m going to meet tomorrow.

Another beach near Chaiya

–

Mee a-rai a-roi baang – What do you have that is delicious. I’ve just learnt this phrase and I’m eager to use it. It probably won’t make any difference to my life other than speed things up a bit because everything I’ve had so far has been delicious. I wish good food was so widely accessible at home. Australia has lots of great food but it doesn’t have great food, if that makes sense. Today I got lost coming back from the beach and ended up in a tiny village whose main road had been commandeered by snack entrepreneurs. The snack village was a veritable run-way of local delicacies – it was like they had set up there just for me, just because they knew how happy I would be.

Could you ever imagine that happening in Australia? Sure there’s lots of great food in Sydney, Melbourne and a bunch of other places but imagine getting lost in Singleton or Mildura and accidentally stumbling upon a food paradise? This isn’t a complaint about how Australia doesn’t have a cuisine, in a country so full of immigrants I don’t think that’s been too much of a dent on my well-being, it’s more the fact that good food is more based on socio-economic factors. In Thailand good food is the norm, it’s available to everyone of every class whether in the home or not but in Aus it’s restricted to certain areas and groups, I think that’s really sad.

–

One thing I really like about Southern Thai food in particular is the ubiquity of fresh vegetables and fruit. On most restaurant tables you will find a tray of mixed raw vegetables, which are free for you to use as you like. Unfortunately though they don’t have the drink culture that Malaysia does. Whenever you order food in Malaysia you always get a drink. Most restaurants and food stalls have as many drinks as food options – juices, teas, coffee, milky-rosewater things, milo, cendol, weird shit etc. Here it’s mainly just water, coconut juice or tea.

–

On my way to the beach today I rode past a curious intersection. It had three signs. One pointing to the left said ‘SHRIMP GENETIC IMPROVEMENT CENTRE’, one pointing to the right said ‘tourist attraction’ and one pointing forward saying beach. The tourist attraction sign gave no indication of what it actually was. I rode right to find, predictably, it was a temple no larger or more ornamented than an obese cow. Fuck, how arbitrary is that? I’ve seen about one thousand cow sized temples on my way here, all accidentally, none of which I stopped for closer inspection. I rode up to the shrimp-enhancement lab and was immediately impressed. Not only was the building of more architectural significance – it was far more interesting – WHAT ARE THEY DOING TO THOSE SHRIMPS?! Making them taste better? Improving their intelligence so the genius-shrimp can explain what it’s like to see more colours? Making half-man half shrimps so they can finally make a live tv show of Street Sharks (they couldn’t use sharks obviously that would be too dangerous).

This temple, street-shrimp bonanza made me think a lot about the tourist trade.
This is my theory:
The tourism industry, led by guide books, is completely antiquated. For something to have tourism value it needs two of three things.
1. Oldness
2. Bigness
3. Difficult to makeness
Beauty can’t be included because that is way to difficult to define yadda yadda blah blah.
When the internet didn’t exist this was probably a pretty good way of going about things. Most people had no idea what big temples, animals and mountains looked like in other countries. Now that we can google them, most of those things have become less significant but tourism business still approaches the trade the same way – if I had followed a guide book I probably wouldn’t have met Jang, Farhan or Leong, I wouldn’t have been to any snack towns and I definitely wouldn’t be in Chaiya (probably my favourite place so far). Instead I would have just glanced at a few thousand temples, visited some packed beaches and partied until my patience and liver had eroded. I’m not saying religious buildings, mountains and parties, are uninteresting or less interesting, just that’s what interesting has been defined as by the majority of the tourism industry.

A tourist attraction in central Chaiya

Now it’s harder to find significant experiences travelling. We have to find other ways to travel, find other things to do which aren’t within our reach as citizens of the internet and wherever we live. I guess for most people that usually means trying to live like locals do and for others it means riding their bike 60km a day.

–

Most of you who know me well will remember I had a few second thoughts about going on this trip – mainly travelling alone, extreme heat and constant rainfall but another minor concern I had was the certainty of getting regular diarrhoea from all the spicy food I would eat. Well it had all gone swimmingly until I reached the border. Despite some sever warnings from some concerned Malays, nothing I had in Malaysia was very spicy (apparently all the fiery stuff is down South). As soon as I got to Thailand that all changed. I just had the spiciest meal of life – a jungle curry with pork, bamboo shoots and a variety of peppercorns, half a roast chicken doused in chilli sauce and some candied peanut dumplings with whole fresh chillies. Usually when you have a spicy meal it burns like a line of hot pins in a very specific location – scuds on your lips, wasabi in your nose, dried chillies on the tip of your tongue. Well this was spilling everywhere, it felt like someone had sandpapered the front of my face and then flooded the grazes with acid.

I’m now lying on my bed nursing a frighteningly mobile stomachache, thinking about what kind of extra precautions I should make for my ride tomorrow to mitigate any rectum related explosions.

Day 15, 16 and 17: Sungai-Kolok to Chaiya

My train was cancelled. I was told it was broken but there should be two the next day.

Now I’m stranded in the erotic but Islamic border town. I have no way of contacting the disco quartet so I’m at a bit of a loss of what to do. I guess I’ll just spend the day exploring Sungai-Kolok with my stomach.

I only made it to the foyer of my hotel when I was joyously invited to join a seven year old’s lunch by a Thai nanna. She was roughly pumpkin shaped and had a milky-way of freckles strewn across her smile-weathered face. She laughed like a retired witch and hollered at the other hotel guests like their mother. She had made her grandson a spicy watercress soup and sweet, sun-dried pork jerky with sticky rice. He couldn’t finish it so she invited me to.

I loved her, she was like the old lady from Howl’s moving castle – hoarse and haggard but youthful and constantly laughing. She held me by the elbows, gave me free food and tried to teach me some basic Thai. She was everything I want from a non-English speaking friend. It was so joyous talking and eating with her I made it my mission to spend the afternoon finding a delicious snack to bring back for her. I decided on some double-fried ayam goreng with a side of freshly ground som tam.

It didn’t have the desired effect, she looked more inquisitive than pleased. Her and another bubbly hotel attendant judiciously inspected the food and then tried as small a mouthful as they could manage. They chatted about it for a bit in Thai and asked me how much it was and whether it was ‘tasty’ (a word I had taught her with some difficulty). I thought it was awesome and told them with a big smile and thumbs up. They laughed. Now I have no idea whether I was ripped off or got a great deal.

I spent the rest of the afternoon conversing with the two ladies (it was probably more us just talking to ourselves and laughing at each other but it felt like a conversation). It all quietened down when their boss came in but when he left they made funny impressions of him and helped me steal some mineral water from his fridge.

–

Something has seriously gone wrong with the Thai-railways, maybe there was a crash, maybe some trains have been recommissioned to serve as giant fighting robots against the uprising or maybe all the trains are driven by one super-genius in his basement and that one essential figure was murdered by someone he intellectually bullied at train school and now everyone is ferreting around to find the next supreme train commander – obviously I have no idea but from all the reports I’ve read the trains are supposed to be pretty reliable – not this week.

I had already been stranded on the border because the two trains out of S.K. simply didn’t arrive. The next day there was a train scheduled at 11:30 and one at 2:40pm. I bought a ticket for the early train and waited patiently (snacked) for it to arrive, well 11:30am rolled past like a smug tumbleweed when a tall, Thai man with a head like a chestnut told me I had to wait for another two hours. I got on three and half hours later.

I had heard mixed reports of when the train was supposed arrive; in four hours, at nine thirty, at midnight, at one in the morning. My ticket said 9:40pm but that was for a train that departed at 11:30am. By the time it was 9:30pm we were about half way so I decided to sleep . . . but then how am I going to know when I get there? Half of the train station signs are written in the Thai alphabet and the on-board announcements may as well be in ancient Azte. I had to try and sleep while at the same time being ultra-vigilante to whenever the train stopped so I didn’t miss my stop. On top of that, Thai trains don’t make great beds. This is the best way I can think to describe it:
Imagine a water bed resting on some poorly strapped roller skates at the top of a steep hill. It’s covered in plastic bags, al-foil and bird cages with loose fitting doors. You’re sitting on it and someone pushes you down the hill.

–

The train arrived at Surat Thani at 3:00am. Bleary-eyed and disastrously lost and unprepared, I stated to ride around the city looking for somewhere to sleep. I found one hotel guarded by a half-sleeping man watching soap operas but that one was full. I couldn’t see any others so I hassled some 24/hr supermarket workers for advice. They were two girls, probably in their early twenties, the kind you would imagine are equally comfortable talking to babies and wrinkles but not boys, particularly not foreign ones. It was giggle-mania, for the twenty minutes I waited next to their 7/11 doppelgänger I don’t think they looked at me once, they just laughed, looked at their phones and told me to wait.

Eventually their manager arrived on a motorcycle. She yelled some Thai at them and then at me, everyone giggled and then she disappeared. They started giggling again and told me to wait. I was so exhausted but what choice did I have. I would have liked to crash at the train station but there was no way I could keep my stuff safe while I slept, so I just waited with the chortlers.

Eventually their manager came back, she pointed at one of the girls and then me and said ‘We go now’. She pointed ahead for me to ride and motored on after me. She must have overestimated how fast bicycles are because she suddenly became very impatient. At first she drove fast ahead and me chanted ‘GO, GO, GO, YEAH, YEAH, YEAH’. Next she came up close beside me asked me to grab her hand. At first I thought they were making fun but she actually wanted to pull me along hand to hand. I thought that was a pretty shit idea considering we were on a highway and it was 3:20am. I went up to my highest gear and pumped it hoping wherever we were going was around the corner.

It was about 5km away. I was destroyed when we arrived. It wouldn’t have mattered how much the rooms cost or how much they stank like human shit I would have taken one.
It was a love hotel – a really fucking shit one. The bed itself was about as comfortable as a mossy rock and the pillows were barely better. They were both covered in weird car-seat like leather and the only sheet provided was a queen-sized towel. Even if you were intending to bonk all night your back/knees/chest/whatever would be fucked by morning (no pun intended). Also there was only one paltry condom and the only sexy extra was a mirror that wrapped around the bed.

To my great sadness, I couldn’t get to sleep. I kept turning and changing positions hoping one of my hips would reveal an hitherto unknown fatty lump to protect my bones from bed-bruises.
Then this thought popped into my head – remember the start of Lord of the Rings, that big battle with elves and men on one side and Sauron and the ugly dudes on the other? Isildur, the man-king, fortuitously chops of Suaron’s fingers and obtains the ring. He walks to Mt. Doom with his friend and ally, Elrond, to destroy it, but at the last minute he decides ‘no actually I think I’ll keep it’.
I was thinking about how Elrond felt in this moment, how frustrated and powerless he must have been. He knew if Isildur took the ring it would bring war in the future but if he just pushed the dickhead in the volcano with the ring then there would be war between men and elves. Imagine how infuriating that would be and then being utterly hopeless, what could he do? It worked like an empathetic lullaby and my own concerns drifted away taking my consciousness with it.

–

All that fucking around with trains and shitty hotels doesn’t matter now because I’m back in paradise.

I’m in Chaiya, a smallish town on the East Coast of Thailand. It has only one hotel, which just happens to be the cheapest and nicest (in appearance rather than amenities) of my whole trip. It’s $5 and although my room isn’t well ventilated it looks like a cabin from the Swiss Alps. There’s a rooftop garden, a communal area downstairs with a small library and a gaggle of couches and it’s all run by a lovely lady who offered to do my laundry.

There is a beautiful river-delta stretching out into one of those endlessly shallow topical beaches.

It’s 7km away and considering my sleep deprivation, cbf riding there, I hitchhiked.

My ride there was from a motorcycle drive madly kitted out in Liverpool fandom. He asked for 100baht when we arrived only for me to realise he was a taxi driver. I had a lovely swim, ate some weird shit and wondered how I could be the only tourist there.

My ride back was with a furiously energetically young man and his family. Their elder daughter and I sat in the backseat, which was actually an industrial sized subwoofer, while Akon was pounded into our ears like an anvil on the end of a cottontip. All the while I wondered how it was that any of them were still alive – I don’t think I’ve ever hitched with a driver that insane. He would regularly speed into on-coming traffic to pass cars that were already going too fast. In the ten minutes I was with them at least three motocylists were almost brutally murdered, all of which recieved a good telling-off for their misdemeanours. Twice while speeding into on-coming traffic he turned his entire head and body around to offer me some food. I just said yes as fast as I could both times – I got a doughnut and a deep fried chicken foot.

I got out early and walked the rest of way, which ended up being a good decision because I’m alive and I made a great discovery – Chaiya, like Jertih, also has a Snack-Town. I’m on my way there right now.

Day 13 and 14: Kota Bharu to Thailand

I just had my first meal in Thailand! A guava slobbered with a super sour tamarind syrup and fishy salt flakes. I thought I was ordering a Granny Smith apple. I laughed and thought to myself ‘welcome to Thailand’. I had been in Thailand for about 20 minutes and I had already had the most esoteric meal of my whole trip. It was so fucking intense I could barely finish it. I’m pretty into fishy/salty/sour/sweet stuff but this was too much for one man.

–

I’m in a border town called Sungai Kolok. It’s so immediately different to everywhere else I’ve been I feel a bit shocked. Like much of North-East Malaysia the majority of the residents here are Islamic and conservatively so but squeezing, rather loudly, into their daily life is a hysteria of alcohol, prostitutes and pork.

In Malaysia when I told people I was seeing my Girlfriend in Thailand most men would laugh and making hooting sounds as if we were all suddenly in a bachelor’s party. Now I understand why. Serving border-crossing Malays their annual dose of filthy sacrilege is big business here. Just on the block of my hotel are two dark store fronts laden with pictures of women with cartoon sized breasts and underwear that look the wings of tropical birds. My hotel room is constantly shaking because the ‘karaoke’ bar across the road has a truck sized bass amp. Even though I arrived at about 1pm, most of the other hotels I looked at had foyers full of bleary eyed men and teams of escorts.

The rest of the city is similarly hectic but in a much less sleazy way. When I arrived the roads were blocked by a nervous-system of winding market stalls breathing out equally disgusting and delicious smells. An hour later they were all gone to be replaced by swarms of motorcyclists and cats. If you looked at it from above I imagine it would look like someone rapidly progressing through frogger levels. In between it all are women in hijabs and men in taqiyahs walking right next to drunken men and their cosmetic entourages.

Initially, I thought both parts of the city seem to live harmoniously but I forgot there has been a spate of bombings and deaths here since 2005. From what I understand that is more a racial-political issue revolving around a Islamic-Malay insurgency. Most of the violence has occurred a bit north of here but regardless I’m getting the fuck outta here tomorrow morning on a train to tropical beaches.

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My last night in Malaysia was spent it Kota Bharu with Leong, a lanky, shy Chinese-Malay guy with a smile befitting his dentistry degree. We spent pretty much the whole night together cruising through the city looking for a good dinner while talking about food and politics.

What I learnt: The Malaysian government is divided into local divisions much like Australia but for Federal elections Malaysian seats are based on area not population so entire cities are represented by just one seat while rural areas with one tenth of the population are classified with the same one seat. Quite a few young people here said this is one of the reasons why the current government has ruled uninterrupted since Malaysian independence. The rural areas traditionally vote for the government in power while the city seats go to the opposition. Corruption and media control have been big issues too but I found it harder to talk about those. I tried to tell Leong that Tony Abbot has control over the Telegraph and is ruining everything but when I tried to explain I felt guilty as if I was complaining my Mansion has a faulty window.

After a comprehensive search for a local specialty called Nasi Kerabu, which I understand is blue rice with roasted coconut and either sweet beef or chicken, we ended up at a roti store. The menu is how I like it – two choices, either roti canai or roti tempayan, served with either ayam (chicken), daging (beef) or kamping (mutton). I didn’t know what tempayan was so I got that with some mutton. Fucking excellent choice me. Tempayan uses the same dough as regular roti but instead of being stretched, folded and grilled, it’s stretched over a boxing-glove like hard sack and whammed onto the inside of a cylindrical charcoal oven. It sticks to the side of the oven so one side becomes crisp and charred and the other stays only partially cooked and doughy – kind of like a schizophrenic naan. It’s phenomenal. The mutton curry was fantastic too, rich like a rendang but thin and more Indian in flavour. In between spitting to Leong about how much fun I was having eating this marvellous bread I tried to explain how there is no concept of desert in Malaysia. He said people eat mostly sweets at breakfast time and between three and five in the afternoon but you can get them at any time, He then took me to another roti stall to get a roti bom – roti cooked with extra butter, sugar and drizzled with sweetened condensed milk. Excellent.

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I was sad to leave Malaysia. It’s so well suited to my idea of travel. Everyone is extremely friendly and wants to chat all the time, the food is excellent, everything is cheap and it’s wildly different from anything in Australia. It also feels very authentic, as if it hasn’t been treated to the kind of dramatic change caused by decades of hoarding tourists. That may not be the case in popular areas like Penang and the Perhentian Islands but most of the areas I went to were untravelled enough for my presence to be a novelty, which is something I haven’t really experienced before. It’s a great luxury to be surrounded by people interested in you. Regularly, people I met would invite me into their homes, their restaurants or, simply, to sit with them because they wanted to know more about me and what I was doing. Many more paid for my meals and told me to return to their city and visit them, which I would love to do.

My sadness for leaving Malaysia (and roti) behind is slowly being replaced by excitement for Thailand. Despite the best efforts of the gaudy shouts of the karaoke bar next to my hotel and the black-teethed sex tourists, the biggest impact Thailand has had on me so far was my lunch.

I ate in an open-air warehouse hosting a gathering of busy hawkers. As soon as I popped my head in I was faced with eager offers of fried rice and coca cola. Sadly, all the dexterity I had gained ordering in Malay is now defunct and I could only awkwardly point to what other people were eating.

I got pork stomach and shittake mushroom soup with pulled pork, bamboo shoots and blood jelly. It was rich, gluggy and peppery. It probably sounds as freakishly nasty as that weird Guava shit but it was the opposite. I thought the stomach bits might have been some kind of unfamiliar citrus fruit because they were so soft, sour and sweet. The whole thing was delicious, I loved every mouthful of it.

I’m so happy I have so much more of this to come.

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A funny thing just happened. At dinner I was having another difficult time trying to communicate what I wanted to eat when a flamboyant Thai with an airy voice pounced on my inefficiency. He sorted out all my shit and invited me to sit with his friends, one of whom was spectacularly similar to a high-school friend of mine, Salvatore de Luca. My rescuer and I chatted through broken English while Salvatore made gesticulatey jokes with his friends (maybe at my expense, they kept looking at me giggling). I established that it was the king’s birthday and there was a festival on tonight. They paid for my meal and beckoned me to join the celebrations. I felt nervous but I went with it anyway and jumped on the back of my rescuer’s bike.

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First they took me to a school dance. They all looked at their phones while I dutifully watched 30 kids clap some sticks and jump occasionally. It was repetitive and long but I enjoyed the novelty. It finished and I got back on the bike for a tour of the city.

These are some things I noticed:
Sungai Kolok has a worryingly large deployment of heavily armed military soldiers.
At night the local highway turns into a motorcycle derby where teenage boys test which high-speed motorcycle tricks will bring them closest to death.
Despite the stress of inner-city living, livestock and humans can live next to each other in peace (besides for sheep who all seemed quite distressed).

During the trip I found out my rescuer is a high-school dance teacher (which I guess explains the school dance) and tonight they are going to a disco in a hotel and they want me to join them. Because I’m so retarded at saying no we ended up having this really weird goodbye ending in ambiguity for everyone whether I was going to come or not. I was especially confused when the disco actually started – it was either 11pm, midnight or 2am. After dismissing some of my more paranoid thoughts I decided to go. I hedged my bets on 11pm and waited out the front of my hotel for a ride. No one showed up. Oh well, I’m buggered anyway, better go to sleep.

Then I remember I had given my them my room number so instead of going to sleep I just laid in my bed like a vigilant meerkat. My adrenaline must have worn-off eventually because sometime later when I was entangled in a deep sleep there was a loud knocking on my door. At first the sound just peacefully integrated into my dreams but then the knocking intensified and someone started trying to open the door. I sat up in my bed like a child prisoned by bed-monster fear. I was naked, it was dark and I had no idea what to do. When I finally decided to put some clothes and lights on and answer the door, they had gone.

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For those interested in touring:
Malaysia is a great touring destination. It’s mostly flat and the roads are excellent, there’s usually two lanes or a wide emergency lane. Dirt roads are uncommon and during stretches without emergency lanes drivers are most often very courteous. While you ride the air resistance easily cools you down, the heat is only a problem when you stop. Almost every road is regularly flanked by food stalls and vendors selling water and other utilities. Accommodation is almost as common; there are enough hotels and homestays for you to ride unplanned and book as you go.