Day 10

New Sukhothai, Sukhothai – Tambon Sai Ngam

I leave with hosts early in the morning: 7 am and I’m already out of the city. Just an hour ride away is the Sukhothai Historical Park. I get there right in time for breakfast and I’m ready for the visit. I come across several tourist groups: all exclusively Caucasian with a local showing around. I have this uneasy feeling of participating in a white supremacist conspiracy. This experience is the last piece of proof I needed to decide once for all that anything touristy is really not my thing. It’s fake, it’s plastic, flat and taken out of context.

Two hours later I’m back on my ride. With wide open roads I feel like I’m cruising. It’s still fairly early and thus pleasantly warm and comfortable.

I stop for some best phad thai I’ve ever had in a tiny roadside hut where I’m particularly popular amongst the female element. The photo session behind, I leave my newfound fan club with hope of finding a place to crash for the night soon. It’s only 2pm but I’m already tired, too hot, in the middle of NOWHERE, with NOTHING to look at, nowhere to stop at and nothing to do (cycling apart). I’m getting grumpy as I am really fed up and just want a nice air-conditioned hotel room. And cocktails. And a dress. And a nice jazz bar. My god, such a dire need for comfort means I’m getting old.

Fun fact of the day: it seems I’m in the least touristic part of Thailand, with nothing in sight apart for paddy fields. There’s no traveller-friendly infrastructure and the ever so popular guest houses are impossible to find. After three hours of nothing and an additional hour of going back up a route I took, I stop at a police box and refuse to move.

I stop a passing cyclist to ask for help and he calls the on-duty personnel. After failing to convince the policeman to letting me sleep at the police box, he gives me a ride to the nearest hotel and pays for my room. A random act of kindness I was not expecting.

Unfortunately, the resort is far from what I’d wished for. The room smells funny, the bathroom is a hot sauna that smells real bad, with feces-like wall colour (sic!) and smudges of blood/vomit/God-knows-what all over the walls of the studio. After the fatal mistake of trying to move a stool closer to the table, I discover it shelters a worm colony underneath. I hop into my sleeping bag on the bed, hoping that the mattress is not infected with anything and that the bugs will not eat my face off whilst I’m sleeping. Well, maybe the lizards whom I’m sharing the room with will make a snack of them before…?

Km: 100.85 km
Tm: 5:42
Av: 17.6 km/h
TOTAL: 666 km