The Odyssey of Gertrude and Bertha: Part Four – Bertha and Gertrude Meet Thailand
Distance so far: 827 km
Bike repairs: The girls have become quite loud and begun clicking. Solution: turn the music volume up.
Dogs in Thailand enjoy chasing bikes. Solution: add difficult to access rocks to the already heavy basket.
We’ve been off-roading and in the rain with the girls. They have let us know they did not appreciate that. Solution: we’ve catalogued and recreated all the sounds for each other. We are still unsure what to do with this knowledge.
As a creature of habit, I am not one to easily accept change. But as an intrepid touring cyclist, I am not one to shy away from an adventure, a challenge, and a good story. And with that in mind, Sophie, Gertrude, Bertha, and I prepared to leave malaysia, where we had just begun to know the language, the country, the people, the culture, and the food, and enter Thailand where we knew, well, nothing. Here is the story of moving from the known to the unknown, the familiar to the yet undiscovered.
The tale begins with two girls, two bicycles (who are lovingly uncared for), a welcoming family, and a bicycle shop. The bike ride to the shop may or may not have involved some rain, some interesting sleeping spots, and a lot of pedalling. Yet somehow we managed to get to Alor Setar by midday, and navigated our way (thanks to GPS and Sophie) to the Neutral Cycle bike shop and our gracious hosts for the night. We wheeled Bertha and Gertrude in to the shop, looking even more sad and decrepit next to the shiny, new, expensive bikes, got to chatting with Radzhi and his son Zul, and got a quick lesson about bikes. I managed to impressively formulate a question about different types of brakes, using every bit of bike knowledge and terminology I had, and got the seal of approval for my dream touring bike. We slept in the bike shop amongst all of the beautiful bikes, and woke up rested, rejuvenated, and drooling over the bikes we couldn’t afford. It was time to go. We headed off with Zul as our motorbike escort, all the way to their family home in the rice paddies, where Radzhi’s wife Ani fed us, toured us through the village, fed us again, let us nap, fed us again, and then took us to the neighbours first birthday party where we watched the sun set behind the hills we were going to climb over the next day into Thailand, and got fed again. Overall a wonderful, beautiful, and delicious end to our time in Malaysia.
We wake up after a fantastic sleep, and mentally prepare for the border crossing, which includes both steep hills and more steep hills. With breakfast in our tummies and nothing but hills ahead, we begin the slow climb. An hour in and we are both struggling to push the girls up the never ending incline, sweat dripping off every possible bit of skin, my sandals are so covered in sweat that I have taken them off to stop slipping. Cars, buses, and motorbikes pass us, giving us encouraging honks, waves, smiles, and thumbs up. I curse at each an every one. My music is blasting, helping to push me forward almost as much as the knowledge that we are out of money and maps, so turning back is not an option. Beautiful Thailand, with it’s dry season, lush scenery, and delicious pad thai lay ahead. I sweatily inched my way forward. Never has a sweeter experience been had than the experience a touring cyclist has when they reach the top of a climb, and there’s nothing but downhill and sunshine ahead. Wind in your face, music in your ears that somehow has perfectly matched itself to the moment, and the blue skies overhead. Reaching the bottom entails a moment of celebration and a water break in a gas station, where magical bottles of water are handed to us as a sort of “well done” peace offering. We say thank you, pumped and ready to cross the border, and head off. Into the rain. We wait a few minutes and then push forward through what will be the last of the rain. We’ve been promised by the internet that Thailand is well into its dry season. We leave malaysia, getting our exit stamps in the drive through lane, never disembarking, head through no mans land, and reach the Thai border where we wait in line, visas in our easily accessed passports, and corroborated stories determined between Sophie and I. We reach the front of the line, hand our passports, and discover that there is a form we must fill out and then we must line up again. We grumble but don’t argue. In line again, filled out forms in hand with all sorts of vaguely true addresses, we hand our passports and forms, answer some questions, get our stamps, and are handed a bottle of water for the rest of our bike journey. We did it! We are in Thailand!
It turns out that arriving in a country through a border mostly used by locals means no money changers. And so we find ourselves exhausted, soaked in sweat, no money, no language, no phone, no internet, no food, and a crappy map. We also discover that Thai is a hard language to speak, understand and read. We’re fucked. We follow street signs we can’t read, to destinations unknown, hoping to find an ATM. Several hours and a papaya picked from what may have been someone’s garden later, we find a magnificent looking ATM and rejoice in the newfound freedom of having money by buying mystery candy. Some more pedalling (our days are quite simple, pedal and eat, pedal and eat, pedal and eat, sleep, repeat) and a dinner so spicy my mouth goes on strike and I could have sworn it walked off my face (this love of spice could prove problematic) and then it is time to find somewhere to sleep. After some drawings, charades, and a general lack of understanding by all involved, we find ourselves in a Muay Thai academy where we will be sleeping tonight. The sheets look like they’ve never been washed, there are pillowcases on only half the pillows, and there is a hole in the roof in the bathroom. And yet, to us, it is beautiful.
Morning arrives and we pedal away, only to be spotted eating breakfast by the Muay Thai fighters on their morning jog. So much for a subtle getaway. We continue on our way, and the rain begins. And never ends. Turns out the internet lied to us, and Thailand is extremely rainy in the south. So soaking wet and miserable, we keep plodding forward, making it eventually to Trang where we decide to take a day off, both for sanity purposes, and because everything we own is soaked and doesn’t seem to want to dry. Our day of doing nothing ends with dinner with Em-Orn and her lovely husband Ple. They are horrified we have seen nothing of Trang, but graciously cover that up and show us a book of casual 80km day trips we can do. We walk out of that dinner smiling, full, and laden with gifts. Sophie has gotten a bike bell, I have acquired an entire cake, and we now have letters written in Thai explaining what we need and are doing. The rain hasn’t let up, but we are happy nonetheless. Plus we finally got pad thai.
