Nepal

I took the ironically named 'Royal Air Nepal' flight, ironic as they've just kicked out their king, which was actually quite good with decent food and best of all, a complimentary bar. We flew over what I took to be Burma, mainly because half of it looked flooded but I couldn't be sure as they didn't have the fancy monitors with GPS mapping that we are so used to on flights these days. I'd met a French guy at the airport who'd been volunteering in Nepal before and knew a decent hotel as we shared a cab into Kathmandu. In a scene marginally resembling 'Wayne's World', there were five of us squeezed into the smallest white Suzuki 800cc taxi- the Frenchman, a Japanese guy with a ukalale, a guy trying to divert us to his hostel, the driver and me, although unfortunately Bohemian Rhapsody was conspicuously absent.

Thankfully the Frenchman's recommendation is good and the hotel is quite nice. For 600Rs a night (just over 4 quid), I get a double room with bathroom and cable telly. I could go cheaper but as I'll be here for the best part of a week, I don't fancy living in a hovel for the sake of saving a few pounds. As Saturday is the weekly holiday here, I delay going to the Airport to retrieve my bike till Sunday.


My first impressions of Nepal are that it's a large dirty city with crazy drivers continually beeping their horns every few meters. I think this is what I thought India would be like and I was kind of hoping Kathmandu would be a nice, quaint Alpine town- but its nothing of the sort. I see a lot of street kids here, and I'm told not to give them money as they spend it on glue to sniff. Some of them are very young, and wander the streets in little gangs. There are a lot of foreign volunteers here, a bit like NW Thailand again, most of them working for various orphanages. Mothers with babies follow you around asking for milk for the baby but if you buy them any, you should open it as they take it back and get money for returning the unopened bottle.

On Sunday, I prepare myself with all the paperwork I think I'm likely to need and get a taxi to the airport. Thanks to Horizons Unlimited, I knew roughly what the procedure should be and how much I should expect to pay but some of the reports I'd read were a few years out of date. I had plenty of time to prepare though as I'd been awake since 6am listening to the racket the Japanese group of volunteers were making outside. They were lined up like some military parade with someone doing a talk to which they enthusiastically cheered. Anyway, before I could get out to the airport, I needed a few litres of fuel first as TAC had made me drain my tank before it went on the plane. As there is still a fuel crisis here in Nepal, its hard to come by and you can either wait hours at a garage or get some on the black market. On the street, I asked around and before I knew it, a young guy was leading me through the streets to a small shop on the far side of a busy junction. The shopkeeper had a potential fire bomb sitting around with loads of plastic water bottles of petrol and several larger jerry cans but at least I was able to buy 4Litres for the outrageous sum of 175Rupees per litre. At around 130Rs to the UK pound, you can do the maths.


On arrival at the airport, you go to the Thai Airways office to the left of the passenger terminal and get your Waybill forms. Then its another taxi (and more bloody bartering to agree the price) to the Customs Warehouse Complex where your 'helper' will quickly appear. I decided to use him as I knew all the forms would be in Nelapese and figured that was the easiest way to go. The building was another faceless concrete structure with no names on office doors and rubbish strewn all over the floor. As no one appeared to be working yet, I was given a small glass of local tea to drink with my helper, an older guy wearing one of those colourful Nepali hats a bit like a Fez. He turned out to be quite useful although I did end up filling in the engine and frame numbers for him. He would whisk me around the building, patiently waiting for some overweight grumpy official to take the papers, scowl at them and then angrily scribble an initial or something on the top. This went on for I don't know how many offices until I was finally allowed to get my crate. It was brought out and plopped on the floor of the warehouse, right where a bunch of guys were hanging around for their shipments. I explained I needed to do quite a bit of work to get the bike put back together and eventually got it moved to a quieter corner of the room. I shouldn't have bothered though as in minutes, I had a crowd of around 30 men, all standing 2 feet away with their hands behind their backs, patiently watching every single move I made, and generally getting in the way. It was as if they were watching some strange creature in the zoo, which I guess they sort of were. If I dropped a bolt or something, it was quickly picked up and handed back to me. At one point, I just stopped and looked back at them all and laughed, saying 'haven't any of you lot got jobs to do!'. 5 hours after arriving at the airport, i was free to leave but not before paying the customs and warehouse charges, and of course, my helpers fee. In total I paid 1223Rs, which was just under 10GBPs.

Riding back to the hotel, I used my GPS which I'd thankfully marked the location otherwise I'd have been up the creek a bit. As I got closer to the center, the streets narrowed and the numbers of pedestrians, bicycles, animals and rickshaws built up, the bike eventually stalled and wouldn't start. This has been happening a lot of late though i haven't figured out the cause yet. I started pushing the thing through the streets but thankfully the engine caught one last time and I managed to ride all the way back, getting hopelessly lost on the way obviously.

Get me the f**k out of Bangkok!

On Monday, I finally got the green light to take my bike over to Trans Air Cargo's office in Bangkok but as if written in a script, I got pulled by yet more cops literally 100m from the cargo office! Using my awful Bangkok street map (with most of the street names written in Thai script) i found the street where the office was located, which was on the other side of the busy Rama road I was traveling on. There was a central reservation so I couldn't turn into the street and as i was waiting at the lights to carry on until I could do a U-turn, I was waved over by a copper. Again, I'm not entirely clear why I was singled out for the 4th time but being so close to my final destination mightily pissed me off! I picked up something about a bus lane but there only was one lane so who know. Anyway, he wanted me to 'step into his office' which was a portacabin under the flyover to which I refused and stated I wasn't leaving my bike. I think this pissed him off as he could hardly start to demand cash in front of all the other traffic. So holding one of my lousy fake licence copies, he wrote me out a ticket and told me to pay at some police station. Yeah, sure! From there, it took at least half an hour buggering about in one way traffic until I finally arrived at the TAC office.

At the TAC office, they measured up the bike for making the crate and to my surprise, they allowed for me removing the front wheel and handlebars etc as Thai Airways were charging by volume weight so overall size is critical in keeping the cost down. I returned to the office a couple of days later and they had the crate parts made up. I removed all the parts to make the bike as small as I could (front wheel, mudguard, screen, mirrors, and handlebars) and wasn't looking forward to putting this lot back together. I was quite impressed with how small the final crate actually was (66Wx192Lx116H, total weight 250kgs including luggage and crate which was 60kgs), I really don't think they could have physically got it much smaller. Unfortunately we had to wait to get a flight booking and find out the final cost. I didn't get this until late Thursday afternoon and as TAC amazingly didn't take Visa, I had to take out the full amount in cash. My final bill was 30,500THB (around $900) which was a little cheaper than I originally thought but still pretty expensive.

Finally on Friday morning, and once I knew that the bike was actually leaving, I ran around near my hotel trying to get a flight for myself to Nepal, eventually getting one for 10,000THB which was flying that afternoon. However despite my rush, as I knew they flew at 1pm, it was delayed by 3 hours. The guy who sold me the flight ticket told me I was 'man very hurry', and I guess he was right. It's sometimes a bit stressful dealing with shipping bikes and sorting out flights in such as short space of time that thats all you can focus on. Overall, since getting back to Bangkok last Monday, it's taken 2 full working weeks to get the bike on a plane. But it's finally done though.

Anyway, on to Nepal....!

Oh, and the final scores for Thailand are:
Overlander 4 : Bent coppers 0

Back to Bangkok

What 2 quid a night buys you in Bangkok

Today I rode the 660kms from Ventiene in Laos to Bangkok in one go as I'm very keen to get the bike shipped to Nepal as soon as possible. Fortunately the roads in Thailand are way better than Laos and this one is a 2 lane highway so I can cover a much greater distance than I have of late. Because the road is so much better, I decide to use my mp3 player today to help pass the time and head south to the sounds of The Greyboy Allstars. I figured that it would be around 7.30pm and dark by the time I got to Bangkok but as I planned on going back to the same guest house I stayed in before, it wouldn't be too much of a problem.

The battery on my mp3 player lasts the day until I get about 30kms from my hostel however the shear volume of traffic around me makes me decide I really need to concentrate now and switch it off. Its dark and I'm in the middle of about 5 lanes, each of which is solid with traffice inching its way forward, with hundreds of mopeds buzzing between the vehicles like flies. Its also raining heavily and I eventually find out why the traffic is so heavy- the roads are flooded to a depth of around 8" in places. To make matters worse, the bike decides to stall on me and won't start. I push it between the cars to the side of the road, eventually getting it started again after about 5 minutes. It did this in Vangvien too after a night of heavy rain and hope this isn't the start of some new problem.

It's painfully slow squeezing my heavily loaded bike between the traffic and trying to avoid any more encounters with mopeds as they fly down the gaps. It takes 2 hours to get through this and is well after 9pm by the time I eventually reach my destination, flopping down on the single bed in my cell-like room. I've scanned and emailed off all my documents to the shipping company I'm going to use to get the bike to Nepal, here's hoping they don't take forever in organising it.

As part of my prep, I get a new front tire fitted but as this is Bangkok, I manage to get myself stopped by the cops going and coming back from the shop. It took me a lot of energy to decide to cross town in the first place so this was all I needed. The first cop explained I should have been 'left' and not 'right' or something. Who knows. He took a look at my frankly shoddy licence copy, laughed and said it was a copy. I somehow convinced him it was my real license though and we commenced the now familiar routine. Wave a ticked in Thai at me and say I'll have to go to the Police station to pay and get my fake license back. But then he tells me 'but you don't know where Police staition is?'. I tell him just give me the address and I'll find it, though as I suspect he knows he isn't actually holding my real license, he repeats 'ah, but you don't know where... etc'. He now begins the begging for money bit where he mutters 'maybe you can, erm, eh, maybe you pay something..' but he can't quite say it. After a minute or two of this, I'm waved on without paying anything again.

On the way back from the tire shop, unbelievably the same thing happens again though this time, its one cop on his own and he can't speak English so after a brief flutter on his radio, I'm waved on again.

So currently, the scores now stand at:
Overlander 3 : Bent coppers 0

I quickly tire or my depressing cell-like room with no windows and the constant noise of tuk-tuks accelerating all night and find something much nicer for a little more cash. If I'm going to be here for a week or two, I might as well not be tempted to commit suicide in the process. I also manage to get some more bike prep done, stuff that I should have done in Australia but ran out of time. As my horn broke in my accident, I get a local guy to fit two loud ones and sort out the new wiring. This will be essential in India where you need to be heard. I also get some perspex cut which I'm going to try and fit to my headlight as I'll need something to protect the glass from flying stones on the rough roads.

And yesterday (4 July), I finally get the green light to take the bike over to the shipping agents on monday so hope to be in Nepal by the end of next week.

Laos Part 2

Riding in to Luang Prabang, I was looking for a guest house called Clear Water GH that someone had told me about. I generally go with accommodation recommendations from other bikers as the place will have decent parking and hopefully no bed bugs. The Tourist Office is rubbish here, they have no leaflets and their suggestion of asking people on the street for directions to the hotel really wasn't that helpful. After riding around town for a while and getting nowhere, a guy on a bike arrives and knows where the guest house is- though it isn't called Clear Water, its called Cold River. I'd looked at the bit of paper with the name on only that morning and somehow during the ride there, the name had morphed into 'Clear Water' in my mind. I remember thinking on the way in, 'what a shit name for a guest house, the river's brown!'

I meet some German cyclists who've ridden all the way overland from Germany over 2 years. They came via Tibet and China, would be nice to do that too rather than shipping but I know its not that easy for a motorbike and would be very expensive. I stayed a couple of nights here and checked out some waterfalls but unfortunately missed the best one I'd been told about as my map had it marked in the wrong place. I then continued south to Vangvien, which I'd heard was a bit of a party town for boozed up young backpackers and it was. I found a really nice place to stay overlooking the river for 50,000kip run by a friendly Norwegian guy, Arne. I also met Grant, an Aussie tour guide who'd just bought a brand new moped there for $500. We rode over a rickety bridge and behind the mountains through some really stunning scenery to a small lagoon where we swam for a while. I'm not sure my photos do it justice but I took hundreds of pictures anyway. I also manged to get someone to repair my boots and Arne helped with the translations. 'Nam bo pai' is basically 'waterproof' so I managed to convice the woman that I didn't want here to sew the boots back together. The next day, when I picked them up, I was quite pleased with the results. A few days later, they got the ultimate test riding into Bangkok in during a torrential downpour.

I rode with Grant down to Vientiene, about 250kms away but following a moped isn't exactly exciting cruising at 30mph all the way though I got used to it eventually. I also couldn't believe my fuel economy, it had gone from an average of 20Kms/L to nearly 30! Unfortunately I don't think I'll be riding all the way home at 30mph though. On the way into town, we meet a couple on a hired dirt bike who invite us to a beer. Never one to refuse a free sunset beer (or any beer for that matter), we follow them to a riverside bar and end up meeting another guy who Grant knows so its quite nice. We eventually leave and look for a hotel, though not before Grants moped runs out of petrol. I go off looking for a garage for him but they all seem to be closed however an ex-pat guy on another dirt bike I meet at the traffic lights knows where to go and I follow him for about 10 minutes until we find some people selling bottles of fuel by the roadside.

We ride around the town looking at places to stay but a lot are full or too expensive. Eventually as is usually the case, we end up at the first place we looked at which is a bit of a dump but at least we can park the bikes in the reception area. After a fairly bland green curry, we find a bar and watch Germany getting beaten by Spain. Its a late night as the footy didn't even start till about 1am but in my windowless room the next morning, I'm unaware that its only 9am when I get up. Feeling pretty lousy, I pack up and get through the Thai border before filling up with gas and eating breakfast. I plan to ride all the way to Bangkok today so sense it's going to be a very long day.

Laos Part 1

Its a long boring ride north from Chiang Mai to the Laos border, not helped by stopping in Chiang Rai to see if I could get any chain lube which wasted a good hour. I checked in about 10 bike shops, none of which had any chain lube with most suggesting an equivalent of WD40. I arrived in Chiang Khong by the Mekong river around 4pm and hoped I could get across the river, get the paperwork done and make some miles till sundown but its never that easy. Getting across the river involved paying 500THB, taking all my luggage off and letting a gang of teenagers tug and yank the bike into a narrow motor boat. I spotted an actual ferry crossing over so I said I'd rather it went on that one however I was quickly informed that that ferry was for trucks and cars only and would cost 2,500THB. Sometime I just wish I did a little bit more research so I don't get shafted so much. So, somehow, we get across the river and I'm dumped onto a muddy bank to sort the bike and luggage out while being stared at by a bunch of truckers.

As soon as I start riding, they're at it again, this time driving straight at me instead of just weaving between sides of the road. And then I remember that they drive on the right side of the road here...oops. I eventually find the Immigration office and have to stump up 1,500THB for the Laos Visa. With filling up the tank twice today, this is fast becoming the most expensive day yet. I'm also informed that Customs have buggered off for the day so I need to stay here in Huay Xai and get the bike paperwork done in the morning. Wandering around the town, I meet a couple of posh English lads straight out of school who have decided they are going to buy motorbikes here and ride around. They haven't got the faintest idea what they're doing however. I also notice just how patronising some of the tourists are to the locals and overhear such gems as 'oh, your English is sooo good, well done'. The hotel I end up in is run (if you can call it that) by a man lying on his back watching a totally blaring TV set from where he yells various orders to people.

I get the bike cleared ok the following morning and Customs even want to check the engine/frame numbers which doesn't happen often. The backpackers here mostly take a boat for 2 days down the Mekon river till Luang Prabang however that sounds like hell as you're only alloted a tiny space to occupy for the duration. I planned on riding untill I got to Luang Prabang however find out that despite the initial section of road being quite fast and new till near the China border, further on however the road just gets too bad to make any decent time on. I came across 4 huge elephants being riden along the road but every time I got close to take a picture, the one at the rear wanted to turn around and looked like it was getting freaked. At the turn off for the road to China, it started raining very heavily so I popped in to a restaurant to shelter. It was about lunchtime and figured if I was going to be here for a while I might as well eat but the entire family were glued to a TV watching a movie on DVD and finding it far more amusing than bothering to serve anyone. Eventually a woman got up and started cooking so I figured I might get something now, but once she'd finished, she dished it out to the family and they all started scoffing it up.

Having given up any more thoughts of lunch, I decided to ride up to the China border to have a little look though it really started chucking it down once again and I was torn between turning around or keeping going. I sheltered under a narrow bridge of a Chinese Cigarette factory for a while but decided I might as well get wetter and carry on as it wasn't too far. As I got nearer, every sign was in Chinese and before the border, there were lots of shops with trucks queuing up on the road. I spied a booth to my left with several uniformed officials inside and rode closer. There was a barrier in front of me and the guys in the booth were shouting at me to park and walk over but I rode over to them much to their annoyance as I was soaking wet. One of them shouted at me for my passport but I explained that I didn't want to go to China, just take a look at the border. He then said something along the lines of "fucking tourist" and told me to get lost.

Thankfully the rain eventually died out as I resumed my journey south but the road conditions got worse. Instead of nice wide tarmac, there was now narrow roads which looked like the Sommne on a bad day with potholes the size of the Lochnagar Crater. Ok I'm exaggerating a little but it was pretty hard going especially with vehicles swerving all over the place trying to avoid the potholes in the road, animals taking a liking to my front wheels, loose gravel etc. I only get as far as Oudomxay having covered 330kms in 6 hours and after finding its more of the same for another 4 hours, decide to call it a night there.

Once again, I manage to get a room in a hotel run by an obnoxious twat watching TV horizontally. Its actually not a bad room but its the fact that 2L of fuel have disappeared from my tank the following morning that particularly ticks me off. The day doesn't get much better though. About an hour into the run, I was approaching a corner when 2 guys on a moped came round it towards me on my side of the road. I had a split second to react but it wasn't enough time to get out his way. The moped hit my left side and I felt something impact my boot and then I managed to come to a stop. I looked round seeing the two guys about 25m way on the other side of the road with bits of bike all over the place. I put the sidestand down, got off and marched up to the rider and gave him a total bollocking. Despite my Lao being a bit rusty, I believe he got the message that I wasn't best pleased with him and suggested that maybe he ought to stay on his own side of the road in future. I'd had a quick look at my bike and bizarrely I couldn't see any damage, though the sole of my left boot had detached form the upper so I wasn't best pleased. I looked at the moped and saw that the metal basket was bent to hell and had gone into the headlight, the full left side of the fairing was off and the gear pedal was now facing the wrong way- had my foot done that? I was glad I was wearing my boots even if one of them was now wrecked. I figured my knee must have done the rest even though I couldn't feel any pain, maybe the knee protection had saved it? surveying the damage, I actually felt sorry for the moped rider despite it being his fault. I saw him trying to bend his gear pedal back with a rock so I gave him my mole grips which soon had it facing the right way. Amazingly the bike still seemed to work and he rode it around testing it. I gave them a handful of zip ties to hold the rest of the stuff on, we shook hands and I left them to it. I figure after my similar accident in Acapulco and now this, two of my lives are up and now need to be doubly careful on these roads. Later on, a chicken made a bee line for my front wheel but I figured that I wasn't pulling any evasive maneuvers on this road- unfortunately I saw a few feathers in my mirror.

Thailand Part 3

Feeling pleased with myself for not giving in to the cops, I head on to Kanchanaburi, home of the famous Bridge over the River Quai. At first, I think I'm looking at the wrong bridge as it's really not that impressive and then realise that I must be thinking of the one in the movie which is a bit bigger. After a walk along the bridge (which is still in use) I take a look at the wonderfully inappropriate tourist tat for sale which includes ninja throwing stars, guns that are lighters, huge knives etc. I'm staying at the Jolly Frog hostel which is a really nice place by the river and incredibly cheap at 70THB a night. I end up staying a few days and check out Hellfire Pass, a couple of hours away which was one of the tougher cuttings the POWs had to contend with. I hadn't realised that it was mainly Korean guards who dished out most of the abuse to the POWs as they were on the bottom rung of the power ladder within the Japanese army.

The people I meet at the hostel are also good value though its too easy to lay about in hammocks with a beer in hand so after 3 days, decide to move on to Mae Sot further north. It take a couple of days to get there as I stopped at Erawan Falls on the way up. There are 7 waterfalls in all to see, each higher than the other and it soon becomes apparent that I'm just not dressed for this kind of activity and get out of my bike trousers and boots and go for a swim. I stop off in Don Chang as it was getting dark and there didn't seem to be too much else around. I find the only hotel in the place and go out to eat at the street stalls finding one that does a tasty soup and end up having two bowls. While I'm eating, locals come by with elephants and sugar cane which they want to sell you to feed to the elephants. Its an unusual dinner distraction, I'll give it that.

The following day, I make it up to Mae Sot and get to meet a few other biker travelers staying there. They are all doing volunteer work with the Burmese refugees. I'd wondered what the road blocks were that I'd been seeing and it turns out that they're for catching escaped Burmese, after which they are rounded up, put in a van with a cage on the back and driven back to Burma. I stayed here a few days catching up on things including doing my valve clearances. As it was the first time I'd done it on this bike, I completely stuffed it up, resetting the clearance on the wrong stroke making the bike sound like a bag of spanners falling downstairs. I give up for the day and redo it again early the following morning, this time doing it right. Well you live and learn eh?I head off towards Mae Hong Son getting a bit lost on the way. I found out I had to retrace my route to get back on the right road but I spotted a small dirt road which looked as though it was heading in the right direction. It turned out to be a great wee road with some lovely scenery plus it got me back on the right track. The road there is pretty twisty in places so it takes the whole day to get there but despite having to redo the valves this morning, I still make it before dark. Thanks to Peter in Mae Sot, I have some new maps and waypoints installed on my GPS and its easy to find Friends Guest House when I arrive. I'm glad meticulous people like Peter exist as I'd be far too lazy to deal with all the techno stuff that goes with using a GPS. The next day, I ride to a Long Neck Karen village about 25kms away. The women fit brass rings to their necks and it gradually pushes the collarbone downwards giving the impression of having a longer neck. Its interesting to see but like most of these things, they're there to make a loving off tourists and the village is taken over by stalls selling jewelry and handcrafts.



My last stop in Thailand before Laos is Chiang Mai and again as I'm still in the hills, the road twists and turns all the way. I'm finding that I'm getting completely knackered by the end of a days riding and have to crash out on the bed for a couple of hours. I guess its a combination of the concentration of trying to stay alive on the roads and the heat. I meet John, the Aussi owner of the hotel I'm staying at who tells me about the accusations of bribery and all the corruption they had to deal with to get the place built. Unfortunately John is a former maintenance engineer who thinks he can also design plumbing systems- lets just say after my first test, the system failed...

Chaing Mai is a fairly lively place with a good music scene so I was able to take in a few good bands. I met Tak, who is a partner of one of the establishments here who's a great guitar player and it turns out, he used to study in Edinburgh back in the late 80's. He even remembers my favorite haunt of the time, The Preservation Hall where one could watch some great blues acts till the bastards sold out and turned it into an Irish theme bar. Walking to the food markets is no easy feat here either as you have to run the gauntlet past the girlie bars and lady boys so it certainly makes you walk with a certain sense of purpose!

Bangkok

Now I had planned on leaving Bangkok until I'd finished my loop around Thailand/Laos/Cambodia but I was curious to see if indeed there were any parts for the bike as I'd been assured and also to enquire about a Pakistan visa. I decided to buy a Bangkok street map before entering the city to give me a head start and I already had an address for a shop that might have some parts. While I stopped at a service station for lunch, I tried asking a few locals where this address might be on the map. About 20 minutes later, they were still 'umming' away tracing virtually every single street with their fingers despite seeming to imply they knew the area it was in. I had to give up on them despite another local outside doing exactly the same thing. Amazingly I did find the place after crawling along various sections of motorway and being sent back from a toll road as bikes aren't allowed. Anyway, my new knowledgable friends in the shop informed me that everything had to be ordered in, from either Singapore or even Japan. I was told what i wanted would take over a month an even then, he couldn't be sure. My new plan is to get an address in Bangkok and have some parts sent over from Australia which will hopefully arrive by the time I get back there in a few weeks time.

While i was still in the mood for more hassle, I decided to try and get to the UK Embassy to see if I could get a Letter of Non Objection to use for my Pakistan visa application but by the time i got there, they were closed. I sat outside the gates getting barked at by the security guards for a while and then decided to brave the frankly horrendous traffic again to find somewhere to stay and come back tomorrow. I'd been told that the backpacker places were around somewhere called Khaosan Road and commnenced a pretty awful ride through the black fumes and solid traffic with the only things seeming to move being hundreds of small mopeds squeezing through the smallest of gaps to the front of the queues. I figured I must be in the right place when I stumbled upon the most touristy street I think I've ever seen in my life. It was basically a pedestrian street filled with European, British, Australian and North American backpackers plus seemingly hundreds of thumping bars, food stalls and tour agents. "Sweet", I grumbled as I commenced riding into the middle of all this mayhem to find somewhere to stay. By total chance in one of the first allys I rode into, I found a shipping agents office so I nipped in and after asking if they'd fly the bike to Kathmandu, I grabbed their details. This street looked more or less like my idea of hell at this point in time and after deciding that there was no way I'd be leaving the bike anywhere near here, I eventually found a place a few streets away for 150Bt for a shoebox with a shared bathroom but it did have secure parking at least. As is the generaly way of these things, after a cheap dinner from the food stalls, I ended up in a bar with a couple of Dutch and American guys and spent way too much on booze in the same street that was my idea of hell only a few hours ago.

Feeling like shit the following morning, I wisely decided to take a cab back the UK Embassy but found out they'd only 'certify' a copy of my passport for 1600Bt. I walked over to the Pakistan Embassy a few streets away to check if that would suffice and eventually got to speak to the guy behind the glass screen. He took quite a lot of glee in informing me that I had a snowballs chance in hell of getting a Pakistan tourist visa there because I had to either be resident in Thailand or alternativelly I could just nip back to the UK to get it. Again, no amount of foot stamping was going to help and I extracted myself from the office to figure out my next move. Bangkok it seems is only good for certain things, none of which I was looking for. The best thing I found to do at night was to eat cheap green curry for 30Bt (50p) from the street stalls and then sit with a beer someplace and watch the people go by- tourists, locals, TW's, nerds straight out of school and people on their own like myself who were all pretending to be thoroughly enjoying the book they'd brought with them to dinner. I didn't bother bringing a book though as it was much more enjoyable people watching.

I decided that there wasn't much more I could do here and set off the next morning for Kanchanaburi where the Kwai river bridge is. But as soon as i got onto the right road out of town, I was pulled by 3 cops on bikes. One spoke a bit of English and took over the proceedings. Basically i shouldn't be on that road despite me asking the way to Kanchanaburi and him pointing in the direction I'd been riding. He flashed a ticket in Thai at me but suggested we could deal with this now for 1000Bt. I decided long ago I wasn't getting fucked about by crooked cops again and refused telling him there was no sign to say bikes weren't allowed but that I knew they wern't allowed on toll roads, which this one wasnt'. He then came down to 500Bt, a sure sign of desperation of a bent copper if ever there was one. I still refused to budge and explained I was a tourist and appologised for for my dreadful mistake. He was obviously bored by this point and waved me on so I smiled and shook his hand.

And if you don't want to know the scores, look away now:

Overlander 1 - Bent coppers 0