Ranong to Krung Thep (Bangkok)

I was convinced the day would be long. I just knew we wouldn't arrive at Bangkok's southern bus station until after the sun sank. Getting on the bus early in the morning in Ranong didn't mean anything.

The sinking feeling dominated my entire nine hours on that bus. All day I tried to telepathically speed up the driver. No, don't stop for fuel. No, we don't need to stop for lunch! Actually the lunch stop was fantastic and unexpectedly included in the bus fare.. I love bus stop restaurants in S.E. Asia but on this bike trip we have experienced few. It was a treat but I ate quickly thinking the bus was going to get back on the road any minute. It didn't and the day lagged. The bus took forever.

Sure enough we arrived right after sunset. Andrea had our route to downtown Bangkok memorized which was a fantastic help since it was complicated. We rode like the wind but it got dark anyway. We were tense. Riding in Bangkok after dark was our worst nightmare - something we swore we would never do. Bangkok is one of the biggest, craziest cities in S.E. Asia (maybe the world) in the daylight!! I kept thinking how nuts we were to attempt the ride even though it was no more than ten miles. At times we had to be on very busy streets, something akin to freeways. Absolutely nuts! Why? Why? Why were we being so nuts? We had had a great trip for four and a half months with no mishaps. Why were we gambling right at the end when we were almost home free?

Well, I guess one of the reasons was because we didn't see one hotel or guest house the entire way in to Bangkok. Also, it would have been basically impossible to get all of our stuff in a taxi. We had to ride. But you know what? It wasn't that bad. The Thai drivers were very considerate, very courteous.

But we had to go over the big bridge to get to our final destination. It might be the busiest bridge in all of Bangkok! We stopped to fret at the base of it. Staring at the traffic and tightness of lanes we thought hard about how crazy it was to attempt crossing it. While we were fretting a lone foreigner came walking out of the darkness having just come across the bridge. We asked him if we were crazy or not. He saw us on bikes. He knew what we were asking plus he was an American which meant he could judge what we were asking and we could judge what he was answering accurately, inflections an integral part of language. Speaking the same language doesn't mean speaking the same language 100% unless you are both from the same place. Language is subtle.

At first reluctant to get involved with us he lit up when we told him we were from Portland, Oregon. He said his grandparents lived just across the river from Portland in Vancouver, Washington. He thought it was a huge, happy coincidence but in the frame of mind I was in and with the task ahead, I failed to get as much of a kick out of it. I stayed in my worried place while he told us how he grew up in Washington D.C. but spent every summer with his grandparents in Vancouver, Washington. As a child he thought it was all the same Washington as if he was simply crossing the river for the summer. I continued to fail to see how cool that was and after a short fake laugh I quickly asked him again if he thought it was possible for us to bike across the bridge. He said, "It's been done," or something like that. Whatever he said didn't exactly instill confidence in me about making it over alive.

Then we saw a guy on a bike heading to cross the bridge. He looked relaxed about it too. We jumped on our bikes and followed him as fast as we could. Fortunately there was a big lull in the traffic at the same time. It was hair-raising as we drove over a metal grate in the road intended to drain water into the river. We somehow made it over the first one without our tires getting caught and then were able to avoid the rest of them. It could have been disastrous but it wasn't. We made it across.

As soon as we were on the other side we were in familiar territory. A quick couple of turns and we were calmly rolling through grimy narrow alleyways filled with tattooed, pierced, stoned and drunk international travelers crowding the warren of restaurants, bars, street food stalls, souvenir shops and T-shirt shops with the largest inventory of Che T-shirts on planet earth.

This was the famous Khao San Road area of Bangkok where misfit citizens of the world meet to exchange information, or at least some drugs. I had never seen it so full and thriving. Every guest house or hotel was full but we were on bikes, easy enough to roll on further and further away from the scene we didn't want to be part of anyway.

Eventually we found a perfect place for us with a room on the ground floor big enough to spread out in for three days and pack two bicycles into boxes. Our bike trip was essentially finished and had been a complete success. I was so relieved about making it the last ten miles safely that I almost wanted to go sit with some pierced-to-the-gills, blue - haired freaks and start drinking heavily. Almost.

Lovebruce