February 12, 2024
Day 8 Bike: The Seeds of a Deal
Chonburi to Sananwan Palace
It was such a delightfully cool day after all the recent muggy weather. Evidently a cold front had gone through and the winds had shifted to the north. It meant headwinds but no big deal, I was hardly breaking a sweat. The riding was sublime.
With such a low kilometer day on the bike today it made sense to first do a strength workout and chill by the poolside at this wicked hotel. To be honest I never would have booked it otherwise. Riding from Pattaya to Bangkok could easily be in one day. I only booked because of the earlier plans made that ended up falling through.
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True to form with my timing, a message appeared at the start of the day from my agent: "Hi Steve, today I have good customer very interested about your condo. Can we come in and have a look?" I told him the keycard was left with reception and they could, so at least that was a good call this time to leave it.
Now looking back of course, I should have just stayed in Pattaya. Meeting people and coordinating business is greatly complicated when you're traveling on a bike and 99.999% of others are not riding. The best way to make all that work is stay put in each one of your bases for awhile, then coordinate everything while you're in one place and people come to you. It only gets difficult when you're transiting from one base to another on a bike. On the other hand, with a bike you never have to worry about getting stuck in traffic, stopped by the police, or someone stealing it. This all works greatly in your favor. The photo below is what Pattaya was like day and night seven days a week.
There remains a lot to process from Pattaya and the trip in general. Of all the people I met, Somjai may have been the most inspirational. What she taught me, or more or less validated, is the principle of just letting things happen and not striving. If it's meant to happen then it will. Stated in the negative, opportunities are squandered when you care too much about what other people think. For example, if you shy away from going to social events by yourself or doing things on your own because you are afraid people will say "Why you come alone?" then by allowing this to be an excuse of inaction, you have just blown all sorts of opportunities
One thing was clear, based on all the principles that these people were teaching me, I wouldn't be going back to the old way of operating anytime soon.
So it was another beautiful day today. After leaving the hotel I was on the wrong side of the motorway, so I needed to hoist the bike up and over by using those pedestrian walkways. Not the easiest thing, but I managed. The benefit of doing so was that I could avoid the section where the Chonburi bypass road merges with the motorway. If you're coming out of town on the bike, it can take very long to find a break in traffic and cross -- I've waited over 30 minutes before.
Once on the motorway it was boring cycling but I could really fly along thanks to the direction changing to catch a tailwind. There wasn't much to say about it, just pedal onwards.
At one 7/11 stop about 10km away from the destination I checked my messages and couldn't believe it: they found a buyer for my condo. The person who saw it this morning was from Belgium and was so impressed with the place he put down the deposit on the spot! This news pumped me up big time and fueled the last bit to my guesthouse without even breaking a sweat. The deal had been done!
Today's ride: 45 km (28 miles)
Total: 1,103 km (685 miles)
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