I had been gaining weight ever so slightly, and so the plan was to do another bike ride around the area to keep things stable.  I also wanted to suss an initial route to Cambodia to help the guy I met on arrival who is thinking of reversing my tour.  

The challenge would be to find a suitable route to motorway #331 without going on sand tracks.  That was easier said than done.  The GPS took me on another such runaround, this time with dogs nipping at my heels.  I kicked them in the teeth as I was furious they tried to be so aggressive.  Eventually the tracks ended, I abandoned the GPS and just stuck to larger roads.

To my memory, there did exist an established route through the 'dark side', basically the area east of Sukhumvhit Road that is named because it separates the major tourist area of Pattaya from the more local rustic side that foreigners don't really visit.  That being said, there is a lot more interesting stuff on the dark side that is worth exploring.

When it became clear this new route was indeed heading towards #331, I happened to ride past a large international school.  It was called 'Eastern Seaboard' or something like that, I googled the name to recall.  Then just for the heck of it, I contacted that school and sent them my resume.  The email basically said that I saw your school while riding a bicycle and it looked interesting.  Who knows what will happen.  Regretably, I already signed another year contract at the Shanghai school and don't plan to bail on it.  But a major theme of this trip is that there's a whole world out there, and even just Cambodia and Thailand alone blew me away with opportunities. 

While riding back to Pattaya a different way, I was able to figure out the proper route through the dark side.  Then it dawned on me, wouldn't it be amazing to actually live here and teach at this school?  I could live at the school during the week then do this bike ride every Friday afternoon, stay at my condo, then bike back to school on Monday morning.  Rinse and repeat.  Not only that but you could spend months, years even exploring all the area and doing these bike rides in the hills.  What makes it so beautiful on the return trip is that you can see the outline of the city and the crescent beach from this vantage point.

But then if I'm really intent on selling the condo, then such dreaming like I'm doing now is only just that.

It wasn't long until a random sort of residential complex area appeared and a sign was advertising burgers.  This called for a stop.  As I was eating and chilling out, just enjoying how the day was going and soaking up the amazing Thai vibes I asked myself why the fuck am I still living and working in China.  Yes there are many obvious reasons, but there comes a point when the suffering has to end.  Furthermore, I need to be the one to do something about it.  As someone once said, "Why would you choose to stay miserable when you have options to go somewhere else?"

If it's a job in the Pattaya area or not, it doesn't really matter, the point is it could be anywhere. 

But back to the task at hand, sell the condo.  Things didn't exactly get very far on that since the route back home conveniently happened to pass by the beach.