February 23, 2015
Looking for a helmet: On the way out of Bangkok
After saying my goodbyes to Yannis I was once again alone as I left Bangkok in the morning. Well, I started to leave Bangkok in the morning. I should think it a very rare occurrence indeed that anyway sets about leaving Bangkok in the morning and makes it out before late afternoon, least of all someone on a bicycle, and even less so someone on a bicycle suddenly devoid of his Luxembourgish guide. Even so I managed to find my way to the river which divides the city, a good starting point. I was impressed by the modern skyline that I could see further downstream, a concrete jungle of skyscrapers, some of them quite nicely designed. I realised that I still had not a clue about the real Bangkok, having only seen the tourist melee around Khao San Road. I hadn't even seen any sights, although apparently there weren't many other than a couple of wats that Yannis, having visited before, said were expensive and not worth it. I would, were I to have seen any of Bangkok's highlights, preferred to have visited one of its red light districts. Just out of curiosity, mind you, sleeping with prostitutes isn't my style ('an unnecessary expense' as Alan puts it), and certainly not when I would have trouble being quite sure of their gender until it was probably too late. Most of the waiteresses on Khao San Road had been ladyboys, and quite possibly all of them, one couldn't ever be entirely sure. In any case it was too late now, the only highlight I had ahead of me was several hours of traffic.
There were only two roads for me to choose from that could actually take me all the way out of the city and I chose the bigger and more southern 'Rama II', partly because of its cool name, but mostly because of the fact that it went reasonably close to a bicycle shop from which I could purchase a helmet. Rama II was as colossal as its name suggests, being approximately 28 lanes wide. I exaggerate, but not by much. There was a standard motorway with about six lanes in the middle, and then frontage roads on either side with a further three or four lanes each. With so much space traffic flowed more freely here, which wasn't all that good for me, cycling on the inside lane and constantly having to weave in and out of parked cars and watch for cars pulling out or pulling in and very much wishing that I had a helmet.
How strange it felt to pull off from this hectic road and suddenly find myself in a peaceful neighbourhood where the few vehicles traveled at a sensible speed and where the people seemed friendly and kind. One man even stopped his car to give me a coffee. Even more strange was the bicycle shop that I found, it being completely out of place on a quiet backstreet next to old hardware stores and corner shops. It was immaculately white inside, a trendy place with trendy bikes and trendy prices. Oh but they had helmets by the dozen, neatly lined up on white shelves. I looked at the price of one that took my fancy. The number of baht was so large that it took me quite a long time to convert it and realise that it cost more than a hundred pounds. "Do you have anything cheaper?" I asked the assistant, whereupon she found me the cheapest one, weighing in at a bargain fifty pounds.
I didn't want to go back out into the heavy traffic unprotected and yet this bicycle shop had made an error, and not just with their pricing structure, for on the map that they had on their website they used a Big C superstore as a reference point. This meant that I knew that there was a Big C superstore just around the corner, and, what with Big C being a superstore, I thought they might have some cheaper helmets. So I went to Big C.
Big C is one of those Walmart-style giant supermarket places that sells just about everything. I have kind of a love-hate relationship with them that doesn't bear getting into now. After about fifteen minutes accidentally lost in the lingerie section I finally located the sports section and found a long row of bicycles hanging on the wall at the back of the store. One would have thought that this would mean that they would also sell helmets but, as with Tesco before them, the bicycle accessory department was sorely lacking in this sensible protective equipment. I once again thought this very irresponsible and felt I should really go away and write a letter to someone. But then, hiding at the bottom of the bicycle accessory department, I found that they did in actual fact sell helmets:
This wasn't my style, but I thought that there was such a large range of bicycles on display that maybe they did actually have some less-pink helmets for sale somewhere that either weren't on display or just hadn't been successfully located by me, and so I decided to ask a shop assistant for some help. I found one a few aisles down tinkering with a bike and thought that this was just the man to ask. He didn't speak any English, but my sign language was on unusually good form because he soon understood what I was looking for. He then beckoned for me to follow him, which I did, back to the bicycle accessory section where he stood and, I'm not making this up, pointed at the pink kid's helmet seen above. I laughed out loud, thinking, wrongly as it turned out, that he would see the funny side. Nope, his serious face remained deadpan.
I went back to the joy that was the Rama II mega-highway still helmet-less and continued to battle with the traffic until I reached a point at which the #9 mega-highway intersected with it and my life got a whole lot more difficult. I needed to go straight on here, but to do that I needed to cross three lanes of traffic that was turning left, at speed, onto the #9 highway, something that was, for a man without a helmet, suicide. It was an impossible situation, there was literally no way for me to continue now. The traffic was non-stop and going too fast to attempt getting across three lanes, I needed a new plan.
My new plan involved going north to the other road which I could take out of the city. To do this I had to first cross the sixteen lanes of Rama II traffic, which at first sounds much more difficult than crossing three lanes of traffic, but not when I explain that there was a very long footbridge. To get onto the footbridge, naturally, involved taking a long flight of steps, so I had to unattach all the bags and carry everything up, and then do the same on the other side to get back down again. I did all this with my trademark good cheer. Then I had to cycle back the way that I'd come for a while, before finding a road going north.
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I found a road going north, which took me into a most interesting neighbourhood, once again of quiet streets that, much to my surprise and delight, had a great many rickshaws trundling about. This I thought unusual but wonderful, particularly so because we were so far from any tourists and these rickshaws were actually being used as a genuine method of transportation around the neighbourhood for local people. But I soon also realised why there was no other traffic on these roads, as I got lost in a maze of cul-de-sacs and dead-ends. This was the reason why I had to take the main roads, because all the small roads never went anywhere, and were blocked in like this by canals and railways.
I had to backtrack to Rama II again and go even further back the way I'd originally come until finally I found a main road north, reached the other road west that I wanted, and eventually got on that and crossed the #9 highway a whole ten kilometres of cycling after I'd first reached it. With all of these difficulties it was by now getting late and I was still in the midst of the city and I started cycling fast to try and get out before nightfall on what was in fact a much more dangerous road than Rama II had been. It was all very stressful but then, by chance and fortune I noticed a small bike shop at the side of the road and, miracle of miracles, they had a reasonably-priced helmet. I slipped it on. It felt good. My head was protected, an insurance policy against the dangerous city streets. And so now, with Bangkok almost over, I was ready for Bangkok.
I pedaled fast and made it beyond the city limits of Bangkok before it got dark. Unfortunately for me what I found beyond the city limits of Bangkok looked a lot like Bangkok, and there was still traffic and buildings and people everywhere. Wild camping seemed impossible, and I was beginning to think that I was going to have to stay in another guesthouse, which would have been rather a weak thing to do seeing as that very morning I'd resolved not to spend any more money on guesthouses. But fortune was on my side once again as, with darkness firmly about to set in, I stumbled across an old unused plot thick with foliage into which I was able to hurl myself. Therein I found a patch of ground that was not only suitable for my tent but that was so soft with flattened grasses that I endured a most unlikely comfortable night. Bangkok was over. It had been survived.
Today's ride: 49 km (30 miles)
Total: 37,708 km (23,417 miles)
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My son turned 18 recently and it was great to have digital memories to look back at and remember fun stuff. Definitely keep blogging and re blogging.
Take care S
1 year ago