December 31, 2014
The end of a great year: Hiding near Ban Dung
I made an early start because I had a not-very-good campsite that was too close to the road. In fact I had previously found a better one in an area of more natural woodland, but before I'd got the tent up I heard a motorcycle approach and park up close. Peering through a gap between the trees I'd seen a man in a full camouflage outfit jump off with a huge rifle slung over his back and I watched silently as he strode purposefully away. I was very glad to be wearing bright orange but even so I made a sharp exit back to the road, and ended up camping in this uncomfortable little place instead. But my enforced early exit had the benefit that I could watch the sunrise from the road on a surprisingly chilly morning.
Even though I was still feeling a little down, Thailand continued to be a good place to be riding. Most of the houses in the villages that dotted the road were two floors and more often than not the bottom half was concrete and the upper half wood. There was usually a shaded space at the bottom where I could see people lounging around, on benches or in hammocks. Sometimes they would cry out as I passed, the shout of "falang!" was the same as it had been in Laos, and reminded me of the equivalent Latin American cry of "gringo!" I had been wondering how the children might shout hello to me, because the common Thai greeting of "sawadee-cap" (the 'r' is usually silent, thankfully,) should also be accompanied by the brief coming together of the hands in front of the body, as if in prayer. This was a difficult thing for me to do whilst riding a heavily-loaded bicycle, and so I was a little concerned about whether it would be worse to offend people by not doing it, or to crash. But thankfully it was a non-issue, because the kids just shouted "hello!" in English, and waved, which is a style of greeting I can usually return without falling off my bike.
At one point during the morning a man on a motorcycle slowed down alongside me and started talking to me. He said his name was Panupong and that he worked as an English teacher. Because I now had plenty of time, and because I like having conversations with people that can speak English more than with those that can't, I suggested to Panupong that we both pull over and have a proper good chat. He agreed, and we stopped just up the road at a place where some sort of road block had been set up. A few men were there making up display boards and there were benches that Panupong and I could sit on. I had seen quiet a few of these impromptu road blocks already and I wondered what they were for, particularly as they didn't seem to be actually stopping anybody. "They are for New Year" Panupong explained, "to test the drivers for alcohol."
This seemed like a very good idea to me; having alcohol testing stations all along the road to prevent New Year drink driving. The only odd thing was that Panupong, the man now sitting next to me and sharing a joke with the testing station personnel, did seem to have rather a large smell of alcohol about him. Never mind, he told me that he was from Nong Khai and was here in the village that we were now in for a meeting with his cousins (he might have meant colleagues, his English wasn't actually that good) so hopefully he wasn't going to be doing any more drunk-riding for a while.
We tried to have a conversation for a while, but Panupong turned out to be spectacularly unqualified for his profession. After a while I thought I might try and get him to teach me some Thai instead, and so I asked him if he could, and he, quite wrongly as it turned out, said that he could.
"How do I say 'can I put my tent here please?'" I asked.
"What, tent? What?"
Tent was a difficult word. I made sleeping motions, and a tent shape, and then drew a very good picture of a tent.
"Oh," he said, "you want to sleep here?"
"No, no. How do I say it? How do I say 'can I put my tent here?'"
"Oh, no, I'm sorry. I have to go to a meeting. I don't think you can sleep here."
"No, I just want to know how to say it. How to say this, 'can I put my tent here?' to use when I do want to sleep."
"I don't know. I will ask them if you can put your tent here."
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Once I made it clear that I had no need to put my tent up and go to sleep at an alcohol testing station at eleven in the morning, I gave up on learning anything from Panupong and looked for an excuse to leave. I asked him if I was keeping him from his meeting, which of course he didn't understand.
"What... time... is... your... meeting?" I tried.
"Five pm."
"Oh. Why is it so late?"
"Because my cousins want to drink first. They want to celebrate, drink lots of alcohol. So do I."
I imagined it was going to be a very constructive meeting.
I left soon after and continued my back-road slow-paced meandering until I stumbled upon the medium-sized town of Ban Dung, where I noticed a wifi sign outside of a cafe and spent the afternoon there talking online with Dea. The wifi didn't actually belong to the cafe, but the very nice cafe woman gave me the password for the police station's wifi across the street, which was fine by me. It was New Year's Eve, the end of another year, and talking with Dea reminded me of all that I'd gained and lost, and made me happy and sad all at the same time.
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Those of you that will remember what happened to me the last New Year in Ukraine will understand why I was content not to try and celebrate this year. In fact I thought it best to just ignore New Year altogether, and hope it wouldn't give me any grief. I still remembered being in that cramped Ukrainian flat, and how that horrible 'Goatee' man had drunkenly spouted rude things to me, telling me that I was a naive fool, sure to be raped and murdered in Central Asia. Well, here I was 365 days later in Thailand, and I'd not met a soul in the last year that could compete with Goatee himself on the 'unpleasantness' scale. In fact as I found myself a nice peaceful little corner of farmland next to one of those wooden huts, well hidden from any New Year trouble, I reflected on what a wonderful year it had been. Could it really have only been twelve months ago that I was in Ukraine? It felt like a lifetime ago. I thought back on so many of the amazing things that I'd seen and done in 2014, the incredible experiences, (not all of them good but all of them enriching in some way,) all of the countries and kilometres that had passed beneath my wheels, and, of course, all of the wonderful people that I'd met in 2014 crossed my mind too, one in particular, (not you, Robin) and I had to conclude it had been a really great year.
Now, what would 2015 have in store for me?
Today's ride: 64 km (40 miles)
Total: 35,075 km (21,782 miles)
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