My Roughest Day

My best day was followed by my hardest day. Knowing I had a long ride ahead of me, I pulled out of Sukhothai around 4:30am. The first half of the trip was on a B road. The rare street light and far too frequent dog made for a challenging few hours. This is where the aforementioned dog incident occurred. In order to avoid the dogs sleeping on the side of the road and to give me a lead should they decide to chase me, I decided to ride my bike in the center of the road. This worked well except for the occasional car that passed me who must have been totally confused.

I had been really lucky so far with finding tiny convenience stores to buy water and take restroom breaks so I hadn't loaded up the day before. This stretch of road however was not as hospitable. Feeling my sugar dip and worried about bonking, I kicked myself for not having bought a few bananas the day before. I eventually found a small store that sold water, laundry detergent and a few other household supplies, but no food. I started to worry. Finally, thirty minutes later I cruised by a furniture store that sold cookies - yeah! I loaded up.

I don't know if the road was particularly boring or that I had tired of the scenery and long rides, but this one seemed to go forever. On top of the boredom, I was worried about making good time. My destination was Uttaradit - 70 miles away - which had received poor reviews. It's an industrial city with few hotels and nothing to entertain passing tourists. My plan was to catch the 2pm train in Uttaradit and take it to the next leg of my trip, Lampang. The road was long and hard and I finally pulled into the Uttaradit train station at 11:30am. Exhausted but relieved, I approached the ticket counter to buy a ticket. However, the 2pm train didn't allow bikes.

"What?" I cried, literally. "When is the next train that will take a bike?"

"Not until 11pm," I was told in very broken English.

"Where is the nearest hotel?" I asked, discouraged that I was going to have to spend the day in this armpit of a city.

The clerk didn't understand me.

"Hotel?" I said. Again, I was met with a look of confusion. I flipped open my guide book and pointed to hotel. He smiled, pointed and then went on to explain where it was, in Thai. I understood nothing.

At this point, I figured I would cruise around the city and find one myself. After 30 minutes of dodging traffic and battling my exhausted legs, I found nothing.

Passing by a bus station, I thought I might find a tourist who had come from a hotel but I saw no one that I suspected spoke English. Completely despondent at this point, I asked the bus clerk if they had a bus to Lampang. They did! And... it was leaving in 5 minutes. I couldn't believe my luck. I bought the ticket, found my bus, loaded my bike and entered an air-conditioned bus, sweaty but releaved.