Nakhon Thai to Phu Ruea - 82km

Considering the generosity my local guide had shown in directing me to the guesthouse last night, free of charge, I wasn't of the mood to turn it down despite the strong stench of mildew, and general state of disrepair. Huge brown patches of mould stained the walls at the rear, and leaking pipes dripped incessantly into the concrete pools of water servicing the squat toilet. It was a truckers flophouse if ever I've seen one, and at 200 baht probably a little on the expensive side. In any other situation I would have knocked it back, I probably could have camped considering the overnight temperatures in these parts (my tent is exceptionally warm, and poorly ventilated - ie. shite for camping in the tropics as I discovered in southern Thailand) but I paid up the small sum and accepted the room, thanking my guide as she went on her way. To make the place more comfortable I stuffed the curtains through the holes in the fly screen, and got all the windows open to relieve the smell a bit, but later this served to exacerbate my second problem - obscenely loud karaoke coming from a bar nextdoor. I endured this without sleep until twelve, by which time I'd worked up enough rage to get out of bed, walk across to the fence and give them a quick burst of shut the f&*k up, like a true australian ocker would, as loud as I possibly could. The singer paused for a moment, and dogs from all across the neighbourhood erupted into a chorus of barking, but to my dissapointment the hokey midi-synth tunes of karaoke continued unabated. I gave them until 1:45am, and this time it worked, someone promptly lowered the volume until it was barely audible and I got some much needed rest.

Quick noodle soup in the morning morning, didn't get away until 9:30 and before long I had pedalled into the midst of a dry empty landscape. Dusty red soil and dead trees adorned the parched hillsides. Traffic had reduced to just the odd car, allowing the hum of powerlines to serve as the soundtrack to this bizzare environment, which seemed out of place in the context of everywhere else so far. The terrain didn't persist for long, and as I gained in altitude the barren foothills of the valley became green, and I started the climb to Dan Sai. The surrounding mountains are not particularly high in altitude, but the gradients are severe in some places. The hardest climb starts around 9km before the Dan Sai township.

While I'm on the topic, Dan Sai is a fascinating little place. A quiet rural backwater for most of the year, it comes alive for a 'merit making' festival just before the rainy season. People from the surrounding areas gather in the streets wearing ghostly masks (see right), hoping to invoke rains for the coming season. The parade has its roots in bhuddist folklore, and participants believe that by dressing as ghosts they can please the spirits and protectors of their lands.

Post Dan Sai, the climbs continue, but with much less severity. As luck would have it on this particular day, my revered Schwalbe Marathon Plus would fall foul of the notourious tyre wire 25km short of my destination. I've read about this alot in other touring journals, but never actually fallen victim to it myself. Car and truck tyres have a framework of wires embedded in the rubber to add strength. Refuse left after a blowout will often have shards of this wire sticking up out of it, so you should always avoid pieces of rubber on the roadside. I had to use pliers to pull the wire from the tyre, and it was almost an hour by the time I had the tube replaced, rack refitted and gear reloaded. During this time a concerned teacher had doubled back to offer me a lift to Phu Rhuea, but I figured I could still get there before dark and kept moving.

Just a few kilometres out of Phu Rhuea, and in failing light police had blocked off the road, leaving a long line of motorists waiting to get through. In the mix I noticed a foriegner, who was touring across northern Thailand on his motorbike. A pretty interesting guy, Surio, directed me to a cheap but exceptionally clean hotel he had been to many times before. The Thai owner Sutep was a real character. He made all sorts of bizzare inventions. One was a coffe machine made of an electric clothes iron embedded into a small bench, on top of which he sat an alessi coffee-pot. He was able to churn out some delicious italian coffees using it. Sutep had an interesting life, during the Vietnam war he worked at an American airbase near Laos, and after that found work with commercial airlines throughout the world, returning to his local area to build the resort after many years abroad. As such his english was excellent so the conversations went on for a long time. Got stuck into the sang-som for the first time in a while, and had a good laugh with Surio about the state of the world. He gave me directions to several guesthouses along the Mekong river for the days ahead.