
Roving Rant - Trip Complete
We’re done! Over 5,000 Km over some pretty dubious roads with some equally dubious traffic. (The flight distance from Auckland to Bangkok...
just telling it as I see it...
We’re done! Over 5,000 Km over some pretty dubious roads with some equally dubious traffic. (The flight distance from Auckland to Bangkok...
Bangkok is huge, sprawling, super rich, super poor, overcrowded, congested, polluted, loud, raucous, colourful, exciting,...
Our hotel last night was basic but grand. Large quantities of timber gave it a solid air. Shame that the hot water was only available on...
Today was a day with nature. A leisurely rise with breakfast (if you can really call it that - I won’t go into details) on our terrace,...
We hadn’t really decided where we were going until after breakfast this morning. And trying to sort out routes when the hotel’s WiFi was...
Today was an R&R day. No bikes, no charging around, just a tourist trip around old Chiang Mai city on foot, a massage & a dinner by the...
My ode to riding! “The engine growls. The exhaust heat warms my legs. The cool morning wind rushes over me. The vents in my helmet...
What a difference a day makes! Riding the same mountain road this morning was a joy. Of course we were fresh, but there was hardly any...
Dawn breaks over Vientiane & from our lofty perch on the 9th floor, we stare out over the city. Different but not too majestic. I think...
So today was our last ditch attempt at getting in Laos. We’d tried 3 times to get into Cambodia & succeeded third time lucky, so would we...
I’m sitting on a motel room balcony in That Pranom, which is a provincial town in Thailand, sipping a gin and tonic & staring across the...
We were up at dawn to ensure we were at the Bayon temple by 7:30am when it opened. There is something rather peaceful about riding in the...
It was a 4:45am start. We’d missed the sunset from the top tower of Angkor Wat because they close at 5:30pm, but we were determined to...
OK, all the negative stuff first to get it out the way. Angkor Wat has been touristified. There are chains, no entry signs, go this way...
This is it. This is the real reason I came to Cambodia. Ever since coming to Angkor Wat several times in the mid-1960’s, I have hankered...
The streets of Phnom Penh. The sights, the sounds, the smells and above all the people. It was Saturday, so the roads were a bit emptier...
Well my trick with our ‘smalls’ worked & we set off from Battambang reasonably early to avoid the heat of the day. Navigation was far...
We woke reasonably early & left the estate as quietly as we could. Pierre had kindly offered us coffee in the morning before we departed,...
Going to sleep & waking up to the deafening sound of cicadas is something I’d forgotten - they simply don’t get that loud in New Zealand....
So after our failure to cross to Cambodia yesterday, we had a leisurely start to the day & after leaving our motel, headed a little...