Day 32 – Hua Hin to Petchaburi and Shoot!
An easy and very familiar 80kms of riding that we’ve done plenty of times before, check the Strava GPS Route for details.
The best past of today was meeting Shoot, a fellow Thai cycle tourer who has set himself the missi0n of visiting the most Northern, Western, Eastern, and Southern points of Thailand and enjoying the distances in between. When we met him he had already cycled 6,000 kms and is 1,500 kms away from completing his plan.
At only 31 years old he had packed his tent and more onto his classic Gary Fisher mountain bike for the trip of a lifetime. He was traveling solo and echoed many of the sentiments that Natt and I both feel about bicycle touring. We noticed him pulling into a little Thai smoothie place with air-conditioning, and although we still had something to do before the end of our riding day we decided it would be worth pulling in and having a chat with him.
I am so very happy we did. Shoot was very passionate about cycle touring and photography, and he looked to be enjoying his 5 month trip around Thailand on a bicycle. His cycling plan and ours covered about the same amount of time and distance but with very different goals. I loved his idea of cycling the country from left to right and then top to bottom. He was also pretty fond of our idea of visiting every province in Thailand.
He told us that he liked starting later some days because it gave him the chance to use the morning light to get the best photos. I noticed prior to him mentioning his passion for photography that he was carrying a large tripod on his bicycle, not something most people pack when going cycle touring for such a long time. He previously worked as a graphic designer and I was really impressed with what photos he was able to show us from his bicycle adventure.
Natt grabbed the audio recorder and asked Shoot half a dozen questions about Thailand and cycling with the hope of putting together an article about this unique solo traveler. I also grabbed some video footage of the interview that I hope we can make into a short story for our empty youtube channel (I wish we did more video stuff, but it takes up time and we stay very busy just writing words).
We exchanged details of the trip ahead, planned to link up on facebook, and gave him some access to the people we have met along our route that may be able to make his trip a little bit easier. I hope our exchanges help build friendships that will grow in the future. We recognize there are people like this that we don’t want to lose. Finding others that love the journey as much as the destination is always a rewarding experience.
All in all Shoot was a lovely guy, just crazy enough to hit the road and see Thailand for himself at 20km/h. I wish more people showed similar interest in the simpleness of bicycle touring. I wish I had asked him his daily budget, I’m sure he is doing it for a lot less than us (at a meager $30 per day)… it would be interesting to find out. We did shout him a Smoothie, it was the least we could do for spending the time chatting to us.
Facebook Fanpage: เหนือ ตก ออก ใต้ (Thai Only but great photography)
