Every Province Challenge

ถ่ายตอนลงเขารัง จ.เพชรบูรณ์ (คือเพิ่งจะนึกได้ตอนลงมาแล้วครึ่งทาง) สำหรับคนที่ไม่เคยปั่นขึ้นเขามาก่อน ก็คงจะไม่เคยสัมผัสอะไรแบบนี้ ข้อแนะนำ สำหรับการชม : กรุณาเปิดพัดลมตัวใหญ่ที่สุดเท่าที่จะหาได้ เปิดเบอร์แรงที่สุดเท่าที่มี แล้วหันใส่หน้าระหว่างการรับชม 555 This video clip was shot while we were half way down from Khao Rung in Petchboon. Anybody who has never ridden a bicycle uphill before probably has not experienced the rush from this kind of downhill. How to watch this video clip : […]

Day 90 – To Mueang Phichit I have no idea what’s going on with me. Last night I visited the bathroom too many times with diarrhea, but didn’t feel that bad. So we slept in a little and headed out around 8am for an 80km or so ride. I was fine until just before the […]

Today’s ride was only 55kms, but we did have a hill. I know you non-cyclists don’t understand, but pushing yourself and a tandem bicycle up a hill is hard work. Since our tandem bike weighs 210kg it’s A LOT of hard work. Even small hills present a problem, but it’s more about the grade. If […]

When we arrived, I wanted Pizza. Not many pizza restaurant choices out here so we rang Pizza Company, 1-1-1-2. They’ll even deliver to your hotel room. Natt spent 10 minutes talking to the Pizza Company girl on the other end of the phone because they were having trouble finding our location. The girl says “you […]

Today was only going to be 40 kms. We planned to stop at the first resort we found, but the day’s ride didn’t end up that way! Originally we were going to Chai Badan (or Chai Bin Laden as I kept calling it), because it was a bigger town and would have more accommodation. We […]

Today we rode 96kms and we found only 4 resorts. Two of the resorts, despite having a shit load of signs announcing their locations from the main road, were not yet finished with construction and therefore NOT OPEN. One other resort was fairly nice, but it overlooked a very loud trucking road and the cost […]

Today we used Google maps to plot a course and it worked just fine. It shaved 10-15 km off the trip and took us down 50 kms of mostly sealed country roads. Sometimes the rewards are worth the risks. We’ve done our fair share of back road searching, sometimes being very lost, sometimes in the […]

I’ve HAD A BOTTLE OF WINE, I don’t know if this will make any sense. Thailand has created 4 new provinces in the last 20 years, 1 of them just 18 months ago. We are a little worried about maintaining Natt’s claim of being the first Thai to cycle to every amphoe mueang in Thailand […]

Today is Day 81. Somewhere in there we lost a day and found it again when I was going through our notebook of expenses. Anyway, I put everything into an Excel spreadsheet for the first 80 days of our trip and this is what it comes to: Room 475 Baht per day Food 750 Baht […]

Distance 75.6km – Elevation 377m – Time 03:52:54. We cycled from the edge of one province to the next, crossing the whole of Nong Bua Lum Phu in only 76kms. Nong Bua Lum Phu is a fairly new province, having been created around 20 years ago. I don’t understand Thailand’s desire to keep making new […]

We didn’t have a plan for today, we were going to do 100, 140 or 161+ kms, but we were going to base it on how we felt at the time. At 100km, in the town of Phon Phisai, we felt fine, we had been powering along at 23kms per hour and doing another 40+ […]

Ok, it’s been a 300km in 3 days and 2 pretty crap ‘resorts’ for 350B per night. Both resorts had musty rooms with rock hard beds and dirty bathrooms. So today we checked into the The One hotel in Bueng Kan for 790 Baht with breakfast (690 without). It’s a brand new hotel with nice […]

Today was a rainy day, but we had a fairly easy ride. The last 10kms with the wind behind us blew us straight into town, which was great. We visited the Tourism office and then found a decent hotel. I wish I could write something interesting, but there is not much to say about this […]

We’ve had a great run of great bicycle shops in these lesser known, or less famous, Isan provinces. Today, we visited Ban Rot Teep (House of the Push Vehicle, or obviously, Push Bike). An Amazing bicycle shop built with the hardcore bicycle tourer in mind. Amongst the Brooks saddles, Surly Bicycles, Ortlieb Panniers, and Topeak […]

Kalasin has a nice bicycle shop and a nice Hotel, but it was not a very pretty city. The city seemed to be full of businesses, especially in the area we visited. A very typical Thai town of endless shop-houses, roads, traffic and overpriced tuk tuks. The ride today was only 50-ish kilometres and was […]

We rode 35kms today, which put us into our 39th province and over the half way mark on our trip. Now we have only 38 provinces more to go and around 4,500 kms by all calculations. The reward for reaching our half way mark was pizza for lunch and a nice(er) hotel room for the […]

Hills. We hadn’t seen hills in a while. We had to pass a small mountain range to cross into the Kalasin province, going up one side, along the spine, and then down the other side. It was good riding, 766m ascent and 520m at the highest point, and we felt much stronger today than when […]

It was a strange day, mostly because we passed more than a dozen Christian churches on the road from Nakhon Phanom to Sakon Nakhon. A very strange experience overall because the churches have been here, in the middle of nowhere, for the past 20 to 30 years. In my opinion, that’s strange. It made me […]

Today was a long day. We made some new friends in Nakhon Phanom. We had been contacted by June, who is a fellow cyclist (female, single, late 20s if anyone interested :p), and I didn’t have time to write about her and her friends in my journal entry yesterday so I’m doing it today. June […]

Today, we made it to Mukdahan. We started late, waking up around 7am and getting on the road before 8am. We planned to ride 50kms or more and stay somewhere near Mukdahan, the provincial capital. That’s pretty much what happened, but we did ride on another 30kms out of town to reduce the distance of […]

We had an idea, to cycle 150kms in one day and cover two provinces, Amnat Charoen and Mukdahan. It didn’t really work out like that. We woke at 4.50am to get an early start and hit the road when civic twilight occurred at 5.20am, giving us the most amount of time in the cool of […]

We are back from the orphanage, it was a great visit and I think we had as much fun as the kids. Natt gave a little presentation about our journey from Surat Thani to Yasothon and its 4,000 plus kms. We talked to the kids and answered a few questions, keeping the whole thing short […]

Finally had a good sleep in a decent bed. Woke up at 5 am ready to ride 100 kms. Overall, the riding was very easy today, I think the distances are become easier and easier as I get more fit and continue to lose weight. I would like to weigh myself soon and will have […]

A visit to Ban Home Hug in Yasothon for children with HIV who have been abandoned or orphaned.