Noble Steeds of Yonder Years

Some days you close your eyes so tight and wish that you were somewhere else - somewhere far far and even further away... I've done a lot of that of late.

It's been a manic couple of months and with my passport nearing expiration and a friends wedding on Koh Samoi fast approaching, there were two reasons for fast tracking and heading back to Bangkok (for the seventh time) via public transport*.

*'Public transport' of course being rickety buses and tuk tuks and sungtaws and trains and that sort of thing... the kinds of vehicles most people see only in museums....  Please note how the word 'VIP' doesn't appear in any of those modes - similar to the word "shocks" and sometimes the word 'brakes' too is a foreign concept...

Anyway, whilst public transporting along I've thought long and hard about noble steeds of the yester years and the joys of having your own 'wheels'....

[cloudy dejavu like fade into the past......]

Charlie... sporting three flat tyres (simultaneously)

First there was Charlie. A 933cc Suzuki Alto that carried  us the 17 000 plus kilometers across 30ish countries and deserts and rivers and mountains from London to Ulanbataar... with only 21 flat tyres on the way, he was a beaut!

After leaving Charlie in the capable hands of the Christina Noble Children's Foundation and being abandoned by my brother and every other person I knew in Mongolia, I found myself walking the streets and somehow ended up with Margret Thatcher. My little Monglian stud that raced through the hills and valleys and caused my buttocks more agony than it could bear. That said, Margret (who turned out to be a boy) was not a very long addition to my life.

Margret Thatcher [left] - world's most uncomfortably saddled horse 

A couple of years later after mastering the art of hitch hiking (you should try it - just not in inland Australia http://barefootedgypsy.blogspot.com/2011/04/when-hitching-turns-bad-and-then-gets.html )

I happened to be walking down the street and bumped into a good Swedish friend. A few days later I inherited Karla  - the Mercedes Benz Camper Van of awesomeness! Karla housed billions of people as she traveled Australia picking up hitchers and strange animals and friends and was great accommodation for random nights out in town. It was sad to say goodbye as I pulled up in the airport and signed her over to a mutual friend [Nathan] just before I boarded my one way flight to Indonesia. 

Licking Karla goodbye before heading to the airport

A couple of months of pottering around had me over public transport and with a good group of people about, we decided to build The Illegal Immigrant to sail from Malaysia to Thailand.

The Illegal Immigrant setting sail for Koh Lipe

 Sadly we misjudged the stretch in the rope, bought cheap wire and didn't take into account that there might actually be waves in the evening and our poor vessel shipwrecked and marooned us on a deserted island.

A fellow Immigrant survivor dragged me across Thailand and through Cambodia and after she returned to the icy lands of Europe I purchased Percy - a 97cc Sanda Boss (which is really just the fakest version of a Honda Dream)

Percy... ahhh.... Percy 

 On Percy I raced the length of Vietnam through villages and cow turd and mechanical faults and I'm still now trying to work out why exactly I sold my little bike... but I did... and that's how I ended up with Mao...

Mao, the Chinese tyrant bicyle

On Mao I crossed from Vietnam into Laos (a particularly hilly route) before speeding up a little to make Bangkok. He's still my little Chinese 'new design bike' but a random I met over dinner the other night is cycling him over to Thailand for me. Let's hope he makes it alive!

[Fancy fade back into modern time...........]

My passport application is in and my wedding is only 2 busses and a boat ride away [I think]. Two more days of hell... but hopefully that will be the end of public transportation for a long while... Apart from cycling to the Chinese border I'm not sure what's next... there's a world of endless opportunities, farm animals and vehicles out there for the taking... I guess i'll wait and see what life throws at me.

Avoiding Death, Elephatitus, and Busses. (In that order)

It was a rough day watching my little Mao (the Chinese tyrant bicycle) be loaded onto the roof of an unroadworthy bus and sadder still watching former cycle buddy, Rohan, pass us three times. It was only once I was on the bus that I grappled with what I'd just signed up for - a 250 km journey that would take 9 hours. According to my googled calculator, this comes to about 27.777777777 km/hr and my Grand mother drives faster than that. I instantly regretted the decision but the rusty doors were bolted shut and the shockless bus was on the crawl.

It gets worse too - by the time I arrived a good many lifetimes later, I felt like death. And once I'd checked into my "China-Food Hotel" and found what used to be a mirror, I discovered that I looked it too. I had elephantitus or something very similar. To put it bluntly, I looked like the incredible hulk - not green or anything but swollen to the point that my eyes ears had almost dissappeared. My legs were tree trunks. My arms Oprah-Winfrey wings. My belly looked like one those African kids with the kwashiorkor and my neck had been swallowed by my shoulders. Worse still my throat had swollen shut and I was struggling to breathe. I climbed one flight of stairs and had to sit down - I was pretty sure I was about to die. Don't worry though, I didn't.

Trying in vain to find a pharmacy or some elephant tranquilizers (which would have possibly worked better) I was talked into booking a tour and I really am not sure why but for some reason it made sense at the time. Regret!!! I spent the whole night tossing, turning, gasping for air, throwing up. Repeat. The morning had me swollener still and I had no painkillers. I had no medication and I had no time to find any because I was already late for my pretty expensive tour.

I’m not sure why I thought a tour of ancient fields of clay jars would have been good anyway. Yes they were big and old and ruinsy, but they were really just pots – old school vases with stale water inside of them instead of pretty flowers. In my state I had little appreciation for the “mystical valleys of Paksovan” and even less for the never-ending bumpy dirt roads that shot spasms up my spine.

6 hours of old pots later I finally made it to the doctor. He wasn’t there. His wife phoned him for me and I tried to explain in a language that wasn’t anything close to English what my symptoms were. The wife handed me a pack of orange pills and another one full of yellow ones and told me to have one of each at every meal. I still have no idea what either are. But I’m hoping for the best…

Then I took the second set of necessary precautions for my near demising state and dragged myself on to a place renowned for recovery – Vang Vieng. It’s the kind of place where everyone has cuts and bruises and broken limbs and accidental amputations and weird drug addictions and massive life problems and well, there I was just about normal.

A couple of hard days of zip-lining, floating down the river, ladder jumping, beer pong, dancing, staying up till ridiculous o’clock the afternoon and relaxing in a hammock I was almost as good as new!

Two things I’ve learned from all of this:

1)    Busses are very bad for you.

2)    Beer is probably necessary.