The air was cool and fresh, slightly thinner due to our high elevation here in Sa Pa, but very comfortable. The first part of the wheel was all to be downhill, which made it very easy, pleasant wheeling. We had both put on our SpeedMatrix jerseys, which added to the airy, fresh feeling. The sun was the brightest it had been since we were in Borneo or Bali, but the addition of the Maui Jims to our lifestyle even kept that cooled off. Basically, we were feeling great.

When we passed a restaurant that sported a big suckling pig, cooling on a spit outside, we decided to stop in for a bite to eat.

Inside, we discovered that this was the policeman’s haunt, and decided, after looking around at tables full of cops eating lunch, just to emulate their behavior, and order by pointing at what they had on the table. We ended up getting a very Chinese plate of crispy pork and greens (delightful though not nearly as good as those we had had in Lijiang during the pilot study), and a large pile of rather crispy French fried potatoes.

With eating out of the way, we climbed back on the Speed TRs and asked a local woman which direction she thought we should wheel in. She pointed down the road up which we had just climbed in the bus.

Okay, more downhill it would be, for now at least. We strapped a bunch of bottles of water to our cycles and headed off.

It is worth pausing to discuss here the strange trends we have observed in Vietnamese bottled water manufacturing. Aquafina, being the market leader, commands a high price for its H2O. So, following suit, all the Vietnamese bottled water companies have re-branded themselves to resemble Aquifina. We saw, among others “Aquaonly, AquahostA AquiMinimax, AquaSpa, ….”

The feeling was wonderful, just soaring down the mountain. As we coasted along, the scene opened up around us to display giant green valleys filled with terraced rice operations, dotted with little farmer’s huts. Morale was supremely high, so we just kept soaring on, stopping, of course, from time to time, to indulge a little of that old vice of ours… timed exposures.

We wheeled on past a large Colorado-esque sign indicating that we were leaving Sa Pa. And down through one valley and then another. On the slopes, everywhere we looked, people were farming various crops, presumably dependent on the availability of water and the quality of the soil. In the very bottom of most of the valleys, there were small streams, around which herds of water buffalo were being tended. Nearby the farmers would churn through the mud of their rice fields with giant devices, seemingly homemade, consisting of engines, connected to openly whirling blades, all mounted on a welded-together framework of metal. Looked like terrifying, but satisfying work.

On we went, farther and farther down, past fellows on mopeds transporting all manner of goods up to Sa Pa, and road crews hard at work maintaining the beautiful curves of bitumen that we so luxuriously rode upon. Finally, we came just to the edge of the clouds we had worked our way through on that morning’s bus. It seemed time to turn around.

And what a change it was. What had been an easy, beautiful, cool, dry wheel, suddenly became a punishing, sweat-drenched test of the human psyche. This mountain, which had once been so kind and open with us, became a cruel beast that had to be tamed. Up and up we rode, stopping from time to time to drink water like lost desert wanderers stumbling upon an oasis. No sooner had we quenched our thirst than we were back in the cycles, hammering up the mountain. We quickly digested all in our stomachs, and drank all our water.

With that came a new kind of challenge. We no longer had the excuse of water breaks. It was just us and the mountain. Even through the haze of struggle, though, from time to time the raw beauty of the landscape would captivate me. I would get lost in the curves of the terraces, or a herd of water buffalo wallowing in the muck at the valley floor.

We neared the top of the mountain and the city of Sa Pa riding a wave of energy. The heat of the moment was over and we were once again in the highest of spirits, and delighted with our recent trajectory, instantly dried and cooled by the mountain air. We wheeled to the edge of the city, where we stopped to take in one more drink of the stunning view. I sat on a tuft of green grass and Scott joined me. What a country this was!

We wheeled back into town past a table where two fried dogs heads advertised the availability of canine meat, and sat down at a hole in the wall Pho joint.

The soup was unsurprisingly delicious, and from there we wheeled slow and easy back to the roomy, Wifi-filled comfort of our hotel room. We spent the rest of the night working on correspondence for you, dear reader, stepping out only briefly to indulge in a small dinner of Bia Hoi and boiled duck eggs, each of which was filled with a deliciously fetal chick.

Sim City 2000 rang out once again, calling the AsiaWheeling team to action. We didn’t even grab a cup of coffee, we just hopped on the cycles, bungee-ing  our poor Speed TR’s wounded front wheel onto the back seat of Scott’s  rental bike. Our first stop was this place, Top Cycle, rumored to be staffed by a knowledgeable Frenchman by the name of Willy.

It was strange to see Scott on this huge-wheeled rental cycle. The wheels seemed so big for a seat that was so low. I was troubled by this new problem with Scott’s bike so soon after our ill-fated adventures in Bangkok, but it felt good to wheel. And, man-o-man were we wheeling hard. A good hard wheel always has a way of calming me down, putting things into perspective and focus. Paired with a good cup of coffee, the cocktail is downright miraculous.

Well, the coffee was yet to come, but by that time we’d arrived at Top Cycle. We thanked our lucky stars to find them open for business. When a Caucasian fellow came out the front door, Scott asked “Are you Willy?”

“Yes,” he answered in a thick French accent. We explained our predicament, and Willy frowned down at the Speed TR’s dynamo hub. He began to unscrew the lid of the thing, murmuring in the way only a Frenchman can when wrapping his mind around a new mechanism. Very early on, he identified the bearing was indeed the problem, as our fellow yesterday had hypothesized, and seemed to think it was a reasonably standard size bearing.

“I think I can fix it, but this wheel is very complex… I also will need to go to the Chinese market and buy a bearing. Come back this evening. Maybe 4:30.”

Scott and I could barely contain our glee, and headed off in search of celebratory breakfasting, coffee, and some unexpectedly free wheeling.

What had yesterday seemed like an insurmountable problem was so quickly solved! Once again the gods of wheeling had shown us mercy.

Unfortunately, now it was a holiday Sunday, and when we stopped at a local hotel to ask directions we were told COPE and MAG were closed. Without the convenient folding capabilities of the Speed TR, catching a bus to the gardens that Motta had suggested we wheel would also be tough. I guess some good old-fashioned unplanned wheeling was the move, then.

Feeling like kings, we headed toward the Mekong and rode along it, making our way out of town. Scott’s bike featured a special passenger seat over the rear tire, which when not occupied could be used for extended rough rider calls. In honor of a good friend of ours who goes by the peculiar name, G-Money, we indulged…

We wheeled out of town and into a neighboring village perched on the banks of the Mekong, where we took advantage of Scott’s rental bike’s large front basket to purchase a gross of people’s waters. From there we took the road until it petered out into more of a dirt path, where we stopped to drink water and chart our next waypoint.

From there, we wheeled away from the river, up into the modest industrial quarter of Vientiane. We passed the giant factory where all Lao’s cigarettes are made, and for a while the entirety of the countryside stank like a humidor. Past there we called a random lichtenschtein onto farm roads, where we promptly got lost.

By this point, the roads were made mostly of packed dirt, with large inexplicable puddles forming major hazards from time to time. We decided to rely on our compass and the kindness of strangers in an attempt to cut through this stretch of agricultural land back toward the city.

Using the aforementioned aids, we headed onto ever smaller and more treacherous tangled Lao farm roads. My Speed TR did an admirable job of this totally off-road wheeling, fording large mud puddles, and climbing through uphill stretches over loose gravel and rotting farm waste.

Soon enough the road started to get bigger, and traffic started to appear in the opposite direction. We had made it. We stopped for a celebratory snack at a strange convenience store. I had a milk-box; Scott had a strawberry chocolate ice-cream. The convenience store seemed to have been erected in proximity to and in preparation for a giant real estate development that was springing up out of the rice paddies. It seemed this land would soon be agricultural no longer. As dirt turned to gravel, and gravel to road, we made our way back to that good old hamlet, Vientiane.

Willy was waiting with a smile with our wheel. “Good as new,” he explained. He expressed some interest in the dynamo hub. “It’s full of very strong magnets,” he explained, “and though it’s got a large coil inside, it is not sealed.” I asked what he meant by this, and he explained that the interior of the wheel is merely covered by an aluminum cab, with no rubber gaskets to ensure water does not get inside. Despite this, he assured us that the interior of the wheel looked very clean and tidy, except for the broken bearing. This was not too surprising, since we had just bought that wheel brand new to replace the one destroyed in Scott’s accident.

Though only one of the bearings was broken, he replaced both. When we asked why, he said that the default bearing in the wheel is a Chinese knock off. He showed us the bearings that he put in. The brand was called NSK, and they said “Japan” on the side. Most good bearings come from Japan, Germany, or Switzerland, Willy explained. Here was your bearing, he held up an almost identical looking bearing, “NBK” it said on it. “This is a Chinese copy bearing.”

Interesting… perhaps Scott’s collision with Motta in the lead-up to Pi Mai Lao had had nothing to do with the bearing failing… more experimentation would be needed…

Though we could not test it right away, once we returned to the Heuan Lao  Guesthouse we found the dynamo even still generated electricity. Top Cycle? Giant AsiaWheeling seal of approval.

The journey from Luang Prabang to Vientiane would be no small feat.  The buses would no doubt be crammed due to the Pi Mai Lao holiday, and with no bus schedule to speak of, it was simply the luck of the draw for when we would leave and what bus we would find ourselves on.  After an incredible downpour, which took place while we were nesting in a cafe, we took to the soaked streets and wheeled up to the bus station.  There, we bought a ticket for the next bus and folded up the cycles; the bus would be leaving in 20 minutes.

The bus was packed, but it seemed we had received the two best seats in the house, right in front, despite having purchased the last two tickets available.  Together, we marveled at the freight loading process in which giant wire frames, motorcycles, and other cargo were hoisted to the bus roof rack.

Of course the journey would not be complete without mechanical and natural mishaps on what we referred to as “the best road in all of Lao,” a winding collection of switchbacks and washed-out embankments, 430 km through the jungle.  The bus stopped occasionally for the crew to inspect the fuse box.  When the bus was moving, the driver peered through the windshield, seeing no farther than a few feet in front of him because of the thick misty fog that saturated the mountain air.  The temperature difference between the interior and exterior of the bus caused the windshield to fog up from within as well, warranting a full-time crew member to wipe down the windshield so the driver could see.

But alas, by the grace of Lao, we arrived the next morning safe and sound before sunrise.  Coffee and a small feast seemed to be in order, so we ordered two fried whole baby chickens, rice, and the black gold we were so very much in need of.

Upon finishing, we wheeled south to the Mekong to scan the riverside for guesthouses.  We passed the great French style archway, as morning joggers stayed honest around the park.

Wheeling a bit farther, we came across some fellows transporting pork in what seemed like the Chinese part of town.

Finally, after traipsing back and forth past embassies, we ventured down an alley and found the perfect guesthouse, which featured a large brickwork project in progress.

After settling down and unfurling ourselves in the room, we snapped into action on the day’s first order of business: Project K9.  Our very own head of marketing and newly christened member of the team had requested “elephant” goods that could be worn or placed in the home for good luck.

In Luang Prabang, we had located items that satisfied these requirements.

First, was an elephant mask, strikingly god-like in nature.

Second was a handbag with an engraved elephantine seal,

and finally, a  peach-orange canvas bag featuring an illustrated elephant.

We wheeled to the post office, cargo strapped to our side.

There we began wrapping the goods.

Of course, the postal workers were sweet and friendly, helping us weigh and wrap the package.

After sending it off, we hit the road.  Vientiane was crying out to be re-explored.

We had a lot of waypoints, which had been suggested to us by the knowledgeable and judicious Mr. Stewart Motta, and only a couple days in which to hit them all. Scheduled for that day were COPE and MAG, two organizations dedicated to bettering Lao, by addressing problems created by the gargantuan bombing of that country by the US, and other destruction associated with the Laotian Civil War.

Few people know that Lao is the most bombed country in the world. To be precise: more conventional explosives, by weight, were dropped on Lao during the US-Vietnam War than any other country in history, including Germany and Japan during WWII, or Vietnam itself during that ugly conflict. Many of them still remain unexploded in the landscape, and much of the population of Lao that survived the bombing did so by spending years of their lives in caves in the mountains while fire and thunder fell from the sky onto their beautiful homeland. And all this while, Lao was (at least officially) respected by the US as a neutral country in the conflict.

The Ho Chi Minh Trail Through Lao, Vietnam, and Cambodia

The recent history of Lao gets even hairier when you consider that in addition to extensive bombing in the south and northeast of Lao, the US CIA had taken up the old French habit of organizing small armies of Lao to fight against Communist forces in the region. You see, dear reader, the NVA was supplying its southern troops (also called the Vietcong) via an amazingly resilient supply route called the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This was a treacherous mountainous road that snaked through Vietnam, Lao, and Cambodia, and was the main lifeline of the indefatigable Communist army. The US felt it could win the war if it destroyed this supply line, which it tried and failed at, using all kinds of war machines. All this occurred at a time of internal strife and civil war in Lao, as they were too thrown asunder with the sudden end of French Imperial rule. The large and violent American part of this struggle is commonly referred to as “the secret war”, and at its height featured what some estimate to have been the busiest airport in the world at the time: a secret air strip operated by a fake civilian airline called Air America, run by the CIA. Originally, the US was training Lao Royalist troops, mostly to aid  the French who were still fighting for control over Lao against wave after wave of Vietnamese troops.

Later on, after the French were soundly defeated by the Viet Cong, we began to take over more and more of their role, paying the salaries of the anticommunist part of the Lao army, and flying all kinds of equipment around using that puppet airline. The entire story is just too long and too unbelievable to fully recount here. Instead, I recommend the Wikipedia page, and also, if you can get your hands on it, a documentary called “The  Most Secret Place on Earth,” which AsiaWheeling is hard at work acquiring for distribution to you, dear reader. Also probably worth saying, before closing this fascinating tangent, is that this secret CIA-funded proxy war is only the second largest CIA-funded proxy war in US history. The largest was the Soviet-Afghan war… but that’ll have to wait for AsiaWheeling 3.0.

Meanwhile, in present day Lao, we were wheeling the streets of Vientiane in search of breakfast and a few bottles of what we were coming to call “the people’s water.” The people’s water is commonly the cheapest way to buy bottled water in Lao and Thailand.

It is packaged in semi-translucent malleable plastic rip-top bottles, and if you buy enough of it at once, it ends up being only a few cents for each bottle. Finding the people’s water was easy; and after drinking a few of them down, we were ready to find noodles, which also in time presented themselves to us, after a fair bit of wandering, in the form of the Chinese style of chewy freshly stretched street noodles. Ah noodles, the fuel of AsiaWheeling.

Not long into our wheel, Scott’s bicycle started to complain somewhat more vehemently in the front wheel-piece. Though we had much to do, we decided we had better stop and take a closer look. We flipped Scott’s Speed TR upside down on the side of the road and began to spin the front wheel by hand and scrutinize it. It would randomly emit this pinging noise, however, as far as we could tell, nothing was in the way of the wheel or the spokes;  we concluded it must be the hub of the wheel itself.

Feeling dark and troubled, we climbed back on the Speed TRs and went off in search of a Lao bike mechanic. Soon we found one who was really more of a bike parts dealer. He agreed to take a look. We spun the wheel around and he began to peer into its depths. Not too long into his inspection, he decided that the explanation lay in a certain scuffed up bit of the fender that he claimed was being pulled into the wheel as it spun.

It was a strange diagnosis, but we were glad to hear it was not a big deal; we bent the fender a bit and kept wheeling. Somewhere into the wheel, the noise started up again at new heights of sound and fury. It was definitely not the fender. We flipped the bike over again and removed the wheel. This time, with the wheel some feet away from the rest of the bicycle, Scott was able to spin it while I was holding the axle pegs, and it still made the sound. This was bad… something inside the dynamo hub was very sick…

So we returned to the same mechanic, and began to remove the wheel, bringing it over to him. The man spoke no English, but communication seemed fluid enough as we mimed and pointed to bits of the wheel. He seemed to immediately realize his previous mistake, and grabbed a few wrenches to began to tear the wheel apart. Some way into the process, he discovered confirmation of a new diagnosis. He looked up at us.

“Bad bearing.”

This was as much English as the man would ever speak to us. We’ll never know how much he spoke or understood, but we did buy a bike lock from him as a kind of thank you, and to relieve us of the constant hassle of the Indian lock we had bought, which had gradually grown a number of sharp pointy spikes, threatening to slice all those who dared use it.  We named the new lock “Cambodia,” since we had been told to lock the bikes more securely while in Cambodia. We named the old lock “Barack Obama,” after his highness.

All new locks and final diagnoses aside, we had a problem on our hands, and it was time to solve it.

Sometimes, dear reader, AsiaWheeling has to switch into Crisis Mode. Now was one of those times. It was still a holiday here in Lao. Tomorrow was Sunday, and we were planning to leave for Cambodia on Monday. This meant we needed to fix this wheel tomorrow.

Over one of those delightful Lao baguette sandwiches, we began to hatch a plan.

Tonight we would establish and draw up a map of all the cycle shops in Vientiane. Tomorrow we would rent a bicycle from the Heuan Lao Guesthouse and strap Scott’s wounded wheel to the back of it. We would then wheel the city in search of:

a) A bike shop that would repair the wheel
b) A bike ship that would sell us a new 74-mm (20-inch) wheel, or hub. In the event that we could not find these, we would move to plan c)

c) Go to Bangkok the next day and refit the old hub left at ProBike, the local Dahon retailer, to the new rim.

A little Googling suggested that our best bet would be a fellow by the name of Willy, who worked at a bike shop not far from the parts guy who had diagnosed our problem. With maps drawn, and fingers crossed we reserved a rental bike for the next day, set our alarm for sunrise, and prayed.

We woke up in Steve (may his beard grow ever longer’s) apartment and commenced the usual maneuver, making our way up to Dane’s room, where we found him plugging away on his Mono machine, pumping out crazy techno science music.

We promptly began making coffee and plans for the day. We would need to get food, and since most cooking was outsourced in this city, that would mean venturing out to a place. Today was also to be Karona’s last day in town. She was going back to Japan, and as you can imagine the mood was somber. Scott and I had been for some time without a wheel, and were badly, badly in need of one. That was the plan for the day, but first we needed to attend Karona’s goodbye luncheon. The luncheon took place at a local establishment called the Goethe Institute. It was an interesting German enclave, sporting, among other things, a very affordable cafeteria.

For less than $2.00 we piled our plates with rice, various curries, fried eggs, Thai sausages, and fresh vegetables. The food was delightful. Saying goodbye to Karona was not. She was such a kind and pleasant woman, and I dare say all at the table were sad to see her go. We climbed on the bikes with heavy hearts and vague directions from Dane.

It was great to be wheeling again. We got onto Rama IV and found ourselves filled with energy, soaring along at the speed of traffic, whipping around the overpass, pulling a vast uber-Rauschenburg and heading toward the port of Bangkok.

We were looking for the passenger dock, from which we would be chartering a small boat across the river. We successfully made our way to the port, and wheeled up to the guards at the gate. This didn’t seem right… certainly one would not need to enter a restricted zone in order to take a small boat across the river? Regardless, we rode up to the security checkpoint and engaged the guards. They spoke no English, but seemed to recognize our butchering of the Thai name for our next waypoint. They motioned to the interior of the port and explained a fair bit to us that we unfortunately could not comprehend. We figured then, it might be time to take out a certain business card from a local nightclub on which Dane had scrawled the name of the place we were looking for. When we handed them the business card, the two guards barely even looked at the thing, before instantly apologizing to us and inexplicably admitting us into the restricted zone!

We were quite sure that this was neither where we wanted nor where we were technically allowed to be, but with the recent error in our favor, it would have been quite the squandering of an opportunity not to wheel the interior of the port on Bangkok. So for the next hour, that was what we did.

The workers seemed thrilled to have us around, smiling and waving at us, as we meandered our way through the dockyards. On our way out, the security guards gave us their best, waving and wishing us well.

Not 15 meters later, a giant sign that we had somehow missed presented itself, indicating the way to our passenger dock.

We had no problem finding a fellow who was willing to drive us across the river in his long boat for about 60 cents. So we folded up the bikes and hopped on board. The engine of the boat was connected to a great steel rod, on the end of which was the propeller.

Our helmsman piloted the thing deftly, using the giant rod sometimes as a propeller and sometimes as an oar, swinging us perfectly up and alongside the dock.

We grabbed the Speed TRs and jumped ship, passing a few baht over the water. On the other side, we found ourselves in a thick jungle, where a smoothly paved road led us from small settlement to small settlement.

We just tore into it. Heading up one way, cutting across and then back down another, soon we had wheeled out of the jungle and into a small suburb of Bangkok, where we rode briefly looking for an entrance to a vast system of elevated roads that fed onto a large suspension bridge. The suspension bridge would be the most triumphant way to re-enter Bangkok after the day’s wheel, but, finally, after finding the entrance, it seemed too gnarly and fast to attempt without the help of a bike lane.

So we pulled an uber-licht and headed back, this time through the city, rather than following the raised expressway, back into the jungle. We got back to the main road just as a giant market was setting up. We could not resist getting off the cycles and taking a tour.

We encountered a particularly enticing stand frying sweet colorful pancakes and wrapping flavorful bits together in a swirl.

We ordered a dozen and quickly decimated them.

We came across a metal box of fresh fish, about to meet their fate.

As well as some fried fish, who had just recently met theirs.

We finally loaded up on drinking water and climbed back on the cycles. We were about to head back to the boat dock, when we noticed an inviting looking jungle road that we had not yet taken, so we decided to follow it. And, dear reader, we are sure glad that we did. What we discovered on the other side was a large village, the entirety of which was connected not by roads but by small raised concrete paths that wound their way over a swampy jungle.

It was one of the richest wheels of my life, so saturated was it with visual stimuli.

I am going to dare let the photos and videos speak for themselves.

Back on the longboat, making our way toward the city, we felt like kings.

So distracted by feeling like kings were we, that as Scott was climbing out of the boat,  he sliced his finger on the side of the dock. He was only mildly dripping blood, so we climbed back on the cycles and made our way to the nearest 7-11. Scott showed the woman his bleeding finger, and she promptly became very uncomfortable beginning to insist that they did not have any bandages or materials with which to aid his recovery. This seemed strange, so we hid the finger, in hope that it might snap her out of it, and began asking again. Still she indicated that there was nothing she could do. Finally, we gave up on her and found the band-aids.

Outside the 7-11 we made fast friends with a woman running a locksmith’s kiosk as we were cleaning and bandaging Scott’s finger. She later approached us with some tangerines and a big grin, offering them to us as a gift.

A fine type.

Back on the road, we made short work of the trip back to Dane’s place, thinking of that Das Racist lyric “People on the street eating chicken and meat.”

So we stopped at a street vendor outside his apartment building and examined the offerings.

The grilled beef looked especially appealing, so we ordered one up.

We retired to the vicinity of a certain street food stall that we knew to serve up amazing grilled meats, of which we procured many, with garnish.

We woke up bright and early in Sangklaburi, having changed our rooms at the P. Guesthouse from the three-bed room that Hood, Scott, and I had shared to a two-man nest, with a private balcony looking out over the lake. It was the same price ($6 per night) and we were thrilled.  But of course, we missed Hood.

Today was to be somewhat of an atypical day for AsiaWheeling, in which we would rent one of the many fine handmade wooden canoes they had down by the dock at the P. Guesthouse, for a little bit of good old-fashioned AsiaPaddling.

We ziplocked our electronics, but we prayed, for the sake of the Panama hats, that none of the local fisherman who so deafeningly zipped around the lake on unbelievably fast, long, and skinny motor boats, would come so near and so parallel to us that we would take a spill.

I took the rear position, and Scott the bow as we headed out into the lake. She was a good boat, fast, silent, and true. We were rounding our first curve, past dozens of houseboats, and fields of some crop we could not quite identify, toward what we had heard was the location of a sunken temple. Sure enough, a few more curves of lake later, we found ourselves at a truly ghostly sight. As you, dear reader, no doubt remember, this was a man-made lake. Before the time of the lake, a great temple had been built in this valley. When the valley was flooded, the temple was submerged completely, but now being the dry, and therefore, low season, the top floors of the building were once again revealed from the cloudy green waters.

We paddled some of the smaller sections of the temple, before beaching the canoe and climbing out into the main building.

The floor was covered in muck, but the old stones were still visible in places, especially where the floor had cracked, revealing another completely submerged chamber beneath us.

Most of the more intricate parts of the temple were broken or ruined by years underwater, but we were still able to make out some interesting and significant features.

The arrival of some truly vicious swarms of gnats heralded our return to the boat.

We kept paddling farther down the lake, where we found more floating villages, clinging to the shore,and more of those interesting large net-fishing devices that we had first encountered being used by the fishermen of Goa. We stopped to hang out for a bit with a roaming herd of cattle, all of which sported jingling bells, and found us quite engrossing, before turning and heading back.

Our whole time in Sangklaburi, we had been noticing a giant golden temple that loomed amidst the smokey mountains across the lake. This, it seemed, would make a wise next waypoint, so we pointed the canoe toward its shimmering majesty and started paddling.

When we finally reached the shore, we beached the canoe next to an interesting agricultural operation, where they appeared to be growing a kind of Asian cabbage and beans, the cabbage spread out on the ground, while the beans arched overhead on makeshift bamboo structures. We scrambled past the farm and up a steep crumbling slope toward a road. We followed the road up and around into the forest. First we passed a large, and quite deserted facility, which remained a mystery to us until we were finally able to ascertain, upon finding a giant charred oven, that it was a crematorium. Hauntingly fascinating.

Just then, we saw a bright red fox appear from the woods and look at us. He turned around and began to trot down another unpaved and overgrown road. It seemed like our best bet would be to follow him, so we did. And sure enough, each time we came around a corner in the road, he would be waiting for us, and upon seeing us continue to trot forward. Finally he led us to the base of the great gold temple.

It was closed for business, it seemed, and the doors were barred and chained. This, however, did not seem to have kept a small village of furniture makers and wood carvers from having sprung up around it.

It was the hottest part of the day, and most people appeared to be napping. In fact, it was so strangely deserted as to elicit some activity in that  part of the brain that is cultivated during the viewing of zombie films. So, you might forgive your humble correspondent’s mild alarm when a strangely loping child appeared as if from nowhere and began running at Scott. His body, poor thing, had grown unevenly, likely due to malnutrition and disease. He appeared to have a great deal of trouble seeing, but had locked onto Scott and made a direct hit, promptly embracing him in a prolonged bear hug.

As the duration of the hug lengthened, Scott began to grow uncomfortable. Finally, and quite gently, Scott disengaged himself from this child and we moved on, continuing our exploration of the temple grounds and the surrounding village.

Back in the canoe, we were getting hungry, and it seemed high time that we return to the city proper and find some food.

After settling up for the canoe rental, we headed into the town, where we feasted on street food: grilled pork on a shard of bamboo,

accompanied by a bag of fresh cabbage, basil, and hot peppers,

delicious northern sausages filled with rice and meat,

and spicy sweet shredded papaya salad, mashed to perfection with a large wooden mortar and pestle.

The next day, we saddled up to the counter at the P.Guesthouse in Sangklaburi, and began the arduous process of procuring bicycles for the entire nine-person team. With the Speed TRs always around, Scott and I had forgotten how much time we had spent during the pilot study finding bicycles. And how piss-poor the cycles usually were.

Three guest houses, a few repairs, and many rejected cycles later, we took off, all in a great mass, headed for the town.

We were quite a squadron, most of us on cycles that were too small for us, and almost all of us riding bikes that moaned and squawked with each pedal. Our first waypoint was the van station, where some of the team was to purchase tickets to go back that evening. Scott and I would be staying for a few more days, so we took that opportunity to acquire a few cups of iced coffee from a delightful local vendor, which while she spoke no English, took very good care of us, providing us with strong iced coffee, made with freshly ground beans in an old plastic espresso machine, and giving us a plate of friend banana pieces, which were sugared and spiced in a most intriguing way.

With tickets purchased, we got back on the cycles, and set into the wheel. The sun was hot, and we were an ungainly group. We quickly made our way out of town, not so much because of the speed of our wheeling, but because the town itself was rather small. Soon we were wheeling along the fantastic, rarely trafficked roads of rural Thailand.

The road was made of bright pieces of poured concrete, and wound among the steep hills that make up this landscape. This time of year, the air is thick with the smoke from slash-and-burn farming practices, so we were unable to see very far. But the presence of the smoke gave the entire experience a kind of mystical feel, which might be directly related to computer games that I played in my youth, such as Bungie’s Myth Series, which due to my slow graphics card, would need to save memory by shrouding the world in smoke.

We were rolling deep, manhandling the rusty old iron cycles, and sweating in the bright sun, which, even filtered through the smokey air made sunglasses essential. We had burned down a long slanting straight-away, when we suddenly we came to a large concrete bridge over a section of the man-made lake, followed by a giant uphill section, which we could see from the surrounding morphology would be long and arduous. I called a waypoint and we turned to the group. We were sort of between a Newtonian rock and a hard place, having already descended a fair way down  the recent straight-away. Our goal was to wheel across to the Mon village on the other side, to eat a little Mon food for lunch.

The Mon are an ethnic group from Myanmar, living mostly in Mon State along the Thai-Myanmar border. Things in Burma had grown tough for the Mon, as well as for many other people as the junta grew in power and activity. One of the earliest peoples to reside in Southeast Asia, the Mon were responsible for the spread of Theravada Buddhism in present-day Burma and Thailand. In Myanmar, the Mon culture is credited as a major source of influence on the dominant Burmese culture. Regardless, the Thai side of the border is full of small Mon villages, some of which double as brick and mortar refugee camps. One of these was to be found across the river, and was only one giant climb (and presumably a subsequent descent) away.

Back in Sangklaburi, we called a brief meeting of the team and finally decided we would go for the ascent.

As we all climbed back on the cycles, most of which had gears, few of which had the ability to change between them, and began to hump them up the hill, it occurred to me that you, dear reader, might be wondering who are these people we’re rolling with? Well, let me tell you:

Hood — A Thai fellow of Chinese descent, Hood is a comedian and a party animal. He is a warm person, and a loyal friend, notorious for his Photoshop prowess, and ability to create imaginative depictions of people, transported through space and time, often with additional organs affixed to unusual locations on their bodies or the surrounding scenery. He recently got involved in a project selling posh motorcycle helmets. We wish him luck.

Dane — Our fearless Bureau Chief, he is a giant among men – literally. Despite his size, he is quite gentle and intellectual. With his recent purchase of a Mono Machine, he is also becoming quite the electronic musician. His Thai is superb, and his lifestyle consists of making many many competing plans, most of which will never come to fruition, but the few that do produce quite glorious results. These were his last few weeks in Thailand before leaving to return for a short bit to the US. Many plans to return to Asia are cooking for him.

Karona –  From Japan, she’s whip smart, caring, and a woman who counts her words carefully. One might confuse her for being meek when first meeting her, though during our time together she proved again and again to be a tough cookie, never complaining, and always going for it.

Samara — A Canadian by birth, she comes from a mixed lineage of Canadian and Burmese peoples. She was living in Thailand studying South East Asian… studies. Samara is an easy-going intellectual woman, always willing to lay into a debate, and exhibiting that oh-so-hard-to-find, but most refreshing, ability to separate an argument from a fight. The first time I met this girl, she lied to me for 15 minutes telling a fanciful tail about Bedouin camel traders and arranged marriages. Entrancing.

Nico — A laid back French dude, dating Alice, Nico is 110% bro. Cracker Jack guy, friendly, and acutely stylish. He is as quick to share his hilariously stylized diving techniques while swimming in the lake, as he is to lay into a busted iron cycle. The man works in film distribution, and was also on his way out of Thailand to go work for the Cannes Film Festival in southern France.

Alice — Alice is a spunky, logical, and delightful person to be around. She’s dating Nico, that lucky duck, and works for a French company in Thailand. She is devastatingly stylish and makes a fantastic addition to any social gathering.

Golf — Golf is a giggly, friendly Thai girl, and a helpless romantic. I first met Golf on the eve of our departure. She arrived at Dane’s apartment with well over 300 roses, recently purchased to celebrate Dane and Karona. She is a warm and caring person, whose English skills are getting better by the day, thanks to a few American teen celebrity adventure novels.

Back on the roads, we were sweating hard and reaching the top of the hill. Nico and I were the first to reach the crest, followed shortly after by Dane and Scott.

As the rest of the team made its way up the mountain, a pickup truck pulled up, and out hopped Hood. He reached into the back and swung his rusty hulk of a bicycle over the side. It seems he had lost interest in climbing the hill and just hitched his way up.  Oh Hood, you sly dog.

Now that the worst was over, we could indulge in the pleasures of a breezy downhill into the smokey valley and the Mon town. Inside the town, we found many people selling hand-made crafts, and quite a few restaurants. We tucked into a meal of pig blood soup, pork fat curry, fried chicken and rice.

We crossed back to the Thai side of town over a long snaking wooden bridge, one of the longest in the world we later learned.

Communities there had sprung up on the water, living on pontoon houseboats.

Back at P. Guest House, we took a quick dip in the lake, before bidding goodbye to our new friends and fellow wheelers. As they climbed back into the van toward Bangkok, Scott and I returned to the hotel where we could relax into the womb of free wireless there, enshrouded in smoke, in the middle of the Thai countryside along the Burmese border.

The red shirts were planning to initiate a huge demonstration that weekend, and Dane looked up at us, through the steam coming off of his perfectly prepared latte.

He swallowed the last of his mouthful of chocolate cake and said, “It could be the end of Thailand as we know it. I’m talking revolution; war in the streets.”

Scott pulled off his headphones, which could just barely be heard pumping out distant strains of trance music. “Bombs are planned for all over the city. I really think we should get out of here for that weekend.”

Scott and I are usually not ones to argue with a Bureau Chief’s suggestions, especially when they are offered under the pretenses of avoiding being wounded or maimed. And with that Dane began a furious Facebook campaign to get his Thai friends together for an outing to the north. Sangklaburi was the name of the place. It lies on the shores of a giant man-made lake, nestled in the northwest of Thailand along the Burmese border.

And it was because of this that we came to be waking up at 5:30 am, to the strains of SIM City 2000. For the first time in the trip, we were stripping down our luggage to the bare minimum. No large packs, no cycles. We would rent them there. In the dark and the confusion, I forgot to pack a swim suit, shorts, sunscreen or my phone charger, but appeared at the elevator right at 6:00, ready to accompany Dane and Karona down to a cab. Scott, on the other hand, remembered most everything important, but was quite late getting out the door, leaving Dane huffing and puffing in the elevator about missing our ferry. You may intuit, dear reader, how the AsiaWheeling team members complement each other.

Next ensued a series of missteps, miscommunications, mistimed bathroom runs and clueless cab drivers that resulted in our group finally convening just after the train to Kanchanaburi had left the station. Drat. Some consolation was to be had in that our group of nine people was finally together, and that coffee and grilled pork and sticky rice were easily purchased on the street.

After a number of ideas were thrown around, we finally selected a bus as the next best option. The fates would have it that, once we arrived at the bus station, a bus would be idling, as if waiting for us, all set to leave for Kanchanaburi. We climbed on, and I promptly fell asleep, only to wake up when the bus came to a halt at our destination.

This was only half way to Sangklaburi, and there would be a little time before we boarded the van that would take us the rest of the way north and up into the mountains.

It was high time for some noodles.

The van ride was tough, with lots of elevation changes and a twisting mountain road. The interior was hot, and we were jostled from side to side bumping sweatily against our fellow passengers. Scott and I were quite thankful for the Panama hats. While in the upright position, the hats provide protection from the sun, and loss of one’s fellow wheeler in a crowd, but when tilted down over the eyes, they provide a virtually impenetrable field of sleepiness, allowing the AsiaWheeling team to doze in even the most hectic situations.

Finally, we arrived at Sangklaburi, where we found our guest house, the P. Guesthouse, to be welcoming, frighteningly affordable, and gorgeous.

It was made mostly from dark wood, with giant granite tables expanding along a deck overlooking the lake.

Devastatingly idyllic.  The guesthouse itself looked like it belonged in Whitefish, Montana.

Dinner was Burmese-Thai food.

Very different from that which we’d had so far in Bangkok.

We tried the local tom yum soup, which was so spicy that most at the table could not have more than a small taste.

The rest of the afternoon was spent lazing on the deck and swimming in the lake.

When night fell, we began strolling the streets of the tiny town, which sported hundreds of brand new looking golden rooster lamp posts, and more than its fair share of loud and none too shy stray dogs.

The next morning, we woke up on Dane Wetschler’s couch in Bangkok and took stock of our consciousness. Dane was already brewing some coffee in the room, pouring hot water over a cone of freshly ground beans, filling the room with a rich aroma. Scott and I were instantly brought into the present. After drinking just one 2/3 full mug of the stuff, we were just nipping to wheel.  While Dane was finishing off the coffee, Karona began making us bowls of muesli and yoghurt, taking care to stir each one lovingly, blending the cereal, milk, and fruit yogurt before giving them to us. For two hard-boiled wheelers used to the hard-scrabble streets of Tiruchirapalli, such hospitality was melting us like butter.

Before we left, we gave a little gift to Karona and Natsumi from AsiaWheeling Global Enterprises and our friends at Maui Jim. Along with the sunglasses, they had sent us a number of women’s small tee-shirts.  Being not small women ourselves, we were thrilled to find a couple on which to bestow these gifts.

Karona, Natsumi, and Dane agreed to take a taxi cab to the bike rental place. Scott and I would, of course, be wheeling there.

Dane marked the place where we needed to meet them on a map. It was a small enough Soi (the Thai word for side alley) that it was not actually shown on the map; we were wheeling toward a little blue circle in a blank part of the map on the other side of town. We would be getting there by taking one of the main Bangkok thoroughfares, a street called Rama IV. Rama IV is an English way to refer to the fourth monarch of Thailand under the House of Chakri. The current king is Rama IX. Rama IV, (his Thai name is Phra Bat Somdet Phra Poramenthramaha Mongkut Phra Chom Klao Chao Yu Hua — we dare you to look up the translation, and provide it in the comments) was the king for the better part of the 1800’s, and is also the Siamese king portrayed in that old favorite “The King and I.”

Today’s Rama IV is a boiling highway, populated with a cocktail of brand new Toyota Camry cabs and whizzing motor cycles.

It crosses the heart of the city, and always seems to have plenty of traffic. Bicycles are making a comeback in Bangkok, but are still a pretty rare sight on Rama IV.

You see, dear reader, it was not so long ago that cycles were, due to lack of funds and industrialization in Thailand, a necessarily popular form of transportation. As Thailand has developed, the new wealth has attempted to divorce itself from its poorer past in many ways. From Thailand’s worship of Japanese and Korean culture, to its embrace of fashion, flat screens, and frappes, the country is determined to show the world it’s made it. And it has. No visitor to the city can be confused about that. Unfortunately, though,  there still exists a scorn for bicycles, being seen as a vestige of poorer, harder times. But what about posh bikes, you ask? There must be a market for posh American, European, and Japanese-made bikes. And it’s true, there is. There is even a fixed gear hipster cycling scene here, but its expansion is relegated mostly to the hyper-wealthy. Due to a massive import tariff on cycles and components from abroad, most people here can only afford a heavy and poorly manufactured Thai cycle.

Rama IV is the nearest big street to Dane’s apartment, in a part of town called Sathorn, right near the giant Lumpini boxing stadium and as such would be one of our main avenues of transit in Bangkok, so we had better get used to the traffic, which while thick, was quite welcoming and none too fast (during the day at least). We took Rama IV through a number of fly overs, and stop lights, pedaling hard in the morning sun. Bangkok was surprisingly hot and humid for being the farthest north that we’d been so far. We were quite soaked by the time we made it to the old city, and began having to make turns.

We were totally unable to locate the streets that Dane had suggested, but with prudent use of our compasses and kind locals, we found the bike shop in no time.

Dane, Karona, and Natsumi were just finishing getting fitted for their bikes when we rolled up. Scott and I quickly sprung to action, teaching our new team the rules of wheeling.

After a little test run on some of the tiny Sois that ran around the bike rental place, we were ready for the real thing.

It was great to have a larger team of wheelers again. We’d had the pleasure of wheeling with Dane back in Providence, but we were most gleefully surprised to find Karona and Natsumi to be not only hard-core wheelers, but startlingly quick learners at the field commands and general rules of wheeling.

Dane took bishop and headed toward the river, where he took us off the road and onto the sidewalk (a “Mario Cart” call). When we exited the sidewalk, we found ourselves in a huge, semi-open-air market.

Here we locked the bikes and headed to find some grub. We started with some Thai rotis, stuffed with crab meat, then settled on a little restaurant.

The restaurant was a sort of point-and-eat place, and we wasted no time in pointing relentlessly. Dane had, during his time in this country, gained not only an impressive grasp of the Thai language, but also a deft sense of what to order at restaurants. “It’s much cheaper to eat out here than to cook at home,” Dane explained to us, “so I just eat out almost all the time.”

He assured us that the best was yet to come. And Thai food in Thailand was well on its way to a firmly applied AsiaWheeling seal of approval with just what we’d had already.

Our lunch consisted of a number of spicy curries, a sweet dish of meat and potatoes in a soy gravy, Thai sticky rice, a tonkastu-like piece of fried pork, a Chinese-esque garlic broccoli and chicken stir fry, and a plate of fried noodles. Paired with our rotis, it was quite the feast.

Back on the road, we headed toward the more historic temples and palace district of the old city, stopping by Khaosan Road, previously AsiaWheeling’s only port of call in Thailand.  It was so over-run with tourists and touts, that we wondered why we ever would have visited such a place. AsiaWheeling was obviously lacking a Thai Bureau back then.

Dane called a coffee waypoint shortly thereafter.

Although it was not cheap, it was the most delightfully European coffee of the trip to date, produced quite masterfully by Thai hands from an Italian machine.

Before leaving the table, I applied some of Karona’s peppermint essence to my back with a pump-action spritzer, which elicited an unexpectedly intense sensation on the skin.

We kept wheeling, now meandering aimlessly though Bangkok’s old city, stopping from time to time for water or a little shape to eat, until the sun fell low in the sky.

It was time to drop the bikes back at the rental joint, since Natsumi was catching a flight that evening back to Japan. Rather than wheel back on Rama IV at night, we just folded the speed TRs and threw them into the cab. Our new Sri Lankan bungees proved invaluable in securing the trunk, which would not quite close over the Speed TRs.

As we bid farewell to Natsumi, she and Karona were already making plans to do a little Japan wheeling.

AsiaWheeling: spreading the gospel one city at a time.

It was 3:45 in the morning and somehow I was wide awake. It had been only a couple of hours ago that Scott and I had retired after being called to the large swinging windows of our room at the Hotel Nippon  by a massive ruckus outside. When we pushed our heads out into the fresh but balmy Colombo night air, we saw a giant procession coming down the street. Most of the people in the procession were wearing headdresses and pushing a number of shrine/float type objects, set on wheels and lit up with hundreds of lights. These float-shrines were being pushed along by some while others, perhaps those in the most elaborate costumes, actually rode on the devices. The float-shrines were trailed by a van carrying a giant generator that was connected to the floats with a stout bit of electrical cable; it thundered and belched smoke.

So having only returned to my bed a few hours ago, why was I so awake? It was then that I realized the SIM city 2000 theme was playing, and this was a Pavlovian reaction. We needed to get to the airport in time to catch the 7:00 am Sri Lankan Airlines flight to Bangkok, and there was no time to waste. Scott and I struggled to pull ourselves together enough to confirm our baggage was successfully packed and drag it downstairs. Our hotel room at the Hotel Nippon had begun to look something like the apartment I had lived in during college, a place we lovingly referred to as the hovel. By this I mean it had become a wasteland of packaging materials, the smoke from multiple curls of anti-mosquito incense hung thick, and what seemed like hundreds of empty water bottles, bits of take-away packaging, and plastic bags blew through the room like tumbleweeds.

The night before, I had ventured downstairs in search of more take-out Koththu and stopped to prep the bikes for the next day’s travels, so we merely needed to put them in the bags and wait for the cab. The last night’s Koththu, by the way, had been incredibly spicy.

One of the spiciest things I had ever eaten, in fact.   Luckily, we had some buffalo curd to soften the intense flavor of the dish.

After three bites, Scott had found it completely impossible to consume his Koththu, and I was suffering from a most persistent pain all over my mouth still slightly that next day (if you can call 4:00 in the morning day). The owner of the hyper-spicy Koththu joint had approached me as I was buying the stuff, and addressed me in English. “I’ve heard about you,” he said.

“Really?” I replied.

“Yes. I saw you eating bread and lentils next door, and I’d been wanting to come and talk to you but had not the confidence to disturb you. You were studying the history of Coca Cola.” This was true. Scott and I had been eating bread and lentils next door the previous morning and reading about the history of the Coca Cola company on the wikireader. “Why are you in Sri Lanka?” he had asked.

I explained AsiaWheeling to him. And while his cook was making the Koththu, he asked whether I could eat chilies. Having quite the chili ego, I smiled and said, “Oh I love chilies.” Perhaps his chef had taken this as a challenge.

Suddenly, for reasons I will never comprehend, the restaurant then dissolved into a giant argument. With the owner, the cook, and a waiter all screaming at one another about something. The cook began emphasizing his arguments by hammering on a wok with a large metal spatula. I became very uncomfortable and quickly paid for our Koththu, thanking them a few times with no real response, and hurriedly leaving.

Back in the lobby of the Hotel Nippon it was 4:00 in the morning, and our packing of the cycles seemed to have woken the manager; he appeared looking for a tip. The cab driver, it turns out, was present too, lurking in the shadows. He may even have been sleeping that night on the couch. Regardless, we were quite glad to know we had a ride to the airport, and though he had been pretty cold to us, tipped the manager generously, and walked out the swinging double doors of the hotel.

The taxi was more like a 15-passenger van. We had no trouble whatsoever packing the cycles and our luggage into it, and climbed into the thing with plenty of room to stretch out. Our driver was a very intense gentleman, driving very quickly and precisely though the quiet 4:00 am streets of Colombo. His driving was made all the more impressive, when I began to notice that he was not using a clutch. It seems that the clutch on this van had died some time ago, so the whole time he was clutchlessly shifting the thing!

Only the odd drunk and the ubiquitous packs of stray dogs were to be seen. When night wheeling, the latter had caused us a fair bit of grief but no actual violent encounters. Regardless, we were glad to be in the van, rather than out on the streets at this hour. We’ll save getting ravaged by a pack of dogs for later in the trip. Maybe in Kazakhstan.

We expected the airport to be as sleepy and quiet as the streets of Colombo at this hour, but we were sorely mistaken. It was a madhouse. Once we made it through the initial security check, we were siphoned into a giant curling line of people who were waiting to check into our flight. The line moved slowly and someone not far from me was suffering from a quite noticeable gastrointestinal ailment. So long, in fact, was the line that Scott was forced to leave at one point and exit security, in search of water.

Though it seemed to take days, we were finally able to check in. Despite the maddening line, the Sri Lankan Airlines personnel were once again startlingly friendly, and more than willing to accommodate the Speed TRs, taking great care to plaster them with fragile stickers, and carting them off specially, sparing them even from a ride on the luggage conveyor.

Sri Lankan customs was painless, once again full of smiles, and we made our way from there into the monstrously over-priced interior world of the domestic terminal. We bought what must have been the most expensive Nescafe of either of our lives and made our way to one of the few cafes in the terminal to await our flight. To our great surprise and excitement, the cafe had free wireless Internet, which was so addictive and transporting that we nearly missed our flight. Realizing we had become quite tardy, we hurried down the terminal toward our gate, where we were for one reason or another spared from the passport security check.  After passing through the check, we chatted with a weathered and disheveled Frenchman in his mid 60s who had just arrived from Paris and was heading to Bangkok with us.  As cabin luggage, he brought an open rubber diving bag with a single nylon strap holding it to his shoulder.  He wore chucks, loose jeans with no belt, a plaid shirt, and stylish glasses.  Wherever this fellow was going, we thought, must be a place worth visiting.

While the Indian fellows behind us were being detained and investigated, we were able to hurry our way onto the plane, where we had what was likely the nicest economy seats on the entire jet.

They were at the bulkhead, but for one reason or another, had been given a whole extra row’s worth of leg room. We lazed back and settled in for the flight.

Out the window, the beautiful and mountainous Sri Lanka passed below under wispy clusters of white clouds.

I’ll tell you, dear reader, Sri Lankan Airlines really knows how to treat a fellow. We were given delightful pineapple-themed menus from which to order brunch, offered many glasses of juice and coffee, and shown such kindness by the staff. Sri Lankan Airlines: huge AsiaWheeling stamp of approval.

After the meal, I retreated to the bathroom to freshen up with a shave.

I had barely begun to watch Liza Minelli’s Lucky Lady on my private screen when we landed in Bangkok.

We had been in touch with our Thailand Bureau, its chief officer being a Mr. Dane Wetschler, about meeting up that day and arranging for a place to stay, but unfortunately, had been unable to reach the point of email exchange in which we would acquire our man’s cell phone number.  Fruitlessly, we powered up the mobile office to scour our email, but the digits were no where to be found.

So we were riding somewhat blind. The only information that we had that would connect us to the AsiaWheeling Thailand Bureau was the address Dane had given us to use in shipping his business cards.

So our plan was to navigate through immigration, then take a cab to the address, in hopes of finding him.

Strangely enough, Thailand was to be the least English speaking country we had yet traveled in, but also, at least in the case of Bangkok, one of the most developed. The Bangkok Airport was clean and efficient, as we had remembered it, sporting some highly evolved advertising. My stomach was still rumbling a little from the high voltage Koththu that I had purchased in the middle of the night, so the presence of sparkling clean and fresh scented bathrooms was also a delightful comfort.

We stopped at a Japanese style Ramen shop to enjoy two steaming bowls of sustenance, which were so refreshingly different that despite very few hours of sleep the previous night, they brought us back into the present. And with that we climbed into a cab. The cabbie spoke very little English and had no idea where Dane’s place was, though when we showed him the address that we had scrawled on a piece of paper, he did recognize the neighborhood. It seemed he would be able to get us to the general vicinity , but we’d have to rely on the locals for the exact location.

As we drove deeper and deeper into Bangkok, Scott and I both began drawing lines between this city and Tokyo. It had a very solid stylistic feel to it, good-looking streets, and the same mixture of medium-rise apartment buildings, covered with balconies containing A/C units and plenty of drying laundry, and giant business and condominium towers, which loomed sporting huge advertisements.

It was also filled with convenience stores, just like Tokyo. It looked and felt wealthy in way we had not experienced since Kuala Lumpur. When we arrived in Dane’s neighborhood, we found it to be a maze of small streets, cluttered with street food stands, 7-11s, and little guest houses. The pedestrian traffic was surprisingly white, indicating this was an expat neighborhood.

We drove back and forth on the small streets looking for Sathorn Condo Place, but to no avail. We asked for directions again and again, and while each person we (or our cab driver) spoke to was more than happy to help, no one seemed to know which apartment building was Dane’s. Finally, we parked outside a 7-11 and our driver radioed in for navigational support.

The navigational support was inconclusive, and finally we just climbed out of the cab and unfolded the cycles. We now began to explore on wheels. As we rode, Scott began to explain a theory that he was working on, drawing the conclusion that in fact the mysterious condominium complex was actually above the 7-11. And when we returned to the 7-11, the woman at the front desk seemed to confirm this.

We then approached a nearby security guard and started to communicate in pantomime that we were looking to encounter a giant curly-haired man who we knew lived inside. He looked at us curiously, until one of his compatriots recognized our description and exclaimed “Dahn!” Ah, it seems Dane was going by the name “Dahn” here in Thailand (we later discovered that this was because ‘dane’ in Thai means something like ‘refuse to be discarded’ …fair enough). The new security guard, promptly unlocked the door and led us to the elevator and up to the 7th floor. Once the elevator doors opened, we walked directly across to a door, which sure enough had a couple of tee-shirt shaped charms hanging next to it, one of which said “Dane,” the other of which said “Jeremy.” Looked like the right place…

Our guard knocked sharply at Dane’s door and we waited. He knocked again. And again. He began to frown and look at us. We were just about to give up when we heard a slight shuffling noise inside. We starting knocking again with renewed fury and soon the door opened. And there he was, in all his glory, 7 odd feet tall, size 16 feet, prominent beak of a nose and curly black hair. He greeted us with a giant grin, and dismissed the security guard with a deftly maneuvered “kup kun kap.”

He immediately invited us to the roof for a cup of coffee and to take in a view of the city. And what a city it is.

It was already obvious. Thailand was going to be a decidedly new chapter of the trip.  Coming back downstairs, Dane serenaded us with beats from his MonoMachine, an electronic music sequencer synthesizer.

That night, Dane introduced us to his girlfriend, Karona, a Japanese woman living in Bangkok, and her friend, Natsumi. The five of us went out to a fantastic restaurant that evening.

It was our first taste of Thai food in Thailand, and we were quite blown away, not least so by the rice. It was very long grain, and unbelievably sticky.

Dane explained to us that it is often eaten with the hands.  We were thrilled by the plates of greens which flanked each meat dish.

As the night wore on, we lounged and munched on glutinous rice shapes, discussing, among many other things, plans for all of us to wheel Bangkok together the next day.

We had taken a bit of anti-anxiety medication in order to aid our slumbers on the night bus from Karwar to Bangalore so we found ourselves, once again, the last to wake up and exit the bus, and doing so in a quite relaxed and unhurried manner. It was cold outside, maybe even as low as 60ºF. After all the boiling and sweating of the trip hereto, we savored the chill.

The Speed TRs had suffered no damage on the ride, thanks to Scott’s careful negotiation and generous tipping of the baggage handlers; they were waiting for us in a neat little pile by the bus. So relaxed were we, that the normal barrage of touts, cab drivers, auto rickshaw wallahs, goods sellers, and con artists failed to even slightly miff us. We joked and giggled with them, eventually parting like old friends and wandering across the street to buy some coffees from a stand.

We had booked accommodation at a local hostel by the name of Mass Residency, and they were kind enough to give us the number of a metered cab company that was more than happy to send a man to pick us up and take us to the hotel for only a fraction of what it had cost us last time we arrived in this city.  The owners of the Mass Residency were two fantastic blokes, who were glad to serve us coffee, learn about AsiaWheeling, and show us to a very affordable, clean, and comfortable room on the 4th floor of their most comforting guest house.

We could smell the ink from the AsiaWheeling seal of approval already. The day was still quite young when we climbed on the cycles and headed in search of breakfast.

Shortly into the wheel, we realized it was Holi in Bangalore. Holi is the Hindu spring holiday, and a celebration of color. One of the main modes of celebration is the tossing of colored liquids and powders onto one another. So in our search for a restaurant, we stopped to ask some very colorful fellows for a recommended dosa house.

And by golly, did they deliver. They directed us to a local institution by the name of Maiya’s, and dear reader, if you are ever in Bangalore, you must visit this place and have one of their vegetable-stuffed dosas.

They were prepared much like a traditional South Indian dosa, but the potato filling was replaced with a rich blend of vegetables, and the accompanying coconut chutney was delicately spiced and bright green.

We also sampled their rice porridge and their vadas, which were delightful.

The coffee was strong and hit us with the caffeine blitz in a refreshingly manic way. Renewed and refreshed, we climbed back on the cycles and took a circuitous route back to the Mass Residency. Many of the shops in Bangalore were closed for the holiday, and the sight of fellows covered in spatters of neon color was quite commonplace. It must be noted, however, that Bangalore is one of the most tame places to experience Holi. In many cities in North India, we would not have been able to wheel without battling huge crowds in the streets, and getting soaked ourselves with color.

We got back to the Mass Residency with just enough time for a little furious working on correspondence before meeting with our dear Mr. Kulkarni for a quick bite to eat and to thank him for his most gracious services at the India Bureau. Nikhil came in the door bearing a very exciting cardboard package. It was our Maui Jim’s. Maui Jim, as you, dear reader, have no doubt already read on our partnership page, is our sunglasses partner. However, through a series of miscomunications, we had not been able to pick them up before leaving for the trip. Since then we had been hoping to receive them in various cities, but each time fate stepped in the way.  Finally, we were able to arrange for a direct transfer between the Maui Jim India Bureau and AsiaWheeling’s similar entity.

With the solemn intensity of Indiana Jones recovering a long lost artifact, we tore into the packaging and removed two cases, which appeared to be made out of pressed bamboo, but had the weight of steel.  We opened the cases with gentle creaking noise and there they were, gleaming with perfection, nestled in tropical patterns. Some serious AsiaWheeling spectacles.