My world walk blog Thailand -2

Gat, A and so much Fhun!

Some of you may remember that a few weeks ago in Australia that I was stopped by a motorcyclist from Thailand. Captain Motorcycle 2018 as he calls himself is a somewhat of a legend here in Thailand. He is on a career break from his Thai Airlines pilot job. He is currently on a world motorbike ride. Immediately after he made his post of our meeting I got about fifty Facebook requests from Thailand! One of those people, a man called Gat spent three days trying to track me down. I was delighted when he eventually did this morning and then came along with his friend, a man called A. Unfortunately, the lads had to return to work. Their great efforts were truly appreciated by yours truly. They followed me on their motorcycles for a couple of kilometres and my luck was in because just as they were departing I came up to another one of those ghastly pedestrian overpasses that I mentioned yesterday. So Gat and A helped me lift Karma up and over onto the other side of the highway. Then it was time to bid our farewell. Thai people are so friendly and helpful.
It poured rain all day long. I had just got beyond what I considered Bangkok's suburbs and though still busy the traffic eased a bit. I walked down route 3010 alongside a canal and all kinds of business like laundry and tyre repair services which people worked from their houses. Despite the rain, the temperature was about 28C. With high humidity, I was sweating profusely, almost fever-like from my forehead and my clothes were saturated. Upon passing a restaurant a woman called Fhun asked me if I was ok. I wanted to stop and sit down for a few minutes out of the rain to check on my Google Map. At that point, her English dried up and when I made a sit-down motion I was escorted to the bathroom! Lol, Sometimes travel can be frustrating but with patience, it usually works out. The restaurant looked to me more like a converted repair garage.

I took Fhun up on her offer of a coffee and before I had even finished she was asking me where I was going to sleep that night and soon I had an offer of a place to lay my sleeping bag. It was in their popup tent and on top of a large platform inside the restaurant. I had planned on 31 kilometres and to finish at Wang Noi and was eight shy of that total but I didn't look a gift horse in the eye! My Thai route is about 650 kilometres and I hadn't walked in the first two days of my 28-day visa. So, obviously, I'm in good shape as long as I keep chipping along every day and keep one eye on the ball.

Aged 32 and along with Yut her husband and seven-year-old twin boys we had an enjoyable couple of hours chatting via Google Translate. I also save my cancer awareness messages in the form of Thai screenshots to show to people I meet.

I have a regular light-weight tent which would be a painstaking down in the grass and with all this monsoon rain and the difficulties in packing up a wet tent in the morning. I'm missing my old popup tent that I left behind in Australia. Popups are wonderful and don't need staking down and can be set up on concrete or gravel or even in a safe, sheltered built-up area. Yes, it was a mistake to leave it behind. I plan to pick one up soon.