Day: 2 August 2014

it’s now 11:30pm and we have just arrived in our rooms on the top floor of the Long Beach Hotel Cha-am. Normally the top floor of our accommodation is the third floor and we have to lug our luggage up stairs to a shared dorm.

This time it is on the top floor, the tenth floor, overlooking the Royal Beach of Thailand and Cha-Am. Apparently it is in the little think bit of land to the south west of Bangkok – geez I miss a paper map. And my iPad had failed my in my time of need. Sure it is working fine for blogging and email, but it failed to sync correctly in the last few days before I left Perth, so none of the maps I loaded appear to be working, and most importantly, the movies of Australia – important cultural ones like The Castle, and the Lake Eyre doco, that I loaded to show to anyone interested whilst travelling.

This morning, as per my previous post, I remained shattered after the first day on the road and the very late finish. Tonight I am not so shattered, but still, another long long day is never good. The weather is slightly less humid and hot as we head north. I think we are now 13 degrees north of the equator, compared to 2° at KL. Nevertheless, with the haze of Malaysia clearing, the sun can shine through, and it IS hot.

If I can meet Colin, an old mate of Thomas’s, in the foyer at 7:30 in the morning, he will take me to someone who can most likely fix the air conditioner. This will be good.

Grace is worried about it affecting the fuel economy….. I’m beyond caring about that. Thomas was concerned about refuelling with Malaysian A$0.60 litre fuel before entering expensive Thailand. Today I think we paid about A$1.00 litre…..

Interesting for those wondering how much more fuel I am using because of the high performance turbocharger, the answer is …. with another vehicle similarly loaded to ours, manual, and travelling the same route in convoy, they filled with 77 litres of diesel, I filled with 72 litres. And they commented how quickly I could get up hills compared to them, how quickly I could accelerate compared to them. It’s a joy to drive. Thanks Graeme from GTurbo, sponsor of the turbo supply and tuning. So it IS possible to have power and not sacrifice economy.

I’ll load some photos from yesterday’s farewell onto the blog from yesterday, so if you’ve already read it, go back and check the photos.

Today was a lot of driving. No crisis, apart from one chap who had a flat tyre. Brand new tyres, the same as I use in Australia. I noticed it down a bit this morning, measured all his tyre pressures on my digital gauge and made sure he understood that 20 psi was not good enough to drive at highway speeds.

At the first stop, after an hour of driving at highway speeds, he filled the tyre with air. Several hours later, he had to stop and change the tyre as it was going flat again…..

Scenes of Thailand are becoming familiar. One is the gracious and friendly nature of the people we come across. Both in shops and service places like hotels. I guess the ones in shops are much the same as anywhere else really. Some haven’t been all that gracious and friendly, but at least they have not treated us with disdain.

One place we stopped was the elephant temple on the highway. Apparently the elephants were moved from the area when the highway was built, so they built a shrine for them, both to remember the ones that got moved and also for the spirits of the ones who died in the past. Firecracker are common way of letting these spirits know you care. Not really sure on that one, but certainly there were plenty of fireworks being let off. And EVERY car and truck that went past gave a loud blow on their horn.

Earlier we stopped at a pretty typical low grade fuel stop come multi food market. All sorts of stuff, some we could identify, some not. Jacob was eager to try many things. We bought some weird fruits, photos below. Yes they are nice.

Lunch stop was at another huge fuel stop come multi food market all. We had lunch for around A$1.50 and on top were served free veggies. Some were probably of the bean family. Others were apparently baby eggplants, there was some grasses and other leaves. Much less concerned about what we eat now as the days go by. No adverse reactions for the tummy, though we are trying to drink bottled water, most of the time. or beer.

I’m going to load a few photos, then go to bed. It’s after midnight. Rest assured we are going well, the people have civilized things like fuel stops, ATM’s, clean toilets, reasonable roads, and some pretty fancy trucks 🙂

What a first day!!

Thomas has a timing routine that he will give us to know how we can keep to schedule. Our first day, now yesterday, was 8/9/10.

So at 8am you get up.
At 9am you should be having breakfast
At 10am you MUST be in the car ready to roll.

Prior to departing there is a short briefing and a stretching time, all very sensible and well organised.

Yesterday we left at 11am.
There was Press interviews to be had, last minute ‘stuff’ happening. We’d been parked under cover in our group, and had a ritual flagging off under the gaze of cameras – who’s operators then needed to jump into the cars which then had to catch up.

As car #10 we followed, not a clue where we were going. The rules were to keep sight of the car behind. Car #9 forgot that bit, quite a lot. Truth be known, Car #10 forgot that bit too, I was too stressed trying to negotiate the freeway entrances and find car #9. And listen to the new voices on the two way radio, some quiet, some raucous. Our radio is a VHS unit, hand held. Our UHF units from Aus are not able to be used at all, unless I share our handheld UHF with another car and communicate on our own in car unit

Moving on. Highways, toll ways, keeping up with car #9, windows down, no air conditioning, loud trucks and highway noises, hard to understand but really critical radio instructions – arriving at our destination at close to midnight KL time – this morning I remain exhausted.

Jacob did a good amount of driving, slowly getting used to the vehicle size, the steering and weight and the need for tiny corrections at speed. Motor bikes taking risks like you see on You Tube. Later I’ll see what the dash cam has captured. Madness. They are not big bikes, just little ones that are wrung out at 100kmh, so the riders dart in behind buses to get the slipstream – at 110kmh on the freeway. They get bored, so they ride side by side and chat, hold hands, or when really need some excitement, lie with their legs out straight BACKWARDS on the bike, or cross their arms over. Aussie readers will find this unbelievable. I still do.

#9 expired in a puff of smoke. $1 resolved the problem by towing #9 via an A frame carried just for that purpose. Problem seems to be a broken camshaft. I think broken timing belt. Either way. essentially a catastrophic failure. Resolution: tow the car to the local car repair area, bring a new complete head from KL, install it overnight and catch up in a day

With this happening, other delays for food, refuelling and pee stops, oh and a border crossing, we made our way through the night to Pattalong where the lovely staff had set out our food in a most ornate and careful fashion. Jacob appreciated how much effort had been put into the food preparation, and how disappointed they would have been for us to roll in so late, eat quickly and crash into bed, not able to enjoy their efforts to the greatest extent.

Border crossing. $1 brother, Abul, had made his way to the border earlier and made our transit so much smoother. First we had to leave Malaysia, cancel the Carnet, and make our way to the duty free shop. Many of our tour were very excited at the prospect of buying stuff duty free. We bought nothing.

Thailand entry point. Hot, noisy, bussling. Something reminded of a drug trafficking movie I saw years ago – was it Bangkok Express?? There was one gruff customs official, and a nice young woman with a smile. Fortunately I got the latter.

Jacob drove through the night, poor road lane markings – which are irrelevant anyway with the continual weaving around motor bikes. Interestingly I don’t see people using mobile phones whilst driving. I see three up on a small motorbike, women sidesaddle, noone wearing helmets, motorbikes going against the traffic, but fortunately no one using their phones whilst driving.

This morning after far too short a sleep – we lost an hour in time zones, and today was a 6:30/7:30/8:30 routine. Nice resort, beside a lake. Thai long boats with their noisy petrol engines and long prop shaft. Images of Asia I have seen on TV, now seeing for myself as normal. Just what I came for…..