It all started with shopping

In Bangkok Theo and I were on a mission: To make the dream come true, the first thing we needed was: a bicycle! On our way through Bangkok we didn’t show any interest whatsoever in all the beautiful temples and Buddha statues we were passing every now and then. We only had eyes for those 2-wheelers. The ones that don’t make a sound, when they glide over the asphalted roads. And, by the way, are very rarely seen on the busy and VERY polluted streets of Bangkok.

We had a bad start, because the busses didn’t seem to work in our favor.  We missed our stop, we took the wrong bus or we were on a bus with the right number but the wrong destination. When we were walking around instead, we weren’t much luckier though. We got lost so many times; we started to wonder if Bangkok was spinning around itself. I guess coming from an eco village with 100 people to a capital city with 8 million inhabitants, was just too big of a change!

After having spent 2 nights at a so called budget hotel in the city centre, we moved to Toom’s place in the north of Bangkok. Toom is a couchsurfer with a big house, who was hosting 8 others besides us.

On our second day, after we were lead from one market to the other and from one street to the other, a bicycle shop miraculously appeared in front of us and inside we found two second hand mountain bikes. They needed some changes, but they were perfect. Three days later, when we were supposed to pick them up we started to have second thoughts about the price and the quality. We were talking in front of the bicycle shop for a long time and missed what was happening right in front of our eyes:

A Belgian couple sold the bikes they have been riding around Southeast Asia to the shop owner. With one ear I heard them telling it to the German couple who were fixing their bikes next to us. I looked at the bikes. It was love on first sight! I ran after the Belgian couple and after a little chat they went back into the bicycle shop and bought the bikes they just sold back and sold them to us. That’s how Theo and I became proud owners of two bicycles. Two bicycles we have only SEEN for about a minute. Thank god the frames fitted us!

Sold!

Toom our host (apparently VERY happy about our departure :/...) and us ready to hit the road.