adventure on wheels: Nice, nicer, Thai?

The amount of friendly people I met in Thailand equals about the amount of people that tried to rip me off in India.

Maybe because we were travelling by bicycle or because we looked dirtier than normal tourists, people didn’t see us as cash machines on wheels and didn’t want to take advantage of us. It was quite the opposite.

Apart from the first two nights in Bangkok we didn’t have to enter a single hotel in the whole time in Thailand! But not only did the policemen and the monks let us camp wherever we wanted, we met a whole lot of other kind people along the way.

One morning a white Honda pulled up in front of us and out came a hip looking young man, waving his arm up and down in order to stop us. He told us that he is from the Mountain bike club in Singburi and offered us to stay at their club house before we even spoke a word. Because the house was only 15 kilometers away and we wanted to cycle a little more we declined his offer with thanks. He left his number in case we have a problem we can call him ANYTIME. Later, when Theo and I were having lunch in one of the rest places along the road, the same white Honda appeared and the man came out with 2 ice cold drinks for us. He was worried about us and asked again where we would spend the night. Then he offered to pick us up wherever we would get to today, drive us back to the club house and give us a lift to wherever we want tomorrow. Although it sounded tempting because he was such a nice guy we didn’t make use of his offer.

On a hot afternoon we stopped at a little gas station where we spotted a table to sit down. A minute after we made ourselves comfortable a man came out of the house and gave us two bottles of ice cold water. He joined us, smoked some cigarettes and after a long chat he disappeared and came back with a whole plate of mangoes from his garden and proudly presented them to us.

Another guy that deserves to be mentioned here was a worker that gave us ripe bananas after he saw us taking some unripe bananas that were lying at the side of the road. We just picked about 8 unripe bananas off the bunch and he brought us a whole lot that were ready to be eaten. After a while he came back with a knife and chopped off the whole bunch of unripe bananas and handed them over to us.

In our time in Thailand we got so many bananas from different people that sometimes I couldn’t remember the last time we paid for bananas.

Then there was the nice doctor that gave us food (and even wanted us to take some money…but that’s another story…), the family that gave me a red bull so I could fly up and down the hills, all the people that gave us rides and all the people that waved to me from the back of the trucks and encouragingly showed me a thumbs-up, that made my time in Thailand unforgettable.