TravellingStrom

Well that had to be one of the worst nights of my life 😦 I woke up so many times either sweating my ring off or freezing the other side off and every time I woke I coughed and can pretty much tell you to the inch where inside that headache was coming from 😦

I was not staying here though, I chewed some more peanut brittle for brekky and hit the road. I planned to ride to Nan today, it was about 370km and if I could get there I could take tomorrow off and have a rest day prior to the HU meeting. I probably could have a rest day today, but I actually wanted to ride 🙂 The road from here went through some hilly sections as it made its way back to a river system, but before that were a lot of roadworks, not shutting the road down, but they were widening it on either side.

Once I got over to the road near the river(not the Mekong) it really surprised me as it turned to shit, I was not prepared for this. The potholes and corrugations were bad and with the tree shadows the holes were hard to miss at times. I was going so slow I started to have doubts about reaching Nan today!!!!!

But lucky for me this was only about a 30km section and I came to an intersection where the quality picked up, along with my mood 🙂 I was still cold and sweating, but tried to ignore it.

I was getting a bit peckish, not having eaten much for the past day and I found this nice restaurant which is worth a mention. Not sure of its name but it had free wifi and they cooked me a lovely Pad Thai. The name I could not work out, but the WiFi name was in English so I will call it the Nitiphoom Cafe and it is in the town of Ban Khok N18.02090 E101.06877. Late mail, Som has deciphered the name on the front awning as Nitiphoom, so the name is the same as the WiFi point 🙂

The meal was delicious and cheap to boot 🙂 After lunch I continued on, I only had 125km to go to Nan so if the road was good I was looking at a 3.30pm arrival or thereabouts. I had arranged with Tony, from Tony’s Place for a roast dinner which should go down a treat 🙂 You can get whatever is on the board at any time, but if you want a special, they need time to shop for it etc. The rest of the ride was quite fun and as I got close to Nan, I could see the rice fields being prepared for the summer season. They had been growing rice sprouts(?) in small fields and then transplant these shoots into the main paddies.

So I was correct in my time guess, I arrived at Tony’s Place at 3.30 and checked in. He had contacted me via Facebook to say he was going riding to Chiang Rai, but his wife would look after me. But, things were just not going my way lately, the message about my roast dinner had not got through and to top it off, as I stopped and got off my bike a stingy thing that had flown up my jacket sleeve stung me, ouch!!!!

I went to the Amazing Guest House to try and grab a cabin but they had none left and the upstairs rooms did not have WiFi nor ensuite, so I bailed. Just up the road I found a hotel called 107 Tower Hotel N18.79550 E100.78523 The rooms were clean, beds were rock hard as most Thai beds are, but super fast WiFi, aircon, cable TV all for 350Baht or $11 so for me it was ideal, especially with the rest day tomorrow 🙂

So, I booked in and went back up to Tony’s Place and just ordered a pork chop with chips, but only managed half of it. So in the end, it was good that my roast dish was not made for me as I would not have done it justice, I was starting to shiver again and went back to the hotel, had a hot shower and crashed once again with the sweats and the headache 😦

Cheers from Nan
TravellingStrom