Tonight I’m sleeping in a police station… Yes, you hear correctly – a police station. This one is a Tourist Police police station and no, they didn’t lock me up for anything, but kindly let me stay overnight, as there is no cheap accommodation in this city apparently. And what city is it? It is called Nakhon Sawan. Well, not that I really believe there would be no cheap guesthouse or hotel, but thanks to the people I asked about a guesthouse in the city (and thanks to other people who were friends of friends as I understood and also a couple of passing buyers and all these people’s lively discussion about the problem) I ended up here. It is free and it is definitely a very interesting experience. The policemen on duty who is here with me watching TV didn’t seem really happy about me taking pictures there so I didn’t push it. So no documentation this time – sorry. I have a location though J - N15.68814 E100.11049.

I thought I would be much further, maybe already in Mae Chaem by this time. However, thanks to lots of forced deviations of my planned route as well as one bad choice on my side I zig-zaged so much that after 450km added to my clock today I’m “only” in Nakhon Sawan. I expected to do even more kilometers today, since I was woken up by a public radio at exactly 6AM so I started early and since there was nothing planned to see on the way. The reason I did not clock more kilometers is that at least about 1/3 of the total distance was on at sections quite rough unsealed roads.

My GPS was showing a road leading to the Si Nakarin dam and then another connecting to it and leading along the rest of the length of the dam to the north. There I was hoping for some kind of a connecting road as the GPS only show “main” roads. Well, I did not see the connecting road and at the end of the road to the dam I found a ferry, waiting for some more cars to drive in. Since the road to that place was a narrow, pretty rough unsealed road leading to 800m above sea level and then back down to 250m and I could not see anything anyway (I was looking forward to some nice views) I decided in favor of the ferry. The decision was made even easier by the price of the ferry for a motorbike with a rider – mere 30 Baht!

I saw a tourist marker to a waterfall just a short way back and a group of Thai teachers on holiday told me that they were just coming from there and that it was beautiful. This information, together with the fact that the marker surprisingly showed the distance to the waterfall, which was only 7km, I slowly decided to take off the barge again and go and check the waterfall out. It turned out that I was deciding too slowly as the barge’s engine was started and the barge started moving. Too late to see the fall this time…

On the other side it was only few kilometers to a sealed road so the access to this apparently beautiful waterfall is quite easy from the east across the dam, which should probably be approached from south. I myself drove north and the road ran off of asphalt again. There I again climbed to about 800m and back down, overtaking about 15 cars in the process, then letting them pass me again when I stopped to take a picture and so I had to pass them again as riding behind them was not too pleasant in the clouds of dust they were creating.

I had the bike falling twice on me today (as opposed to falling from the bike). These were only my second and third fall in Asia so far. The first one today was at a service station where I was just moving the bike aside to stand it there. My helmet seemed to be falling of the mirror where I put it this time and so I was saving it. Doing that I let go of the clutch lever and the bike took off in little higher speed straight towards a low railing. I breaked with my other hand, but the front wheel only locked and was now sliding on the little rocks that were making the surface. The engine still pushed on so at the end I could not equalize these two fighting forces and lost my balance. Nothing really happened there and the bike was quickly picked up with the help of the fuel station employees. The second fall was on a 3-kilometer stretch of slippery mud through a village where they had just been working on it. At one point the mud got even slipperier and my almost bold rear wheel totally lost its grip. Before I knew I did 180 and the bike was on its side again. This time I hit my calf against the pannier again as I was trying to counterbalance it. Nothing really happened again and I got help from one of the villagers to stand the bike up again.

The roads today had mostly no turn-offs so I could not follow the GPS direction that easily and had to go where the road was taking me. Once I finally got to a sealed road that was looking like it should now last I was happy. I even found a Tourist and Highway Information. I went there and surprisingly, the guy couldn’t speak a word English. One would expect that in tourist information places they should be able to speak some English. Anyway, they had an excellent road map there. which I used to re-plan my approach to Mae Chaem. All looked good and I should have been fine with only sealed roads to ride. Right after I left this office I made a mistake to not follow the direction the GPS was telling me, but rather I followed a marker to the city I was heading to first. I even returned once only to find that there seemed to be no other way. OK, so I followed the marker. It didn’t take long and I was on an unsealed road again. I passed another military checkpoint (my third one today – I guess they either have them to prevent poachers to easily enter the parks or because all these places are quite close to Myanmar border) and was on the roughest road of the day. After 10 kilometers it was clear to me that there had to be another road to Ban Rai. I kept to my “rule” not to travel the same road twice, not even in the opposite direction, so I kept going. After 35 kilometers of this road getting from bad to worse I ended up crossing a creek and riding a narrow road where only the two wheel ruts from the car and tractor wheels were not covered by grass. At that point I had to ask someone. I did and the two people on the tractor who I was now talking to assured me that the only way to Ban Rai is the whole way back where I came from. If I continued I would apparently end up in a national park where there are no roads at all. “That’s just great” I thought to myself. To add to the low point a look at the sky told me that rain was cooking there for me again. So I stepped on the gas and was hoping to get out of the clay and rocky road before it gets wet. With the current stage my rear tire is in that would be hell. The rain caught me about 5 kilometers before I reached the end of the dirt… “Great, great, fucking great!” I thought to myself again (you have to excuse my French as I really felt that way). Fortunately it wasn’t as slippery as I thought it would be when wet, so I only got wet myself and pants and boots covered with the color of the clay as I was now riding through muddy streams running on the surface of the road. The rain stopped 5km after I reached the asphalt… The nature was playing games with me there but it could have been worse.

Now I was determined to follow my GPS as by now I lost most of my confidence in the traffic signs in Thailand. It was going to be dark in an hour at that time.

What followed was the looking for a place to stay described at the beginning of this article.

(450km)