Sleep of the Week: Thai Road-Block

I have had ten months to come up with a weekly blog theme, so after ten months of answering questions relating to my nightly search for a spot to lay my head, it seems obvious that this should be the theme.

When you’re on the move, rarely spending more than a night or two in the same valley, village, town or city, the search for a place to sleep becomes a regular ritual. Sometimes it’s fun and at other times it’s a bore, or even a chore. But it is always necessary. Mosques, churches, under the stars, roadside ditches, abandoned petrol stations, guest houses and friend’s houses – I’ve slept all over the place, so…..

First up, this week’s Sleep of the Week is a Thai Army Military Checkpoint. (More photos from my time there are on my photostream on my website homepage.)

I was cycling south from Ranong, a provincial capital that is only separated from Burma by a narrow stretch of water. It was 5.30pm and I had just started looking for a good camping spot when I came across a military checkpoint – there had been many that day, partly because of the proximity to Burma. I spotted buildings in a clearing in the forest (I call it ‘jungle’ – sounds cooler), and decided to pull over. They didn’t speak English, so once I had gauged their mood (it was good – they were all smiles and high 5’s), I gestured, using a series of universal hand signals, that I wanted to camp outside their buildings. Without further questioning one of the soldiers led me to a bed made of tree branches and told me I could sleep there.

The atmosphere was much friendlier than at the Turkish military base outside Adana, where I was questioned for an hour about my identity. The younger soldiers seemed delighted to have me there. They were moderately impressed that I had cycled from London, but all they really wanted to talk about was football. When I told them I was English, they all laughed and a few of them chirped up in unison’ “Michael Owen!” I told them he hadn’t been much cop for years and that Torres was now the man, but they wouldn’t have any of it. Happily they were all ardent Liverpool fans (as most Thais are), and they remembered his glory days. I spent the next hour with a soldier, who had a bullet around his neck, tattoos of guns all over his back, and too much time on his hands, getting thrashed at FIFA Soccer on the Nintendo.

Although I had picked up an extra portion of pad Thai in a cafe earlier in the day, and stuck it in a Tupperware, they refused to let me hit the sack without devouring a few corn on the cobs in front of a surprisingly enjoyable Thai war movie.

Frogs are causing me a problem at the moment. There are thousands of them, and the noise they make at night, especially on this night when it was coupled with the soliders’ constant movement as they rotated their 2 hour shifts on the road, isn’t conducive to a good night’s kip – not even after 120 kms on the bike. So I was up at just gone 5am the next  morning. I thanked the soldiers, bid them farewell and was on my way.

It turned out to be the third day of almost constant rain in succession. The monsoon has hit, and hard. Today it is raining too hard to move anywhere, so I’ve got myself a day off. The locals tell me it’ll rain for the next week though, so I guess I will just have to get back on the road tomorrow and try to keep moving. I’m hoping to hit Malaysia by the end of the week.

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