We felt odd stopping. It wasn’t really what we did. Don’t get me wrong, we enjoyed Hua Hin, went to the Tamarind Market, I did a cooking class. One night we went to the Hua Hin pier, had the best massage either of us had ever had, and watched the sunset from the pretty market on the pier. But we were missing that onward impetus. We need to work out the balance between riding and stopping. We haven’t quite done that yet.

We also have to figure out a way for Dalma to work. She has a few old back injuries, and she needs to work in a good chair. These were not even middling chairs, and it took its toll. In the future, we may need to look into coworking spaces I think.

I had a blocked ear on the day we were due to leave. As both hearing and balance are important in riding, we made an appointment at a local ENT clinic and set off to see a wat or a Buddhist temple for those in the know. I’d randomly seen it on the map and thought it would make a pretty backdrop for a photo of the bikes. We rode down roads of decreasing size and quality. Google eventually guided us down a goat track. We stopped, looked at each other, and headed back the way we had come. We eventually came across the wat. It was gorgeous in the way of religious buildings, literally in the middle of nowhere, but with stairs bounderied by giant golden snakes. A woman came over from the workers setting up for a festival and kindly invited us to go in. We asked if we could take a photo and video in front of the temple, and her eyes opened wide and shook her head. It took a couple of minutes until we realised she had thought we were asking permission to take our bikes into the wat for a photo. We all had a bit of a laugh, we took our shoes off, for we were on sacred ground, and climbed the stairs.

Once inside, there was a giant golden Buddha statue along with a seven-pointed silk design above us and what looked like tapestries. While I understand why people build these beautiful buildings to honour their creator deity, as an atheist, I still wish people would equally fund the building of beautiful schools, performance spaces, libraries, museums, public places, and universities. Of course, there are exceptions: Sydney Opera House, the British Museum, and the Országháza in Budapest. But many other spaces for non-religious people were clearly designed by architects from the Fuck You School of Architecture. This musing didn’t distract from the beauty I saw in front of me, but gosh, it would be nice to live in a world ordered by me. I wound up my red flag, stuffed it back on the bike next to my copy of The Communist Manifesto, thanked the kind temple workers, and rode to the hospital.

We needn’t have bothered making an appointment, as we waited an hour to be seen anyway. An efficient doctor sorted my blocked ear and charged me an amount to make me go “Gosh!” and understand why so many people come to Thailand for medical tourism. It was half what it would cost me in Australia, even with the Medicare rebate. I reached for The Communist Manifesto, but Dalma smacked my hand away. I guess I can’t blame her. Ceausescu was an ass.

We finally got on the road. We weren’t planning on riding far today. In one of her fevered rantings brought about by working on holiday, Dalma had complained that we hadn’t seen a floating market, where people sell things from narrow rowboats. In an effort to save her sanity and, coincidentally, my neck, I looked on Google Maps and found one a hundred kilometres away in the general direction of Bangkok. There was a very nice-looking traditional hotel near it.

We were heading there now. Our navigators guided us to Route 4. I think we’ve both gained and lost things with these instant atlases. My early travels had involved paper maps, Lonely Planet guides, and turning up on hotel doorsteps to ask if they were full. Now things were easier. Need a floating market? Type into your handheld oracle and find the answer. But we’d also lost the background research. In the 90s, I’d read books about countries before we went there, find the history, learn about wars long gone, but who has time for that now? I should do that more often.

This journey was almost entirely on Route 4, which can be summarised in two words. It was busy, and it was boring. Eventually, we turned off and suddenly found ourselves in a magical realm of winding roads, coconut trees, and pretty villages. The road turned this way and that way like a mouse finding its way around a warehouse. We arrived at the market late in the afternoon to find the last shops closing for the day. Thai voices and Thai laughter drifted across the water. It was more impressive than we’d expected. We would later discover it was the most important floating market in Thailand emerging from King Mongkut’s impressive modernisation programs. He had built a canal 35km long and dead straight between the Mae Klong and Tha Chin rivers to aid trade. It was so successful that river trade dominated Thailand until the invention of the motorcycle. The old market, where our hotel was located, had emerged on this.

But first of all, where was our hotel? There was a sign, but a search of the area revealed no sign. Several locals tried to guide us there to no avail. Eventually, we found the housekeeper/manager/barista from the hotel. She guided us to the imposing teak hotel on the riverfront and introduced herself as Jiap, which means chicken. So chicken she remained for the rest of our stay.

That night was Dalma’s favourite in Thailand. There was no local restaurant so we went to the seven-11 and tried one of their burgers (average, but better than expected) and then found a stand cooking Thai food on bamboo skewers. We took them back to our riverside hotel and watched the sunset and the dark creep in while drinking Leo beer accompanied by Thai food and hot sauce. We talked aimlessly about Thailand, life, motorcycle trips, what awaited us in Sydney, and future plans. It was a perfect way to end one of our last days in Thailand.

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