(written by Dave)

Today was nearly 50k shorter than yesterday but almost twice as hard.  The road from Phitsanulok to Lom Sak is called the Green Route by the Thailand tourism folks.  The route passes through one National park and skirts the area where the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) hid out in the 70’s when they were trying to take over Thailand.  All this translated into heaps of up and down for us.  We’d read a few Internet blogs that said the route was very hard and it turns out that none of them were exaggerations.  The first 20k after the resort were only a little up hill.  From there it was a series of granny gear climbs, followed by little flats or downhills.  Progress was pretty slow as you’d expect.

The full range of our gears got a serious workout as well.  There was one nice 2k downhill about half way through where we made it into big ring (our biggest gear).  We were both going close to 60 kph when we rounded a corner and saw a massive hill staring us in the face.  We went from 60 to 6 kph in about 50 meters, and straight into the granny gears.

We were running low on water near the top of this climb and Nancy was starting to worry.  She was so worried that she wouldn’t let me open our reserve 1.5 litre bottle.  Here again I reminded her that when in junior high, I studied Nevada history where we learned that many of the early explorers that perished crossing the Nevada deserts were discovered with more than one “saved” water bottle.  We rode on, with reserve bottle still in reserve.  Eventually we came across a junction that was not on either of our maps where there was a small store.  We refilled all of our bottles and drank a couple ice teas.

The water stop was near a summit ridge that we then followed for another 10-15 k.  There was a fair bit of traffic and quite a few resorts.  The up and downs were nearly all granny gear and it was hard on our legs.  By now it was getting pretty hot – it was close to noon.  Waiting for brekkie to be served at the resort this morning at 7:30 meant we had a latish start.  About now, we were thinking that doing brekkie on our own a few hours earlier would have been a better plan.

One of the blogs we’d read was a rider going the opposite direction than us.  He was some sort of ultra-marathon guy and noted that going the way he did there was massive climbing and very little downhill.  Well, we already knew that the part about little downhill wasn’t correct.  We were starting to doubt his credentials when we came to the end of the ridge and a hill with several downhill warning signs.  We then were treated to a solid 15k of fast turning downhill, followed by 15k of gentle down hill gradients to Lom Sak.  This would have been a very hard 30k start with and our faith in the previously mentioned blogger was restored (except the part about very little downhill).

On the 15k run in to town, we stopped at today’s fruit stand of the day.  Here again we saw one stand, followed by dozens more, all selling the exact same thing.  I’m not sure how one would pick any particular stand over another.  Anyway, the stands today were selling all forms of Ma Kaam (known as Tamarind in other places).  They had many different products, from random baskets, to sorted/graded jars, to paste form and finally caramelised.  We had a nice visit with the non-English speaking stall owner and purchased some of the caramelised fruit.  I’m not sure that I am a big fan but it might taste different in other forms.

We eventually made it to Lom Sak around 2PM.  There is only one noted hotel which we found with ease.  We decided to get some lunch before we checked in.  We were both pretty hungry and trying a local shop is sometimes a way to get the skinny on other hotel options.  We had our usual chicken rice and pork rice (mine is the pork).  And best of all, the staff were very helpful on the hotel situation.  We learned that the hotel we planned to stop up was “one thumbs up” and that there was another guesthouse a couple k’s away that was “two thumbs up”.  The restaurant owner did not speak English but figured out how to use the “thumb’s up” gesture to convey to us the relative condition of the two places to stay.  Their daughter spoke pretty good English and filled in the blanks.  As the “one thumbs up” hotel was virtually next door, we decided to have a look.  Nancy is in charge of room selection and I’m happy to report that she is well over her “it’s not the Le Meridien” benchmark [Editor’s note – I’m not over it, I’ve just lost all hope of those clean, plush hotel rooms and must ignore those longings or I will become severely depressed].  She returned from a room inspection saying – OK, we’ll take it.  The room is very basic, but it is quite clean and has English cable TV.  Plus, the night market is just around the corner so we’ll have no trouble getting dinner.

We are headed out to get food now as I think we will soon be asleep if we don’t.  Tomorrow we head north on hwy 203.  We are not sure how far we will make it as we are not sure of the terrain.  The goal is to make it to Phu Rea (just under 100k) but that depends on the how many hills we hit.  If that turns out to be too hard we will head for a little town called Dan Sai, just off of hwy 203 (about 65k or so).  From where we end up we will head to Loei.  It’s supposed to be pretty riding up there – hopefully a bit less up and down that today.

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