(written by Dave)

Today has gone as planned – bikes are cleaned and we are rested. All good. As our time in Thailand is coming to an end, it seems like a good time to report on some Thailand things that are a bit unusual but which we see everyday and now almost take for granted.

Let’s start with tuk-tuks, or the famous three wheeled motor scooters that we see almost everywhere in Thailand (except in Lampang where for some reason they don’t have any). I’ve started reading our Laos book and noticed that the tuk-tuks in photos look more souped up than we’ve seen to date in Thailand. Then last night when we rolled into Loei we discovered that Loei tuk-tuks look the same as those in Laos.

My interest in tuk-tuks piqued, I walked across the street from our hotel to the motorcycle shop where they had new tuk-tuks on offer. I found a salesperson who spoke a little English and learned that the 130cc brand new tuk-tuk sells for 57,000 baht (or about $1,900 USD) before negotiations. The dealership owner came out and we had a nice chat (with limited shared language). He just sold 10 tuk-tuks to someone in the US (not sure where) and I got the distinct feeling that pricing was subject to discussion. The motors for his fancy tuk-tuks were made in China, all the rest is made in Thailand. There are no seatbelts for drivers or passengers so I’m not sure how he sold some into the US. Below I’ve included a few photos of Loei tuk-tuks, plus some I snapped of the different ones in souther Thailand.

Next up, dogs. Or more important, how to stop them from chasing you on a bike. To begin with, I should point out that Thailand has a lot of dogs and we are pretty sure that many (if not most) are stray. So many of the dogs we see are malnourished and have mangy coats – it is quite sad really to see them wandering about. None of these dogs chase us, most of them either don’t have the energy or are easily spooked and actually run from us. There is another large group of dogs that are probably owned and reasonably fed – but just can’t be bothered getting up in the hot Thailand sun. That leaves probably about 5% of the dog population that would even consider chasing us.

In southern Thailand, when we happened to intersect paths with one of these dogs in the 5% group, we did what we always do. Yelled “NO” and pedalled as fast as we could. If you think about that for a minute, you’ll realise how silly it is to yell “NO” at a dog raised in Thailand. None of these dogs have ever heard “NO”. We kept yelling and pedalling but the dogs kept chasing. Then when waiting out the flood waters in Kanchanaburri, we met an English fellow who was married to a Thai woman and struck up a conversation. He was interested in our ride and we somehow ended up talking about dogs. One of us got the brilliant idea to ask his wife what she would do if a dog chased/attacked her. Introducing “chet!” and our new magic dog stopper. Now, when we encounter one of those 5% dogs, we yell “CHET” (which apparently means “stop”) and pedal hard. The “CHET” does the trick, dogs stop and we crack a wry smile. Now all we have to do is figure out how to say “chet” in Lao.

On to showers (in Thailand and Malaysia). I know that we’ve mentioned showers a couple times in our blog but I’ve never really talked about how you get hot water here. You see, in Thailand there are very few whole house hot water heaters. Same for hotels, they don’t have floor based hot water heaters. The way you get hot water in Thailand is an in shower hot water heater (shown in photo below). These units produce on demand hot water, have individual temperature adjustment knobs and you never run out of hot water (very important as I almost always get the second shower). I’m not sure if these units are super efficient but they cut plumbing costs in half as there are only one set of pipes running through building. Plus, you don’t end up heating pipes all the way from a central heater to the shower. Quite funny, many of the units say “element made in England” on them. I can’t remember seeing very many of these heaters in the UK.

There is a down side in this type of heater – you have to install one everywhere you want hot water. Only the swanky Le Meridien in Chiang Mai had hot water in both the shower and the sink. The rest of our hotels have only hot water in the showers. Given that units and all piping is mounted on the outside of the walls, you’d have to run more piping outside the walls for sink hot water. I’d suggest that before hotels worked on this, rather they should work on how to tighten the faucet so that it doesn’t turn when you turn on/off the water (at least 50% of our bathroom sinks have this ailment). They also often have badly connected drain pipes so it is not unusual to have the sink drain onto the bathroom floor, a generally unpleasant thing.

Tomorrow we head for Nong Bua Lampru. It’s about 100k and we have no idea if it is hilly. We’ll leave early in the morning to be sure we beat the heat. After that we are on to Udon Thani where we’ll catch up with one of my former work colleagues and spend a few days. Northern Lantern Festival is celebrated November 8-10, during the time we are in Udon Thani. Tubular lanterns, fai khom, resembling hot air balloons, are lit and released into the night sky as offerings to the Lord Buddha. The cover of Thailand Lonely Planet has a photo of the lanterns – looks very nice and we are looking forward to participating in it.

From Udon Thani we have a short ride to a border town on the Thai side and will then make our way into Laos. Nancy is busy trying to research routes in Laos so it’s time to hand the computer back to her so she can get back to work.

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