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Hello everybody, i am very happy to be writing to you again, andthank you so much for the messages you sent, itfeels really nice to read them! melanie, j'ai eu ton message, merci beaucoup -j'ai n'ai pas pu te rapeller parce que on etaitdeja en retard pour l'aeroport...mais ca m'a faitbeaucoup de plaisir de le recevoir. mama, tata si roxi, o sa va scriu un alt mesajaparte de asta in curind. tata, poti sa'i daitoate mesajele lui dragos, imi pare bine ca ilintereseaza, si zii salut de la mine! ok, and now on with the news...as i wrote last time, we left bangkok as we weresupposed to. we got our bikes just as we werepromissed that we would, plus some little perkfor the inconvenience. riding out of bankok was really bad. the trafficwas awful, so we had to ride on the sidewalk,which is a foot high (no kidding), ans has amillion potholes, plus the people with theirfruit carts that we had to dodge, you get theidea...so that day was really bad. the nice thingwas that at the end we found a really beautifulhotel, so in the end all was good. we were really worried about biking at thispoint. the next day though (yesterday), thingswent much better. we rode on smaller countryroads, with beautiful scenery and much lesstraffic. we had no more problems in that respect.it was really hot though, and we both gotsunburned. it was hotter when we stopped thanwhen we were riding, so i didn't feel likestopping that much. ed was very insistent though,he's religious about how much water we shoulddrink...it's good for me, i would probably end upgetting heat stroke otherwise...so we rode ~91km yesterday (we weren't planningthat much, but had to keep going to find a placeto sleep), and we drank over 12 liters ofwater!!! when we were about 10 km from ourdestination, i got a flat tire! fortunatelly wehad a spare tube with us so we replaced it andwere on our way again soon. we were prettywrecked by the end of the day, but in goodspirits.today we decided to stay in nakon nayok torecouperate. we only did a 40km ride to awaterfall in the area. we also bought some repairpatches in case we have tire problems again.ever since we left bangkok, we haven't seen any westerners. everyone speaks thai andoccasionally we get someone who understands a fewwords of english. but most of the time, we justpoint to words in a dictionary and that's how wecommunicate (see getting tire earlier today).eating is another adventure. since the menus arein thai and nobody speaks english in the roadsidejoints we eat in, we have developped a method: wego around looking in everyone else's plate,seeing what they eat, then we decide what looksbest and point to it. very rude in normalcircumstances, but here our way has brought a lotof smiles and laughter...i actually laugh everytime, i can't believe we're doing this.sometimes, when there's nobody eating, we justorder random things. we did this twice, and bothtimes i ended up with mega spicy food. reallygood otherwise, but so so hot. and i even likehot food, but this is beyond anything i've hadbefore. i have chest pains now! i like thepointing method better...the fruits are really good! i'm in heaven! we buythem very cheaply, although there are fruit treeson the side of the road too.ed got chased by 3 dogs so far. they never comeafter me, so i just laugh - not verycompassinate...everything is so cheap! for the past 2 days we'vebeen spending under 10$ per day on food for bothof us.tomorrow we are planning to head to a nationalpark that's supposed to be really nice (kao yai).it's in the mountains and it's supposed to havebeautiful nature and all kinds of animals. i can't believe how much fun i'm having writingthis email. it's nice to share everything we'reexperiencing, it makes it more real and puts itin a different perspective somehow...more to come soon...guess how much it's costing me to be on theinternet for 1 hour? 50cents! isn't that crazy? oh, one more thing. andy, our plans with laosmight change and we don't know how that willaffect everything downstream yet. we've heardthat some areas are not good to travel through,so we are making alternate plans. we'll let youknow when we have more info.... bye,cu drag,raluca |
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