South East Asia 2012

On the 4th of July in the morning Steve and I started our adventure, bicycle tour in South East Asia. We were going to include Thailand, Burma and Laos but due to difficulties entering Burma by bike and not knowing if we were going to be able to ride by ourselves where we wanted we decided to not go to Burma and go to Cambodia instead. The trip started with the good news that Cathay was not going to charge us for the bikes and other than a very long stretch between LA and Hong Kong (14 hours) the trip was uneventful. We arrived after midnight in Bangkok, the beginning and end of the journey and without much difficulty found a taxi that could fit us, the bikes and the suitcases and took us to our friend Jesse Sozanski apartment at the Hospital of Tropical Diseases. Jesse is a family medicine resident from Tucson that is doing a rotation in Bangkok and offered us to stay with him and to keep our suitcases and boxes until we come back from the tour. Today July 6th (we kind of lost the 5th in the crossing the Pacific), we went to explore Bangkok after a great breakfast at a cafeteria by the hospital and putting the bikes together. Steve and I walked through town, and saw a couple of temples. The most impressive was the reclining Buddha (Wat Pho) which is 46 meters long. We also went to the amulet market, ate our first and yummy Pad Thai and got a one hour Thai massage. Waiting for Jesse to come back from work to go out to dinner, maybe Chinatown night market. Tomorrow evening we might leave north if we figure out how to leave Bangkok safely...not a bicycle friendly city. As we are not taking the computer (only the iPad) it will be hard to upload pictures but will tell stories when there is internet