The Long Version....My Day Trying To Get To Sammakon

So, you got Vince's side of the story. I left to give him a quiet day, which he did have until we got lost. On of the girls has a really good sense of direction and we probably should have gone with her gut instinct. Taking Vicne's phone with the GPS would have been a great idea too:)

How hard can it be to find a mooban (suburb/village) which is a 20 min bike ride up the busy street? Why we did not enlist the help of a seasoned klonger , I don't know but I have two lined up this week. 

So, it went like this....

Kay, Becky and I met up and went to the bridge in Perfect Place where we knew that we could get on the klong. We got that part right but when we got on it was pretty narrow with no rails but we could see rails on the otehr side which was the general direction we wanted to go. Directions were "up the klong (one of many) then turn right at the mosque (also one of many).

We started about 100 ft to the left of the green building shown below. Check out the retro bikes!

Some of it looked like this with a rail on one side.....

Some wider with no rail....

Others that you could fall of both sides but still fairly wide but don't let the width fool you. It is still damn narrow and we all had our seats set so that we could easily put our feet down.

So, why not add a pipe to the pathway on one side? We walked it because it was too easy to hit the pedal on the pipe and we didn't like the outcome. We saw a huge lizard run under the path at on point....eesh.

Left or right?

Obstacles are everywhere and scooters are found all over the pathways. We wondered how one would make it through here. had to cross the huge busy road ahead which I found out later was our own neighbouring Ramkanhaeng. This might have been the beginning of our getting lost. We knew that we could always jump in a taxi anyway.

Huh? 

Felt like we were walking into someones house but we were assured it was correct.

A little rickety?

The silver lining. I could never find this again but it was interesting seeing it being built. 

The beautiful, wide cycling path along the wide San Saep Canal. this was much more doable and we will try and find out how to get to it more easily. Theoretically it is close by where we live.

A car, a scooter and a pedestrian (Becky). All win.

so wide.......so nice

More canal

The klong taxi stop at Sammakon....we must be close.

Seriously? A flat today?

So, yes, I did get a flat tire and I have absolutely nothing with me, unlike my amazing adventurer nephew, Luke, who would have the whole bike rebuilt in under 5 minutes. For those who don't know, he is solo bike riding the BAM road in Siberia as we speak....which makes our klong look like child's play:)  I digress.... 

I consider myself very lucky that it happened in Sammakon and that they did have a bike shop which is usually any shop that has rubber anything hanging from the rafters. It is usually a motorcycle shop with a few bikes. They were really nice and quickly took my back wheel off which is a pain because it has a fender and a stand (cool factor). Once apart thay found that the tire was partly shredded which is probably from one of the gigantic mutant snail shells that I rode over. The tube had about 6 patches on it so I was in for a tire, which they had, and a tube which they had to go an get. We understood 5 minutes, which turned to ten. We ate an ice-cream, chatted some more and went back and were "charaded" that in 5 min someone would go on the motorcycle to get the tube. Still nothing happened until a man visiting the store translated it to 5pm....it was 3pm. We knew the way home from here was a 20 min ride along a busy road but I told them to go and I would be fine...still had taxi option. So, went back and tried to ask why 5 pm...then I realized that the store closed at 5 pm and only then was he going to go to the store, get the tube and fix the bike. I offered to go...and was more than willing to fix it. In the end, the owner realized that I did not live so close and took off down the road to get a few tubes etc.. so that I could be on my way. 

My Myanmar buddy taking the tire off. While we waited for the boss to come back he pointed out all of the farangs (Westerners). Okay, so there were only 5 in an hour but it passed the time. 

Bike/motorcycle store

Sammakon Mansion

 My ride home

So, we all made it home in one piece and I have organized to go for a run on Thursday with one girl I work with and to join another group on Saturday to get an informed look at the waterways. All a learning experience...always fun.