To Burma on a bike...

...or, maybe 'the least relaxing 'relaxing weekend' ever' would be more appropriate.

I may have mentioned before that Thailand has possibly the most public holidays of any country I've ever been to, apart from the obvious fact that it seems that every time I need something urgently from another country's embassy and there seems to be a holiday causing delays, Thailand is definitely up there with the best for 'any excuse for a day off'. Some months in Thailand we can have up to 4 days off for various festivals, including a 'Royal Ploughing Day'.

So, after a rather stressful few weeks back at school, where incompetent bosses, infuriating kids and a daily conundrum of finding a working computer that happens to be installed to a working printer, Nick and I were more than ready to head out of Bangkok for a break on the King's birthday long weekend. We decided to head out into the hills outside Kanchanaburi where we could escape the hordes of tourists and the horrendous noise of the karaoke disco boats that make their way up and down the river when you're trying to sleep.

Sadly these weekends never end up being quite as relaxing as planned, and more than partly to blame due a big 'girls night' the evening before, the quick and easy taxi ride was slow, hot and constant test of concentration to stop myself from throwing up in the juddering, stop starting, holiday traffic. 2 hours turned into 3 and a half, and by the time we arrived all I wanted was a bed.

Due to our great idea of staying outside town, we also had to arrange a motorbike so we could get out there. The directions seemed simple and we followed them to the letter. Directions were correct but we were told to start at the wrong junction so finding the place took a lot of irritating phone calls and wrong turns.

The place we were staying in was really nice with it's own lake and pool. We were shown to our wooden air con hut with a view of the lake. The air-con was broken so we had been given a fan. The wooden room felt and smelt like a sauna in the midday heat so we turned on our over-sized fan and collapsed on the bed. The fan must have been a jet engine in a past life and the whole hut vibrated and rattled when it got going. No catch up sleep that afternoon.

Somewhat tired and cranky, we went out to meet up with friends that evening in town. Not only was it the King's birthday, but it was also the sound and light festival at the Bridge over the River Kwai, so Kanchanaburi old town was looking more like Piccadilly Circus. Buying tickets for the sound and light show was your usual chaotic affair where you have to clamber through hundreds of people to 3 different stalls telling you completely different things before you actually walk away with a ticket in your hand.

The sound and light show was very well done, even though we'd had no other choice than buying the expensive tickets and seemed to have ended up with the worst seats in the house. The display is done with lights and fireworks along the bridge and on a shiny old steam train the goes over the bridge. It tells the story of what prisoners of war went through to make the bridge and how it got destroyed in bombings. They actually have it set up so they can blow chunks of flaming debris off the bridge into the river. Not too environmentally safe, but quite impressive non the less.

After dinner with our friends (no alcohol mind as it's bad to celebrate the King's birthday with a drink...where's that old hair of the dog when you need it...?) we climbed on our motorbike and started to make our way out of town. We quickly became aware of a problem with the bike as it was bumping along and the steering had gone. We drove straight to the rental place (open till 12.00) and found that at 11.30 it was closed with no answer from their mobile phone). We decided it was best to make it to the nearest garage where somebody might be able to help. Driving past the first garage (closed!) the tire finally popped and we admitted defeat. Now away from all signs of life, we didn't want to leave the bike in case it got nicked and we got into no end of trouble, and we had to sit on the side of the road and wait for our most understanding guest house to send a pickup truck to come and get us. It's worth taking note that not one but two policemen drove past us without stopping to ask if we were ok.

Getting back late to a cool room we climbed into bed and fell asleep, only to be woken an hour or so later when a drunken mob of uni exchange students came back from town and gained access to the music system in the restaurant and put on dodgy 80's songs at full blast. A new kind of rattle for the hut.

The next day, after a later than planned start, after the bike had been collected and the tire replaced, we took off into the hills to avoid the busy tourist areas. Beginning to enjoy ourselves as we got out of town, we get that bumpy feeling on the bike again and another flat tire. Now we hire bikes all the time so I'm pretty sure we are not wrecking tires due to bad driving or even over-wieghting, I've put on a few pounds but I'm not at the blowing tire point just yet. We had to sit and wait an hour for the rental place to come, this time with a whole new wheel, before we were on our way again. We thought that as the bike was so obviously fixed what with having a complete change of wheel, we would head of in the direction of the hills that border with Burma or Myanmar as it is now known.

The official border crossings between Thailand and Myanmar are further north so we didn't really expect to see much, but there were some remote Thai villages near the border that we thought might be interesting.

It took us about an hour and half to of driving past rice paddies, small wood hut villages and a few bemused and waving guard posts before we started moving up into the hills near the border. It was around this time that we saw a signpost saying that we were about 18 kilometres from the Thai-Myanmar border. Quite surprised that there was a border post that nobody really new about we thought we might as well check it out. The road got quieter and quieter the further up into the hills we went. Eventually we followed the road around a bend and straight into a rock face. They obviously built the road as far as they could and then just stopped. 100 metres back down the road was a hand-painted sign on a old plank of wood saying something in Thai and '400' with an arrow pointing up the bank to the left. With some difficulty Nick managed to get the bike up the steep narrow track (obviously not a border crossing for cars) which disappeared off into the bushes. We followed it for about 200 metres before I bottled it and said we should turn around. I didn't like the idea of being faced with angry border guards and trying to explain that we drove off road and through the bushes 'just for a look'. I especially didn't like the idea of potentially getting into trouble without my passport which was in the British embassy at the time getting replaced due to an unfortunate incident with a washing machine.

Anyway, after nearly making it all the way to Myanmar, we turned around and drove back to Kanchanaburi. It took us 2 tires and a rather frustrating phone call to the bike shop before we eventually got back into town. The kind mechanic who kindly replaced the inner tube half way home for 100 baht (about £2, for the inner tube and no charge for labour) told us the tire was bad and showed us how it had been put back on incorrectly. Needless to say we won't be hiring bikes from that shop again, and made them drive us back out of town to our guest house. We then enjoyed a quiet evening until being woken up in the middle of the night again by our friendly Canadian neighbours coming back from town and continuing a raucous birthday party all night. Love it! Relaxing weekend all round then!