January 9th: Uttaradit to Den Chai – 72.2km
Day 88
We are getting into and out of the groove depending on the day. Travel fits dancing metaphors quite well, although it’s more like dancing on a first date where your date wants you to dance and you can’t say no. Sometimes the music is perfect. The mood suits you, the beat is just right and all you have to do is let go and the rest takes care of itself. On these days the road is smooth. Hills give you enough speed to coast to the top of the next apex. A perfect lunch spot appears when you’re hungry and that clean hotel you need is right where you expected it to be, for the right price. Your date is impressed that you dance so effortlessly. Did you take lessons? She asks you.
Other days you want to rock it out but only country music is playing. You dance anyway, and you do so begrudgingly. You step on your partner’s toes, you’re out of sync with both your date and the music. You lurch around the floor like you’ve just learned about this new fad called dancing. You kept going when you should have stopped for lunch, the hotel you wanted is overpriced and there isn’t a restaurant nor store within half an hours ride. You try another place around the corner but it’s filthy and the owner is chuckling to himself like a lunatic. You end up backtracking 20 km to a hotel you passed up as not far enough and you eat lunch at 7-11 with the other tourists. But like a date, in the end you find that even though you stepped on their toes all night, your date is going to throw you a bone for trying. You roll into a little bungalow across the road from the 7-11 and it’s everything you need, AC, wi-fi, clean, quiet and cheap. You decide to rest there because you got lucky and your date promised breakfast in bed!
To elucidate we followed signs for a homestay, each promising “it is just 1km ahead!” for about 20kms. When we got there it was overpriced, and in the middle of nowhere. We backtracked and found a crazy man chuckling to himself who showed us a frightening filthy room that was also overpriced. We then backtracked even further to the first place we saw when we arrived in town but decided to press on because, well, you know, never stop at the first option you see. After a long day of traveling and backtracking, it was everything we asked for.
