Day 129
We reluctantly got out of our extremely comfortable luxury hotel bed and navigated our way out of Bangkok. Although we heard a lot about the protests, we must have been in the right area at the right time, because we didn’t see one protester. As far as we could see, much of the city was going about its business as usual. Getting across the city was difficult during the morning rush hour, and often required us to cross 3 or 4 lanes of non-stop traffic to access an exit ramp or make a turn. This could have been exceptionally difficult, but as a result of many very considerate Bangkok drivers who stopped traffic and waved us through, we were able to wend our way out of the city with our nerves only mildly frazzled.
One hour later we were free of the city and navigating the highway system, where exit ramps led to overpasses with no shoulders, and the left most lane regularly changed into a u-turn or exit lane. We spent a lot more time on the highway than I was comfortable with, but we made it far enough out of the city and soon we were on salt fields.
During our trip we pass a veritable landfill along the roads. This is especially true around urban areas and even in some rural areas. Much of the trash collects in roadside ditches and streams. We regularly see people fishing or irrigating their fields with this water, which has led us on more than one occasion to avoid eating any local fish. In one of these road side drainage ditches filled with garbage and what smelled like raw sewage, we saw a man taking some small fish out of a net. We were amazed that fish could survive is such sludge and then horrified that they were being consumed. A few kilometers later we saw his roadside stand where he was drying and selling them. We won’t be eating any local fish jerky for sure.
I’m not an environmental activist, but it’s difficult to not be alarmed. We later passed a river with several large-scale shrimp farms, fed by these same ditches. I could continue since these rivers really do go right into the sea, but I’ll stop there for now. It’s an unsettling experience to peddle for 2 months in 4 different countries in feverish heat and to never be able to jump in one river to cool ourselves, never mind filter and drink the water.