Getting up as early as possible to escape the heat a little bit didn’t quite work. Up at 7am, we first went to the Coffee House for breakfast. It’s a really cute place that combines a cafe with a book shop. Lovely atmosphere, great coffee (bunny coffee!) and tea, not so great croissants. But afterwards, we were good to go.

It wasn’t certain how far we could make it today. Flo still would have loved to go camping while I was hanging on, hoping to make it to a town called “Hot” as this would make the remaining route to Bangkok doable in two days.

The “haze” this morning was crazy. You really couldn’t see much from all smoke being pressed down into the valleys. I’m not sure if the pictures give a good impression of it; it’s like fog but man-made. The road was good though and riding run while I finally gained confidence again on the bike. Not so much to take daring pictures but at least I snapped a few quick shots this time. Although we planned to go further than yesterday, we stuck to taking breaks often to relieve Flo’s arm and to drink as much water as possible. It was getting sweltering hot to the point where the wind was like a blow dryer to the face again. Seriously, it hasn’t been so dry and stuffy since Australia. Luckily, Thailand is an easy country to travel in so we found plenty of cooled water along the way as well as lovely little shaded spots for breaks.

In the afternoon, we rode through a forest park. Camping is allowed in here but I just couldn’t imagine it. Even Flo admitted that we would steam ourselves in the tent. Instead, we took a nice long break in the shade with an iced coffee and an iced chocolate which brought our core temperature down a little bit.

From here the road followed a river which meant a very curvy but flat road. Heaps of people flocked to the river which was lined with snack stalls and inner tubes for hire. EVERYONE needed a little cool down. It was tempting but I knew that once I was out of my gear, there was no way I would get back into it. So we pushed on a little further until we arrived at a lovely little guest house along the road. Prices were reasonable, breakfast was included and it had ac and a mini fridge in the room. Bliss. When we put on the ac, it showed the room temperature as 36 degrees. So freaking hot.

Needing to cool down and relax a bit, I skype called my family a bit later before we headed out for dinner into the nearby town. The first place sent us away again as they didn’t offer any vegetarian food but the second one made us mixed fried vegetables with rice for under NZ$4. Thus, I thought it was justified to buy a bag of peanut M&Ms in a 7eleven as dessert. 🙂