Edirne, The Border, some Stone Mushrooms

After Gallipoli I headed back up the peninsula and then north towards the town of Edirne. It was another day riding along highways over hills and then along mostly straight roads. Edirne is another quite nice Turkish border town, like Erzurum in the East. I navigated to a small street filled with hotels and ended up at the Tuna Hotel for 65lira/night (10 lira off because I hesitated after he said 75).

Edirne used to be the Ottoman capital for a while. It has some impressive old buildings, and a couple of old covered markets (but now selling the same crap as every other part of the planet). But I mostly took photos of the two big mosques in town.

Wonky view of Üç Şerefeli Mosque. Each minaret is built in a different style, the name comes from the one minaret there with three balconies.

Inside the courtyard.

Selimiye Mosque the larger and more famous mosque in Edirne. I've just learnt it has the highest minarets in Turkey at 70.9 meters!

The next morning I had packed up all my gear and made sure I had all of my paperwork in order before heading to the border with Bulgaria. I had also tried to time my refuelling for the Bulgarian side but I was a little too effective and hit reserve while still in Turkey. Not knowing where to get money or fuel in Bulgaria I put in another five litres of some of the most expensive fuel money can buy so I would make it to the cheaper fuel zone (although, not much cheaper it seems).

Once at the border the process was quite simple. Hand passport to some guy in a booth, he stamps me out of Turkey, ride to the next window and they type the number plate of my bike into a computer and that's it. I'm out of Turkey. Possibly a whole minute to get out of the country.

On the Bulgarian side I went through the EU lanes with my shiny UK passport, they just looked at it to checked I was the one in the photo and sent me to the next booth, no stamps needed here for EU passports. On to customs who were checking through the luggage in a few cars, one officer came over and asked if I had anything to declare, which I said no and then I was waved on. This was exceedingly simple, what's going on. The next booth is for the road toll/tax that all vehicles need to pay, I had read something that motorbikes were exempt but I couldn't remember exactly. After waiting in line for a while eventually a guy in the booth came out and made me go around all the cars and past the booth. Well I guess I don't have to pay it then. There was one other booth on the way out and they just waved me past too.

I stopped after the last gate to put my helmet and gloves back on and wonder why this only took 20 minutes. I kept thinking I'd hit a bigger fence further up the road where they would take a lot longer with the documentation, but no, I was in. That was all there was to it. I know I'm missing insurance but I'm hoping to sort that out at the motosapiens camp site who also offer the green card insurance for the rest of Europe too.

With the border crossed I headed into the nearest town to fine an ATM to get some local money. After I discovered the ATM it was back on the highway where I found a Shell service station with a McDonalds in it. I refuelled the bike, ate some bacon for the first time in a long time, and abused the free WiFi before moving on to my next stop at the stone mushrooms of Beli Plast. One of the two things I had noted down to look at in Bulgaria.

Donkey.

Beli Plast down there. This is from up on the hill where the stone mushrooms are.

This is them. A small grouping of these rock formations beside the road.

Another angle.

A brain looking one.

More shrooms.

All of the mushrooms from the most mushroomy looking group.

Shroom.

I got back on the main highway after getting lost in Haskovo and then headed to Plovdiv where I'd stay and explore Bulgaria's second biggest city for a couple of nights.

Intro to India

The morning after viewing Bhuddhas birthplace we got up and had breakfast (at 3 foxes again), and then headed towards the border with India.

Parked at the guesthouse. I almost ripped off one of their doors getting out of there...

On the Nepal side finding immigration was easy, we got our passports stamped. Then the process of finding out what to do with carnets for the bikes... In the immigration office they pointed us to the building nextdoor which was the tourist info center, we got in there and a lady got up and went to get someone else for us. When that person got there they didn't know what the carnet was for, so we asked where customs was, which took them a while to explain...

We left the bikes at immigration and went to the "Customs Agent" office, first at the help desk door, where they told us to go to the next door, and then we were directed to an office next to it with lots of people sitting around. At first they told us we had to go to immigration and get the stamp, and I explained multiple times that we already had and eventually they believed us once they saw the stamp in the Athe carnets around but they all just kind of sat and didn't do much. Eventually someone arrived who was the carnet expert, they informed us we had to have photocopies of the passport, and that we should bring the bikes over to customs... We set off back inside Nepal (note: you can wander ANYWHERE on land borders) to go to the green building with a photocopier, got our copies, and then went back to customs with the bikes. The carnet expert got us to fill in the book with the details, and then he started stamping, and then he said we had to run and follow him to the customs office (what?) before they went on lunch. We walked through a field of trucks to get there, and it was a long slient process to gain a signature on each carnet, then back out to the bikes to make sure they'd signed the right thing. This would be the slowest carnet processing I'd have seen for at least the next hour of my life...

INDIA!

Immediatly the border is more crazy than Nepal. There are shops scattered everywhere right up to the official border, in the middle are two small shopfronts for immigration and customs. After fighting the traffic which seemed to go everywhere here we got to Immigration were we filled in an entry form, got our visas stamped, and filled in the carnet details in a small notebook. This wasn't customs so I figured there would be a lot of double entry for carnet details.

Then it was time for customs. We had to travel back up the road slightly and get across with the bikes. However, while we were at immigration the Nepali side of the border went to lunch, this left a long line of trucks up the road. And because there was a long line of trucks everyone in cars decided to use half the other lane to get up the side of the trucks, and then because all the cars had almost blocked the lanes then all the bikes came up and filled in the rest of the space available. All I had to do was get through a small gap over to the customs office, Drew could fit on the vespa, but my bike was too wide. Then the police started telling people to reverse to get out of the way of a truck going into india, so I had to get off the road and let some traffic pass for a while.

I was stuck here for ages. Customs was below the red sign on the left, the big orange truck was blocked by a car...

Eventually there was a small gap between the southbound traffic, the northbound cars, and the trucks and I made it across! What an effort, it was like frogger but much more annoying and without the spare lives. Inside customs we had another introduction to indian efficiancy. First, you go inside with your carnet, where some guy fills all the details into a book and fills in half the carnet information, and then stamps some of it. Then you go outside to the big customs cheif I guess, where he signs it and the carnet is handed back.

All up I think it took us 3 hours at the border.

After we got away from the border area and the long lines of parked trucks the road queitened down and finally, finnnnnaallllyy, I was on a straight semi-flat road where you could keep some speed up. There were some cars/trucks pushing you out the lane, but nothing to mean yet. This was the most enjoyable part of India so far! Hopefully between towns elsewhere It's like this. We stopped at a small shop where the owner was very friendly, we attacted a small crowd who looked at the bikes. And we got to see quite a few chickens killed...

We got to Gorakphur, which is a town of 600000 people but it's very compact. The traffic and buildings don't really pick up until you get close. Then of course it gets nuts. We stayed in a hotel that seems to be filled with lots of business travellers, and some very grumpy staff. At first there was a problem with where to park the bikes, a serious problem. I've no idea why. They told me to park in one spot (Where I couldn't open my luggage) then I was told to move it to another spot, but apparently that was ever so slightly in the wrong spot so I had to move forward again, we kept asking to verify where exactly they wanted us to move, but each time they would tell us to go somewhere, and then say that was wrong and we had to move it again... Wow. How hard can parking be? As Drew noted they were precious about where to put these vehicles, but garbage can go anywhere in the parking area, anywhere you like (I helped contribute too).

The floor numbering in this hotel has yet another system for yet another country. This time we have a ground floor (which is unnamed), then 1st floor with rooms 001 to 010, then 2nd floor with rooms 101 to 110, then 3rd floor with rooms 201 to 210... I was quite confused when trying to find my room (208) on the second floor...

That night we headed past all the street resturants next to the drains filled with sewage (it smelt like it whatever it was). Touts zeroed in on us pretty quick, asking us to come to their resturant. Eventually one from Hotel Sunrise found us, they had a rooftop resturant which was away from the street at least. We went up there to have a look and stayed anyway.

Food is cheap here! I had vege kofta (there's not a huge amount of power to keep meat cold here) with 4 chappatis for about $1.05, and it was really good. Beer is slightly expensive at $3.10 for a 650mL bottle. Bottled water is about 20c/L.

Gorakphur at street level...

From the rooftop restaurant at Hotel Sunrise. What a noisy mess. The railway is big building in the back.

Looking the other way.

The next morning we ate breakfast at our hotel (Paneer and Aloo Parathras, very good!) and noticed the  tout that got us into Hotel Sunrise for dinner the night before was also working in this hotel! We asked him and he works two jobs, morning to afternoon at one, then goes to the other to work into the night.

Then it was time to set off towards Varanassi! It was 200km from Gorakphur.

This cable was powering a drill. It had several taped together sections and it took a bit of jiggling about to get working.

However... About 40km in we hit a very rough patch of road which broke the Vespa again. The rear suspension had broken again so we headed to the nearest bike shop and they got to repairing it right away...

Removing the fuel tank to get at the top of the suspension for re-welding.

 There are a lot of Vespas in India so they're used to working on them.

The offending part (the round object). The top nut on the suspension had gone through this, it held the spring down.

It was off to the nearby welding shop to get the shock welded up, and the body work welded for more strength.

Sleeping Vespa.

Welding safety in India.

Rubbish by the side of the road.

Goat eating the rubbish.

Trying to pay for what they did. The mechanic didn't want to take any money. I think the total ended up around $20 for all the work and welding, but the money had to be forced on the guy!

Since we had a delay during the day once we got riding again we would try to find a hotel on the way to Varanasi. Unfortunately there isn't a lot of choice. Since neither of us know what the local word for Hotel looks like we may have past a lot of them. We found one that looked shiny and new but they told us they were full (which may not be true...).

We got to Ghazipur and started asking around for hotels, and they were all directing us towards the train station (which is where you find them I guess). We found one fancy looking place and checked the price, $12 for a fan cooled room. Excellent. It had a shower and western toilet, neither of which worked very well, but they were there at least.

We think we were one of the first westerners to stay there. The manager wanted to make sure we were happy with everything in his own Indian way, when we got luggage off the bike they refused to let us take bags and had someone follow us around everywhere. A bit tiring and we don't need it, but hey, they had staff members almost pouring out of the place and they needed to do something.

According to the manager a lot of the hotels would have told us that they were full because we were foreigners and they wouldn't want to do the paperwork that the police required. Well that's the first time I've run into that. But they kept our passports and kept asking questions all night, eventually we had to sign a form in triplicate that had a space for our Indian address on it, which we didn't have. Very confusing, but I think the form was for business travellers and not for tourists. Who knows, maybe there will be issues when leaving India now.

Of course, then there was the problem of where to park the bikes. First they opened up this small door and told me to ride in there. I pointed out that my bike was in fact wider than the door, and there was a lot of thinking but eventually I said I wouldn't bother and I'd just park on the street, but then they found a gate and opened it and I parked in there. No idea if it was part of the hotel or not. Drew got to park the Vespa in a small hallway... somehow. They did give us a 101% guarantee that our bikes would be safe.

In the morning when I got my bike out I found switches had been played with, and the trip meter reset, and then I noted there were two kids in the yard where I parked. At least all my fuel was still there.

The road to the train station in Ghazipur.

Next time, Varanasi, and Touts.

Cambodia!

They let me in! Ha!

First off, I left Sukhothai and headed to Loburi, pretty boring flat road day for 300km. Stayed at Noom Guesthouse again because I knew it was decent and cheap and the owners remembered me (and gave me a discount on a bigger room!). The guesthouse seemed busy even though the monkey festival was on last time. I thought it would have been rather quiet without the festival, but there are still monkeys roaming everywhere of course and that's what people come to see.

Next day I headed to Aranyapathet, the town next to the Cambodian border. I stayed two nights at the Market Motel to make sure I researched what I needed to do to cross over. And by the way, Motel style accommodation is great, ride up to the door and throw stuff in, no stairs! I started reading about the border crossing and about the apparent scams here. People helping you get visas for Cambodia before leaving Thailand, but not telling you the visa is available on arrival on the Cambodian side. And also on the Cambodian side the officials overcharging for visas to earn more beer money. And many other scams. I was prepared!

I headed over to the border past a lonnnnggg line of trucks waiting to cross. Just near where the road turns into the border market there are lots of touts who all rushed towards me to ask if I had a visa already (I told them yes, thanks internet advice) and then headed down the side of the trucks to get to the Thai immigration. It's not as well organised as other borders here, I wasn't exactly clear on where to go, but I just showed them the bits of paper I had for the bike and they pointed me in the right direction.

After handing over the temporary import form to one office which I think was customs, not sure, I went back out to the foreign passport line for immigration to get my passport stamped, then back out of immigration the wrong way (past the confused looks of everyone else waiting in line) to get my bike. Then I rode up to another little booth where I handed over the notice of conveyance they gave me when entering from Laos, which they then asked for my carnet, and ran off and photocopied it and I signed everything and they charged me 20baht for photocopying. Not sure what that was for, hadn't had to do that from Laos or Malaysia on the three other crossings. First unknown fee of the day.

Then I made it to Cambodia! The first thing I learnt was they drive on the right here, forgot to check that before I left!

Welcome to the Kingdom of Cambodia!

There's signs up on the road pointing you to the visa on arrival office, so it's not exactly hard. Out the front of the building were touts waiting for people to get through immigration so they could help direct them through the rest of the border proceedings.

In the visa-on-arrival office there's a sign above the window which shows the prices, $20 for a tourist visa, no problems. I had heard that the officials like to overcharge here, asking you to pay $30 instead. So I filled in my visa form, handed that + a photo + passport + $20 to the guy at the window, and in front of him was a piece of paper which read "$20 + 100baht"... This is below the sign that shows the fee amounts. I asked what the 100baht was for but I didn't understand him, whatever, it wasn't worth $3 to protest.

I got my shiny new visa, and headed down to the immigration office, got my passport stamped, fingerprints taken, and then switched off my headlight and rode into Cambodia! But what about Customs you say? Who knows, I never saw the building, and the general advice is to just ignore it and ride in.

I got my money exchanged at some random booth on the way in which everyone was staring at me. 6000 baht came out to $194US, not too bad. I got some of the local currency as well. The next big town in I stopped to get fuel at a very quiet petrol station. All the pumps read in US$ and it came out to $19.51. I gave him $20 and told him to keep the change but then he brought me over a bottle of water! (20c worth? so he still got 30cents out of it)

It's flat in Cambodia. I only saw a couple of hills. I stopped once on the 160km ride to Siem Reap here:

Small waterway.

Typical side road.

Flat flat flat. Like the northern territory with more green.

The National Highway 6, which leads from Poipet at the border to Siem Reap was only sealed a couple of years ago. I read on a couple of motorbike forums that there were lots of potholes, and cows, and mad traffic. But it was fine. No potholes, one cow crossing the road about 50km out from Siem Reap, and one guy overtaking and pushing me out of the lane behind a very slow bike (just like thailand really) and traffic was pretty minimal. People seemed to sit on 100, in Thailand they'll sit on 120 on roads in worse condition.

I got to Siem Reap and then tried to find a place to stay. I tried one that looked like it had secure parking, but it was $20/night and full, then I rode round about and stopped at the Saphir Hotel and got a clean room for $12/night (because I'm staying a week) with aircon and hot shower and fridge and TV. Not bad! Right across the road is a shop with cheap beers too! The bike is just sitting outside all locked up. No problems yet and it's been like that everywhere else. No one has touched it or stolen the fuel from the tank. I'd be more worried leaving it alone in Australia.

Cambodia is more similar to Vietnam than Thailand or Laos. Just less people. Bikes are everywhere, and they can carry everything. They can even tow trailers, but I didn't get a photo of that happening yet. Here are some others I took yesterday:

Fridge biketuktuk...

Cambodian (or just Siem Reap) style tuk tuk.

Bicycles are still everywhere.

Now to plan out the rest of my time here. I can't take my bike up to see the temples, so today I'll explore the town and then tomorrow I'll get a tuk tuk up to the temples and wander round all day.

Malaysia, and then back to Thailand.

After Chris and Helen left I packed up and headed towards the border from Trang. I decided to use the easternmost crossing in Wang Kelien as I'd read that there's some quite nice scenery through there. The road was rather uneventful, but nice scenery and limited traffic but lots of unsigned roadworks going on. It looks like they may be developing this route as an alternative to to the main Asia Highway 2 through Bukit Kayu Hitam, at least on the Thai side.

Once you get closer to the border there are lots of scooters with many jerry cans attached, I assume they have been across the border to get the cheaper petrol in Malaysia. PROTIP: Foreign Motorbikes in Malaysia get to fill up with 95octane fuel, which is subsidized by about 50% by the Malaysian government, foreign cars have to use the 97octane which is more in line with the international market. Once I saw the locals and their "illegal fuel" I realised I wouldn't make it to the border with what I had left I put a small amount in and will fill up in Malaysia (AU61c/L vs. AU$1.23/L) and would fill up the rest in Malaysia for cheap!

The Thai side of the border was easy: fill out the departure form, hand the temporary import form for the bike back, ride across. The Malaysia side took an extra hour or so and I'm not quite sure why. When I enter Malaysia I'm supposed to use the carnet that I got at great expense, however, at this border they were saying there were "new rules" and that I would have to get the ICP (which I had anyway, still valid) and extra stickers for the bike because the number plates were the wrong colour. After arguing for a while they issued another ICP for no cost and took away the old one, but I had to pay 150baht for the stickers and a photocopy of the insurance and my licence, and the carnet remained unsigned. All of this sort of just happened even after my insistence that they only needed to fill in the carnet. It was stupidly hot there so I was in no mood to argue after an hour and just let it happen, I thought there might be problems getting the bike out again, but whatever they needed to do to let me in I did so I could get to a hotel with A/C!

One of the new stickers, the other is on the front.

The problem with the numberplate as they explained it was that it had a white background when all Malay numberplates had to have black backgrounds. After sitting and watching many many cars and bikes go through the border without this requirement applied I figured out why it was a rule (but not why I was selected). It's so that the Malay police can refer to numberplates on thai vehicles with latin characters, but still it seemed to be randomly applied.

Finally I got out of there and down a nice windy road to the plains below, and past a plant where they were slowly removing one of the limestone hills for material. I headed towards the main expressway trying to find a hotel somewhere close to the border for the run in the next day. I eventually found the T Hotel and I'd stayed at another location of the same hotel at Kuala Perlis. Very nice clean rooms, if a touch expensive and mostly used by business travellers, but breakfast is included!

Breakfast in Malaysia! That red stuff was HOT.

The next morning I got up and went through the Bukit Kayu Hitam crossing. The Malay side was again a problem. Because my bike wasn't imported into Malaysia with the Carnet, there were some issues signing the carnet to get it back out. Most of it I didn't have to do anything for, just follow the customs guy around and try and sort it out, it took an hour and a half to get through this crossing though. It turns out that the ICP I had from the day before had been issued by the JPJ (the Malay road authority) when I should have seen the Customs office instead.

I had a quick visit to the Duty free, then off to the Thai border! I used up the second entry on my visa, and then got the bike in for another 30 days, then purchased another 30 days insurance for 300baht. Easy now that I know what I'm doing! Then I was officially in Thailand again!

And only about 2km into Thailand I saw my first dead body. I'll spare the details, but there was a lot of red/pink and it was a big advertisement for helmets. I pulled over shortly afterwards because I felt a little sick and obviously my thoughts were elsewhere rather than concentrating on riding in this traffic... A bit further up the road I saw another ambulance with a knocked over bike but I couldn't see if that one was a fatality. There were a few other ambulances around this area too. I guess with 12000 deaths a year in Thailand It's likely to see this stuff, just didn't expect it all on the same day.

I made it to Hat Yai shortly after, I had arranged to meet up with a German rider I met while in the Northern Territory. His bike was broken when in Australia but he managed to get it all fixed up and travel through Indonesia, Malaysia and some of Thailand. I think I mentioned him before. This is him, but the article is all in German. We chatted about world travel for the afternoon and then decided to get some food a the night markets, I jumped on the back of the scooter he borrowed from another German living there. However... About 500m down the road the scooter had got a flat rear tyre. The hotel I was staying in was close so he pushed it round there and we used my tools to get the tyre off to see if we could patch the tube. But patching wasn't an option as it looked like the valve had been ripped out of the tube leaving a 50cm long hole, and this was a tube that was put in earlier that day because of a different problem! He eventually found his way home via Mototaxi and was instructed by the owner (who was away) to replace the tube and tyre with Dunlop items, not this local thai crap :)

I got away moderatly early the next day and headed to the coastal town of Songkhla. There's a bit of a write up in the lonely planet guide but they do this thing where they make a town sound tiny, and when you get there it's a huge place. I was only there to have a look at the beach anyway.

The serpent at the north end of Songkhla

Close up of it's face. There's sections of the body futher south.

The beach, sandbags everywhere to prevent it from leaving. There's meant to be a mermaid statue here but I didn't see it.

Potato?

I checked out the guide book while I was here, didn't look like there were too many accommodation options until I got closer to Ko Samui (big party island). So I headed 200km-ish up towards the coast near there at Khanom.

And I ended up at the Talkoo Beach Resort for 500baht a night. I'm staying in a bungalow away from the beach and I think they were trying to tell me that at this price there was no tv, but there is one... Possibly the best cheapest place I've stayed, so I stayed another night!

Sunset out the window. The housing across the road is for the staff.

The room! need a wider lens.

The sink! This was mentioned in the lonely planet guide.

The rough sea.

Beer in the very quiet bar. One customer, me!

The beach is made out of shells in places!

Still rough seas

More beach!

Flower!

Tomorrow I'll head to Khao Sak national park and try to get a bungalow over the lake. It's west of here but there's only a couple of spots north of here and I think they will be taken up with escaping Bangkok-ians.

And now for some leftover photos:

The rain yesterday. I stopped once the water hit my underwear.

Me gesturing to a waterfall. This was near Trang.