After I left KL I headed north to the island of Penang.  Penang is a local resort of sorts and I stayed in a hotel right on the water - I could walk out the back door of the hotel and onto the beach!  Later in the evening I had dinner on the patio and looked out over the bay and the distant thunderstorms.  It was very nice and relaxing.

 The next day I rode to the Thai border and crossed into Thailand.  The border crossing was not too bad - I got my immigration stamps, then got the carnet stamped.  It all took about 45 minutes including changing some of my Malaysian money into Baht.

 Once in Thailand things changed immediately.  The roads got much worse, even though they were still paved.  And the roads and towns were more crowded.  The riding was much slower now that I was off the toll roads and back onto surface streets that wound through every town.

 After I got a bit further north the roads opened up into 2 lanes in each direction.  These roads feel like an expressway, but there's a confusing mix of slow traffic, fast traffic, and mopeds on both sides.  In addition, there is contantly traffic going the wrong way down both sides of the highway!  This is definitely not an US-style limited access highway!  And the funny thing is that the police don't seem to mind.  In fact, you're just as likely to see the police cars or mopeds going the wrong way, or speeding past you.  I guess the Thais haven't learned about revenue collecting yet, which is fine by me.

 I rode a couple of long days making my way to Bangkok.  Late on the second long day a pickup truck went by me, with 2 elephants in the back!  I had to do a doubletake to make sure I wasn't hallucinating, but they were elephants sure enough.  Back home it's dogs and Harleys (sorry Steve!) in the back of pickups.  Here it's elephants!

 So far very few people in Thailand speak any English.  People are constantly coming up to ask about the bike, but I don't understand what they're saying and they don't understand me.  We end up smiling and pointing at the bike, and then we wave goodbye.  It's even harder when I have to find food.  Everything is written in Thai, the menus, restaurant signs, street signs, everything.  It makes it hard to figure out what the food is, or even which buildings are restaurants.  Nobody understands when I say I want vegetarian food.  So I had the clerk at my hotel write the Thai word for vegetarian on a piece of paper.  Now when I go into a restaurant I show them my paper and they understand.  It's worked so far - I haven't gotten any meat or fish meals!  But I have gotten some surprises - like fried rice with pineapple.  At least it was meatless :-)

 I couldn't read the street signs, so I navigated as best I could using the GPS and the tall buildings.  The hotel I was looking for was in an out of the way place making it even more difficult.  As I got close I asked people and they pointed me in the approximate direction.  After about an hour of this I found the hotel - on a dead-end street.  Luckily they had a room as I wasn't prepared to head back out into the traffic and rain!

 So here I am in Bangkok.  I'll stay here for a couple of days to see about arranging service and shipping for my bike when I return at the end of June after visiting Laos and Cambodia.  But this afternoon I'm going to enjoy the air conditioning, western food, and relative calm in this small corner of the city!

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