Before I get into today's ride I should mention my sleep last night. Now from previous holidays I've touched on how much sleep I need compared to others. Especially Americans. I was hoping for a good night's sleep last night but that didn't happen. Firstly when I went to the toilet I found a huge spider near the system. Now that's not a real problem for what I had to do in there, and I've had plenty of practice with my aim over the years. Thankfully I didn't have to do a sit down job or that spider was going to be nuked with my Bushman's spray.
The next thing I have to complain about was the 3 million mossies in my room. I decided to leave my mosquito net back in Cambodia feeling it wasn't necessary to carry that weight around with me. Wrong. I sprayed myself, turned on the air con full blast and pulled the sheets up to my neck.
Now the air con. At times I was considering pulling that thing off the wall due to the noise it was making. It had a terrible rattle which would come and go and that was annoying. I decided to use some toilet paper and fashion it into the size and shape of ear plugs. How ingenious am I? Yeh, I should have brought some along for the ride. Len did give me a set but I was too lazy to try and find them.
During the night I was woken by Len because he's air con had decided to stop working and he was sweating like a pig. We only had one remote for both rooms. I gave him the remote and fell back to sleep.
The next noise I heard were children and adults running up and down the stairs outside my room. I'm thinking it's 5.30 in the morning and don't these morons have respect for us old people who like to sleep in. This continued on for at least least an hour. So, once again it was an early morning after one hell of a night's sleep. Now it was time for breakfast.
Breakfast was toast with a bowl of rice soup with either pork or meat in it. I couldn't work out what I was eating.
Just as were getting on our bikes to leave That Phanom and head north, I met this young monk. Extremely polite young man who gave me an overview of a monk's life. He stated that he was required to spend 3 months minimum with the monks to learn the teaching of Budha. He had to sit for an examination at the end of the 3 months, but it didn't matter whether he passed or failed. The monks are subject to celibacy for this period and must stay in the region of the Wat they are studying at. They are not allowed to leave nor stay in a hotel or eat after noon each day. In total there are over 100 rules they must comply with during there studies. He also has a law degree and is returning to America to work in the investment industry. Now that's not bad information in a 5 minute conversation, although I don't remember his name.
Finally we're on our way for the 52km trip to Nakhon Phanom a border crossing area into Laos. Today the temperature reached 107 degrees with an average temperature of 95 degrees. Once again we had a headwind to contend with all the way.
During the ride today we came across a lot of small temples (Wats) with statues of Budha inside. Some are very intricate in detail, but many seem the same to me, and I'm certainly not being disrespectful to their religion.
In the photo above you can see a person painting the gold leaf on the entrance to yet another Wat. In some of the major Wat's in Bangkok and down south they actually use gold in the painting of the temples. I like the scaffolding used in Thailand, all made of bamboo.
As we continued on searching for our morning tea stop Len found this unique banner on the side of a house. The windows were shut, the gate was closed and when we took some photos a person within starting yelling at us. I was waiting to hear bullets buzz past my head. We quickly got back on the bikes and didn't look around. I couldn't work out what the relationship between the Swatz logo and Che Gevara until I checked out wikipedia. So I copied an extract and now I understand. For the first time on my journey's a history lesson.
The
swastika (卐) (
Sanskrit:
स्वस्तिक)
is an equilateral cross with four arms bent at 90 degrees. The earliest
archaeological evidence of swastika-shaped ornaments dates back to the
Indus Valley Civilization,
Ancient India as well as
Classical Antiquity. Swastikas have also been used in various other ancient civilizations around the world. It remains widely used in
Indian religions, specifically in
Hinduism,
Buddhism, and
Jainism, primarily as a tantric symbol to evoke
shakti
or the sacred symbol of auspiciousness. The word "swastika" comes from
the Sanskrit svastika - "su" meaning "good" or "auspicious," "asti"
meaning "to be," and "ka" as a suffix. The swastika literally means "to
be good". Or another translation can be made: "swa" is "higher self",
"asti" meaning "being", and "ka" as a suffix, so the translation can be
interpreted as "being with higher self".
In
East Asia, the swastika is a
Chinese character, defined by
Kangxi Dictionary, published in 1716, as "synonym of
myriad, used mostly in
Buddhist classic texts",
[1] by extension, the word later evolved to represent eternity and Buddhism. And now for Che Guevara. When you read both you get a better understanding what this person is all about.
Ernesto "
Che"
Guevara (
Spanish pronunciation: [ˈtʃe ɣeˈβaɾa];
[7] June 14,
[1] 1928 – October 9, 1967), commonly known as
el Che or simply
Che, was an Argentine
Marxist revolutionary, physician, author,
guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist. A major figure of the
Cuban Revolution, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous
countercultural symbol of
rebellion and global insignia
within popular culture.
[8]
As a young
medical student, Guevara traveled throughout South America and was moved by the poverty, hunger, and disease he witnessed.
[9]
His burgeoning desire to help overturn what he saw as the capitalist
exploitation of Latin America by the United States prompted his
involvement in Guatemala's social reforms under President
Jacobo Arbenz, whose eventual
CIA-assisted overthrow at the behest of the
United Fruit Company solidified Guevara's political ideology.
[9] Later, while living in Mexico City, he met
Raúl and
Fidel Castro, joined their
26th of July Movement, and sailed to Cuba aboard the yacht,
Granma, with the intention of overthrowing U.S.-backed Cuban dictator
Fulgencio Batista.
[10] Guevara soon rose to prominence among the
insurgents,
was promoted to second-in-command, and played a pivotal role in the
victorious two-year guerrilla campaign that deposed the Batista regime.
[11]
Following the
Cuban Revolution, Guevara performed a number of key roles in the new government. These included reviewing the appeals and
firing squads for those convicted as
war criminals during the revolutionary
tribunals,
[12] instituting
agrarian land reform as minister of industries, helping spearhead a successful nationwide
literacy campaign, serving as both national bank president and instructional director for
Cuba’s armed forces,
and traversing the globe as a diplomat on behalf of Cuban socialism.
Such positions also allowed him to play a central role in training the
militia forces who repelled the
Bay of Pigs Invasion[13] and bringing the
Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles to Cuba which precipitated the 1962
Cuban Missile Crisis.
[14] Additionally, he was a prolific writer and diarist, composing a seminal
manual on
guerrilla warfare, along with a best-selling
memoir about
his youthful continental motorcycle journey. His experiences and studying of
Marxism–Leninism led him to posit that the
Third World's
underdevelopment and
dependence was an intrinsic result of
imperialism,
neocolonialism, and
monopoly capitalism, with the only remedy being
proletarian internationalism and
world revolution.
[15][16] Guevara left Cuba in 1965 to foment revolution abroad, first
unsuccessfully in
Congo-Kinshasa and later in
Bolivia, where he was captured by
CIA-assisted Bolivian forces and
summarily executed.
[17]
Guevara remains both a revered and reviled historical figure, polarized in the collective imagination
in a multitude
of biographies, memoirs, essays, documentaries, songs, and films. As a
result of his perceived martyrdom, poetic invocations for
class struggle,
and desire to create the consciousness of a "new man" driven by moral
rather than material incentives, he has evolved into a quintessential
icon of various
leftist-inspired movements.
Time magazine named him one of the
100 most influential people of the 20th century,
[18] while an
Alberto Korda photograph of him entitled
Guerrillero Heroico (shown), was cited by the
Maryland Institute College of Art as "the most famous photograph in the world".
[19]
Finally we found a 7/11 and Amazon coffee shop about 10ks before town. I do enjoy these breaks out of the sun. Len pointed to this fruit which might be a JAP fruit which suppose to taste very nice. I prefer the coffee and cake to be honest.
Finally rolled into the Nakhon Phanom River View Hotel at midday. After getting a room for 600 Baht which equates to 20 dollars it was time throw my gear in my nice room with a view over the Mekong River and go for a swim. Nice pool.
This is the view from the area around the pool looking out over the Mekong and Laos in the distance. You can just make out some wooden huts down on the shore of the river. I was told these are traders where small boats stop and the goods are ferried up to the road. I did see a couple of motorbikes running all over the sand.
For the rest of the afternoon I'm going to enjoy the pool and do absolutely nothing. Tomorrow we cross over into Laos.
Safe riding.
