February 26, 2009

dong lakorn (198 km): 7-feb-2009

route from lum sai (#3312-#4009-#2008) to bang sang. the tricky bit is the hair pin turn you need to make after the railroad bridge (thanks to pa somkate & khun tee from the nongchok bike club for the info). then up #3076 past sri chula (road's not so hot and a bit too much traffic for my liking).

this time went into the ancient city site (but ran out of batteries for my camera so only got a few pictures). nothing really outstanding but once you ride around you can feel how big the site actually was. the old city walls were kind of massive kind. worth the trip. GPS ate 1st 40km.


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From bike rides

dong lakorn (194 km): 14-feb-2009

the ride started out quite slow, very thick fog. took me almost 2 hours just to go 30 odd km up khlong 8--then figured out i could take off my glasses ;-) this route was up along the #305 highway to nakorn nayok intersection then down #3076 to dong lakorn. in the afternoon it was hot enough to make the grease run out of my hubs (and it's not even summer yet). ran out of daylight on the way back & had to hop a taxi.

dong lakorn is rather bigger than i expected, took me almost an hour to ride around the "dong" and i skipped plenty of side roads (although some were more mountain bike trails than "roads"). this time through i took plenty of photos.


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From bike rides

February 24, 2009

almost chet kot (215km): 21-feb-2009

i've been bombing around the ban cha om, grok e-dok, khaeng khoi area over the last year or so and i always wanted to see the "famous" chet kot waterfall--famous in that it was once written up in the bangkok post. after re-reading the article and pouring over google earth i finally found a route there that didn't require going up to thap khwang district first (there are only a couple of small signs pointing the way on the main road and pretty much no signage once you get onto the smaller roads so it's kind of hard to figure out on the ground):


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as you can see from the map (and you know, the title of this posting) i didn't quite make it there. the paved road i was following turned into a dirt one quite a distance from the waterfall (with the additional fun of a couple of dog packs that tried to run me down just where the road turned to dirt). i got various advice about the length of the dirt bits from people around the area (all the way from less than 2km all the way up to "don't bother trying") so i left it at that.

along the way i stumbled on this awesome forest monastery (Wat Pa Sawang Boon) that i had noticed on google earth. turns out to be quite a place. i hadn't really planned on visiting it (other than "what the heck is that" when i saw it in google earth) but i stopped to talk to some folks near there (asking about the road condition) and these folks more or less insisted i visit the temple. glad i took their advice.










From bike rides