murrah farm (175km): 9-may-2009

even though i left > 1 hr late (another stupid alarm clock failure), excellent ride to murrah farm. routes 3121-3010 were very nice riding terrain--rolling terrain with plenty of curves & not too much traffic. some bad road surface patches along the way (even trucks had a hard time w/a few spots) but nothing catastrophic. farm owner said she'd heard that TAT was looking at this route for some kind of bike tourism. i'd agree 100% if they fixed the road ;-)

the farm itself was quite interesting though you'll need to hoof it for 50 or so meters as the road down to the farm is dirt. owner was friendly & informative. had the best fresh mozzarella i have ever eaten. definitely worth the trip, for sure will do another ride there.


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khao ito, part deux (132 km): 25-apr-2009

after the last trip to khao ito, decided caution was the better part of valor & hopped a train up to prachinburi instead of riding there. the train ride probably made little difference as there were no seats, so i had to stand for 2.5 hours and i ended up saving only about 1 hour off the time if i rode up there instead. trip up the mountain was still tough (that "so & so" is one steep ride). came down the mountain so fast my ears popped & couldn't touch my rims they were so hot from braking (hit >60km/hr, still not 100% sure about the road to really let it rip & used the brakes a bit too much).


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khao ito (220km): 18-apr-2009

khao ito was deceptively steep, in fact it was so steep that the GPS went into auto-pause mode so often it messed up the track up the mountain. had to ice up my knees after the ride. despite that it was a beautiful ride up the mountain, very good road, plenty of trees, almost no traffic.

found a decent coffee shop (even though it was robusta) on the way into prachinburi (about 3km west of the city), "khao tha lu" which i guess is named after a coffee growing mountain down south in chumporn. nice pick me up before tackling the mountain.

needless to say the ride back to bangkok was plenty brutal.


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pattaya (168 km): 2-may-2009

a first for my saturday rides, down south east to the "notorious" beach resort of pattaya. the ride was actually pretty decent. the only bad parts were the last bits of 304 into chachoengsao (of course) & the last 5 km or so of 3138 into 331 (lots of hills w/bad road surface, felt like cobblestones, shook the blood out of my arms, actually split open one of my gloves). route 3240 into pattaya was a very nice surprise, though just a bit too much traffic for such a narrow road. probably do this ride again.

pattaya itself is still the suck though.

didn't take many pictures, i guess the highlight was the busted water main near the beginning of the ride along route 304



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