A Broken foot in Thailand & back on the road in JAPAN!

Waiting for the broken foot to heal was a painful process. Though in many ways if I were to break a bone on this trip the timing couldn’t have been better.  I took the bus to Chanterburi, eastern Thailand and spent a week hobbling around at my friend Steve’s house/restaurant. Steve was a fireman with me when I worked at  Canterbury before transferring to London. Though unlike many of the fireman I see, who retire to work 6 days a week painting people’s houses/driving lorries or spend the rest of their lives vegetated in grim south east London cafes whilst trying to relive the fire brigade and eating themselves towards a heart attack, Steve chose the Sun. He had build himself a wonderful house come restaurant virtually on the beach in a small local village called Lem Sing. 

Some good grub with Steve and his wife Mem

After leaving Steve Betsy came to visit from London and we hit the Islands in the south of Thailand on the Andaman coast. Despite being extremely touristy they are incredibly beautiful. The first we visited was Pipi. One of the most famous and smallest of the islands where no cars or motorbikes are allowed. The tiny streets on the island were congested with human beings and littered with bars and street stalls selling alcohol out of buckets. One  of the bars had a Thai boxing ring where it was advertised that you could "have a go for  fun and protection would be provided".

More often than not the result was a complete tear up.Often  a westerner who claimed to have no experience but  obviously trained at boxing/kickboxing or an Irish Gypsy would beat the shit out of an innocent naive drunken tourist who wrongly thought it would be a bit of fun! Pipi was a good spectacle for a few days but I soon decided it would be better to go to a more chill island where I could rent a moped to use as my own personal motorized wheelchair. We went to Ko Lanta and I booked the place with the largest pool I could find. Betsy had brought me an aqua sock off ebay which was meant for swimming, and by this point with so much time without exercise I was starting to go a bit crazy.

Beach somewhere on Ko Lanta

From Pipi we had a few days in a town called Ao Nang before returning back to Bangkok. Ao nang was a nice enough place with some great beaches nearby I was keen to enjoy. After being such a spectacle riding through India I was looking forward to blending in with the rest of society for a brief while. A beach holiday would have been the perfect answer...... though riding a moped to the beach with a foot in a cast and having to put a giant blue condom over my leg so that  I could swim prevented me from doing this. The lack of balance from having a broken foot left me quite vulnerable and I also managed to bash up my toe on my good foot, which bled for days and started hurting more than the broken one. On top of that, the aqua sock wasn't as aqua proof as it was designed to be - or it was perhaps because I tried to do a one legged dive off the side of the snorkeling boat. I felt like I had two wooden legs and my broken foot was beginning to itch like crazy with all the salt water and sand which had become wedged between my leg and the cast. The stench coming from it was the least of my concerns - the doc did say DO NOT GET IT WET! There was only one option, a self operation.

 I bought myself a bottle of red wine and set about trying to remove the fiberglass cast - which felt as solid as concrete. My choice of tools for the procedure were a pair of nail clippers I had bought in Bangladesh and a house key to be used as a saw. It took me around 3 hours to remove the cast as I slowly made incisions with the nail clippers and ripped away at the cast with my hands. I thought that my foot would be completely fine as i was able to walk in the cast without the strap on sandal they had given me, though I guess the cast takes more weight off the injury that you realise.

I had taken the cast off well before the doctors earliest recommenced removal date and as I finally removed it I was somewhat hesitant to stand up on my newly revealed foot. I slowly put my weight onto it and it felt very fragile and tender! The swelling and bruising had gone.......... though only to be replaced with infected saws from the wetness and rubbing! Though it did feel awesome to set my foot free. It still hurts a bit now but seems to be getting better everyday.

Coincidentally the only other bone I’ve managed to break is also my 5^th metatarsal, thought on the other foot. I also broke it running, though by putting my foot in a drain running home from work. The so called “bad news” from the NHS doctor was actually a blessing as they put my foot in a walk –a – boot, which unlike my cast on this trip, meant I could walk quite well and cycle perfectly. The doc signed me off work for 2 months in the middle of summer. I immediately set off riding to Spain. On reaching San Sebastian I had a phone call from my watch manager at the time, Ivan, who had been mad with me ever since I got on the wrong fire engine for a fire call. I am probably the only fireman capable of doing this and have long had a reputation for living in the clouds. He presumed I was in bed or hiding somewhere and went nuts trying to find me, after abandoning the search he arrived at the fire late only to find his favourite fireman on the branch (hose) saving the day wearing the most ridiculous pair of goggles following lazer eye surgery, he was not a happy man! I’m going off on a massive tangent here, anyway, Ivan called me on my mobile, and angrily asked, “Simon, where the flip are you?! (Clearly it wasn't flip but my mum doesn't like my language on this blog and told me off) You’ve missed your flipping medical!!!” I have no idea why the brigade would want to give me a medical when I had a broken foot. Though neither was there anything in brigade policy that said you couldn’t cycle to Spain while on sick pay with a broken foot! 

I arrived at Bangkok airport on the 24^th March for my flight to Osaka, Japan. There are actually 2 airports In Bangkok, luckily I checked that morning and realised that I was flying from the old manky low cost one. Flying with a bicycle is never easy but this airport was particularly problematic. The lady at the check-in desk asked me for proof of onward travel out of Japan. I didn’t have any. Though I did have proof of flights booked from Sydney to Hawaii and Hawaii to Alaska. I didn’t want to book the Japan – Sydney leg yet as I had no idea where I was going to cycle to or when I would arrive. She told me I would not be able to fly and they would issue me a refund. I unsuccessfully tried to argue my point, why the hell would I book flights to Hawaii and Alaska if I didn’t intend to go there, which I thought was a good point. She out rightly refused to let me fly without having proof.  This may sound a touch racist but I thought to myself....Jesus I’m from the UK not an economic refuge! In the end she had a word with her manager and I had to show them my online bank account to proof I had sufficient funds!?!

Next came the bicycle box, which I was somewhat rehearsed for. She asked how many pieces of luggage I had, I replied 2. – one bike and one carry on. There were actually 3, I hid one behind the bike box – I’ll explain later! She put the bike box on the scales and it weighed in at 24kg. The first 15kg cost 1400 baht, the remaining 9kg cost me 550 baht per kilo!! – 4950 so 6350 in total. That’s about 150 quid, my flight was only 200! I was told to go over to the excess baggage payment counter. In fact there were about 4 counters, almost as many as there were check-in counters. AirAsia were quite the experts in ripping everybody off. But It could have been way worse, I had hidden all the heavy goods such as my tent, cycle shoes etc in a pannier bag. After paying my fee I ripped open my bike box and stuffed it full with everything from the pannier bag before borrowing some tape from a different counter to reseal it and returned with my box and payment receipt to my original check in counter. Luckily they didn’t reweigh it, it would have cost another 100 quid! Another passenger at the excess baggage payment counter said she had paid 3 times the price of her ticket for her excess baggage!

I thought I couldn’t have hated Air Asia anymore when I went to order food on-board (nothing is free on the 5 hour flight) to discover there were no more hot meals on offer so I had to buy 2 overpriced pot noodles! The final dagger was the announcement made during the decent, “in an effort to *****load of bullshit***** we will be weighing carry on hand luggage on arrival and anyone carrying over 7kg will be charged.....” I couldn’t believe it! People sometimes call me tight but this was unbelievable! Anyone who had loaded up with cheap booze at duty free was in for a shock! I started putting layers and layers of clothes on in readiness, there was no way I was going to give these c***s another penny!

Waiting for me in arrivals was....(no, not a large breasted tall blond supermodel)...but one of my best childhood friends from school, Karl Hannaford. Karl had moved to Taiwan to learn Mandarin, met a Japanese bird and moved to Osaka. He had not been home since moving there 6.5 years ago.  Japan, immediately struck me as being completely different to anywhere else I’d ever been. Obviously I knew it had a reputation for being futuristic, but I was amazed how different the simplest things were. It was like the Brits doing things differently 100’s of years ago, like opting to drive on the left when everyone else drove on the right. Though in Japan everything seemed to make good sense. Doors open sideways not inwards to save space, food in restaurants is ordered on a touch screen computer as you enter and delivered to you on a conveyor belt – in the case of sushi, and the toilet...the toilet is f'ing genius.

“Have a go on the toilet!” Karl said to me shortly after entering his flat. I sat down to find the seat was self heating and already warm by the time I sat on it. As I flushed the toilet the water refilled the cistern into a bowl which enables you to wash your hands in the water for the next flush, saving energy. There is also an electronic control pad with a selection of buttons, I didn’t know what they were so decided to push one of them and find out. A plastic jet extended on a robotic arm out of nowhere and started spraying water into the air and on to my face!

It went all over the ceiling and door and I couldn’t stop it firing despite trying to stop it with my hand. “Karl!” I shouted, who came running over laughing his head off despite me drenching his bathroom. In fact karl is so incredibly laid back he wouldn’t have been angry had I covered the room in shit. The button I had pushed was one of the arse cleaning options, a spray of warm water, which I later discovered was extremely effective. What i thought was state of the art was in fact quite a basic japanese bog. The higher range models automatically opens the seat for you and plays relaxing music while you dump and gives you the option to clean your vagina, should you have one, or your arse.

Despite being extremely advanced much of Japan feels extremely retro, a time warp from the 1970s. Karl told me about the working culture which existed. Men work there arses of and demonstrating working stamina is an important part of culture. Sleeping at your desk is seen as a positive as it shows your working hard - i'll have to see if this excuse works at the fire station. They say that you are married to your company and working weekends and till the early hours is often expected.  Marriage was, and apparently still is a business relationship.  Often the man’s wage goes directly to the wife who allocates her husband a (often very small) salary. Because of this it is often not frowned up on for the husband to indulge in brothels.

Underground train in Osaka - carriage is obviously decades old but still in perfect condition - worthy of a transport museum!

Visiting the local park....dressing up as a cartoon character  for a photo shoot is apparently quite normal in Japan

On the subject of sex, what appeared to be quite disturbing was that Japan appeared to be a nation of Pedophiles! The girls which covered the magazines were of half naked women who looked like they should still be in school. I saw one middle aged bloke in a large black estate car with pictures of teenage girls from his favorite pop bands plastered all over it!...and a group of men in there 50s dancing erratically to a completely uncoordinated teenage pop band performing in the city centre. I later discovered the legal age to have sex in Japan was 13...no wonder such behavior appeared so acceptable! My friend Karl tells me that all of his female friends at some point have been subjected to a man with a strange fetish who has randomly pulled his penis out in public or started hugging them.

It seems to me that things have gone a little bit wrong somewhere! The younger generation are also apparently working so much that they aren't finding time for sex...and with no reproduction and an ageing economy Japan has been in a 20 year recession. More sex and less fetishes are surely whats needed!

I was anxious to hit the road but first needed some winter gear as Japan was very much still in winter and I had been using a 2 season sleeping bag (& Alaska was still - 20 at night!) Japanese people love image and spend 1000s kitting themselves out with the latest high-tech gear before even trying a new hobby for the first time. The cheapest winter sleeping bag I could find was 350 quid! Cheap used camping gear doesn't exist in

Japan....infact other than food, nothing is cheap in Japan! Then Karl recalled an old shop he had seen years ago. As soon as I saw it i knew it was right up my street. It was a gem. Old camping gear, some of it must have been there since the 70's, was hung up and thrown all over the place covered in cobwebs and dust, like a run down charity shop. He had just one down Japanese made sleeping bag in the shop window, completely bleached by the sun! I snapped it up for 120 quid and was good to go.

I persuaded Karl to join me for the first short leg on the road, a 30 mile cycle along the river to neighboring Kyoto. It was 25 degrees colder than Thailand, but 10 degrees made for some pleasant cycling conditions.

Kyoto

Kyoto is one of the most visited places in Japan as it wasn't bombed by the yanks. I found a cheap hostel and checked out a few temples. The hostel had a bath house attached, basically i naked spa. I gave it a go...and after taking a naked bath with an old Japanese bloke tried the "electric bath" out. It was a small cylinder shape bath tub with a glass circular screen which you have to climb into - it basically looks like a torture device from a Roger Moore era James Bond film. As i climbed in i thought i'd slipped a disc in my back.....but then realised it was the electric shocks been pulsed through by body!...at the point my right arm became paralyzed and i thought i was going to die i hopped out and called it a day.

I was itching to get back on the bike again properly, all that time off with a broken foot had sent me a bit mad and made me a bit soft, my plan was to head north into the mountains and cycle somewhere fucking freezing, camp to save money and toughen me up and give my lungs a proper burn out. Heading north i climbed over a small mountain, cycled along the side of the enormous Lake Biwa and then started climbing high into the mountains taking the smallest roads i could find. The first night i thought i had found the ideal camping spot, a perfect bit of grass just off a tiny track from the main road, it even had my own private Japanese gate. What i failed to observe was train line for the Japanese Bullet train was about 30 metres away!

Taking the small roads

Climbing higher each day i noticed the roadside electric temperature gauge dropping one degree at a time until the day time temperature was hovering around freezing. Nights were starting to get a bit brutal! My second camp was in the town of Gero just south of Takayama, I arrived in the pissing rain freezing cold and so decided to go directly to the local bath house (Onsen) before pitching my tent. This one was heated naturally from the underlying hot springs and at 350 yen -about 3 quid seemed pretty good value.

Bathhouse - Gero

Everyone squats on little plastic stools with there own shower hose and washes there body 10 times over before jumping in the hot wooden bath. Neither myself or Japanese men will win the worlds biggest willy competition and it wasn't a particularly intimidating place to be, the old boys seemed to like the fact i was embracing the local culture and seeing me in there, often coming over for a chat. Unfortunately the women's one was separate. When i left the onsen it was still raining, i pitched my tent on a bit of grass next to a flat block right by the river, by the time i woke up there was fresh snow on the surrounding mountainsides.

Takayama

Takayama

I spent half a day looking around Takayama, with its lovely old wooden houses and headed higher still. By now i was well into the snow level and snow was piled up metres high by the road side and I had climbed to 3000 metres. It had apparently been a very late winter, as by now the cherry blossom should have been in full bloom. I was keen to take the smallest mountain roads possible and had spotted a road on my map which would have taken me right over the top of Mt Norikura, the number 5, though when i arrived at the turn off it was well closed! Barricaded by a huge snow wall and completely in-passable.  I kept on heading uphill in the general direction of Mt Fuji and ended up passing several ski resorts,

one i popped into for lunch, the locals found it quite amusing to see a Westerner on the ski slopes with his bicycle! I eventually reached the top of the pass where the road flattened out and went through a massive tunnel and then immediately descended down and into a beautiful mountain town i have no idea the name of. When the sun was out it felt pretty warm, especially exerting constant energy cycling uphill, though you seen freeze your arse off when the clouds came in or descending downhill. Anyway, the town i got to was a dead end town! Other than the car only toll road - a tunnel right through the middle of the mountain, the only road out of there was the 158, which was a remote mountain pass. It was partially cleared at first so i  started making my way up it until it became completely snow covered. I realised it could be a long night but even if i had to walk i'd get there eventually! So i returned to the shop in town to stock up with food so I could last the night. I made another attempt once more up the snowy road........ but it terminated into a massive snow wall and became covered in feet of snow! It was well closed. The only other way out was the toll road which went through a 3km tunnel. The Japanese are very Germanic, rules are rules and there was no way i was going to be able to cycle through it. Very luckily i bumped into a couple of Japanese guys that had come up from Kyoto for the weekend and slept in there car to do some skiing. They bunged my bike in the boot, took a pic and drove me past the man at the barrier so i could continue on my way! 

Sun and Snow

The snowbound 158

Top of the pass - exiting tunnel before big downhill

One of the more interesting roads - my attempt up the closed 158

Lift pass the toll man from a friendly Japanese guy

A long decent followed some more climbs as a i passed through the city of Matsumoto, climbed yet another big mountain and from the top was amazed to look down onto the most beauiful lake just as the sun becan to set. It looked like an awesome place to camp and it was. I found a nice spot of grass next to the lake that wouldn't look out of place on a golf course and pitched up. It even had a public toilet nearby. It was one of the most beautiful places i've ever camped, despite me and my tent being frozen when i woke up at 5am.

Camping - Lake Suwa

Another day in the road brought me to the town of Kawaguchiko at the foot of mt Fuji. It was massively impressive to see it. I never thought a volcano could be so impressive. I spoiled myself and spent the night in a pod hostel and was rewarded with perfect blue skies the next morning.

ps i do realise ive just posted about 5 photos of the same mountain...but it deserves it!! As i left Fuji it remained in view on my right hand side for hours as i made my decent towards the coast and north into Tokyo. Temperatures rose rapidly as i lost altitude and by the time i hit the coast road heading into Tokyo i felt i was on the cote d'azur. The build up towards Tokyo went on for 50 miles of endless suburbia before hitting the big city...where I am right now getting fed up of writing this blog in an overpriced Starbucks with a hangover! In short i found myself smiling at big group of Japanse who were sitting getting pissed under the cherry blossom on the river bank, i was invited to join in and found myself eating Sushi and some strong Japanese liqour....a few hours later I was dressed up in a lions costume at 2am on the microphone in a Karaoke room!

Cote De Jap

Drinking under the Cherry Blossom followed by Karaoke 

Camping shop come hostel by night where i stayed - strange choice i know - where i had a massive row with the owner..long story!

Tokyo!

Tokyo - Massive!