The first time I went to Bangkok after Nepal I knew about Khowsan road, but had forgotten about it or wasn't interested, I can't remember which. But nevertheless I got a hotel in the center of the city across the street from a big indoor supermarket which I took a walk through. But most of the couple day I was there, besides the trip to the Korean embassy to get my Korean visa, I was just Chillen in my hotel room because it was so nice and I had a TV with cable and I just wanted to hang out. I remember I really liked the Janet Jackson video, ''Party all night'' or something like that.

After Korea I had kind of a culture shock seeing bunches of grungy spaced out tourists on Kowsan road in Bangkok, I bought myself a tie dye outfit and quickly got used to the relaxed world of being a tourist. After three days of getting caught up on all the new movies (I loved starship troopers) and seeing the sights, I got a desperate urge to "get the fuck out of Dodge" and hit the Tai autobahn.

Riding through Thailand was great on the grounds that I had a huge shoulder allowing me to groove to my newly acquired tunes. When I got to Surat Thani I went to Phan Ghang island and tried to do the scuba diving class. But I told the anal Germans who ran the place that I have asthma, so I had to do the course on Samui island.

Breathing under water was a little freaky for the first twenty seconds or so, but after I got used to it, it turned out to be a fascinating activity that I can't see myself ever getting bored of. I think I want to buy my own scuba gear one day, an Irish guy told me you could get a used setup of as little as $500 U.S. I didn't see a whole lot of fish though because I was there at the same time as the boat sinking, plane crashing storm.

I tattooed my scar there and loved the party atmosphere, but was eager to leave when the diving was done.

I have been thinking about a movie I want to make called ''ultimate warrior'', it is about a man who lives on a planet about 100X the size of earth who was recently catapulted from the stone age to present technology because of an upliftment mission from earth. They brought all this technology, but the people don't understand were it came from and don't really care about it. They don't travel because of an ignorant cultural habit of being afraid until one day the hero, Martico, who is very gullible and open minded but not too bright meets an old drunk man walking down the road at night who babbles, "The golden amulet make money and power,

midnight runners know; help me, help yourself". Martico takes this to mean he must travel the globe to find the golden amulet and give it to the midnight runners to save Gargantuan's, or something like that. Because of the vastness of the planet and all the different tribes there are so different, the hero has a magnificent adventure and meets strange people.

When I flew into Bangkok I had heard about Kowsan road and wanted to stay there so I took the bus there with the other tourists who wanted to stay there.

Khowsan road is the place where all the cheap travelers hotels are and it is lined with cyber cafes, Thai related stores, and restaurants that play movies every night. The travelers there were pretty closed up in their own worlds though and I didn't really meet anybody.

The first day I was there I did a tour of the old royal city which was similar to the royal city in Katmandu in architecture but the buildings were much more elaborate and shiny. A couple of the buildings were covered in gold, and the ones that weren't were painted like new. The whole complex was walled in and was kind of like a mini city within a city. There was also a museum there that was housed in the old government building where the French ruled over Thailand for some time.

Then I went to the famous Thai massage school where they give Thai massages but I was stupid and didn't get a Thai massage there, instead I got a Thai massage later from an old man on Khowsan road who gave me a pretty bad one. Because Thailand is famous for Thai massages, a lot of untrained Thais advertise that they give Thai massages but they are really bad. Then I went to see the reclining Buddha which is a giant gold plated Buddha that is laying on his side. I saw a couple more things at that complex which was near the royal city but I don't remember what was there.

I also did a tour of the market place near the river and did a river tour. Bangkok is connected by a network of rivers similar to Amsterdam. Where a lot of people get around the city on transport boats.

I knew about the sex bars where there are holes in the bar where girls zip down your pants and suck your member, and where they shoot ping pong balls out of their orifices, but I didn't know where they were and didn't have the motivation to find them so I skipped out on that tourist attraction.

After a couple days there I rode my bike down the the flat barren countryside where there are grain farms. I drafted behind a tractor for a little bit, and made pretty good time until I got to a small town and got a room. I went for a walk there and was the only white person I saw there but nobody seemed to be staring at me. As I continued south it got junglier, populated, and poorer. Pretty soon there were primitive road side stalls all over the place where I could stop and have a good cheap seafood meal. I remember one town I stayed at was pretty famous for a buddhist monastery in the hills nearby, and I went for a walk in a sort of festival market going on and pigged out on all the kinds of food they have. One cool thing about Thailand was the plethora of healthy cheap food. It really works well for when you are bike touring to have a lot of healthy food in your stomach all the time.

A couple days into the riding I caught up to an older guy who was going in the opposite direction as me but we were riding into town which was a little out of the way from the highway. He was really mellow and was riding slowly. He said he had done this same route like seven years beforehand and was doing it again in the opposite direction. We rode into a seaside town and got some seafood. He said he had stopped at that town on his trip before and even remembered eating at the little restaurant we were eating at. Then we got a room together to save money because it was like eight bucks a night for the cheapest room, but the shower was nice and modern and warm. He got up at like six the next morning and I got up at like eight.

I rode down another day and got a room in a run-down tourist beach resort for Thais. The beach wasn't that bad but there was trash everywhere, and it made me notice that apart from the tourist places the Thai do make a mess of their country with plastic bags and trash. I got a room in a hut that was amongst a few others that were empty and clearly hadn't been used in a while. I rode down to Ranong where I was going to take a boat to Ko Phan Gang but it had been storming really bad that year which caused four boats to sink and a plane to crash, so the boats to Ko Phan Gang weren't operational because of the large waves, so I took the bus to Surat Thani.

I put my bike in the back of the bus with me and laid down. I had my bike bags with the bike in the seat in front of me and I was looking up at the ceiling of the bus which was a mirror so I could see the bags and make sure nobody robbed anything from me. I saw that one of the guys who works for the bus was rummaging through my bags, and I waited until he took some of my tapes out and I sat up and took them out of his hand. He was startled and tried to tell me they were to play the bus. For some reason I didn't tell the guys he worked for, but I should have. He looked kind of embarrassed for the rest of the ride and then gave me an angry glare as I got of the bus. I guess I didn't tell his co-workers because I felt sorry for him, I don't know.

When I got to Surat Thani I booked the next boat to Ko Phan Gang and saw saving private ryan in the theater in Thai. The boat ride was pretty cool because the boat was pretty small and instead of having seats the open area under the deck was just flat, so the people but their sleeping bags there and that was it. It was cool because it was so warm and we were so close to the water. The boat ride went through the night and we arrived at the island in the morning.

I rode across the island to the northern shore and back down the western coast to a small tourist place where I got a bungalow on Sri Thanu beach. My first night there the host of the place was trying to sell magic mushrooms to as many of the tourists as she could so make a trippers party. I bought some and sat on the small quaint beach on the full moon with about a dozen other tripping travelers. We started out by listening to techno music. At the time I wasn't used to techno music as it wasn't really popular where I was from in America. I remember we were sitting there on the porch of some guys bungalow listening to the techno with some guys radio, and I was thinking to myself, "This techno sucks, I can't believe nobody is telling this guy to put on some Reggae or something, I feel embarrassed for him,'' and just at that moment someone said, ''Wow this techno is awesome,'' and everybody else sounded in agreement and the guy was like, ''Yeah, I know''. I was like, ''wow'', I guess I need to be more open minded. Then we went down to the beach and hung out for the rest of the night. I was trying to do handstands in front of everybody for like two hours straight which was totally cracking this one couple up. They were like, ''He just doesn't give up, he keeps trying and trying, and one day he'll do it!" Then I got the idea to try to do it with another guy so we could support each other, and we did for a little bit but weren't that successful. Every once in a while somebody would walk by and the couple would be like, ''Hey look! there goes another one of those walking post cards!'' The funniest thing about the whole night was the host lady who was frantically running all over the place making sure we didn't do anything stupid. I remember one time I wanted to get in the water and she ran up to me and said ''No don't get in the water! You'll die it's dangerous, stay right here!'' And I was like, ''OK if its that important to you I'll stay right here. But on the south end of the island where the big mushroom parties are, tourists have had a history of getting loopy and swimming off in to the ocean never to be heard from again.

The next morning I rode to the south end of the island to do some scuba diving.