Day 1

It was barely light and about 18 degrees at 6.30am as we slipped out of the Pen Park Place hotel.

 We rode down khao San road passing a few drunk backpackers who were stumbling around, still enjoying a night on the sauce and then headed east through the city. Navigating out towards the airport was pretty easy and the traffic was (relatively) light. 
We stopped off at a 7 eleven for a can of ice coffee and to replace the bottle of water that had fallen off Will's bike. We also tightened up Kate's handle bars that we'd forgotten to do the day before. So far so good!

About 20km later we stopped for brekkie, well, don't you just love a steaming bowl of spicy fish ball soup with noodles on a Sunday morning?
The road was basically a dual carriage way that headed out through the industrial suburbs. All pretty dull really and actually not very nice to ride on. We knew it would be like this from reading other people's blogs who all recommend getting the train instead. We wanted to ride though, this was the start to our big cycling adventure and to not be riding felt wrong.
It all began to wear a bit thin though over the next few hours. The traffic got lighter but then the hard shoulder pretty much disappeared, making riding a bit unpleasant. The Thais are actually pretty courteous drivers though so we felt ok(ish). More flat hot farming land, more factories and more thundering trucks.

By about 1.30 we'd covered around 65km and were feeling pretty hot and tired. There was a bit of a headwind to add to the challenge of the 30 degree heat and less than ideal road.  The target for the day was the town of Chachoengsao which we knew nothing about except that it was roughly the distance and direction from Bangkok that we needed. We pulled over at a petrol station to sit in the shade of the canopy. The road was really busy, hot and dusty. We sat there and I actually asked Kate why we put ourselves into these situations.... After a bit of a rest we pulled out our phrase book and managed to get directions to a nearby hotel from the 2 bemused and giggling staff. 
After a couple of wrong turns and the help of a passer by we're now £9 lighter, showered and lying on a nice clean hotel bed in aircon comfort. It's funny how quickly things can come good again. A nice cup of tea wouldn't go a miss though. Oh well, we can always dream....
We'd covered 68km, more than double the total distance Will had cycled over the last 3 months! Our fitness could certainly do with a bit of improvement as could the songs we've had stuck in our heads all day - 'Good King Wenceslas' for Will and kate, for some reason, enjoyed (?) the 80's hit 'We didn't start the Fire'. Help!