Thailand > Bitten by a dog

Thailand - Exploring the area by bike

I sleep in until nine o’clock. At half past nine I go downstairs for breakfast. The other travel companions are there around the same time. Isabelle has now filed a police report. She has to travel back and forth to Bangkok for her new passport. At the reception desk we rent mountain bikes. The bikes are rarely loaned out and first need to be cleaned. Since the gears of many bikes don’t work properly, the young woman ends up cleaning almost all of them. In the end we manage to get two reasonable bikes. Only on mine the saddle cannot be raised. The hotel porter pumps up the tires for us. Then we set off. We ride toward Pattaya along the main road. It takes some getting used to riding on the left side. We cycle onto the boulevard where we walked yesterday. It eventually turns into a pedestrian path, but we can still manage to ride there. Through side streets we reach the viewpoint. The slope is too steep to climb with these bikes, so I walk the last stretch. From the top I have a beautiful view over Pattaya Bay. Carefully I descend; I don’t have much faith in the brake pads either. We ride toward the center of Pattaya. At a coffee shop we park our bikes—you’re quite a sight on a bicycle here—and order coffee. The café is part of a larger department store. Through the streets of Pattaya we end up in the outskirts. The roads are sandy and the houses mostly shacks. Sometimes a path leads to a dead end and we have to turn back. We try to find a route to Jomtien without using the coastal road. On one of the roads a barking guard dog chases us. The dog gives Geert a light bite on his leg. Not serious, but enough to have it checked at a hospital. We manage to reach Jomtien. Along the boulevard we cycle a long way south until the end of it.

Thailand - At the hospital for a rabies shot

Then we ride back along the boulevard to the hotel and return the bikes. At the pool we meet our fellow travelers again. After a beer in the room we take a taxi to Pattaya. We try to get to the hospital by taxi, but the driver only understands the word “Pattaya.” He drops us off at the shopping mall, saying we have arrived. However, there is no hospital there. We walk into a hotel to ask for directions, hoping someone speaks enough English. The hotel clerk judges that a hospital is unnecessary and suggests the pharmacy across the street. The pharmacy, however, considers a hospital visit necessary and points us the way. It turns out to be about a 15-minute walk. At the hospital we wait for half an hour before a doctor examines the bite. Geert receives a rabies shot and will have to complete the treatment in the Netherlands. We eat at the restaurant Klein Vlaanderen. There we hear that Saddam has been captured in Iraq. Along the boulevard we walk to South Pattaya, a pedestrian area full of bars and prostitutes. We don’t really feel like sitting on a terrace in the middle of all this revelry. At the end of the boulevard we take a taxi back to Jomtien. In the room we finish the day with a beer and go to sleep at half past twelve.