2010-01-23 18 99

The Place

6kms or so to the east of Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Who Went

Felix Dance - by pushbike.

Expedition

Felix Dance

Well, I was still feeling pretty bad about stuffing up the 2010-01-07 8 99 geohash outside Krabi in southern Thailand so I was keen to get another one in before I left the country.

The morning after arriving in Chiang Mai offered me a perfect opportunity. When I checked the net I found it only 6 kms away and, by zooming in - a luxury not usually afforded to me in most internet cafes around here - right on a road.

Well, not much decision about that one. I hired the cheapest pushbike I could lay my hands on - a single-speed girl bike complete with a basket built to contain fluffy puppies - and headed east in the most direct way I could manage under the draconian one-way-street policy in this city.

After not too much time at all I decided I should turn off towards the hash point. The road I chose steadily got smaller and smaller until I was riding on a dirt track which crossed a river at a weir and then disappeared into some bushes. In order to provide me with more definite proof that I'd taken a wrong turn a fiery red ant walked over my sandalled foot and bit me to death (its death). I turned around and got out of there.

My next route guess took me into a university which was closed for the weekend but still let me know I shouldn't really be there by inserting a speed bump under my wheel without me noticing it and causing me to gash my favourite index finger on my bell. This trip was turning out to be disproportionately injurious for its size.

Eventually, after being chased by wild dogs - I'm getting used to that experience by now - I unexpectedly reached the hash point. Here I took a lot of photos with my brand new camera, in widescreen too, check 'em out, before heading back home via a few Buddhist temples. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that on the way I stopped off at a dentist's to arrange for some dental tourism tomorrow - it's like subsidised backpacking.

Finally, back in the charming city of Chiang Mai I went to a 7-Eleven - a hard earned thirst deserves an ice-cold 830 mL bottle of full cream milk.

This was the first successful geohash in Thailand, and only my second deflowering of a country after Indonesia. Hopefully, many Thai geohashers will follow my pioneering path.

Time of hash: About 2pm

Distance ridden: About 25 kms.

Here's my route.

One final thing - the reason the file names of the photos showing the directions from the hash are different to the labels here is that I got them all wrong by 180 degrees when I uploaded them and couldn't be bothered doing it again.