Lazy folk that we are, we caught the train from Kanchanaburi to Bangkok.  It's an easy enough ride and lots of it can be done on back roads.  It's the last twenty kilometers that just doesn't make it worth it.  If I look at my journal entry from the the day we entered Bangkok from the west during "The 3rd Step" it reads "a really crappy section on the route 337/338 where we had to dodge through a turnpike that routed traffic on and off the elevated highway above the route we were on" and we didn't feel like doing that again. 

In retrospect, the decision to take the train was not a bad one because we would have had to cycle 100Km into a hot headwind.  So here we are at the New Siam II (again - this is the sixth time we have stayed here) getting ourselves sorted out for the flight back to Port Elizabeth.

One of the things I have done was to visit Bok Bok Bike, about 3 kilometers away from the New Siam II.  Bok Bok are the agents for Thorn and Rohloff in Thailand along with other touring friendly brands such as Surly, Bike Friday and Tubus.  The owner, Ma, is a great guy.  he had just got back from cycling around Taiwan when I got there.  The tiny shop is full of Thorn stuff - a couple of Nomads, a Club Tour, a couple of Ravens and various frames. 

The reason for my visit was that I wanted to replace the internal cables to my Rohloff hub, supposedly a fiddly job and I wanted to watch a pro do the job so I would know what to do when I tackle it myself.  It was a surprisingly easy task, at least that what it seemed like with Ma doing it.  The cables were about twenty one thousand kilometers old and had started to fray so it was a good time to change them.

We have arranged with Velo Thailand, a bike shop about a kilometer from the New Siam II, to box our bikes and arrange our transport to the airport.  They have done this before for us and it was so convenient to use them again.