39 km

Seeing More of the Island

Today we got the bikes out for a ride up to see the Kek Lok Si Buddhist temple on the hill. It’s the most spectacular Buddhist temple in SE Asia, the guidebook says. Dave navigated us through the city of Georgetown, a nearly impossible feat considering the amount of one-way roads that constantly change one-way directions, forcing you off to the left or to the right onto other roads. We climb gradually until we can finally see the temple on the hill above us. What we see first is the pagoda, rising many stories above the hill it’s sitting on.

Though we don’t see any Buddha ashes or blood, we do see many many Buddha statues throughout this sprawling hilltop complex of colorful prayer rooms, shrines, halls and other things I can’t name. We walked through it all, even nearly to the top of the pagoda, which offered a beautiful view of the city and surrounding hills. The temple was still decorated for the Chinese New Year, which just passed a week ago, so it’s even more colorful than normal.

Angry Knees Make a Frustrated Michelle

We continued riding up and up, to the highest point of the road with a lookout to the other side. We didn’t have our heavy panniers on the bike, but all of a sudden today my knees are angry. This is a big climb, but not big in the way that we expect to see up in Laos or northern Thailand. My knees have been happy this whole first month of the trip, but today they are instantly up to a fairly high level of pain getting to the top of this climb. I’m so frustrated I could cry. I worked so hard to keep my muscles and knees fit between the Great Divide and this trip, riding a recumbent bike at the gym when I still had my arm in a sling and continuing on a spinning bike when I could support weight on my shoulder again. It may take surgery to really fix my knees – oddly enough, the same surgery Dave had for his knees a few years ago. But I’m in Southeast Asia now, and surgery for my knees and possibly my shoulder will have to wait until I go back to work and have good insurance again. That’s not going to be soon!

Dave and I sat at the lookout and talked about the options. I think riding for an extended time in the highlands in northern Thailand and Laos might be out, but continuing on through the more flat or rolling areas should be OK with plenty of rest days like we’ve had. I think this pain came on after the push to get across the peninsula, as we covered a lot of kilometers and did a lot of climbing. If we have days with climbing, we’ll just take it slow and keep the days short. But mostly, we’ll stick to flatter areas. Maybe head north for some diving near Krabi, then head over to and up the East coast with another island stop, then on to Bangkok. From there we’ll figure it out, but most likely head through Cambodia and up the coast of Vietnam. Maybe we’ll stash the bikes and see a little of Laos by boat, which is one of the recommended ways to see it anyway. So, my knees are now in delicate mode, but we’ll take care to take it easy. This trip has always been about more than just covering a lot of miles.