Gallery of Jim Blilie's Photos:

World Bicycle Tour, 1990-1992

The Big Show

Part 8:  Thailand

All images are copyright © James W. Blilie, 1990 through 2010, All rights reserved

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning

all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas

and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts

of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues

from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance

which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can,

begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now."  (Often attributed to Goethe)

  This page is under construction.  I'm still working on a text for each segment of the

trip and scanning in some negatives and maybe a few more slides hidden here and there.

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These are THE BIG SHOW of my slides from my trip around the world with Jeff Mellor, 1990-1992.

There are many more slides in this set than on the main world tour page:  About 2600 total.  I spent

some time in late 2009 going through all my slides from the world trip and I selected many for scanning.

The results are on this page (slide shows).  Many of these have been seen only by me and many of those

I hadn't seen since 1993.  The trip itself is outlined below.

These are scans of my Kodachrome 64 (and a very small number of Ektachrome 100) slides

From Jim and Jeff Mellor's bicycle tour around the world from Nov-1990 through Oct-1992

All images are copyright © James W. Blilie, 1990 through 2010 All rights reserved

I used a very nice, yet inexpensive scanner, the  Epson V500  I like it very much.

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Thailand 27-May-1991 to 18-Jun-1991, 1 mile to the train station

These shots are from our three-week trip through Thailand.  We spent most of the time in Bangkok

seeing the sights.  But we also took a train up to Chiang Mai and spent several days there, stopping

at the ancient capitol of Sukhothai on the way back to Bangkok.  We rode little in Thailand, just from

the Malaysia border to the train station in the first Thai town, Sungai Kolok.  We flew out of Bangkok

to Nepal.

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For the slide show:  

Click HERE.  Then:

Click on the first picture (upper left picture) on the black photo album page and then

Click the "play" button at the upper right of the view panel to start the slide show.

Enjoy.

Crossing the border from Malaysia	Sungai Kolok, Thailand	Thai version of a pickup truck	The train station at Sungai Kolok.  We decided the highway was too dangerous (we'd heard hair-raising stories) as all the traffic between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok uses the road.  We took the train to Bangkok	Sungai Kolok train station
Sungai Kolok train station Our cars AC caught on fire.  They weren't going to let us ride; but we insisted and had no AC to Bangkok, and overnight trip.  Oh well, we made it!	Finally on the train and on our way to Bangkok	On the train to Bangkok	The Bangkok train station	Our bikes and stuff on a tuk-tuk and off to the K T Guest House in Bangkok:  A wonderful place in a non-touristic neighborhood.
The K T Guest House	Bangkok street scenes	Bangkok street scenes	Bangkok street scenes	Bangkok street scenes
Bangkok market scenes	Bangkok market scenes	Bangkok market scenes	Bangkok market scenes	Negotiating a tuk-tuk ride
Street food vendors	Street food vendors	Local taxi stand	Local man with lots of tattoos
The Chao Praya River	Water taxi boat Inside a water taxi boat	The grand palace	The grand palace	The grand palace
The grand palace	The grand palace	The grand palace	The grand palace:  Reflections and lotus	The grand palace:  Guides in training
The grand palace:  Lotus	The grand palace	The grand palace	The grand palace	Market scenes
Market scenes	Chao Praya River	The UPS man in Bangkok!  We shipped our bikes to Denmark where we planned to start riding again.	Narrow gauge train to Chiang Mai	Chiang Mai
Tuk-tuk tail gates	Chiang Mai	One of the main sights around Chiang Mai is factories for hand-crafted items such as umbrellas and silver work.	Umbrella factory	Umbrella factory
Flame trees, Chiang Mai	Dancing at the Chiang Mai Cultural Center	Dancing at the Chiang Mai Cultural Center	Dancing at the Chiang Mai Cultural Center	Chiang Mai moat at night
The other big attraction at Chiang Mai is a mountain top temple: Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep	Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep	Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep	Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep	Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep What happens to the old saffron robes the monks wear
Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep				Train south to Sukhothai
Sukhothai	Sukhothai	Sukhothai	Sukhothai	Sukhothai
Sukhothai	Sukhothai	Sukhothai	Hotel room, Kao San Road (much inferior to the neighborhood around K T Guesthouse, which was booked up when we returned	Major teva-tan, my feet, Bangkok

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Outline of our trip:

From Nov. 15, 1990 to Oct. 6, 1992, with a five-month break for the winter of '91-'92, Jeff Mellor

and I traveled around the world through 26 countries, mostly by bicycle.  While in the "developed"

world, we bicycled 1000 miles per month, camping each night.  In Asia and Africa, we traveled by

train and bus and used guest-houses.  We encountered 16 different foreign languages, of which we

needed to learn at least the rudiments.  We rode a total of almost 11,000 miles on our bikes, camped out

at least 350 times, and climbed several mountains including Pt. Lenana (16,350 ft.) on Mt. Kenya in

Africa.  We took a three-week, 220-mile hike around the Annapurna Range in Nepal, which included

a 17,700 ft. high pass.  I took 13,000 photographs and wrote 1000 pages of journals.  No experience

in my life, except my university education, can compare with these travels for the depth and breadth

of learning or for the perspective gained.  It was one of the peak life experiences, up there with

marriage, children, university education.

Our trip was through these countries:

[Hawaii:  The Big Island, a 2-week shake-down within the US, started Nov 1990]

Fiji, about 10 days riding around Viti Levu from Nadi to Suva

New Zealand:  Auckland to Wellington via Coromandel Penn. and a loop around the Southern

Alps from Christchurch and back

Australia, from Sydney to Melbourne via Canberra and Mt. Kosciusko, around Tasmania, bits and

pieces inland mostly bus to Darwin

Singapore

Malaysia, from Singapore to the Thai border

Thailand (no bikes; we sent our bikes to Denmark from Bangkok, not wanting to ride in Thailand,

Nepal, India, Kenya, or Egypt)

Nepal (no bikes)

India (no bikes; just passed through Delhi and Bombay since we were running way behind)

and then on to a long tour of Europe:

Denmark

Germany

Netherlands

Belgium

France

United Kingdom

Then a winter's break at home in the USA from Oct 1991 through March 1992, then we flew

back to Lisbon Portugal in March 1992:

Portugal

Spain

France

UK, we rode from Plymouth to Land's End then from Land's End to John O'Groats at the tip of

Scotland and via ferries to the Orkneys, Shetlands, and on to Norway over the North Sea (with a

detour from Holyhead in Wales over to Ireland and back)

Ireland

Norway

Sweden

Germany (former East Germany)

Poland

Czech Republic

Austria

Germany (Bavaria) and home in Oct 1992 from Frankfurt am Main

All images are copyright © James W. Blilie, 1990 through 2010, All rights reserved

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Time and mileage table:

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Background image is a stupa at Sukhothai, June 1991

Last updated:  29-Aug-2010