Lately, when it is that time of day when we start thinking about where we will be at nightfall, we sigh with some relief, “We’re not in Burma anymore! We’re in Tajikistan!”
Tag Archives: sleeping
Daily Nest: Kyrygzstan
Since our walking pause was slightly longer-than-expected, we took the opportunity to rest up and slow down.
Tribal Council: Can We Sleep Here or Not?
Finding a place to sleep has been one of our biggest daily challenges on this stretch of the walk. In our Daily Nest post, we highlight a few of the places we slept during the last eight weeks. This is one night’s surprise.
It’s about 3 p.m., time for us to start thinking about where we will sleep. In Burma, this is never an easy task for the kind of trip we’re doing. We cross our fingers, ask the universe to fix something up for us, and hope a dash of luck and a good amount of patience and preserverance lead us somewhere safe.
Daily Nest: Sleeping in Burma
Finding a safe place to sleep is one of our key priorities every day. It’s right up there with drinking potable water, eating enough calories and stretching our bodies during mid-day breaks.
The sleeping thing has proven to be harder than expected in Burma. It has turned into its own stressful job at the end of the day when we are exhausted from walking an average of 25-30 kilometers (about 15-18 miles) in +40-degree heat (about 110 in Fahrenheit).
Finding a Safe Place to Sleep: Ban Lan Sang
The man with the big smile and kind eyes passes us his phone. He wants us to speak to his son.
“Hello again,” we say. We spoke to the young man a few minutes ago on speaker phone. His father called him when he saw we were having problems reading the menu of the restaurant we found ourselves in at the end of a 26-kilometer stretch. Thai letters are beautifully curvy, but we have no clue what they say. Both father and son wanted to make sure the cook understood that we requested our favorite, easy-on-the-stomach walking dish: fried rice with chicken and a fried egg.
“Hi. My father will take you to a homestay where you can sleep tonight, and tomorrow he will take you back to the intersection where you are now so you can continue walking. Ok?” The young man on the phone is in Bangkok, a few hundred kilometers from our finish line today, Ban Lan Sang, a speck of a town near Road 12 which will take us into the Thai hills and eventually into Myanmar. His English is very good, and our Thai is pathetically bad.
Continue reading Finding a Safe Place to Sleep: Ban Lan Sang