Monday 22nd June, 1998. We started walking from our 5 star ‘bus stop sala’ at 04.30 hrs as the mosquitoes became intolerable. William said they liked the taste of my farang blood. We passed a hotel where we had been told we could have stayed, but it had not yet been completely built. We found the ‘Salok Bat’ hotel 3 kms south of ‘Salok Bat’ beside highway 1. We decided to stay there & took 2 rooms at 150 baht each. This was total luxury for us after our ‘bus stop sala’ 14 kms away with it’s too many mosquitoes. We showered & did our laundry & had a rest, then at 11.00 hrs, workmen started to knock a hole in a wall close by for a fire door exit to a ladder to the ground. What a noise, just as I was nearly in dreamland. William said “Let’s go for a walk and meet the locals & see who we meet?
On leaving our hotel we were immediately met by the highway police who told us that the area where we had slept in our ‘bus stop sala’ beside highway 1 was very dangerous for robberies at gun-point by addicts stealing money to buy drugs. In fact this part of highway 1 & all the way to Tak was very dangerous. The highway police advised us to keep in touch with all the police boxes that we pass at 8 kms intervals, as we walked to Tak. The highway police also organised for their patrol cars to keep an eye on us every half an hour and they kept in radio contact ahead so we were expected when we arrived at the police boxes.
The Monks at the Temple last night would not let us stay there as we were ‘unknown to them’. These were their own security measures as given to them by the local police. We asked the police to tell us if they thought it was too dangerous for us to walk on highway 1. They said “we would have stopped you right at the start, when you were spotted leaving Nakhon Sawan”. In fact all the way to Lampang, we were under constant police protection from the highway & amphur based Royal Thai Police. They said we were a first in Thailand. They get cyclists but never walkers. They said that William was the “Tiger Man” and Dennis was “Mr Amazing Thailand”.
Our grateful thanks to all the Royal Thai Police for your generous assistance to us in 1998 and for giving us the idea for ’The Tiger Team’ who are now ‘Walking For Thailand’:
http://www.walking-in-thailand.com
Yours truly,
Escati.
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