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My favourite part of any cycling trip is when we stop. Never has this been more relevant than in Mostly Fun: Soft Nut Bike Tours of Laos and Thailand. For fans of the truth-telling style of travel writers such as Paul Theroux and Bill Bryson - travel is not always about glamour and goggle-eyed wonder. Sometimes, reality bites; roads are bumpy, restaurants are closed and the music is awful.
Another Christmas and New Year finally over, I set off to join friends, old and new, on a voyage of discovery, exploring the backroads and quiet towns of Central Laos and Eastern Thailand. Between the two saddle-bound trips I also enjoyed some rest and relaxation in and around Bangkok.
Laos was dusty, Eastern Thailand was hot and Bangkok was, much as I remembered it; sometimes hot, sometimes dusty but always fascinating.
The trip was, as the title implies, mostly fun.
About the author
I was, as Groucho Marx said, born at an early age, in London (England). My parents moved to the Kent coast when I was seven. I caught up with them a year or so later. My school days were unremarkable. Some were marked but usually very badly. The only subject I had any affinity with was English and this was mainly because my parents both spoke it, often at the same time. My career has taken many turns, dips and troughs, a few false starts and even one or two emergency landings. However, it seems I was destined for an eventual career in the travel industry. Following a failed attempt to make my fortune as a driving instructor, I joined British Airways as a Sales Agent where I stayed for 4 years before emigrating to Australia after marrying local girl Tracy. Fortunately for me this coincided with the rise of the CRS (Computer Reservations System) which later morphed in to GDS (Global Distribution System). I worked in Australia for a company called Galileo and in Europe and Asia for Amadeus. Both companies offered similar products and, obviously, both were best when I was an employee. I retired from the corporate treadmill a few years ago and I'm now officially an author. My first book was My Brother's Bicycle. It describes a journey of contemplation and misadventure as I attempt, mostly unsuccessfully to re-live a bicycle trip I first embarked on as a fresh-faced 20-year-old More than 40 years ago I headed south with a guy I met at Liverpool Street station in London. Enfield to Athens on a tandem. They said it couldn't be done. For the re-run I was better prepared, or so I thought. But as it turned out it didn't really matter.My other books have a recurring theme; travel memoirs with a dash of philosophy and healthy cynicism.
