Day Four: As authentic as it gets

Sadly last night's accommodation did not provide any of the luxuries that we craved. In fact it didn't have many of the basics that we needed!
The town of Tha Hton is well off the beaten trail, so the town is not blessed by many options for 20 British cyclists.  So this was a night that few of us will forget in a hurry, the party split between two different guest houses. The names were nice enough, Yellow Cloud and Blue Cloud, but not every cloud has a silver lining:
Up to three of us shared windowless rooms, and even beds. We swapped tales of plastic chairs,  unorthodox wiring, showers that didn't work, and hotel staff who tried to fix it by turning on the TV.  Yes, there was TV and that worked fine, but it was about the only thing that did.  Sadly we didn't have a Burmese equivalent of Basil Fawlty present to complete the experience.

To continue the authentic theme, dinner was in a very local Chinese restaurant. Tonight was clearly going to be a night to cope with,  although in fact the food was pretty good and a drop of Grand Royal whisky as a night cap eased us to bed!

Day Four dawned with quite a few reporting unexpectedly good nights sleep. A 7 start this morning,  and authenticity continued as we headed to a local tea house for breakfast.  Crouching on nursery sized chairs we marvelled at the efficiency we were each served two eggs on toast and tea or nescafe (or in some cases both mixed together)

 And then to the task in hand. We were reunited with our bikes just outside the town and pedalled along a fairly busy road but with views and experiences to compensate : two tuk tuks with even bigger sound systems than we saw yesterday complete with jiving young men walking directly in front of the cacophony.

At one water stop we were encouraged across the road to meet a five families who lived in one small compound of teak houses on stilts.  They were just as curious of us as we were of them. Ben was, in their eyes, the special one,  receiving many admiring comments for his height, pale complexion and good looks. And had we not rescued Kirsty I think they would have been more than happy to welcome her to their family for good.

  A short photo stop at a waterfall for the team shot wearing our Hope Asia challenge t shirts and we pressed on to complete 48km at our lunch stop.  A chance to relax in the shade was most welcome as we waited for the food to be freshly cooked for us.  A most pleasant experience experience provided you didn't need to go to the loo.  Post lunch there was even a chance for some to catch 40 winks. I'm not relishing the prospect of seeing the photographic evidence of that.

Another 10km and we arrived at one side of a bridge spanning and vast waterway - 3km in fact which was a joy to cycle over. Then a leg burning hill climb to a spectacular view point

and a pleasant downhill run and waterfront cycle to the Hotel Attran as the heavens darkened and thunder rumbled around us. 

This couldn't  be more different to yesterday as we were welcomed with iced jasmine scented face towels, chilled orange juice (10% juice content?) and the sun sank below the horizon on the other side of the river.

Just as authentic but in a rather more agreeable way.