People ask me what the bike trip was 'like' and in a sentence it was like a great big long meditation. So much happened and so much was seen and so many kilometres covered that now I take ridiculous pleasure in staying in one place for even a couple of weeks. It's also really nice to know what I want to do after the trip - I enjoyed chasing the stories and presenting them so much I want to chase a job doing just that.

I spent a week in Dunedin catching up with friends from my film course and am now tucked away in a lesser known corner of New Zealand called Golden Bay, where I'm wwoofing on a farm for a while before heading to Wellington to wriggle my way into its film, media and/or journalism world.

Of course, The Book of the trip is on the way. Wish me luck! Thanks to everyone who supported my project; part of the pleasure was to see how inspired others got from the stories I collected and the weird, quirky (and sometimes crummy) things that happened.

The stories from the trip are my favourite part. You can look through them by clicking here. There are four more coming, which I need to write up.

Cheers!

Nick

Tonight I'm going to climb up to a small guesthouse at 3000m, perched above the town. I'm going up with a French friend I've made in town - he's here setting up a trekking company and putting together a guidebook for the remoter regions of Tibet. We'll spend a few days up there, and use it as a base to climb to the peak of the Can Shan mountains.

After two weeks in Dali, enjoying a rest, time to write and potter about and best of all make some local friends, I've decided to finish the journey. The mountain peak will be the point of return.

Of course, it's been a big decision.

I'm a happy man. I've always gone on big bike rides when there's been something on my mind. In a way this one wasn't much different - just a little bigger than before.

After 7000 kilometres, shortly before arriving in Dali, something went click. To work out quite what the click meant to me took a week, some good long phone calls back home (for which I'm very grateful) and I don't want to know how many pages of my diary (I've got an almost-blister from writing)...and now I'm a happy man.

The decision is that I don't need to be alone any more after several years always looking for so much space to myself. I'll head back to Tasmania to see my family and drop off the bike before a month or so in New Zealand to wind down and start writing something out of the journey and interviews.

I'd like to say a huge thanks for the huge amount of support in the last week and for my expedition as it formed and progressed. I think I've managed to reply to all your emails. It meant a lot to me that so many people went to the trouble of writing to me, and I wanted to thank you individually.

It's been a fantastic experience. The highs were superb, the lows were the pits. Some places were beautiful, others apocalyptic. I think the most valuable experience was to be able to meet the people along the way who let me into their life for a minute, an hour, a day, a week. These people who had the time to smile at a passing stranger helped me learn so much about themselves and their cultures, and about myself.

For those in town, I'll be in Hobart for roughly a week from the 13th of January.

I think my past life has been in Dali. I came to Dali for the first time several years ago when I went to Lijiang on business. There was no expressway then. I loved the trees, they’re called Anshui, they’re famous in Taiwan. A lot of them are gone now, but they’re still on the mountains. In the autumn they change to a beautiful red colour. I didn’t have the same feeling for Lijiang as I do for Dali.

This place is different to where I come from. On the left, you’ve got the mountains, green, and on the right you’ve got the lake. Another thing is the buildings: the Bai people here paint their buildings white, it makes things look so clean. The Bai girls traditionally wear white, too, with a pink or blue colour as well. So everything’s clean and beautiful.

Later, after that first trip, I tried to take a chance. I finished university, and I was the only one who wanted to work in Yunnan. Every time I came here I got more experience, and several years later I thought I should move here to live.

I studied English at university. My father was a language professor. I always wanted to be a lawyer, and then changed my idea while at middle school. My father wanted me to take Chinese language classes, but I didn’t want to do the same work as my father! I knew I didn’t want to earn lots of money, and I didn’t want to work with machines. My father thought English would be used very widely in China later, so I choose that.

I always concentrated on talking and listening, I was always bad at grammar. To me, language is about speaking and listening. Later I’ll learn Spanish, and next either German or French. Now most people in the world speak English no problem. Later, perhaps, they’ll speak Chinese…

My bookshop is like a hobby. The cost of living here is lower than compared to, say, Kunming. I go back to Beijing to work a little as a translator for an export company, then return. In Dali, you can be more relaxed. Like the bookshop – the sorts of people who like the books come and enter by themselves.

I’ve lived here for seven years now, I’ve run my bookshop, Bookworm, for four years. I want Bookworm to be the best bookshop in Dali run by a Chinese person. Later I hope that foreigners will come, interested in Chinese for exchange.

In Beijing, books are sold by weight – they weigh the books. Here, I swap books. I’m not poor, I’m not rich. It’s like a hobby. I choose who can stay at in the rooms, I don’t choose young people. Writers, documentary people come here. If I don’t like someone who wants to stay, I start telling them about the bad things…and tell them about the other places to stay!

I’m a little lazy about cooking things. We only eat baked things at movies – only Americans want popcorn! But nearly 95% of foreigners want baked things. When the bakery began we were authorised to sell for two weeks. I do it in cooperation with a German couple, they do the baking. It’s good for the bookshop customers too, they see the bakery and come in. It’s a good feeling, and then they buy books too. I’m living in Dali to enjoy it – and to help each other like with the bakery is beneficial.

Now Chinese artists come to Dali too. Young ones, not famous, they do art more as a kind of hobby. Here, it’s relaxed, there isn’t the pressure of the other cities. My friendscape here is people from 24, 25 to 60 years old. On the surface, everyone’s doing nothing, but everyone has their own thing that they’re doing.

I spoke to Yanzi on the 20th of December, 2007.

It's almost 7000km since I left many of you on that snowy Mount Wellington. Three thousand kilometres ago I was standing over the sausages of a suburban Darwin supermarket deli, talking to a friendly Maori woman. We got talking about where we were each from, and where I was going. She ended with 'Well, if you keep smiling like that, you'll be OK!' I took it to heart and almost got knocked over from all directions in Thailand, where every person seemed to be as happy as Larry and keen for a laugh. Laos was similar, perhaps the most laid-back place I've been. Outside the main street of Luang Prabang, which felt more like Provence than Asia, the locals sat on their stools and watched the world go by. Unfortunately Luang Prabang was alos memorable for the worst case of the trots imaginable, though after a week I was still alive, and eating again.

Coming down hills into villages I had to dodge people, chooks, pigs and potholes; suddenly I was in China. All the blue trucks in the world appeared to be on the road from Laos to Jinghong, and when I had the bright idea of taking a side road to Jinghing they were on it too, only it was steeper and more narrow.

The man in the internet cafe in Jinghong wasn't so friendly. He simply said 'maiyo!' 'Don't have' and shoved his hand in my face. There were plenty of computers free, but he wasn't going to let a foreigner use one, nor explain why. 'Well!' I thought, 'what sort of a country is this?' I was furious and stalked out, and so began Love And Hate in China, as Ester, a Dutch cyclist I met summed it up. I tore myself away from Jinghong's two travellers' cafes and headed out up the lesser western road towards, eventually, Dali.

In this part of China the hills build up the further north you go, from one-thousand and something to 3000 plus metres here. They're covered in magnificent terraces of tea, fallow rice paddies, sugarcane in blocks, veggies, a tumbling stream or two and a road winding its way up to one of a variety of passes. That's the Love in China bit. It's magnificent.

The Hate bit is down in the valleys, which contain polluted towns entirely of new buildings less than 50 years old and ubiquitously clad in white bathroom tiles. The people are less friendly and more likely to simply turn away when you stop at an intersection feeling rather lost. It's frustratinga and baffling...I kept going and found sanctuary in tiny mountain guesthouses, like the one under the pass at Fuyong, where I was waved over in the dusk to sit by their fire and warm my knees, and my hands with a cup of tea. It was jolly cold that morning, and I set of down the road in two jumpers and trousers.

The road - by then it had turned into cobblestones after a previous incredible day bumping, winding, ploughing my way over gravel, around potholes, pits, piles of gravel, landslides and two-inch thick dust that came up in clouds from my wheels as from a puffball fungus. Coming into a hotel that night they laughed at me - and in the mirror I was eyebrows to toes covered in muck, just like Sputnik the bike. That road was hard, awesome fun. The cobblestones were crap. My personal hell would be an eternal uphill on a cobblestone road. You creep along in you lowest gears putting half your energy into a monotonous jarring up-and-down. Ah well! I got there.

The last few days have actually been incredibly hard. The attitude of so many people to a traveller coming through has been to stare and call out 'Helloooo!' in the tone reserved for talking to a parrot or a small kid...in one town yesterday looking for a feed I cycled up the main street to find people pulling their friends out from the shops to get a better view of the travelling freak show...and all the way down they laughed. Horrible.

Hats off to the man in Quannai, father of the cook who was stir-frying up a storm of a late lunch. He had terrible red teeth, enormous ears (they stuck out at least 3 cm, and flapped as he spoke) and must have been about 70. He sat and watched me eat, with a smile on his face and chattered away to me in Chinese. He must have seen that I liked the tea, as he wouldn't let me leave without stuffing a handful of leaves in my handlebar bag. With the leaves he gave me the feeling that, perhaps, China was possible after all.

About five days to Dali and a Christmas break. I'm looking forward to getting up into the big mountains. A huge hello, and Christmas hug to everyone. Thanks to everyone who's helped me out with emails, texts, advice (yes, Gav, I'm keeping my knees warm) and support.

When you're lying in bed for the 7th day in a row, it really isn't a good time to cycle. But with the knowledge that every day means more snow in China, I really wanted to keep going....but with all the symptoms of cholera (though that's a dodgy ex-medical student self diagnosis) I wasn't going anywhere at all.

So Luang Prabang for me consists of one cell-like cheapie guesthouse room, the guesthouse bathroom (pink tiles), and the road to the post office. In fact Luang Prabang feels like a forgotten corner of Provence, with many buildings in a French colonial style, with hordes of camera-wielding tourists on the pavements. The lenses of the German tourists are the longest.

Yesterday I was desperate. I did all of three kilometres out of town before I was exhausted and turned back ... but it was a sniff of promise. A potholey asphalt road, chooks running about and small sleepy villages.

Today I woke up with a clear head and oomph back - but ENORMOUSLY hungry. I'm doing errands around town, and packing up to cycle north towards China - tomorrow. Yahoo!

I was only looking for a haircut. But the sound of a crowd in the darkness drew me away from my search for a barber's shop.

Milling on the grounds of the Wat Luang temple was a crowd of several hundred people. Around the side was a shooting gallery, knick-knack stalls, and the stage of a Shan theatre group. In the middle a roundabout span around, powered by a fan, keeping seven kids at a time in smiles. To the right, a large stage hosted a junior karaoke competition. A patient mother stood to one side as her daughter, with backpack on, laboured through the words of the Thai national anthem. Everyone clapped afterwards.

Over everything and everyone, the main chedi of the temple rose into the smoky air. It was lit beautifully with fairy lights.

But what was it all about? I followed smoke to find seven torches flaming behind the chedi. They lit a large area of grass. Groups of three or four people, and a scattering of monks, crouched together in one section. They were peering and prodding at small holes in the ground.
I introduced myself and soon had an enthusiastic, if slightly drunk, guide who gesticulated wildly to explain what was going on. The inverted aerosol cans (with a hole punched in the centre of the base) were home-made fireworks. They were being carefully wedged into the holes in the ground, before being lit in about an hour's time. On being lit, with something long and skinny, but not a match, they would spray up into the air (quite a long way up and with some force, judging by his arm movements). Each spray would resemble the new growth of bamboo at this time of year. It was a competition: each group was trying to create the biggest and longest golden spray. I took a step back.

While I waited, families and young couples lit hot-air lanterns which floated up into the sky to join the many others drifting across northern Thailand. The Shan theatre group sang and flicked their wrists under the fluorescent lights. After each song the performer received garlands of flowers. The shooting gallery was popular as boys to grown men aimed cap guns at bottles of whisky between teddy bears.

The crowd began shifting behind the temple to the firework ground. The grass was clear now, except for two figures crouched over the flame of a match. The light of a sparkler lit their faces as they carefully pushed it down into their can; a tiny golden spray became a whistling, roaring, spectacular golden eruption of hot sparks which arced high into the air and down over the crowd. The globs of hot material felt like they were burning through my shirt and my scalp, but no-one around me seemed to mind. Instead, they cheered and laughed with the jokes of the compere as he judged the success of each firework.

After twelve firework bamboos over an hour, my head felt like it'd had the haircut I was looking for.

I opened the first bamboo tattoo shop in Pai. For the first three months it was difficult. No-one here knew what it was - it's more common in the south [of Thailand]. They thought it meant using the bamboo as a needle, but it just means holding the needle with a bamboo stick. This year is my fourth year here in Pai.

I got interested in tattooing when I was fifteen, from a friend who liked monks' tattooing. Monks use bamboo. They do [bamboo tattoos] for protection, for the heart and other things.

Tattooing has a long story in Thailand. In the past, like when the Thai army was fighting Burma, when they were fighting with swords samurai style every man had tattoos, for magic. Long, long ago a small town, Kam, in Cambodia used tattoos for magic, like ninjas...they could go through the earth.

You see a lot of [tattoo] guns, tattoo machines in Thailand. Thai people see the machine as modern, so they ask for the machine. I was looking for a different type of tattoo.

I knew the art of the monks, I was looking at it, I thought about my friend. I thought about how to change [the bamboo tattoo technique]. The monks use long bamboo poles, I now use short.

The machine takes two months to master. It's easier than bamboo, you use one hand, it's like drawing. Bamboo takes six months to learn. You use two hands, one for the line, and one for power.

I learnt by tattooing myself. I did a tribal pattern on my leg first. That's a good way to learn. If you do it on yourself then you know the pain. Bamboo is a lot less painful than machine! The tribal design is good because you do the outline first. Then you can experiment inside before you fill it in.

I never learnt drawing, I just looked at Japanese cartoons.

I'm from Chiang Mai, I left to work in Koh Phi Phi, but it was too far from home. When I wanted to go home it took about twenty four hours. But Pai is near - only two hours to home. I don't like the big city. Pai is a small town, I like to live here, it's the nature too. Pai is good at this level [size]. A small town but now it have a lot of banks. People are getting rich. Many people from the south are coming to make business.

If you ask me, I liked Pai three years ago better. I moved from Koh Phi Phi because it has a lot of parties, I couldn't sleep after 2am. It wasn't good for my business either - I had a share in a business, I couldn't speak English but the boss could. He didn't do any tattoos, I did them, but everyone remembered him!

Now, I'm the only bamboo tattoo shop in Pai. Pubs in Pai have to close at 12 - stops party problems.

I was lucky. I left Koh Phi Phi before the tsunami. Many of my friends died.

Before I had my son and daughter, I just worked with the feeling, when I wanted to. I'd close the shop, go to the waterfalls, play the guitar...now I have my son and daughter I need to work more!

Korn talked to me on Thursday, October 8, 2007. He is the owner of Korn's Tattoo in Pai.

I'm from near Songkhla in Southern Thailand, but I live on Koh Phangan, I own a bar there.

The first time I came to Pai was on a motorbike, twenty years ago. It took us three days from Chiang Mai - because the road was under construction. We had to cross the old World War Two bridge. I was a student then.

I keep coming back to Pai because I find a balance here after living on the beach. Our plan [with partner Emma] is to have a house in Pai, in Koh Phangan, in Australia...I've never had a business in Pai. I have no work in Pai, I have friends. It's fun - "do nothing in Pai," just enjoy it.

Pai is special. I call it energy, spiritual, that's my feeling. Lots of friends, connection. Maybe my holiday - just come to balance myself. For me it's like my second home after Koh Phangan.

I see a lot of change in Pai as well - in the last four years Pai has changed a lot...Twenty years ago it was changing slowly, far slower than Koh Phangan was changing.

People come to Pai...they don't know why they're coming...there was a movie two years ago set in Pai, that's helped make it famous. Thai people come for cool weather...and they hear that there are lots of farang [foreigners] here, they come to look at the farang. Others come to make money from the farang, to do business. Some want to live here, they like it and ask their parents to buy them a house. It's a very interesting town, people bring ideas, they build good homes. People feel the energy - but they have to make their living.

Many [business] people have come from the South [of Thailand], many of them are from tourist places and bring knowledge with them. Others, like Toto [see previous interview] want to live Pai style.

In ten to twenty years, I think there will be lots of businesses, houses, like a big town in the valley. So long as they don't disturb much nature, it's OK. Look at this guesthouse...it's old style, so it was OK in the floods, he only lost one hut, the one by the water...others had punishment of the river - people lost two-thousand-baht a night huts, expensive huts.

I think it will stay a special place. The energy is still here. Most people come for differing reasons, but the spirit stays, it's stronger than them.

Bio talked to me on Thursday, October 8, 2007.

I found Pai as a tourist, in the year 2000. At that time, six or seven years ago, Pai still had nothing. Just a small village. Just one, two, three restaurants, just two or three guesthouses, no traffic lights.

I'm from Bangkok, I was born there. I grew up around Thailand - I moved with my parents every three to four years because my father was a government officer. Then I lived for fifteen years in Bangkok, studying and working. Well, it wasn't really work but I made money, importing sports equipment. If had stayed in Bangkok I could have made more money than here. But I love to live here, that's why money is not so important.

I loved Pai because it's quiet, friendly. It's different from Bangkok, it's opposite: good fresh air, you're close to nature. It's not set up as a touristy place like Pattaya. You can still find the local people. One time my friend Soy lost his ID card and went to the police station, and there was no-one there. At that time, all the village people knew each other, there was no crime.

The thing I like best about Pai is that you spend your life in an easy way. It's a small social place. You don't need a mask here with the local people...maybe just if I do business with Bangkok people...simple life.

If I lived in Bangkok I'd have a house, a car, the costs of city life, everything. Here I have just a small scooter, an old truck, it's enough!

Coming to Pai wasn't too much of a change for me - my grandfather was a farmer, we used to stay with him in the countryside in my school holidays. We'd try to ride buffaloes! You have to crouch, on your knees, not straddle like a horse, otherwise you fall off...

I took over this place. It was a guesthouse before I came. People tell me it was the first guesthouse by the river, and the first out of town. It's at least twenty years old - some old guests came, from fifteen years ago, and the said it was still the same.

The first time I came to Pai I just wanted to build my house here. I came with a friend - he said, "if you buy that guesthouse, I'll run it for you".

I think every city has change. But Pai is changing too fast. I'm trying to keep this guesthouse like Pai was in the past. This time the Government has a policy about hotels - I can't build bamboo huts like this anymore, because they say they are not strong enough, easy to have fires. But the locals have used huts like these for hundreds of years. In summer, it's not too hot. I want to keep this style - bamboo grows fast - the bamboo used in the huts is just three years old. It supports the local people - spreads money around the local people - every time I replace a roof or a whole hut. It's much better than a modern place and a mortgage.

When the Government tourist people knew that many farang, foreigners, were coming, they try to improve Pai, rebuild, make more comfortable - comfortable as in TV, airconditioning. But the commonsense of the local people is not like that. People coming here nowadays are eighty percent still the same - they come here because it's cheap, there's nature, they want to relax.

Pai is also changing towards the people who don't have much time. Tourists that come and go, spend lots of money. They never talk to local people, never breathing the smell of the country.

This has happened to many places. They go into through a touristic phase and then die - but even in the rainy season tourists still come to Pai.

Many people are just speech and not action. But I think it's important to just do something with your simple life, you normal life. Like my King said: if you can feel you have enough already, it will make you happy.

All you need is to eat, sleep, shit, fuck...it will make you happy. Like I just have my scooter, my old truck, it's OK for me.

I hope I'll stay here forever.

Toto talked to me on Wednesday, October 7, 2007. He is the owner of Pai River Lodge.

Ranong - Kra Buri

God I'm stuffed. Pissed down with rain all day, starting shortly out of Ranong....I headed for a tree and just when I was so soaked I couldn't be soaked any more it stopped. Call me a sunny weather cyclist but this rain was so torrential I did dashes between the downpours and made it in to Kra buri.

Very weird to look across the river and see Burma just there, looking poorer but just 400m away. A cruel world that your life can be so different depending on which side of a river you're born on.

Phra whatsit cave on the way in: a long walkway through magroves amongst sheer limestone cliffs, all overgrown with vines. The cave is occupied by thousands of bats, it sounded like the sea roaring when I disturbed them. Steep steps led right up to where light came in through a hole in the highest point of the cave, jolly spooky.

Internet shop crammed with 50 schoolkids screaming and playing very realistic network shootemups.

Found little bungalow place...still can't find cheapies! Annoying. Nice anyway to be snug and warm after a shocker day.

Kra Buri - Chumphon

I had the glooms this morning! After ringing my home the day before, even hearing from my mother about problems with the council drains made me wish for just a bit of time somewhere snug and warm with people I knew around, most of all staying put for a bit. I just felt lonely.

The solution to being lonely was not to be alone...I found the market at Kra Buri and its coffee stall. Unfortunately, the owner gesticulated that her coal-fired coffee water wasn't hot yet. She did yell out to the other side of the market and motion for me to sit down, though. Hey presto, five minutes later another woman turned up with hot coffee and water. Beautiful! Sipped away, dipping in some crunchy doughnut things I'd bought.

A very busy world went by around me. School kids, three to a motorbike, pulled up for their barbecued chicken breakfast. An ancient (super-wrinkled) woman went past, regally, in the sidecar of a moto-taxi, and bought noodles.

But the doughnuts must have been the wrong thing to dip, as the doughnut stall owner came up to me with another packet, this time of flat, sticky round rice things sprinkled with sesame seeds. He motioned dipping them into the coffee. Refusing payment, he left me with a smile. I sat back, gloom gone, relaxed with the buzz of coffee and the tasty smoke of the chicken stall.

For the next twenty kilometres I pedalled beside Burma, which lay 500m across the Kra river on the left. A tailwind turned into a blast, the hills weren't noticeable and now suddenly I've covered most of my day's ride. Sheltered for the moment under a nursery owner's "gazebo", I'll ride the last twenty kilometres into Chumphon as soon as this downpour stops.

Khung Maha

A tired day...but here I am in Khung Maha, and I'd just been given a whole house to stay in. I'd asked at a local shop if there was anywhere to stay. The son and daughter led me on their motorbike to their 'spare' granny shack, where they launched into a flurry of cleaning. I was flaked out on the balcony as the cleaning went on inside, when a cyclist went by, none other than a guy called Benji from Melbourne. Small world. Quite weird to be talking to another cyclist after so long by myself. He's on his way around the world on a great sounding five-year trip, no flights.

Ban Saphan

There were 26 squid boats out at sea, we could see their greenish fluorescent lights from the pier at Khung Maha.

Earlier that day I'd arrived in mid afternoon and found the pier a great place to sit down with just the lap of water below instead of the hubbub of a rural Thai road. Around me then, the fishing boats were really colourful; lots of red and green. There were open longboats, with outboards: these outboards were small uncovered petrol engines mounted on a swivel. Directly off the drive shaft a long tube extended to hold a propeller on the end. The whole pole was swung around and placed in the water to drive the boat, and steering accomplished by swiveling the whole contraption from side to side.

The other boats were like your normal single-owner Australian coastal fishing boats, but as if they'd had a discount on the brighter end of the paint shop spectrum. They looked great on the water.

The other day there had been lots of these boats boats on the road. True story! I'm not kidding you - crossing the Isthmus of Kra, the skinniest part of Thailand between the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea, the highway was the best place to bung one's boat on a truck and swap seas. It was a little odd to cycle along and find boats coming my way.

Bangkok

Benji and I threaded our way through a tenuous series of tiny coastal roads, trying to avoide the big Bangkok highway...with varying success. When we did find them, these roads were magical - 10 metres from the lapping sea, and sleepy coastal fishing villages. The end of the line was Samut Songkhram, home of Thailand's fish sauce bottles and the beginning of the train line into the city. Half an hour on the highway was total craziness!

Bangkok, hey. It's busy. And full of farangs. To see foreigners everywhere was a little of a surprise, having taken two trains and two ferries into the city, cycled up impossibly busy streets and suddenly arriving at Khao San Road, the hub of Bangkok backpacking.

I felt out of place. For one thing, I was soaked in sweat, and stank. Everywhere, there's a mix of beach bums, spaced out hippies, bikini babes, fat white men, business types. And that's just the tourists. I suspect the city Thais have seen it all, and just can't be bothered smiling at another tourist. I feel naked without Sputnik - a bike is such a good excuse for someone to smile, to open themselves. A bike sets me apart from everyone else. Without Sputnik I feel like a walking ATM machine, and everyone wants to make a withdrawal.

Now it's day three in Bangkok. The best part of Bangkok is finding a narrow leafysoi and being reminded that there's a beautiful human-scale world out there, that I'm looking forward to exploring some more. Go down one street, turn a corner and there's always another surprise....wandering around in Chinatown district I was thrilled to find an entire section devoted to hardware and industrial supplies. People making gears and cog; enormous industrial valves, hardware shops, extrusions.

I'm also enjoying the pleasure of finding a good book in English, some coffee and a good old slow afternoon. I also had my first ever filling at the poshest hospital I've ever set foot in: it looked like an extravagant hotel, complete with Starbucks. The filling was to fix up the tooth I smashed in my Australian tumble.

Khao Lak

Absolutely PISSING down with rain, what a treat after so long trundling through the Australian outback. Like water with holes in it.

I'm munching Pad Thai in a little restaurant, having cycled from Phuket Island this morning to here in Khao Lak. Leaving the backpacker ghetto behind yesterday was awesome. The roads I took were rural coastal ones, lined with drippy jungly forest most of the way, climbing up so steeply over headlands that my legs turned to jelly....for a terrific zoom down the other side to a tiny little beach with guest houses amidst the forest and palm trees.

At Thatchatchai at the very top of the island I paid the princely sum of $6 for a nice room by a beach with fishing boats pulled up.

Today a bit busier, a bigger road and bloody hell, so HOT. It didn't rain this morning so I sweated from every single available pore, dribbling like I'd just stepped out of the shower. The roads here are scattered with roadside stalls, so I called into a few of them for the shade and, I admit it, Coke.

What's Thailand like? It feels like a cleaner easier version of Nepal, if that's any help. People everywhere, a marvelous clutter everywhere. A smell of drains when it rains. Colour. Lots of motorbikes zipping around, I even saw a pillion passenger asleep. People? Super friendly. I butcher out my best sa-wah-dee khrap as hello and grin away like an idiot at everyone, who universally beam back and wave. Lots of laughing and joking, these Thais seem a happy bunch. Tomorrow - up to the border with Myanmar/Burma, where the road veers northeast and heads over the mountains to the east coast. Will be a bit busier there....I expect it will take a few weeks to make it to Bangkok, for the delights of chasing a visa amidst smog. For now, I'm enjoying idyllic coastal riding. Mmmmm!

27/09/07 A roadside in the hills near Pra Tha

I think I'm drunk on smiles...today has been stunning. Absolutely beautiful, a winding, perfect road with wide hard shoulders, moseying up into the hills a little bit and traversed by a light throng of people in cars, occasional trucks and lots of puttering 125cc motorbikes. From the ancient old man who beamed and waved at me from his equally ancient motorbike (barely faster than me) to the laughing noodle stall vendors, these Thais have charmed the socks off me.

Being a rural area, the road is lined with the odd bit of wild green growth but mostly it's rubber plantations, what I think are sago palms, and other trees I don't know. Here, I'm tucked into my tent for the night just off the road under young palms by the edge of a rubber plantation. Some decaying leaves just outside the tent are glowing in the dark, and fireflies moving amongst the trees have a bright double flash like aircraft.

All the rubber collecting cups are upside down, so I don't think it's the season; I just figured out that the creamy white sheets drying on sticks outside some houses probably aren't destined to be noodles but probably rubber gloves.

On noodles: ban mee are delicious bowls of thin rice noodles cooked briefly in a fish sauce broth, and topped with sliced pork, chopped vegies and chicken. The last two bowls had liver too....I swallowed them whole without chewing, Mum. At 15 or 20 baht a pop I've spent $2 on food today after starting with deep fried banana and sweet potato!

Am enjoying being on the road. There's so much to look at and learn, and it's great being amongst amazingly happy people.

29/09/07 Ride on to Ranong...

I was wrong! As I went to sleep the light of the fireflies flickered against the tent. At 5.30 a brighter light lanced against the walls, with voices: I patted around for my glasses and groggily pulled on my shorts. Outside, through the mozzie net two head torches moved amongst the rubber trees as two workers scored the tree trunks and righted the collecting cups. They'd seen my orange tent; I called out a Thai hello and they hello'ed back and kept working. I went back to sleep. When the sun came up and I walked around I felt the goo of the sap as it dripped off the stick stuck in the tree into the cup. There must be thousands of plantations like that in the world but I thought it was rather neat to see, and in season, too.

Now, if you're a neat person (of course you are! You're reading this!) head to the Khura Bhuri resort...it's the only stunningly beautiful tourist resort I've seen so far, sad as that is (let me get that clear: I've cycled through amazing country, only to arrive at a tourist mecca and find it filled with sanitised, walled resorts). Climbing up a steep tree-filled valley, it's a wooden building built on poles amongst the trees and looked absolutely zen and bee-ootiful. When I'm old and crotchety I'll stay there.

Shortly afterwards in the next valley, it dumped down on me. Like, it pissed down so much it was like water with holes in it. Naïvely I sheltered under a tree but it wasn't a short lived shower. I did a dash for the nearest roof, hesitating in the driveway as I saw it had people under it...the oldest toothless woman I've seen in a while waved me under and before I knew it there was a cup of very sweet coffee in my hands and hubbie was looking for the motor in my bike. Not finding it, and returning the 5 baht I tried to pay them for the coffee, they waved farewell with a stern admonition in body language to stay a night at their house on my way back from Bangkok. I'm sorry I'm not cycling back.

The rest of the day passed happily rain free and mostly absorbed in a relaxed trundle stopping for frequent noodles. I've now collected at least three names for the same dish; I need to work out which one is the one with chicken liver because it almost made me vomit, which wouldn't have been very polite. After some very careful not-chewing I got it down.

Beautiful forest, bumbling hills to keep me occupied and mountains to the east all day. Now I'm in Ranong, having a day off, plotting and scheming for the months ahead and catching up on keeping you lot informed. Am enjoying both being here and the riding immensely.

Later gators.

Current location: Now returned to Tasmania, Australia

20,000km in a sentence...

...or with an atlas: Australia

...South East Asia

...China

...Kazahkstan

...Russia...and the end.

• A snazzy map (or two)

I was one of the first Aboriginal Health Workers to graduate. I started when I was 18 years old.

Back in 1969 the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress (CAAC) had started a medical service in Hartley Street. I started as a cleaner.

I was inquisitive about how health worked, I started to think, Doctor, Health worker, what is that? I just got interested in how doctors find out a diagnosis, how they treat. 'Well, we'll show you then," they said. They wanted four indigenous workers, two of them ladies who were fluent in language [Arrente] and English. It wasn't long before I started knowing how to introduce myself as an AHW and interview someone before the doctor.

Then came more senior work with doctors and nurses - rosters, medical meetings. I started to coordinate the other three health workers to take visits to the town camps, with the Congress health centre nurse. I told them, don't expect them to come to you, you've got to go to them. You mob put up with pain, they don't come in.

I think have four Aboriginal employees made a cultural presence, made it a more friendly service. People need to feel confident.

Working at Congress was a foundation for me to respect other cultures outside Alice. I had culture shock - even just [Aboriginal] mob coming out speaking other language.

I became the regional manager for the Alice/Barkly [region] AHWs. I'd go out with the other managers, a senior doctor, and sort out the problems. I started to get an understanding that rather than an open honest discussion there was a conflict of roles, and AHWs started leaving. They didn't feel like it was their clinic any more.

The nurses were stressed - they'd fly out [for a break], leaving the AHW behind. There were till uneven conditions of service. There was no leave [for AHWs] for sorry business, for ceremonial business.

Somehow you've got to make the nurse know the clinic is ours in partnership. The nurse used to come, want to go straight to the clinic. no, no - sit down here first. Sit down, talk for a few minutes. What do you see in my community? Is it clean? Are the dogs healthy? You have to leave your standard of living behind. You've got to take time out to really think about the social skills to survive out here.

There's an exchange of language both ways between the doctor [and patients]. There were times when the doctor didn' talk to the patient, instead they'd talk about the patient in front of them. Sometimes the doctor wouldn't introduce the AHW. Not involving you. I tried to incorporate awareness that we already had traditional healers. Relationships are very improtant, social networking with others.

Part of it was always the barriers of profession: "I've trained for six years...". For the AHWs it was new and fresh, an exciting career. Now it's like turning abck the clock, there's no recognition that AHWs and doctors could be at the same level.

I had the freedom to explore the whiteman system: how to use it, how to tell our mob how to take it up for their problems. A lot of people nowadays don't want to talk up.

It took me about thirty years to get to be poilicy officer. I found it really hard, not being respected for who I was - I wasn't invited for policy, finance meetings. It was a token position. Instead I used to go and pick up the little souls in the pockets of the system: "when you're stressed, just sit on the lawn, go meet people on the streets."

After a while I said I don't want to be policy officer, I told my boss that I was going. I sat in the mall, my spirit was crying. People came, an Aunty came and said: "come walk with us." She changed my life. We spent a couple of days together, we formed a relationship. I came back, my boss cried with relief when I came back. But I asked for a transfer to Wallace Rockhole: not as a Health Worker, as a Health Educator. I spent four hours in the clinic, one hour in the school.

We'd put roses, scones and dressings on a trolley. The old people came. That made it their place.

Wednesdays, I'd do education at the school. The clinic is a sick person's place, the school in neutral.

Eventually in 1992 I came back to Alice, to Tangentyere Council as a manager of a training program called "Family Wellbeing". It was written by the Stolen Generation mob in the South Australian eduction unit. There was a lot around identity, dislocation, being taken away from family, from your spirit. Stolen Generation people came in to talk.

It was also grassroots community based issues. What it means to be taken away from country, ro recolelction of it. And how to go back to country. Do I want to go back? What about my children's future. You can imagine what it's like now with the government. You can't mainstream Aboriginal nations.

I started up the healing centre while I was at the council. It's an indigenous cultural service that provides access to traditional cultural practices - bush medicine, bush tucker. We're working with all different family groups in relation to accessing traditional nungars [traditional healers]. It's called Akeyullere Apmera, the People's Healing Place.

If you went there you'd feel comfort - it's on a sacred site. "What a nice feeling," you'd think, you wouldn't want to leave.

Spirit families came to me in the dead of the night. They told me I'd be given four mothers, that they would help me start the centre. I went and got them.

We started doing traditional smokings. People started coming, twenty to forty people a night, they could feel the energy. It's like quickening, like passover. There's a cloud between heaven and earth, we collect the spirits of people around Alice and take them through. My role is to collect the right bushes from the land and distribute them to the mothers.

Another case was asthma - the smoking gave confidence in her spirit - that's linked to health.

For eleven years we had no funding. Now we just got two years funding. We'll have a men's healing camp, and two women's camps.

I've learned to know who I am, my place in my society. I know how to relate to people, who to relate to, a shared responsibility with the elders. A deeper understanding of my role - an obligation to take care of people. The only thing that keeps me going is that in the spirit world I'm doing the right thing and I've got the backing of the elders.

The next journey is to reclaim Alice. This town isn't ready for Aborigines. We need to reclaim this town.

I'm here for the soul problems. You mob are here for the acute problems.

Kathy talked to me on Sunday, June 23, 2007.