We righted the bike and despite his injury straight away John set about getting the bike rideable. We collected the scattered pieces off the road and straightened as best we could the badly twisted bars. As people stopped to enquire about us it was not long before an ambulance arrived and took John to the local hospital where he urgently required stitches. An hour or so later we managed to ride the bike as far as the local town some 15 kilometers away and made further rudimentary adjustments to the bars and pannier that allowed us to carry on to the next biggest town for that night. I can't overstate that very few people of John's age would be able to cope with such circumstances so well, if at all. We were still left with a long ride that evening and there was not a hint of nervousness in his riding. Indeed we could have well done with an easy time the next day but it conspired to be anything but. For the first time on our trip we had rain for most of the day and it was torrential to the point that the road was very treacherous. A car literally disappeared straight off the road in front of me on oil and somersaulted through the air luckily landing in a drain on its wheels with the result that no one was injured, incredible as it must seem. We lost count of the number of cars and lorries that we saw crashed that day as we drove up to Bangkok but it certainly made our ride all the more tiring as the concentration needed was intense. We eventually made it safely to the city that night but it was the last thing John needed on the back of the accident. Nor indeed was there much rest over the next few days as the bike had to be repaired in a local shop beside our hotel so that he coped so admirably with so many adverse circumstances speaks volumes for him.

We have now eventually got a chance to rest as it is taking a week for the customs to authorise our flight to Nepal, our next destination so that we have time on our hands. John's thumb, however, is giving some bother since it got infected due to all the work he has being doing with it on top of the lack of rest he has got till now. Bangkok is a very big city of 6 million people and what stands out about it most are the worse traffic jams we have ever encountered. The city itself is very modern with pockets of beautiful architecture scattered about it. Today we headed north to the River Kwai with its famous bridge from the war and went elephant trekking and rafting down the river which was especially enjoyable. Hopefully we'll be able to get a flight out of here by the weekend as it is a big polluted city and we have been held up here long enough and seen all there is by now. It would also be nice to get to Katmandu while the 50th celebrations of the conquest of Everest are still going on. So hopefully that's where the next report will come from.