The benefit of keeping a personal journal throughout the course of a visit to a country comes to the fore when you have dramatic events halfway through the visit. All the early memories tend to get obliterated by the later events....
We arrived in Thailand on an aeroplane from Tokyo, having consigned our bike to 9 days on the high seas courtesy of Nippon Express. All of a sudden we were backpackers, arriving effortlessly at midnight in an airport without being hassled about "what is in the panniers and show me the engine number". All very painless; it makes you realise how much extra hassle overlanding can bring.

Having said that we almost missed the plane in Tokyo! Over the past 5 years Georgie and I must have taken over 500 business flights between us but now we're so relaxed that we can hardly manage to get on one we've paid for ourselves!

We decided to sleep the night on the airconditioned concourse of the airport. Georgie had phoned a few Bangkok guesthouses from Japan but was met with "less than efficient reservation systems". We reasoned that it was better to hit town at 8am on the first bus rather than wander round gormlessly at 2am, prey to pimps and touts.

Early morning Bangkok was an unfamiliar world full of buzzing markets, uncontrolled traffic and lots of street food. Georgie was delighted by the spontaneous smile on my face as I realised that I'd be able to get cheap, FISH-FREE food whenever I wanted (in contrast to Japan).

The people were smiley and the temples were gaudy. The girls were pretty and gave "come hither" smiles. It was already 30 degrees with 100% humidity, and we were eating red curry for breakfast, for 50 cents each. We were back in Asia again.

After being on the "path less travelled" for 8 months it was a shock to see so many western tourists (farangs) about. Many were clean-cut, young back-packers, others more travelled hippy youngsters and there was more than a smattering of raddled old hippies looking as though they'd been on the road for a thousand years. Thrown into this mix of travellers were the sex-tourists - fat, sweaty, tattoed and uncouth, lording it over young girls they'd bought from the local bars - the going rate seemed to be about $20 to the girl and $10 to the bar.

It dawned on us that the rest of our trip would now be in the "easy" parts of Asia; we'd blend into the general tourist traffic - as soon as we'd gotten off the bike.

We had arrived in the run-up to the King of Thailand's 75th birthday. The Royal Family are immensely popular; there are posters everywhere, there's a daily "what the Royals did today" spot on all Thai TV channels. There's none of the cynicism you'd get in the west, and no Thai ever mentions that the King looks a bit strange because of his glass eye. Over the next few weeks of this visit and the course of the next 2 forays we'd make into Thailand, we'd notice that the Thais have quite a few more quirky takes on the world.

It would be about a week before the bike would arrive so we took to the tourist trail.

A few days were spent in Bangkok, visiting those tarty golden temples (so much more visually stimulating than the classy Japanese temples), bumping into locals events (such as the induction of a year of saffron clad monks into a temple university), and browsing fantastically posh markets. We attempted to buy some new clothes to replace the tatty items we'd thrashed to death over the past 8 months. To our amazement Georgie (normally a "small" size in the UK, and "medium" in Japan) is too large for most "large"sizes in Thailand. Hell, the locals are small. And as for me finding anything to fit - well I'm twice the weight of the average local bloke!

We had to check whether it would be possible for us to enter Vietnam. We'd heard from other bikers that new rules had stopped foreigners from travelling in Vietnam on bikes over 175cc. Bit of a blow to us on a 1000cc brute. The Vietnamese embassy confirmed that the new rules were in place, but we'd be welcome to leave the bike and go to Vietnam on foot. We politely pointed out that we were on a bike tour, so we'd give Vietnam a miss and spend our money in Cambodia and Laos. The bad news was actually a bit of a god-send, as we'd spent 5 weeks longer in Japan than planned and we'd heard from many other travellers that Vietnam had become a bit "money-grabbing" and overpriced.

We spent an evening in the red-light area of Pat Pong - a real disappointment for "a couple not looking to have sex with the locals" - not nearly as huge, varied and entertaining as the red-light canals of Amsterdam.

Finally we visited a "little piece of England" - Boots the Chemist - to buy anti-malarial pills. As is usual with anti-malarial advice, the information we received was CRAP! "In Thailand you don't need anti-malarial pills unless you're near the border with Burma, Laos or Cambodia". "Well we're going up to Kanchanaburi and the 3 Pagodas Pass near Burma, and Ko Chang which is a known malarial area". "No worries, you won't be near the border up there and it's the dry season in Koh Chang - just take care not to get bitten by mosquitoes". As if getting bitten is something you can choose to avoid. Another 30 minutes of grilling would not yield a straight answer to "how near to the border is 'near to the border'?" or "is there malaria on Koh Chang or not?". So we bought pills and beat a dissatified retreat. We couldn't blame the Thais for being useless on this one - I've tried the UK's anti-malaria hotline and web-site before and they use the phrase "no need for pills but avoid being bitten by mosquitoes" as well. If anyone out there knows of a good web-site on anti-malarial prophilaxis, we'd love to know!

Then we were off back-packing on an air-conditioned bus to Kanchanaburi on the infamous WW2 "Death Railway". A super-easy and super-comfortable journey compared to our usual sweaty, logistical nightmares, but we couldn't actually see anything from the bus and when we arrived at our destination, we couldn't get out and about without difficult or expensive local transport. Give me the bike back please!

The River Kwai at Kanchanaburi is distressingly similar to Walton on Thames in England. Pleasure boats plying up and down the river past posh houses with lawns and landing stages. Not really the "hell on earth" that we'd imagined. It would take us some time to get a feeling of how thousands of people had suffered here.

We had arrived during the annual Kanchanaburi festival - an excuse to drum up more tourists to visit the Death Railway and party on the disco-rafts which are towed up and down the river. The area around the famous railway bridge swarms like Blackpool on a bank holiday weekend and the locals make a mint. All very unseemly for a place that is famous for working to death tens of thousands of POWs and enslaved workers. There was a sound and light show over the bridge every night which we went to - a bit cheesey, but it did include a steam train roaring and whistling over the bridge, and I'm a sucker for steam trains and Georgie is getting that way too.

The Bridge Over the River Kwae

And we found a contender for "the worst museum of all time" (up against stiff competition from dozens of ethnology museums in the FSU countries). This one was privately owned and overlooked the railway bridge. It was full of misleading information and weird exhibits. There was one exhibit that was so badly worded that it sounded like "it was ok that all those people died because now we have a really thriving tourist spot". I complained and the management came and taped over the offending piece. They also had a row of "allied bikes that were used by the Japanese during WWII" - all painted khaki with the Japanese flag painted on the tank. The row included a 1963 BSA A50 and mid-50sTriumph Speed-Twin. Maybe they were used by some of those "Japanese soldiers still fighting in the jungle long after the war ended". The BSA was in pretty good original condition. I want to go and liberate the poor thing to go with my other A50 back in England!

Other exhibits on the Second world war included pictures of Napoleon and others of the Boer war!

We visited the war graves in the area, to go with all the other war graves we have seen on our tour. The Changhai war cemetary was nicely done, although not quiet because of the disco boats plying up and down the nearby creek. The casualties in the grave yard had mainly come from the camp hospital, and you could see how the place had filled up from one end from the dates on the graves! As I walked through the graveyard an elephant walked just outside - that doesn't happen in Flanders!

We were expecting the King's birthday to be a right raucous affair, but it passed with a whimper. It turns out that there is a law banning the sale of alcohol to Thais on the big day.

Mopeds in Thailand....the common person's wheels. There's a new generation of "step-through" mopeds (similar to the old Honda 50 design that has been around for 40 years). Everybody seems to have one, or access to one. Commonly they have 100cc motors and the Thais love to customise them - low "clip-on" handlebars and lowered front forks give them a cafe-racer stance (if you can imagine a cafe racing shopping-bike!?) and flourescent coloured wheels, extra chrome and anodised fasteners add more sparkle. Then what do they do? - they get as many people as possible onto the bike. Typically 4 Thais can sit comfortably on a bike, and we've frequently seen 6-up. We saw 2 women and 2 kids on one bike and one of the women (thankfully the passenger) breastfeeding one of the kids as they went along. Anywhere else it would be a circus act.

Many of the mopeds have been turned into mobile food wagons care of a bodged-on sidecar, hotplate (gas or charcoal), 4 metre diameter umbrella. Completely amazing and a testament to the strength of the bikes' frames and wheels. If a Thai were to grow legs long enough to ride our BMW he could probably use it as a bus or a supermarket.

The helmet law is fun. Legally one person on a bike must be wearing a helmet - you can have as many people as you like on the bike, but one of them must be wearing a lid, just to make the whole lot nice and safe.

After Bangkok and Kanchanaburi we were in need of somewhere a bit more low-key, so a run up to the Burmese border looked promising.

We dropped in at "Hellfire Pass" on the way. This is a section of the disused part of the Death Railway which has been cleared of jungle overgrowth. It gives you a some idea of the conditions the POWs worked under. It was difficult enough for us to stand the heat and humidity as we just walked along the firm track-bed, and we got through 3 litres of water in 90 minutes. And we were there in the cool season. It's a nice pretty place to visit as a tourist but it must have been a bloody horrible place to be worked to death.

Up to Sangkhlaburi and a few nights chilling beside a lake. We rode elephants and rafted down a river. We visited a Hmong hill tribe village and saw the finest collection of mangy dogs imaginable. Burmese curries to eat, Burmese cigars (with sugared tobacco) to smoke and locals with decidedly "Indian" facial features.

The weather got even stickier and the locals lay around complaining. This has been a feature of many of the places we have visited - the weather often seems to be unseasonable and the locals are always complaining - so not just a British obsession.

The day for reclaiming the bike approached so we planned an atmospheric return to Bangkok. This included a bus trip down to Namtok - the terminus of the remaining sections of the Death Railway and then a rickety 4 hour train journey all the way to Bangkok.

The first part of the train journey was fantastic, through jungle at first, then overlooking the River Kwai. The train passed over wooden tressles (just like the original famous bridge) and finally over the 1940's iron bridge at Kanchanaburi (where we'd seen the sound and light show). The rest of the run into Bangkok was pretty hot and noisy - our first experience of ancient tracks, open windows and hard-class seating.

Back in Bangkok and time to get the bike. Getting the bike was a 2 day procedure and the story isn't the most interesting thing to relate. Highlights include spending another $50 on various charges, getting to the warehouse about 30kms outside town too late and having to go back the next day. Me forgetting the delivery note on day 2 and Georgie finding her way to the warehouse (4 buses and a hitched lift without a map) to find me. 5 hours clearing customs, a 2 page essay in my passport telling me I'd be fined and imprisoned forever if I didn't take my smelly bike with me when I left. Bike lost in warehouse, bike found. 2 workers required to rip the crate apart for me, 20 workers required to watch me put the bike together.

How many men does it take to...

And into the Friday night Bangkok rush-hour. A minor nightmare, but not as frightening as similar in London, Istanbul or Moscow.

We felt like a fat bloke going pot-holing (caving). As we entered Bangkok the roads got narrower, the traffic heavier and the traffic lights more numerous. Three lanes became two and the gaps we were squeezing the (fully laden) bike through got narrower. Then we'd get stuck - too wide to weedle through the gaps, stuck down a cave until we could loose some weight. Then eventually the lights would change and the cars that surrounded us would unjam and we'd roar and weedle through to the next choke point, where we'd get stuck again. The local bikes by contrast were small, light and narrow, many with their handlebars turned in and few with mirrors. We were a fat badger down a termites nest, awaiting extinction.

An hour and half to do 30kms - not too bad - and with the bike back the holiday was back on track.

A few more days relaxing in Bangkok, checking out the bike and visiting the weekend market.

My guts have been getting steadily worse after the trip down from the Death Railway. I'd eaten the best part of a pineapple and a watermelon, supplemented by various fruit shakes, all on top of a recent diet of 3 curries a day. My body was screaming "enough already!", but still feeling hungry all the time. It was time to become a "Brit Abroad" again and seek out western food for a while.

Christmas was looming and we decided to head south to find ourselves a beach somewhere. We'd promised ourselves a luxury holiday, somewhere with air-conditioning, a bath, a view over a perfect beach - the illusion had kept us going through some pretty rough moments in Central Asia.

Two days ride down to Koh Samui, dreading the potential for it being a tourist hell-hole, but realising that we needed to visit an island with a vehicle ferry rather than just a walk-on boat.

Good roads and mad drivers all the way.

The first night was spent at Hua Hin which we thought would be a cozy little fishing port but turned out to be one of Thailand's first tourist towns and patronised by the Royals.
A long beach, big hotels and more Italian restaurants than Rome - pizza's; good for the poor tum! The place seemed to cater for Germans and Scandinavians, and there was even a Thai-Austrian restaurant - schnitzel-mit-noodle anyone?

We found a little piece of old Thailand there - the fishdock buzzed with life as the fishermen prepared nets and dozens of swarthy youths filled the boats with ice. They all wore broad-brimmed hats and were muscular, tanned and hormonal - all very "boyband". I was surprised that there weren't more women down there drooling.

Burger King for breakfast - guts getting what they need! We've met a few long-term travellers who have the same thoughts as us about eating. Yes we'll eat as the locals do 99% of the time, but sometimes you just need normal food, and sod any short-term tourists who frown at you for sitting in a burger bar.

Back on the road and into our first area of rubber plantations. Rubber trees are most unspectacular looking things - like sickly sycamores. The only ways you can tell that there is something special about them is that they're planted in straight lines, there's a slight smell of fish in the air and there's a little collection pot near the base of each tree.

A night in another pokey little town - Surat Thani. It's a rubber-town and passenger ferries leave for various islands including Koh Pha Ngan where the monthly full-moon beach party was only a few days away. The quayside was full of ravers downing beer whilst waiting for the next boat. In the next few days thousands would join them to dance the full moon night away fuelled by booze and whatever drugs the locals could get past the police. We focussed on more earthly matters, mainly the local speciality - BBQ'd chicken marinaded in what seems to be a marmalade syrup.

A cheap ferry ride took us to Koh Samui for what we knew could be a stressful session of "trying to find somewhere to stay, cheap, on the beach, with facilities, with few tourists" - "your mission if you choose to accept it...."!

We knew that Ko Samui was going to be a real tourist trap, and we were right. The roads swarm with idiot farangs on mopeds trying to get themselves killed - Koh Samui has the highest motorcycle death rate of the whole of Thailand. One town which sounded doable (Bo Phut) had been turned into a tourist ghetto. A place (Chaeng) that promised to be a horrid tourist village was!

We were starting to dispair and were thinking about maybe going to Koh Tao - a much less touristed place but lacking in accommodation. Then we got to a small peninsular between 2 tourist hell-holes and found a half decent and cheap set of rooms - but no better than we usually go for. Next door was a much more exclusive place - the Koh Samui Yacht Club - with rooms at 40 quid, right on the (beautiful and quiet beach) - so after a quick check at another couple of dives on the other side of the peninsula - we returned and booked ourselves into the Yacht Club for 2 weeks. Xmas Eve dinner and News Years Eve dinner were compulsory, so we would be forced to do something sociable those nights (good!). Georgie was hugely happy to finally be somewhere idylic, I was chilled. The cost would go on plastic; a bit of a hole in our budget, but we were planning to do something decent at xmas so we knew we'd have to stomp up. And the place was excellent.

It was interesting to be at a posh resort for a change. People came round to sweep the beach! The Yacht Club actually turned out to be nothing of the sort - there's a bloody great reef about 50 yards off the beach so no boats could come in and even tenders would have to cross at one end, at high tide. But the name gives an impression of the grade of the place.

The first few days we spent there were incredible. I started to read at a previously unknown pace - a novel every 2 days! The hammocks we'd bought in Bangkok got strung between palm trees and Georgie disappeared into hers, seldom to be seen. A good dose of sunburn for us both, to get the tanning process off to a painful start; although we'd been through some of the sunniest places on earth in the previous 6 months, our bodies were still whiter than most of the "fresh off the plane" tourists. Except for our noses which had been permenantly stuck out in the sunshine.

Then things took a strange turn, which rocked the way that I think of Thailand and its nice smiley people.

I went to an internet cafe, did 2 hours work, then the cafe owner decided to try to charge me more than we'd agreed and when I told him "no", he and his dad tried to beat the shit out of me in a Thai boxing, armed with glass bottles and an iron bar type of style. I managed to fight the buggers off with one hand while the other clutched a grands worth of camera and computer kit.

That was the first piece of violence on the trip, and in fact the first I'd suffered in 22 years. And in the "land of a thousand smiles"!

I called the police and the police were only interested in me paying for the internet time.

All pretty shoddy, but I suppose it's what you get when you're on an island full of tourists, and you look like the archetypal British football thug.

No real physical damage was done (except a few scrapes and bruises from falling through a hedge), but the psycological damage was pretty annoying. I had to sit through the next couple of weeks on our tropical paradise and the rest of our time in Thailand, having flashbacks to the event, with the associated HUGE SURGES of adrenaline that made me want to beat the living shit out of someone.

The worst side-effect was my resultant inability to trust anyone who was smiling at me, in case they suddenly turned round and started to attack me. Very unpleasant and annoying when you've been looking forward to this one piece of relaxation for the past 6 months.

My ability to interact pleasantly with the locals was reduced to near zero. The objectivity that I try to maintain in my diary flew out of the window as I noticed every negative aspect of the Thais rather than the positives. What a way to spend Christmas!

While I was brooding and twitching, paradise was still busy being wonderful, the hammocks still swung from the palm trees, the cicadas kept chirping and the sun still set into the sea.

The annual nauseating run-up to Christmas was reduced from the usual 2 or 3 months to a manageable 24 hours. On 24th December the resort put up a few decorations and dug-out the Boney M and Johny Mathis records and joy beyond belief, we didn't hear one song by Slade or Wizard.

Georgie started to get a dose of homesickness brought on by fond memories of Christmas in the arms of her family - she was pretty tearful but perked up a lot when we went to pick up her Christmas post from the island's Poste Restante. The ride home from the post office cheered me up as we went across country - up about 600 metres altitude through the island's network of interior dirt tracks - all rather gnarly, gritty and steep. It had rained for a few hours earlier in the day and the tracks were sodden, rutted and littered with obstacles like palm fronds, rocks and coconuts. That got shot of some of the adrenaline.

This was to be our first experience of a "Hotel Christmas" and should be documented. That night there was to be a dinner with entertainment laid on. Good food including turkey, a skin full of Mai Tai cocktails and some surreal performances by local schoolkids, including a bamboo handbell orchestra. Their repetition of "Jingle Bells" between long Thai songs made me wonder whether it was Christmas or Groundhog day. When they fired into it for the third time the giggling and groaning in the audience almost drowned out the bells. A choir, some people dancing in Thai style, a quick dance with Georgie and then back to the seafront to listen to "9 Lessons and Carols" on the BBC World Service as the waves purred onto the beach.

The Bamboo Bell Band

Then a finale to the day was to talk to home who were 7 hours behind us. It was a special day as we'd sent a card home to each pair of parents with strict instructions to only open the card on 24th December. Inside each card we announced our engagement to the folks at home. We had actually been engaged since Uzbekistan, but it's more than a little difficult to announce such things in a hurried phone call or by email. So they got a nice surprise at Christmas.

Georgie gets lucky with the food

The following days were more chilling - swimming in waterfalls, fishing off the rocks, diving and game fishing. So much better than literally "chilling" at home in Britain's grotty winter weather.

Lost my bike in the river again

Then a weather front set in and gave us a few days of tropical rain and storms. Pretty miserable for the people who'd just turned up to sunbathe, but ok for us as we'd got lots of writing to catch up on. The storms also brought down a load of palm fronds so one day I kept a Swedish family and the resort staff amused by plaiting the fronds into native roofing sheets in a Tarzan/Ray Mears stylie.

More amusement occurred when we broke out the camp cooking gear to fry a bunch of fish we'd caught. Yellow snapper, boiled potatoes and garlicy mange tout.

Fish dinner coming up

All this frantic inactivity took us through to New Year's eve and another resort party. What a gloriously naff affair! Good food again, but the entertainment was dire. The main act was a transvestite cabaret miming and dancing to old camp disco songs. What a messed up sort of country where you can't admire a dancing girl in case it's a bloke. There are only 3 pleasures in watching people dance - watching the totty, top melodic tunes and admirable athleticism. Take away the totty, take away the tunes (badly canned music, badly mimed to) and no athleticism - well you might as well force me to sit through classical opera.

Then there were local school kids dancing to canned music, singing jingle bells (bugger me, not again!!), the hotels cleaners-cum-masseuses doing local dances, a parade of people in Thai regional costumes... oh the pleasures just went on. There was a crappy "hotel male cleaners" Thai boxing competition on a pole suspended over the swimming pool and a kids game of burst the other kids' balloons. The "highlight" was a magic show. Luckily about an hour into the proceedings we realised the potential for increasing pain and so we upped our alcohol intake.

Sadly one of the advertised events of the night was subtley dropped from the proceedings - the "Miss Koh Samui Yacht Club" contest was to award the title to some poor female guest from the hotel - I was really looking forward to seeing what this "disaster looking for a place to happen" would be. Unfortunately someone seemed to have scrapped the idea before it could run aground and pollute the beach. We retired to bed after 12 mid-night to watch the film on HBO - Tootsie! Just a typical new year's eve party - dreadful.

The weather continued to be moody so we decided to visit the local shooting range and "pop some caps" (best Manchester speak there!). What a slack ship they ran. We turned up, pointed to some guns, and they handed over the loaded beasts to us. No checking that we're not psychos, no training - just load the bullets in and blast away. It was surprisingly easy to hit dead-centre from 10 metres. Georgie used a .38 revolver and I used a 9mm automatic pistol (loaded with luger brand ammo). The lack of training they gave us was farcicle. Georgie didn't know that when she cocked the revolver's hammer, the trigger moved forward, so she kept turning the gun sideways to see whether the hammer was cocked. Needless to say this frightened the shit out of the 2 idiot attendants who thought that she was going to blow herself away! Much shouting and gesticulating lead to Georgie giving them a crash course in "this is how you should train people how to use a gun". I guess that the lesson went in one ear and out of the other - just like a bullet.

A final blast of sunshine and all of a sudden we were out the other side of the Christmas break. Refreshed and ready to travel again after an unforgettable Christmas; it was time to leave paradise and turn into dusty travellers again. We could have happily frittered another month on the beach but time and money had caught up with us.

Two days of riding to Bangkok. The second day was 480kms of hair-raising driving along the equivalent of the British A1, with dogs, mopeds, trucks and buses trying to be as unpredictable as possible. We even had a police car tailgate us - I indicated that he was mad and he indicated that I should be riding on the hard-shoulder - at twice the speed of the mopeds there - right! Later we found out that over the Christmas period the Thai roads had claimed 562 lives, with 32,541 people injured. The paper with these stats points out that the various recording agencies don't record whether any of the accidents involved alcohol, or whether the bikers involved where wearing helmets! One major cause of the accidents is the booming Thai economy. Loads of Thais are buying flashy pickup trucks and souped up mopeds, driving them flat-out like they were used to doing on their old 50cc mopeds. The number of wrecked pickups we saw was amazing!

We managed to avoid becoming a statistic and set about getting visas for Cambodia and Laos.

We decided that our style of travelling would be different in South East Asia - we would not camp at all. The region has an abundance of cheap and clean accommodation and eateries in all but the remotest regions. But more importantly the region is full of creepy crawlies wherever you might camp, and in Cambodia you have to keep to footpaths so that you don't step on landmines. So it would be hotels for us for 3 months and the tent would be left in Bangkok along with the sleeping bags and roll-mats. I looked forward to having a bike that handled better without all that weight hanging off the back, and we both looked forward to showering every evening.

Out of Bangkok and towards Cambodia - a long day's ride with 315kms of decent roads on the Thai side and then 150kms of dirt riding on the Cambodian. Surprisingly we didn't have much trouble getting out of the city or finding the major road. We quickly did about 70kms and then realised that the road was about to turn into a Toll Road and in Thailand bikes aren't allowed on Toll Roads. There was no easy way to turn around so Georgie went to charm the toll both staff and policemen. After a bit of head scratching the top policeman told us to just carry on along the toll road and turn left (good advice) when we got to the exit we wanted. Excellent - didn't even have to pay the toll or the $20 fine that normally gets handed out to bikers who get caught on toll roads!

Many hot kms got us to the border at 2pm. 15 minutes of customs admin on the Thai side (compared to the 5 hours as we entered at the Lat Krabang customs office) and over to the Cambodian side.

The border was similar to the Uzbek/Kyrgyz border. A very loose place with locals wandering back and forth, seemedly unchallenged. Goods being wheel-barrowed across the border by porters (no duties seemed to be levied). A bigger than huge truck and trailer also crossed; loaded with very light goods to well over 5 meters high. Three men bounced around perilously on top. It turned out that their job was to lift the telephone and power wires up and over the loads - a very slow and dangerous business. The truck was not going anywhere fast.

This border was the first land-border that we had done for 4 months - since we crossed from Mongolia into Russia. It turned out to be one of the easiest.