William Never Eats Sweets

West, North, East, South. Reading from left to right, with North at the top. William Never Eats Sweets. That's how I navigate. In the northern hemisphere, the sun is on my left in the morning, right in the afternoon as we travel south. This system fails a bit at midday and nighttime. We get to Ubon R and there are lots of traffic lights and crossings. Its midday. "Which way," B calls. " Not sure, go straight," I shout back through the visor. I twist sideways to get the map out from under the bungee on the pannier, then in the breeze unfold it, turn it around so that the map points the same way we are going. (I am a girl, after all). The shadows re-appear, midday had passed. I tap B, " Turn around, we should have gone left." Some maps are better than others. If the map doesn't show the road we are on, then we use Maps.Me. This works without wifi, just gps location. However it is quite important to download the map of the country you are visiting, before you get there, when you are in a wifi area of the country before. We forgot to do this in Cambodia. Our map shows only main roads, where were we? So then we go to Google maps. Oh, there is only one road. This is it. This is the main road. We bounce on, missing potholes, slowly, slowly from the Thai/Cambodia post at Choam. We had gone through the Thai side, no problem, no lecture. The very nice young officer produced an A4 pad, labelled Tesco, Power of Attorney Form, in English and Thai. He tore off a sheet to use for next time, and willingly accepted the photo letter of which we had a lot of copies. Walk with the bike to the other side, this time with lots of carts bearing lots of goods. Fruit, sweetpotatoes, melons, personal possessions, it was not an International Border crossing. We were treated like royalty, seated at a separate bench and table under a tarpaulin. First the customs officer came over, then the immigration man, we handed over some dollars, got stamped and set off. Down the one and only road. En route from Khlong Hat, where we had enjoyed a stay in a very respectable bungalow in a litchie plantation, we set off south towards Koh Chang. Fortunately, there were Army/Police checkpoints at regular intervals as we were riding along the length of the Thai/ Cambodia border which is under dispute. We asked directions. Too many roads to choose from. Midday, again. I spotted a sign, oops, we were going in the opposite direction, just a minor 20kms detour. Never mind, we have 8 days to get to Phuket. After a ferry crossing on a rather rusty barge we get here, it's beautiful, the gentle sea is lapping less than 5 metres away, we are in a bungalow on concrete legs. Surrounded by coconut palms. And that's it. William Never Eats Sweets. Navigation in a coconut shell.