66 km

Today’s ride was full of gently rolling hills, with nothing too steep. In the mid-afternoon it started to lightly sprinkle on us, and then it turned to an all-out rain.

We are seeing more and more dogs the farther north we head. In Malaysia, we hardly saw any dogs, and there were cats everywhere. Now it’s the opposite. But as we keep going, the dogs are less shy and more interested in raising our heart rates. We’re being at least half-heartedly chased a couple of times a day now, and once today I really thought the dog meant business. It might be my imagination, but they do seem to give pause to my “psht” sound, learned from my hero Cesar Milan, the Dog Whisperer. If you haven’t seen that show, you gotta. You just gotta. Anyway, Dave said that we can keep rocks handy in our handlebar bags and they will respond to that. He had plenty of practice while riding across China and Tibet.

We cycled in the rain for the rest of the day, finally rolling into Chumphon to a lighter sprinkle. The last 8-10 kilometers were grey and depressing, not because of the dark skies and rain, but because it is one long, straight stretch of highway filled with tired old shops and car dealorships, growing to a 4-lane ruckus closer to town. But still, it was plenty safe and smooth riding.

If it had been nicer and earlier in the day we would probably have continued north about 12 kilometers to the beach and found a rustic bungalow. But instead, we find the Suriwong Chumphon hotel listed in our guidebook because we know it will be clean and easy. They let us park our bikes in the front lobby out of the way, and we do get shown a clean and tidy room with a fan. Usually in cities, where it can be noisy and hotter, we opt for air-con rooms, leaving fans for the country bungalows where we also have a breeze at night. But the evening remained cool and it continued to rain or sprinkle, making the cheaper fan room quite bearable.