We slept in and got up late, then packed our things and made our way to the Laughing Gecko down near the next beach. They had a bungalow available for us so we stashed our stuff, changed into our swim suits, and headed down to the beach with our books and some snacks.

We went to the beach near our guest house first. It appeared to be the locals’ beach, and we were the only non-Thais sitting down in the shade of the trees. Just after we settled with our bikes and things, a Thai woman walks right up to us with a digital camera held out. It took me a minute to figure out that she was there to take pictures of US. But it took her a long time, she was standing there for what seemed like several minutes, positioning and repositioning the camera right at us. We continued doing what we were doing, which was applying sunscreen. I looked at her and said, “We look pretty darn funny, eh?” and she only smiled and nodded, probably not knowing what we were saying. Who knows. Finally she took her picture and walked away. I was wondering if they disliked having tourists invade their beach or something, but we didn’t want to be down at the busy beach.

We spent the morning reading our diving course book in the shade and swimming. When we were hungry for lunch, we packed up our stuff and found food, then went to the main tourist beach at Ao Nang and did the same thing there, but without the weird picture incident.

We are successful in this tourist town finding great Thai food! This is Pad Thai.

Red Curry (looks yellow, but don’t believe the color).

And the usual condiments for fixing up your dish, including more than one way to make it even hotter than it already is.

It was a nice, relaxing day. We came back to the Laughing Gecko for dinner. The food was incredibly good and there we spent the entire evening talking with a friendly and interesting German couple.

32 km

After breakfast and some internet time at our guest house, we set out for the short ride to Ao Nang beach. This is where we planned to stay for a few days to get our Open Water Diver certification. We had a booklet from the Krabi tourism office with prices of the guest houses in the Krabi area, with several in Ao Nang that were in our budget category.

We rode through grove after grove of rubber plantations between patches of coconut trees and limestone cliffs jutting out of the landscape. We saw a sign for a wat (Buddhist temple) on the roadside and decided to take a look. We parked our bikes and walked up to the side of the cliff, where underneath the rock overhang there was a huge gold-painted Buddha lying on his side. There were other little shrines, but the Buddha was the central attraction. A monk, dressed in the yellow and orange cloth draped around him and with a shaved head, approached us with a big smile. He pointed to the top of the cliff where we could see a small roof, maybe to a shrine, poking out of the jungle. He motioned for us to follow him, and he showed us the hidden pathway and handed us a bottle of water, wanting us to head up there. So, we did. It was a short but steep climb, and all of a sudden we were above the trees with an open view of the valley we were riding through, which headed down to the beach. We leaned out and waved to the monk, who was standing down there waiting to see if we made it. We looked to the direction we were heading but couldn’t see the water yet, because we had to go around other limestone cliffs nearer the water. It was a nice preview of what we’d be seeing.

Alter in front of the Buddha.

We got to Ao Nang and were overwhelmed with the busyness. Tourists crowded the sidewalks and the two-lane road was congested with cars, pickups fitted with benches and coverings for carting around tourists, and many scooters and motorcycles. Westerners were everywhere, though not all were white. There were many with bright red sunburns that made us wince just to see them.

We took out our handy booklet with the budget guest houses marked and started looking. What we found very quickly was that the booklet was very out of date, and the prices had all tripled at the very least. These places were no longer in our price range. So we ditched the booklet and went back up the road we had come in on, away from the beach, and started asking prices up there. We definitely couldn’t afford air conditioning, and even the bleakest fan rooms were ridiculously priced. We settled on a room finally, nearly as far up the road as we could go. It had no windows except one that opened up to the hallway, which had no outside ventilation at all. The fan was good, but it blew only hot air on us. We weren’t sure this was the place we wanted to spend a few days in while doing our dive training, a four-day event.

We then walked around to talk to the various dive shops and get prices and information. The first shop we came to was near our hotel, with a nice German guy at the desk who was very helpful. He filled us in on a lot of the details and told us how the course would go. He also told us about going down to the next beach to find a more affordable place which might be nicer to stay for a few days. The shop seemed nice and professional, and we immediately liked it. We then went to several other dive shops and talked with them, and found that all the shops charge exactly the same thing and went to the same places, and since the first shop seemed the most professional and knowledgeable, we decided to go back there and sign up. But not until we looked around for another place to stay so the evenings would be tolerable.

We looked and looked, and many of the places were also ridiculously priced. We finally found a place, the Laughing Gecko, with affordable rustic bungalows. It’s run by a Thai man and his Canadian wife. They offer dinner each night, served up family style and everyone eats together. People were hanging out in the big main house, an open, wooden structure with a thatched roof. This is where the meals are served. We liked the feel of the place and said we’d be back the next day to stay for a few days. We headed back into Ao Nang and signed up for our diving course, starting in two days.

We went out to find dinner and decided on various street-food items and were happy with our choices. It was fun to be out on the street with people walking everywhere and lots to see. We walked around a bit, and eventually made our way back to the hotel to sit outside and chat with the front desk guy. All the shops and hotels here in Southeast Asia so far are completely open on the bottom story, with accordion-folding gates that they pull shut to close them at night. So there is open seating here in all the restaurants and places, except a very few (touristy) places with air conditioning. We eventually made our way up to the room to sleep, and with the fan directly on us we slept OK.

78 km

We got our first flat tire today, just entering Krabi. It was my back tire, caused by a piece of broken glass. We’ve had to ride through big puddles of glass the last couple of days, as we were forced to stay on the shoulder by traffic. As we inspected the tire we found a couple of deep cuts in the tread, and decided we needed to check the tires more often. We fixed the flat and headed into town to find a guest house.

Entering Krabi, we see many stores selling yard animals and alters.

Krabi is a popular tourist destination, a stepping-off point for climbers seeking the huge limestone cliffs, divers heading out to the Phi Phi islands (Koh Phi Phi), as well as the usual backpacker and family tourist seeking a hot-spot in Thailand. We weren’t too excited about staying right in Krabi, we wanted to get to the beach. But I was tired and getting grumpy, so we found a guest house.

Prices here are expensive, so we looked for a fan-only room, and found a nice one at the Chang Guest House, on the road that goes by the pier, just up the hill a couple of blocks on the opposite side of the road. It’s a clean and very pleasant place run by several members of what appears to be one extended family. They also have a restaurant up front, and we ended up eating both dinner and breakfast there because the prices were good and we found the food to be great. They even had a special vegetarian section on the menu!

As we were out looking for dinner and finding expensive prices elsewhere, we met Damien & Judy, a couple who are bike touring the opposite direction through SE Asia. They were vegetarians too, and knowing they were probably on the same kind of budget we were we asked if they wanted to come back with us to our guest house’s restaurant for cheaper vegetarian food. They did, and we spent most of the evening talking about our trips, and we got even more useful information on which to base our route decisions. Once again we heard that Laos is the favored place for touring. The roads are quieter, the mountains are beautiful, and the people are welcoming. We’d really like to tour there, so we’ll give it a try, taking care not to do long days when the mountains are steep, and hopefully my knees can adjust if we go slow enough. If not, there are rivers everywhere, and we could simply load ourselves and our bikes onto a longboat and continue seeing the country.

59 km

Yesterday’s Ride Pays Off This Morning

Yesterday we had a long day in the interest of getting to a town listed in LP and with the guarantee of a guest house. We’re going through so many small towns that don’t seem to offer accommodation (that we can tell) so we just wanted that guarantee.

We also knew that this particular town offered something we’ve been missing for the last month: real filter coffee. COFFEE!!! We’ve been drinking either Nescafe or Malaysian coffee, which is mostly instant coffee with stimulating herbs added and always sweetened and usually with condensed milk too. So, this morning we found one of the coffee shops recommended in LP that also offered breakfast. Yay! LP sent us in the right direction this morning. We each had two cups of filter coffee. It could have been stronger, but who’s complaining. Not us.

Afterward, we found bread in the grocery across the road. We are already finding out that bread is going to be scarce here in Thailand, and we’ll have to stock up when we get to a city big enough to have a large grocery. We have looked in countless small stores since entering Thailand and this was the first bread we’ve seen. When you do find a loaf, as our friend Charlie wrote to us, there are about 10 pieces of bread in the wee loaf, so we have to buy two just to get us through a couple of days.

An Attempt at an Easy Day

I had thought we should take it really easy today, make it short, since we went long yesterday. I want to help my knees get stronger by challenging them and then giving them plenty of rest. So I picked out a couple of towns ahead that looked big enough to be promising for accommodation. But we didn’t see any guest houses until
Ban Khuan Kun, 59 kilometers into the day. It turned out to be fine for my knees though, because it was mostly flat and we had a tailwind, so it felt like a shorter day than it was.

Where Are We, Anyway?

I can’t tell you what guest house we are in right now, because the sign is written in Thai and the owner here doesn’t speak a word of English. Trying to get the name of this place would just not work. But it’s about 500 meters before the junction with the larger highway, where the main part of town appears to be. It’s new and really nice and clean. We paid 350 baht after asking for a cheaper room than the 400 baht that she asked for. She simply nodded 350 would be ok after she talked with her husband.

All We Want is Vegetarian Thai Food

We used our phrase book and written Thai for “no msg” and other things and tried ordering food at a restaurant. Um, we did get food. But. It was rather plain vegetables over white rice. No curry or pad Thai noodles or anything like that. I guess when we present them with the phrases, “no meat, no chicken, no msg” they freak out and wonder what the heck they CAN make for us. This has happened a couple of times now. Also, the plates of food were not enough for our monster appetites, and when we tried to order more, we just couldn’t. They didn’t get it, at all. The woman (and her friends who were trying to be helpful – basically repeating everything she said) just kept repeating the price of our meals, “50 baht, 50 baht.” So we finally just had to pay and leave. We stopped at a market on the way back to our guest house and got an ice cream bar. So, the grand food adventures that everyone is hoping to hear about are not starting yet, but soon! Soon, we MUST be able to order real Thai food!!

Welcome to Thailand, where you see pictures of the king just about every kilometer. This one is a state line marking.

103 km

We’re seeing more women without full head coverings, fewer mosques, and more Buddhist temples. We are definitely seeing changes as we work our way North of the Malaysia/Thailand border. We even saw a couple of Christian churches today, one in session with the doors wide open. There is definitely more diversity here. Other drastic changes include seeing dogs. In Malaysia the only animals we saw around houses or restaurants were cats and chickens. Now there are very few cats and plenty of dogs. We had our first dog chase us today, though it didn’t put in all that much effort and never caught up to us, but if it were a cattle dog like the ones we saw in New Mexico on the Great Divide trail we would have been toast.

Passing through one of the towns, we stop at a Buddhist temple to
take a look. This friendly monk wanted to be in the picture.

Another site we saw many times throughout the day as we passed through towns in the palm & rubber plantation countryside was people on motorcycles and scooters holding cages with birds in them. Nice, big, ornate cages, sometimes covered and sometimes not. We could not figure out why so many people were transporting birds around. They were not all on the move, there were many houses and shops with one to several cages of birds hanging out in the yard or from the open front overhang. Birds were chirping left and right on the road through these towns.

Later in the afternoon we overtook a couple of cyclists coming back on the road from a noodle stand. Wow! Cyclists! Day after day in Malaysia we were the only alien beings on the road, and so far in Thailand we’ve seen three pairs of cyclists: an older couple getting on to the ferry we had just taken to get to Satun, they were going the other direction; another couple passed us going towards the ferry several kilometers into the ride from Satun; and now these two men ahead of us. We rode along with them and chatted for a while. They’re both Thai, touring for 10 days from Satun up the West Coast. After talking with them for a while, Dave asked them if they knew anything about the birds everyone was carrying around. Evidently they hadn’t noticed. Hadn’t noticed?

Just a little while later, Dave and I were having a cold soda at a roadside stand and saw THREE MORE CYCLISTS! They were from New Zealand, heading the opposite direction as us. One was traveling for a year, his sister had recently joined him for a month, and another friend had just joined them for ten days of riding. They stopped to chat, and we talked with them for about twenty minutes. We got all kinds of great information about the roads ahead, from Thailand to Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. We’ll definitely be taking that information into consideration as we plan the weeks ahead.

We got to Trang late in the afternoon and tried to find the Yamawa Hotel, which was listed in our Lonely Planet guide and sounded pretty nice. But Trang was just too big to randomly look for a particular hotel, nobody recognized the name and we didn’t understand directions to the street it was on. The Thai people so far speak little to no English in general and we don’t speak any Thai, and using the phrase book so far is not working well because we’re not saying the Thai words well enough for people to recognize them. We’re probably not getting the tones right or something. Anyway. Dave finally saw a sign for tourist info, and he went in there and got a copy of a simple street map with a few places marked on it, including our hotel.

The Yamawa is barely like the description in LP, more expensive, and ended up having some kind of bed bugs, so we can’t recommend it. However, the girl who worked there spoke just enough English that, with our phrase book, she was able to write down and help us pronounce a few key words with which to find food. It’s not easy being vegetarian in SE Asia, but Dave is also very allergic to MSG, which is in everything here in Thailand in great quantities. His stomach is already in great distress. So I will give the Yamawa good marks for helpfulness, but I’d still say to just look around for a reasonably priced guest house.

We rode about 25 km back to the jetty today and got on the 1:30 ferry to Satun. It was a smaller ferry, and the only outside space was on top with the luggage. Dave was out there the whole time, I stayed for a while near the end. Dave said the ferry workers (a Thai crew) were repacking cases and cases of cigarettes from duty-free Langkawi into suitcases after the ferry left the jetty. They resell them back in Thailand and probably make a killing.

There are about 104 islands all together around Langkawi, most of them uninhabited. Dave really wants us to do a sea kayak trip there sometime. It would be a beautiful place for kayaking. The water is warm and green and there are beaches on many of the islands.

I forgot to mention yesterday that we rented a kayak in the afternoon and enjoyed a bit of paddling. My shoulder was quite happy with the paddling motion and I breathed a big sigh of relief more than once. We’ve got a sea kayak trip planned for this summer and my shoulder HAS to work. Well, I think it will be just fine. In fact, it’s probably great rehab to continue strengthening the ligaments and muscles that look so weird now.

The ferry ride to Satun, Thailand took just over an hour, and another 45 minutes to get the bikes unloaded and set up and us through customs. We had a quick snack outside the terminal and then started riding. It was only a few km to the town of Satun, and we were not ready to stop for the day. We saw a couple of towns in the 50-100,000 population range within a reasonable distance, so we went on. Well, all the signs in the towns were in Thai, but we never saw anything that looked like a hotel or guest house, and we even asked at a few places, acting out sleeping like charades, and there just wasn’t any place available until about 55 km down the road in Langu. We asked at a little store and the women pointed us just a bit down the road to the Andaman Guest House. We rode on.

About 500 meters past the store I said, “There it is!” I thought I saw Andaman written on the sign, but when I stopped and looked closer it was in Thai and totally unreadable. “That’s weird,” I said, and we kept riding. We rode more into town and still didn’t see it on our left, as we were told. We asked again, and were pointed back the way we came. We got near the place where I thought I saw the sign and I asked some working men at a shop, “Andaman?” while pointing at the sign. “Yes, yes!” they said, so we went down the little road to what looked like a guest house. This was the place! That was really weird. It’s like I could read Thai for a half second, then my brain kicked in and said, “Hey, what are you thinking? You don’t know Thai!”

We’re going to have to quickly learn some basic Thai phrases. It’s difficult because it’s a tonal language, so we have to get the sounds right as well as the tone. Malaysia was easy, because there was English everywhere on signs, and at least the alphabet was the same so we could pronounce the words. We will be studying our phrase book!