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!