November 25, 2006
To Khao Lak: Another beach
We ride out of town at first light just before six. Monks are doing their daily rounds to collect food and handouts. We ride north on highway 4 (towards Phang Nga) for about 23 km, then turn west on a secondary road towards the coast. At a junction we stop for a sports drink and cookies. A small boy plays hide and seek with us below the table.
Traffic is very light and the scenery is nice. We have left the vertical karst rock faces and are now in rolling hills covered with jungle. At the coast we rejoin 4 and head north to where a series of beaches have many hotels and bungalows. Khao Lak is one of them, we don't know exactly where it is, but we do recognize the strip of shops, diving outfitters, restaurants and bungalows when we get there. This area was the most devastated in the tsunami of December 2004, over 6000 people died here and everything in the low-lying areas was washed away.
The Jai's bungalows we stay in survived because they are on slightly higher ground. We arrive at about 10, clean up and have a nice egg sandwich in the restaurant. Then we check our email (Nathan has added pictures of Sumatra and Malaysia to our picasaweb site). There is a very well stocked supermarket and we pick up chips and coke and head to the beach.
There are a fair number of backpackers in town, but most muzungus seem to be Scandinavian families with children enjoying a beach vacation. Some of the resorts on the beach look very nice. We return to the supermarket to do more shopping, Patrick then returning to the bungalow, and Rachel does more shopping. She comes back with beer and a watermelon. For dinner, we go to O'Connors Irish pub for Shepard's pie and spareribs. The Guinness on draught though is a bit too expensive.
Today's ride: 55 km (34 miles)
Total: 1,890 km (1,174 miles)
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