Coasting In On The Fumes

February 15, 2015

The end of the bicycling part of this trip

Bang Boet to Ao Bo Mao Beach 31.5

Ao Bo Mao Beach to Chumphon 30.5

Dear little friends,

If we had known there were miles of deserted coastline with a deserted road and deserted forests we would have gone on from Bang Boet and its full and costly guesthouses and just camped a few miles further south! It is just gorgeous there, and the delightful road was made more delightful by a nearly complete absence of traffic. We stopped and had a breakfast picnic of muesli and soy milk at a dream campsite.

We wish we had seen this little road the night before.

Roads really don't get better than this.

Our route sometimes followed a highway that had a large red bike lane on it, with bike emblems, I think it was called the King’s Highway or something like that. I could see the Thai king approving bike lanes, he was all about intelligent infrastructure in his day. He also had a million hobbies, he was a photographer, a jazz musician, an expert agriculturalist, and the list goes on and on. Whether he had personally planned the bike lanes or not, we loved them. The road was smooth and the views amazing.

I would feel a lot better about this bike lane if he was wearing his helmet. Or even his head.

Yet another famous shot of the road from Bang Boet.

Fishing is the big deal here, we lost count of the fishing villages and their boats we passed. There are also gigantic artificial fish ponds being built, we had seen them on Google maps’ satellite view but it took a while to figure out what they were. They kind of tempered our appetite for seafood somewhat, who would want to eat anything swimming around in what looked like a giant mudhole lined with plastic?

Beautiful karst formations along the King's Highway.

We had been catching glimpses of a faroff Buddha statue, and then we rounded a corner and it wasn’t far off anymore. That still amazes me as we ride along, suddenly a mountain appears that wasn’t there before, something else disappears, and it was OUR movement that made that happen.

The Buddha was reigning over a large temple complex with an unbelievable array of Chinese, Indian, and Buddhist imagery. Statues of Kwan Yin rubbed elbows with Ganesh, there were gardens and posters and a large vehicle with the Wat Kaew Prasert website printed on the door. We left our bikes and wandered up to take photos, and suddenly were face-to-face with the abbot of the temple, who was preparing to do a rap session with some locals. Apparently after they listened to him there was going to be food, kind of like coffee ‘n rolls after Mass. So we talked to him briefly, were gifted with strings to be tied onto our wrists that he had blessed, and some amulets to hang around our necks. He seemed to be a pretty great guy. He waved us on up to the food while the locals prayed and talked with him, and the food was spectacular, I have to say. Like the best Thai potluck you’ve ever been to, if you ever have, which we had not, but if you ever get invited to one you should go.

Subsequent research shows that if we had lingered and wandered a bit more, we would have found a grisly sculpture exhibit in the forest of hellish torments of the afterworld but we had left our bikes unlocked and out of sight, and even on a temple grounds that makes us pretty nervous. So good on us, we left with full bellies, blessed reliquaries, and the innocence of our fate intact. We saw our abbot friend featured on huge billboards for a hundred miles after that, and always made sure we waved our appreciation.

The coastal roads often have to go inland, and I am pretty proud of our navigation. We have Google maps and Pocket Earth on the iPad, both of which will give us our location or we would never know where we are. We came around a corner and saw yet another gorgeous long beach which we decided must be Ao Bo Mao, dotted here and there with a few guesthouses and a seafood restaurant that really smelled good despite our misgivings about possibly farmed fish. It was early afternoon but hotter than hell, and the beach was flat, the water seafoam green and we found a little cottage right on the water.

Bruce took this to mean he had to dry off outside the shower for three minutes.

It was Valentine's Day, so time to celebrate! The end of our trip was on the horizon, we had cycled a long way for us, and the water was calling, so we tossed on swimwear and walked far, far out into the sea, which never seemed to get any deeper. Walk, walk, walk, letting the waves crash over our knees, we must have gone a quarter mile out. Finally we were able to swim. While swimming I am the point guard, making sure nobody is breaking into our bungalow to steal our valuables. Bruce is virtually blind without his glasses but he can see a wave coming. Sharks and thieves, not so much.

The beautiful shallow bay from our guesthouse on Ao Bo Mao.

After our deep sea frolic we started wading back in and realized the tide was going out pretty fast and most of our walk would now be on muddy sand dotted with tiny shells housing hermit crabs. Why do hermit crabs always get the best shells, anyway? Because our panniers would be stuffed full of shells otherwise, that's why.

The Hadsuay Resort was a Thai resort, in fact we hadn't seen any farang since Bang Krut. Funny thing, Thais on vacation. Most of them bring a stove and fresh food and cook up a storm out in front of their bungalows. The women cook, the men wash the salt spray off their cars, and the teenagers goof off on the beach, swimming fully dressed in their jeans and hoodies. If they go to a seafood restaurant, as we did, they splash out and drink bottles and bottles of beer, buy the best and most expensive grilled fish, and leave half of everything in the bottle or on the plate when they leave. I guess it makes them feel like high rollers when they do that. We on our meager travel budget got some fairly good fish but not really enough to fill us up much less leave on the plate.

The next morning we ate our muesli out on a picnic table on the beach, another unfamiliar hedonistic pleasure. There had been a bit of a rain shower in the night so the men were out washing their cars again. Bruce read that Thailand is the second biggest consumer of large shiny pickup trucks after the USA, and I believe it. If only they knew what beaters Bruce and I drive, older than half of the Thai population and getting washed once a summer whether they need it or not.

After a couple of cups of resort coffee and some of their sticky rice snacks we set out on our last real day of riding for this trip. Chumphon was as far as we were willing to go by bicycle, the busy, hilly Highway 4 to Ranong did not look at all appealing in this heat which was getting worse every day.

Tung Walean Beach was even busier with farang than Bang Krut. What a difference it is to travel by bike, because while you can go to the farang spots if you wish, you also see that there are far more choices, even if you can't pronounce them or locate them on a map. The wind was wailing on Tung Walean's beach. An older Danish couple hailed us and asked us a bit about our trip. They also had been to Myanmar on their bikes, and were now holed up in southern Thailand. Oddly, the guy proceeded to make pointed remarks about how loaded up we were, which seemed pretty rude to us. We have what we have, and our bikes ride much better with panniers both front and back. Certainly we've seen cycle tourists far more loaded than we are. We shook our heads as we rode out of there. I'm sure this couple is far more athletic, have ridden a million more miles than we have, have loads more experience cycle touring. But I wonder if they find it as much fun as we have, because if they had, they probably wouldn't need to rank us like that. Ah, well.

We tried to avoid going on the main route to Chumphon so we added about six miles extra by keeping to the coastline. I was feeling weenie and ordered Bruce to stop at the first Walls freezer he saw, but he wasn’t wearing his Walls glasses and was enjoying the curves and coastal glimpses too much for ice cream anyway. We had one last beach front and then navigated onto a beautiful tiny road that would meet the big highway that takes ferry traffic into Chumphon. For the first time since Prachuap Khiri Khan the southeast wind became our friend and we wailed into Chumphon, well, almost. First we screeched to a halt at a "tray food" place, where the friendly women fed us and made some great iced coffee, there were cats to play with, and we could check the map to find our guesthouse. We were tired, we were hot, we were happy to pull up and rest.

Our scrumptious "tray food" on the outskirts of Chumphon.

When it's this hot, cats get realllllly relaxed.

Our run down Thailand’s east coastline was over and we had said goodbye to it with the same feeling we had when leaving the Mekong at the Stung Treng bridge, that it had been a good companion and guide, an edge and a map to where we could go so we didn’t have to just cast around in all directions. Distance tires you enough to slow down and start paying attention. The world is a big place and it’s good there are mountains and water to limit where we can possibly go, because if we could go anywhere, we would probably just end up going nowhere out of sheer indecision. Wisely, the earth helps us decide.

Today's ride: 62 miles (100 km)
Total: 1,636 miles (2,633 km)

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