August 5, 2019 to August 9, 2019
Phuket Decompression and Time with GF
Staying near the airport had some great advantages. It wasn't planned, but I woke up late and literally had 50 minutes before my flight was due to depart. Damnit. Within 7 minutes flat I had packed up, checked out, then cycled to the airport across the street. At this point I normally would have panicked, but thanks to a prior airport rehearsal at that place I knew *exactly* what to do and got it all done in record time.
Some workers were yelling at me to park the bicycle in the proper spot but they could buzz off. The bike was folded, thrown on a baggage trolley, shrink-wrapped, and then I checked in and went through immigration and security on time. There was hardly anyone on the flight too, actually the least number of passengers I've seen. If flying was always like this it would be bliss. Heck even better, we could fly turboprops!
Arrival at Phuket was nice and after passing immigration I dodged the taxi mafia and assembled the bike outside. It felt so much more chill here than Cambodia, but didn't Cambodia feel chill after Bangkok? Who knows. I got a nice Thai massage, washed off the dirt on the bike, pumped up the tires, and was really enjoying the pleasant vibe. I set off cycling towards Karon Beach some 35km away. The warm winds and the pleasant sunshine were beautiful, and this was some really peaceful cycling.
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The whole point of doing this was to meet my girlfriend who flew in from Shanghai and was staying on Karon Beach with one of her friends. So that's where I was heading to also. I managed to find a nice hotel at the very end of the beach with an incredible discount of 800 baht for low season, which for this part of Thailand is very good. After settling in I then met my girlfriend for dinner and romantic walks on the beach.
Later we had to do some errands unfortunately, but renting a scooter made it fun. The main task was to get some English and Chinese translations for the passport theft police report that happened last month. There were a ton of police checkpoints on the way which are basically a money trap that work like this:
1. Scooter rental company gives you a great price and doesn't tell you a Thai drivers license is required (those are impossible to obtain for foreigners).
2. The police catch you and fine you 500 baht, they issue you a receipt that is valid for a day that allows you to ride past any checkpoint without further fines.
3. Part of the proceeds from the fines get funneled back to the scooter rental mafia.
I didn't want any part of this mafia, and so the name of the game was to avoid the police checkpoints. This proved very hard! At one in particular I did a quick U-turn but they immediately yelled and tried to whistle me down. It required some quick thinking to find a side alley, duck into it, and bide some time with sodas and food.
Later we hit F45 group fitness training for some high intensity cardio and that was a bit of a mistake because it knocked me flat out, made me feel sick, and then generated some process in my body to sweat out poisons. Sophia later said the same thing had happened to her. These workouts were no joke! Both of us hadn't done any HIIT since Shanghai and were very out of shape. Bicycle touring keeps you in shape no doubt but is low burn cardio, not high intensity.
The last day was a group tour to Phi Phi islands. I'm not a fan of organized tours in general but made a compromise and did this, also to see the island for the first time. It could indeed make for a nice stop on future cycle tours as it's not hard to get the bike on the ferry and there is plenty to do on the main island Koh Phi Phi Don.
I was complimented on the fact that ever since I came in, the prices the girls were paying for things dropped considerably. Basically Sophia was with her friend a few days before I got in, and they were being ripped off all over the place. I wanted to investigate this more and discovered that for many tours the locals will ask "Where are you from?" and if they say "China" the price is doubled or even tripled.
But when I was there the price got much less for everyone. They also quickly learned to say "Canada" or "Japan" to get better deals. It was pretty much a no-brainer. Besides all that, I taught the girls strategies to find more local out-of-the-way places to eat and seek out tour operators who weren't trying to rip them off. The girls were actually very well behaved tourists. Yes, there do exist Chinese tourists in Thailand who travel independently and excel at respecting cultural norms of other places.
Unfortunately this part of the trip went by much too fast. We had timed it to perfection to catch a week-long break from the rains and this was really the most ideal it could have been.
Today's ride: 96 km (60 miles)
Total: 1,934 km (1,201 miles)
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