Paradise found: Sort of

February 25, 2015

The road continued to have a bicycle path in the morning and was wonderful cycling. It went through more salt farms and was completely flat, peaceful, safe - one simply could not complain. Except of course that one must, as a true cycle tourist, always find something to complain about and in this case it was the wind, which was blowing rather rudely from the wrong direction. It tends to do that rather a lot though, and given the pleasant status of the road I felt inclined to focus only on the positives for once. It was even signposted as a scenic route and every few kilometres there was a 'viewpoint', although this was a bit misleading because every viewpoint had pretty much exactly the same view. Still, there were benches and an information board and I stopped to read each one, hoping to gather some information about my surroundings. I learnt all about the mangrove forests and the traditional fishing and all about the nature of the area, although it was rather strange because after I read about these wonderful things I looked up hoping to see those mangrove forests and the traditional fishermen and all the nature and each time it looked remarkably like salt farms.

I wonder if the King was on his own throne when he had this inspired idea for a solid waste disposal system in this little known province. What a thoughtful and ingenious King

Ah at last some honesty! Although I still don't know how salt farms work. What's with only translating a bit of it anyway, what's the rest say? Hmmm?

Well it was interesting to see the workers collecting the salt. They ran around collecting it in their balance bags and put it all in a big pile

I hadn't seen the sea since Turkey, and I hadn't swum in it since Denmark. For as long as I could remember I had held in mind the goal of finally reaching the beautiful beaches of South East Asia. For so long I was so far from the ocean, but as I crossed the Kazakh steppe, the Siberian forests, and the deserts of Mongolia and China it was the dream of one day swimming in turquoise waters off golden beaches in Thailand that kept me going. And now I had at long last actually reached the coast of Thailand. And all I could see was ruddy salt farms.

But finally the salt farms seemed to be petering out and ahead of me I could see a tall resort building that I reckoned must be right on the seafront and I was so keen to get to my beautiful beach that I took a side road towards it. There was a barrier across the entrance-way that I had to duck under and as I pulled up to the towering hotel I realised why. The place had been completely abandoned. On the wall behind what once would have been a reception desk the words LO-DON and -ANGK-K indicated where clocks used to hang. There were holes in the ceiling, plaster peeling from walls, electric sockets hanging empty. But, importantly, it was easy for me to walk through and out the other side to the sea. Startling a stray dog as I did so I hurried out looking for my sandy beach and was confronted instead with a concrete wall that the waves of the ocean were crashing into with enough ferocity to put swimming right out of the question. What a rip-off. No wonder the hotel went out of business.

Thoughts of a free night in a hotel quickly evaporated

Well Thailand was threatening to turn out to be a complete disappointment but I thought it best not to give up all hope just yet, what with the country being famous for its beaches I thought I might still run into one eventually. And that optimism was rewarded not ten minutes later when I spotted a trail heading from the road back out to the sea and before I knew it, there I was on my own private sandy beach. My long quest to one day feel the ocean envelop me again was now finally at an end as I waded out into the warm water and dived triumphantly in. This was the moment of success that I had dreamt of on those long and lonely days in the dry desert. It felt glorious to swim in the sea again and think of the whole continent that had passed beneath my wheels since I'd last done it. Well, it felt glorious for a bit. To be honest it was too salty.

Paradise found! You'd have thought the water wouldn't be so salty though, but they're working hard to farm it out so it'll be better in the future

I went back to the road, which was a little inland, but as the day went on I popped back to see the sea a few more times. Now the last time I swam in the sea, as I said, was way back in Denmark and it was at about the same time that I saw Copenhagen's Little Mermaid and I was a bit surprised to find, on one of my current sorties to the sea, what I could only describe as Thailand's answer to the Little Mermaid. Except it was not as popular, what with me being the only one in the sandy car park looking at it, and it was much less attractive, and quite weird looking, and possibly a bit racist. Maybe it's best if I just show you:

But things got even stranger still as I was looking at this bizarre monument to human pointlessness, when a police car suddenly pulled into the parking lot. I tried, as I often do when police cars pull up next to me, to remember if I had recently committed any crimes, or if I had anything to feel guilty about. I decided that I probably didn't have anything to feel guilty about, but felt guilty anyway, and told myself not to act suspicious, and ended up both looking guilty and acting suspicious. Two police officers stepped out. One of them, obviously the superior officer given his greater years, larger size, and more confident air, came over to me and started interrogating me with friendly questions. His underweight young colleague then did a most unusual thing, and ran around us with an I-pad taking photos of the two of us as we conversed. Now I was trying to act as natural as I could so as to a) not look guilty and b) not appear suspicious and c) look good in the photos. It was all a little odd, but aren't so many of the things in the world? If you doubt it, look again at the above photo of what was in front of us as this unorthodox police interrogation was taking place. I almost cracked and confessed everything but instead recovered my composure to turn the tables on my investigating officer with all his "how are yous" and "where are you froms" and asked him if he could explain just what in hell this sculpture in front of us was in aid of. He stared at his I-phone for a while and, once he realised he didn't have a signal, said "I'm sorry, my English" and ran back to the car with his photographic-evidence-gathering colleague, and off they skedaddled.

Towards the end of the day I got what I'd been hoping for when the road actually started to run right along by the coast, and a sandy beach as well. Unfortunately I also got the sprawling town of Cha-Am Beach along with it and the seafront became busy with people and I started on a continuous loop of 7-elevens and lobster-red tourists with various bits of their over-exposed bodies wobbling about as they strolled around. It hardly felt like paradise, it had more of an English seaside town feel to it.* A kilometre inland there was now a major highway running perpendicular to the coast, with high-rise resorts covering much of the land between them, and yet I did manage to find a plot of as yet unoccupied land in which to hide away for the night. I guessed I was just going to have to get used to all this tourism, and thought that it was probably going to be like this the rest of the way down the coast, a prediction which would thankfully prove typically inaccurate.

*I hope I haven't offended anyone from Margate.

Further proof that the world is decidedly odd

Today's ride: 75 km (47 miles)
Total: 37,864 km (23,514 miles)

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