January 14, 2024
Trying to restore light
Pak Nam Beach to beach near Kui Buri
Dear little friends,
When the koels start up in the morning, it’s time to get up and get going. Bruce prepared our muesli and fruit, I goofed around and did all the other little chores required. It was pitch black outside. It goes from pitch black to very noticeably light out very quickly, so you just do your morning stuff and suddenly it’s light enough to leave.
The plan for the day was to ride to Sam Roi Yod beach, we stayed there last year in a place we would not stay at again but we had a couple of new places marked on the map. Just a short ride, 15 miles or so. That sounded good.
The sun was rising as we rode along the beach, it was pleasant and cool, we were rocking along through the coconuts and such. The wind was slowly shifting to help us and I felt great.
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As we approached Sam Roi Yod, there had been some damage to the beach from windy storms, palms and other trees had had their roots exposed by erosion, many had been cut down. There were some sort of ugly mitigations put in place but it wasn’t pleasant at all. The first of our guesthouse choices was at that part of the beach and had “once attractive but now sort of desolate” written all over it. We’ve had plenty of those places and will have plenty more, no need to stop here. It also felt very isolated, there were no restaurants or beach life going on anywhere around there. Onward.
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11 months ago
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It was very early still, too early to even check into a second choice guesthouse. So we decided to confer over iced coffees and both of us decided it might be better to continue on, this would make that last push into Prachuap Khiri Khan less arduous. Shortly after we started up again, we were waved at by two people swimming on the beach, and that was odd, but not when we saw their tandem touring bike swaddled with panniers and towing a trailer. Wow! We hadn’t seen other cycle tourists in weeks, since back in Vietnam!
Even crazier, another cycle tourist pulled up shortly after that! Three cycle tourists!! And those three were “overlanders”, people who rode from Europe across Asia, or at least as far as they could before visas and weather roadblocked some of their plans. I have so much admiration for that. We yakked for a bit and then we moved on.
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11 months ago
When you leave Sam Roi Yod you turn inland into a beautiful national park, just spectacular, with jagged rock formations and monkeys running around. We were just here a year ago so no need to spend a lot of time on it this year, plus the sky was hazy and not much interesting going on photo wise. There was a lady selling bananas and mangoes so we stopped and stocked up. We stopped for a photo and guess what? Yet another touring cyclist stopped! FOUR in one day! Crazy!
What we didn’t stop for last year was a beautiful temple area near the rock formations so this time we crossed the cute little bridge and Bruce wandered around and took photos and I checked in with my family back in Portland. Very unfortunately, a wind and cold and ice/snow event had hit the metro area and things were getting gnarly very quickly. There had been really good preparations and warnings for this storm and people had really taken it to heart, stocking up and staying home and off the roads.
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11 months ago
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The German government was going to kick him out saying that a head of state cannot live permanently in Germany while conducting the business of running another country. But maybe they decided he isn't running Thailand at all.
11 months ago
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But then trees started coming down everywhere and in a matter of hours there were thousands of households with no power. Power poles were snapping, trees landing on houses, cars, and people. A real mess. My daughter’s house lost power first, then my son’s. They both have small children and the outside temps were rapidly approaching bitter. So then it was a matter of them deciding what they needed to do to keep the children warm.
It’s a little hard to focus on coconut groves and beautiful beaches while wondering what is going to happen to your family, and hard to be that far away. But I could tell from looking at my thermostat app that my house still had power so my son’s family moved there, just three miles away. My daughter’s house had a gas fireplace and the roads near her were steep, iced up, and covered in trees. They weren’t going anywhere.
I’m super grateful that my immediate neighborhood apparently never lost power, we were super lucky in that, because by day’s end 250,000 people were sitting in houses that were starting to freeze inside. An awful thing to contemplate, horrible.
There were other worrisome things going on too, there. So I hadn’t slept much as I texted people during the night, we hit a more desolate part of the road, the sun was coming out full strength, I was starting to overheat.
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11 months ago
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At 30 miles we pulled into the guesthouse, which was adorable. In fact it was so adorable that last year we had pulled into the exact same place, inquired as to the price, and left because it was too high. This year we were able to talk it down a bit and settled into one of the wooden chalet places, I hit the shower and cooled down, Bruce took off to walk on the very beautiful sandy beach. The only other folks there were next door, an older Western guy and his Thai wife, they were sitting on their little porch and the wife was laughing and talking with one of the guesthouse employees.
Bruce was gone a long time. I washed my clothes and hung them here and there. Still gone. I could see toward the beach, in a little kitchen/cafe area (no longer used, they didn’t serve food anymore) that some dogs and a cat were running around.
Suddenly, Bruce was back at the porch.
“Do you have my shoes?”
He had taken his Keen sandals off at the kitchen area and walked on the beach and now they were gone. Nope, I didn’t have his shoes. The neighbors had disappeared into their bungalow. He went back to look some more.
He didn’t return for a long time so I finally locked up the bungalow and went down and he had one sandal in his hand, which had been chewed by one of dogs. No sign of the other one.
This was a bad situation because, while I carry a pair of super light sandals for days off, he had no other footwear. We were 30 miles from a town to buy more shoes or even a pair of flip-flops. The areas near the beach were full of scraggly dead grasses and plants and plastic junk and barbed wire fencing. There was no way he could walk there barefoot to look. I started following dog tracks in the sand hoping to find the other shoe, but it was not looking good at all, the shoe was a grayish brown, the exact same color as the sand and the dead grass.
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Finally I walked back to the neighbors’ bungalow. I described the situation and all three of them, the foreign guy, his Thai wife, and the Thai employee, dropped everything immediately and started helping us look. That was a really gratifying moment.
We spread out, I walked down the beach, Bruce walked up the beach, and later I turned out and Bruce was making a “Hurray” gesture. The other guy had slipped through the barbed wire fence, walked several yards away to where one of the puppies had gone, and found the other shoe, a little worse for wear but mostly fine. It was a miracle.
I got the story later that while I had been in the shower, Bruce and that guy had been having a long conversation, he was originally from Finland, had been in Thailand off and on for over 50 years, and so on and so forth. So he already had met Bruce and wanted to help him, and he did. The other thing that happened was that while on the beach he met a very weird foreigner and had some strange interaction with him. Oh, AND then he spotted on the road two more cycle tourists. SIX, SIX in one day. We’re on the touring superhighway now, apparently.
The Thai employee was super embarrassed that the dogs had done that and did some yelling and shooing at them. The Thai wife laughed and was happy that her man had saved the day. And Bruce and I were absolutely thrilled and grateful that he had two working shoes. We’re not done with this trip yet, we need shoes.
Meanwhile, it was the middle of the night in Portland. Trees snapping, landing on houses, people helping other people, giving advice, giving rides, giving them blankets and telling them where the clean sheets were, hoping for the best. My grandson was sleeping in a warm house, his twin cousins were asleep nestled with their parents. The electric company employees were working in the dark, trying to restore light.
We can’t do this life without helping others and being helped by others. It just doesn’t work otherwise. The thaw will come, the road continues, there’s lots to look forward to. But I had another night ahead where I worried and texted with family and neighbors, it’s just what I do.
Today's ride: 30 miles (48 km)
Total: 886 miles (1,426 km)
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11 months ago
11 months ago
Think I'll get that tatooed on my forearm...
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11 months ago
We lucked out down here in the valley- we had ice but no real issues. Glad Judah and fam were able to crash at the Mango.
11 months ago