Day 7: Phuket Airport stealth camp to Khao Lak (73 km / 45 mi)
[ Sally typing ]
During the night the waves actually lapped up under our tent a bit but we slept right through it and didn’t notice. We woke to a gorgeous sunrise and as soon as vagrant garbage collectors started appearing on the beach, we decided it was time to break camp.
I was all groucy and sleepy because, as romantic as stealth beach camping sounds, it was hot and I didn’t sleep well at all. At one point during the night, I awoke to the clanking of a fist-sized crab right by my head outside the tent tapping on a glass bottle.
We had a nice breakfast of Chinese doughnuts and rice grits with eggs, and of course Thai Iced Coffee and got to rolling. My sour mood slowly lifted as the riding woke me up.
Today was the day that it occurred to me that our Thailand experience is quite different from most tourists. I think it was because I kept seeing words like ‘pampered’ and ‘luxurious’ as I thumbed through our Lonely Planet Thailand book. Hmm. We have yet to get a massage, or experience any of this ‘luxury.’ That’s fine with me, as luxury is often synonymous with ‘douchey’ and I’d take a roadside moped food cart over a westernized 5-course meal any day of the week. (but hold that thought, we did finally get a massage today)
Today was a great day for riding. We probably were rolling by 7am or so, and a nice early start really helped. We also got some relief from the heat, the sun went behind the clouds and we even got some nice gentle sprinkles at times — didn’t stop to put on rain gear, riding in it felt really nice.
We just randomly decided to duck into some cute little thatched bamboo huts on the beach for a cool drink, and moments later a violent downpour erupted — good timing with the rain once again! Once that died down, we were back on the road and crossed the bridge onto the mainland, finishing our time on Phuket Island.
The terrain was really nice, gentle rolling hills helped keep our pace up, and given the heat we’d been experiencing in recent days, today was a really nice change in temperature, although I’m sure it still got up in the 90’s at the hottest moments. It’s a sauna down here people! Imagine doing a Spinning class at the gym…inside the sauna.
I think on this leg of the trip, people were most exuberant about our presence. Everyone seemed to at least smile, if not wave, say hello in English or Thai, laugh, point, look back over their shoulder mouth agape while driving their moped at 45mph. We saw one cute family, three little tiny kids probably about 4 years old standing up on a scooter with their grandad driving them. We could hear their giggles as they approached, and they were so excited to see us on bikes they were laughing and pointing, waving, and looking back at us as long as they possibly could after they had passed us.
Even when we’re in what seems like remote, unpopulated areas, there are always roving food carts (scooters with side cars that are stocked with food and cooking equipment). One woman passed us with an ICE CREAM CART!! I don’t even know if we motioned at her to turn around, she just saw the look on our faces in her rear view and figured doing a u-turn to come back for us was a good beat, and it was! Random roadside ice cream in what seems like the middle of nowhere jungle is awesome.
Not much English is spoken out this way, but our Thai is (hopefully) improving and just knowing how to say ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ has gotten us pretty far. It occurred to us that we need to know ‘sorry’ too, I’d hate to spill hot sauce all over someone and just say ‘thank you, thank you.’
I really enjoyed today. Despite my lack of sleep, the cooler temperatures and beautiful surroundings made it a great day. Towards the end of our ride, we finally hit a wee bit of climbing. I was really beat at this point, 45 miles fully loaded is a long day. We stopped midway up one climb to drink some water and heard a crazy screeching sound coming out of the wilderness. Convinced that we were hearing wild monkies, we were disappointed to see that it was only a pickup truck squeeling tires around the tight turns - doh! :)
We rounded a corner atop the hill and saw a beautiful view of Khao Lak beach down below — our destination!
We easily found our guesthouse, the Khao Lak Inn. A really nice place, clean and spacious. They let us stash our bikes in the hotel lobby. For $25/night we get A/C, Thai television, a balcony overlooking lush jungle, and quick walk to the beach, and massage and other amenities just downstairs (and $25/night is rather expensive if you can believe it).
Massage! Yes, we finally got a massage. What, it’s been a week here now?! After today’s long ride, it was well-deserved I’d say. Oh man, an hour long Thai massage for something like $7! They did the hamstrings, the quads, they did it all — everything a tired cyclist needs help with. Thai massage is much more rigorous than Western massage. It’s challenging and at times painful, but well worth it and overall you come away really glad that you did it — kind of a metaphor for bike touring, don’t you think?
Cheers!
[ Sorry there are still no pics, we need wifi to upload photos from my iPhone and all the web connections have been wired since Bangkok. ]
2 years ago