Day 11: Ratchaprapha Dam to Surat Thani (96km / 60 mi )
We couldn’t have stayed in a nicer place. A shower, a western toilet that flushes. Toilet paper! Soap!! These things are a big deal! This place was really upscale! We had a/c, we even had a television with a good English-language Chinese news channel. It’s amazing how much news we never hear about in the States, and you’d never know it until you travel elsewhere and see the international news. I wasn’t referring to the loss of Michael Jackson, but this is when we heard the news, sad to say.
By the way, if I’ve caused confusion about the cat in previous posts that we commemoratively named “MJ” it was a retroactive naming upon hearing the sad news about Michael Jackson. We had been calling the cat Black & White, because he was black and white, but now he is simply MJ.
We had an EXCELLENT dinner last night at the resort’s restaurant. We ate local fish caught in the lake, fried up in a sweet and sour sauce, and then a coconut soup I think. Really, really good!
Our hostess chatted us up in English while we waited for the meal to come. She was a lot of fun, from Koh Samui I think. In the off-season when the resort doesn’t see many visitors, her company pays her to study English and other languages to use during peak season. Although, she admitted, we were maybe only the second time she had seen farang there. This is an upscale Thai resort, mostly centered around Golfing, and it is beautiful!
Oh! And on our way to dinner, up a (blasted) final giant hill that we had to climb after the most god awful day of riding ever, I think we saw some sort of lemur. We’ll have to look him up, he was really cool!
This morning, we had breakfast in the same place, really nice lake/dam view. Took some cute pics we’ll have to upload. The test-ride up the hill to breakfast told me that my legs were completely shot, just sore rubbery chunks of uselessness, full of lactic acid alread.
On top of this, I had a sort of psychic hangover from yesterday’s ails and once again, was not feeling up to the day of riding that we had planned ahead, neither mentally nor physically. Yesterday was our longest day of riding in terms of mileage so far. But today would beat even yesterday with a whopping 60 miles ahead of us, fully loaded. That is a hard day — and that is coming from the girl that rode 3 weeks of 100 mile days in a row (not loaded, but that’s still epic people!).
So it was looking to be our hardest day yet, and I was at my lowest point. I wasn’t up for it. I told Tommy. Couldn’t we rest at the lake for a day? It’s nice here. Take a rest day, re-up, feel stronger, feel happier about the ride…? I could see that Tommy wasn’t into the idea of a recovery day, especially at a douchey golf resort of all places. I felt guilty after being such a pain yesterday. He encouraged me, told me I could do it, he knew I could. Now, there’s a difference between (1) being able to do something, and (2) actually enjoying it, and I was looking at another day of pain and misery ahead of me, but didn’t want to drag Tommy down so I agreed to suck it up and “try.”
Honestly, I don’t remember much. I remember all day thinking about how bad my body felt, about how much I didn’t want to be riding, but how I didn’t want to ruin the trip for Tommy. I was kind of hating myself all day. Why couldn’t I enjoy this more? Why do I feel so crappy?
I do remember a lot of downhills. We were out of the mountains and headed for the beach so the pace was pretty good and we got off easy considering the mileage, with a lot of coasting (thank goodness). We were out of water at one point and a little concerned because all we had seen was giant construction vehicles, no real amenities anywhere.
Eventually we spotted something like a little hardware store / market and we loaded up on drinks and snacks. The ladies at the shop didn’t speak any English, but when they noticed us out front looking for a shady place to eat, they asked us to come into their ajoining nail salon where it was cooler and they offered us chairs to sit in, a bathroom to use, and even some rambutan!! Moments like this are so hugely uplifting when you’re in the middle of nowhere having a difficult time. The random kindness of a stranger is better than any delicious meal or air-conditioned room or any other creature comfort. These ladies were great!
They had a little boy in there, maybe 3, that was eating ice cream that was melting quickly and we was making a mess all over their nice shop. They found some old newspaper and laid it out under him as he ate, just as you would with a puppy that hasn’t been house-broken. We said our goodbyes and rolled on, and on and on and on.
Another stop at the top of a hill for a Coke. We’ve gotten good at our strategy for when to stop. Don’t stop at the bottom of a hill, stop at the top. Stop in the shade, don’t stop in the inside of a turn where vehicles will come around quickly.
From there I don’t remember anything noteworthy until the sun was getting low and we were still 30 km or so from our end point of Surat Thani, a little city on the east coast of southern Thailand (yep, we crossed from west to east coast through the rugged interior in these last couple of days).
On our route, we happened upon a lone Thai mountain biker — a rare site! In broken English he asked us where we were going, we told him Surat Thani. He motioned for us to follow him, but we didn’t quite get it at first. He rode up ahead of us, and eventually we figured out, he was escorting us into town! He showed us the way, a shortcut that shaved some miles and cut out a bunch of climbing we would have otherwise done.
Once we hit Phunphin, a little town about 15km outside of Surat Thani, he unceremoniously pointed our way and forked off in another direction. What a hero this guy was!!
Riding into Surat Thani was wild. It was the first real city we had ridden into. We were (once again) racing the sun and trying to finish the ride before dark. It was fun, riding amongst the insanity, the scooters, the taxi trucks, the food carts, the density increasing as we continued. We stopped for a quick snack and map check and low and behold, our destination was just around the corner!!
We were here to catch the night ferry to Koh Tao, a little island off the east coast of Thailand, known for it’s scuba scene. We bought our tickets and handed over our bikes as cargo (after pulling anything of value off of them).
With a couple hours to burn, we found an internet cafe. I found that this web site was down and spent a frustrating 45 minutes doing remote tech support to no avail. Then we headed for a really cool night market where Tommy & I both had Pad Thai, it was good! MAN the food here is great!
Back to the piers, and we grabbed a beer with the idea of trying to lull ourselves sleepy for the 8 hour overnight boat ride ahead.
This was a big cargo ship, with the upper deck reserved for passengers. And for lack of a better description, the passenger area looked a lot like the diagrams I’ve seen of slave ships. Just a wooden floor, covered on both sides with thin fabric mattresses, butted up against each other, each one about 30” wide. There were windows to open, fans oscillating above. Sort of a shocking site, just a bunch of sweaty white bodies shoulder to shoulder. This was the most white people I’ve seen since Phuket!
Koh Tao is a popular spot for farang, especially scuba newbies seeking their PADI certification (this includes us). You can get certified for Open Water for 9000 baht which is just over $250 USD, that’s about as cheap as you can do it anywhere in the world, and what a beautiful setting!
Anyway, the boat pushed off, we chatted with a nice Canadian couple, Ron and Christie (I think?) and I feel asleep.
1 year ago