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Published: November 11th 2009
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Day 9: Prachuap Khiri Khan to Bankrud
After waving goodbye to our eclectic host Kwan, we biked off, straight in to an air base, where we dismounted our bikes and signed in to a guestbook, before being allowed to bike straight through. We signed out in another book, at a small station house on our way out, five miles later. The rain started soon after we began, and only got heavier as the day wore on. We found ourselves on Rte. 4, the main highway, sometimes propelled by gusts of wind from tractor-trailer trucks, sometimes pushed back. We rode up and down long undulating hills, lone cows and dogs watching us from the side of the highway. Where were these animals owners? I don’t know, but throughout the day, cows and dogs would poke their heads out of the woods by the road, stopping and staring at us as we passed. We passed loads of friendly people, all waving, smiling and honking hello.
The rain was great weather for biking refreshing us and keeping our muscles loose. The trick to biking in the rain is short breaks; if you stop too long while wet you get cold, and you
can’t warm up, and then you‘re screwed. Also, you can’t wear regular sneakers, they’ll get squishy and heavy. Fortunately for me, after about two days of biking I’d shed my sneakers in favor of flip-flops. The switch had made no difference in my biking ability, but did make biking more fun as I could stretch my legs longer and was more comfortable. I might not have looked as professional biking in my flip-flops though. But I did have on my spandex bike shorts, sports apparel I thought I would never wear alone. Yet after two days of wearing my long shorts over my bike shorts, sweating and chafing, I shed the shorts and never wore anything but the bike shorts again. The padded butt was a godsend, but the tight spandex was also incredible for preventing chafing and keeping cooler.
After three and a half hours of biking in the rain, we were tired of being soaked. Biking through a very rural, wooded area, we started looking for a place to stay. The first place we passed was a youth hostel, with shitty shared wood cabins. It was 800 baht and they wouldn’t negotiate, telling us we would find
no other place to stay in the area. A youth hostel membership would have gotten us a fifty baht discount. Fifty baht? $1.80? Who cares! The next hotel we found looked really nice, and it was completely empty. The owner demanded 1000 baht. I tried to argue him down, mentioning that his hotel was void of customers. He wasn’t having it, he had pride; he’d rather have nobody in his hotel than have somebody stay for less. I tried to debate the logic with him, but he would not be swayed. Sadly, we biked on, unsure if we would be impelled to head back to this place, tail between our legs, if we could find nothing else.
Luck be our lady, ten more miles and we hit a tiny strip of beachside hotels and restaurants. The first place we inquired had cute bungalows with sweet front porches and beachside views for 400 baht. Sold! Something about the rain always makes me want to swim…how about you? So we dropped our stuff, changed in to our suits, and ran to the pool. It was concerningly green. Luckily, the ocean was one hundred feet away, so we ran across the road,
down the sand and in to the sea. It was warm and blue. We soaked in the sea for awhile, incredulous at our great luck in finding this place.
Running back to our room for a hot shower, we quickly realized we did not have a hot shower. Only a cold shower. One very fast shower later, we were bundled up in some nice, soft fleece blankets in the bed. In shorts and t-shirts, the warmest clothes we carried.
Once we’d warmed up, we headed out to find some grub. To our surprise, ten feet down the road we found JJ’s Burgers, a tiny burger and french fry shack, completely covered in country music paraphernalia. JJ, an affable Texan in his seventies, garbed in cowboy boots and a cowboy hat, had been here for twenty-seven years, living a quiet beach-side life with his Thai wife. He’d recently opened this restaurant as a project for her, and wow, we couldn’t have been happier. After rice and noodles for days, the sight and taste of a burger and fries was heaven. We spent that afternoon and evening relaxing on our front porch by the sea, drinking thai whiskey, weaving hemp bracelets and necklace and recording our adventures. We were barely even sore anymore.
Some of the coolest things we recorded about biking through Thailand so far: pickup trucks packed full of people or supplies, cows lounging alongside the highway, the shops run out of the front of people’s homes, the outdoor markets, the chickens running around wild, the abundance of motorbikes, the enterprising people, setting up stores all over the place, the lack of safety precautions, the oodles of stray dogs, the common use of the word FALANG!! (foreigner), yelled out without embarrassment, by all ages. The expectation that women, like men, will shake it off in the bathroom. (It’s a BYO T.P. policy here, generally BYO soap too.) The way people working outside cover themselves completely to avoid getting tan, gloves, hats, ski-masks, turtlenecks, despite temperatures in the 90’s. The people wearing mud as sunscreen, the little kids wearing plastic bags on their head to keep dry in the rain. The friendly, friendly people yelling hello from their windows, their fields, their cars (I cannot imagine that happening in the US). The ubiquitous food and drink shops, allowing a passer bier constant easy access to delicious homemade and local food, and the ability to directly support local economies. The overall intriguing mix of practices; the country is developed, it boasts all these benefits common to developed countries, yet its still got all these remnants and reminders that it’s not been developed long, all these pockets of resistance, areas that development has barely touched. Biking through Thailand was turning out to be a fascinatingly great idea.
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