Denbobcamino

Our hotel was a city style, clean and comfortable, the breakfast was adequate. In the morning we travelled in the van to the west to the railway station at Phunphin , we cycled through a busy town and across the chulachomkaou railway bridge and on through into rural southern Thailand along the banks of the beautiful river. To the temple at Wat Tham Sing Khom , an ancient cave was uncovered during construction work, it has examples of wall paintings and Chinese pottery embedded in the ceiling. The cave has become a place of worship and contains many buddahs! A quick snack and we headed on through a rubber plantation where we met local people harvesting the rubber, counting, weighing and transporting it to the factory for processing. I’m this area there were also many mango ... read more

It was a cooler morning and we had a lovely breakfast in the barn porpla resort Prachuap Khiri Khan. The cycle team arrived promptly at 8am and we set off through the town and over to the Air Force base. Pi Golf explained about the Japanese invasion where many Thai policeman were killed during the Second World War so Japan could access Burma across this thin peninsula. We cycled On to visit the Waghor aquarium and further through beautiful jungle with verdant palm trees with occasional glimpses of the shore line. We wound on through an area mainly populated by Scandinavians within the Wat Hanakon national park and had a rest stop at a local police station, where we ate snacks and chatted with a policeman. We continued through similar landscape winding through small roads often ... read more

60 Km day so an early breakfast at the excellent Golden beach hotel Cha Am. a lovely beach, many bars and a great atmosphere. Our guide picked us up at 8am and we drove 30 Km to Hau Hin the starting point a beautiful temple as always! We followed cycle paths inland towards and along a lovely beach seeing statues of the kings of Thailand throughout the ages along the way. Stopping for a break to see a pineapple farm and sample the produce, delicious succulent fresh pineapple and some cocunut dumplings. There were rivers with fishing villages and shrimp boats and 3 temples, Hindu Buddhist and Chinese. We ate local bananas. Then headed for the cave at phraya Nakhon it involved a sea boat trip and 1km each way hike over steep and slippery terrain. ... read more

We met up with Nicks wife Marisa at Bangkok airport, the took a taxi (all electric) heavy traffic in the are around our hotel. We are in the Grand President and had our rooms upgraded to suites, on the 17th floor with excellent views all around the city. First stop was the pool area, where we had a beer and a quick swim its a sultry 33C. Decided on a local Thai restaurant just the other side of the sky train adjacent to Nani station. Marissa selected some excellent dishes; Pla Kapong Neung (sea bass in lemon and chilli sauce) and some Tom Kha Gai, lovely hot and sour soup! Really tired after the flight so an early night, but of course awoke really early.... read more

It's the last day, we could have finished it last night but with 33 Km remaining it started to rain and we looked around to see an auberge, lovely old building set back from the road and that was that! Over supper we met Karen a kiwi currently living in Sydney and 2 Germans from Frankfurt and from Munich, good company and interesting conversation. This morning it was still rainy so we set off in waterproofs. Along the road with about 20 Km to go we joined the trail, it was very full with pilgrims so we got back on the road again until 12 Km near to Santiago airport where we picked up the trail again and meandered into Santiago. On arrival we headed for the Sella (stamp) to validate our journey; picked up a ... read more