Surly They Won't Make It

25/2/25

It had stopped raining. It was merely cloudy and a bit overcast. The warmth was returning fast. We had some coffee and Frankie ate some overnight oats she’d prepared. They don’t really agree with Jonathan’s stomach. We had zero plans for our final day of rest. It was crazy, but we hadn’t cycled for three weeks now. 

Our plan for the morning was to go for a walk in a new direction. There was only one track that was even vaguely likely to go to the jungle. First we went past the temple, and plodded through a housing estate. It was nice to be in an area where there were no other tourists. No one else had any reason to go this way. The postman was darting about on his scooter, people were floating around outside their houses.

Everyone seemed to have some bananas in their garden. They were almost like weeds the way they were everywhere. It was likely that most of the sellers were taking them from the locals. We could see where each bunch was plucked so the next one up would start to grow and ripen. We enjoyed these small bananas. But they weren’t quite as good as Cretan bananas. They were like crack.

The road passed one last house, with roaming loud, but harmless, hounds before it became a track. Then it passed a weird skeleton scarecrow and it became a mere path. It was someone’s garden plot on the edge of the jungle. We explored as far as we could go, hopeful for some wildlife. But sadly it didn’t go into the jungle.

We started walking back. Occasionally there were paths that led to the rubber trees. We took one of them and we saw the most wonderful butterfly. Large and calm it landed on some flowers before resting on a leaf. Content with our nature walk we headed back a different way. There was nothing but rubber trees with the odd cow cruelly tied up. 

After a couple of corners there was the landfill. We always wondered about the rubbish and here it was. A boatload of plastic bags and a few people seemingly sorting through it all. It was a pretty devastating sight. And the fact that there were people going through it too. Somewhere in there was our rubbish. Not a good feeling. The rest of the walk back was much the same. Tourists, scooters and shops mostly selling tat. It wasn’t late but we headed back to the hotel to mong about some more. 

It’s a little bit weird. We were quite content lying on the bed watching Everything Sucks on netflix. We’d bought a Thailand subscription for less than £4 a month. No adverts either. But we aren’t outside exploring or anything. There’s no beaches this side of the island. We don’t have a scooter. And we’ve walked around the area a few times. We won’t be doing it much longer, but still it’s odd to be on the other side of the world lying around like it’s the weekend. We ended up eating pomelo and watermelon while watching The Beach. Frankie had never seen it. 

At around 5 or 6 we went back to the same restaurant yet again. We did look at a couple of others, but they cost more and they didn’t mention tofu. Plus, the lemongrass salad was incredible. We ordered it for the third time, along with a green curry. The other two dishes we had, tom yum rice and stir fried garlic were a bit average. But we needed to try something different. 

The fruit stall next door sold us a papaya and some more bananas. We obtained some nuts and more jujube on the way back to lie down a bit longer. We gorged on the many bananas we had. They were lovely to eat covered with coconut milk. Nothing else happened. The sea came in quite a long way under the room. We set an alarm for a barmy 5:30am and it finally, but only kind of, set in that we’d be moving again the next day.