14/3/25
We woke up in the middle of the night to find a thunderstorm soaking all of our clothes that we’d left drying outside on the balcony. We donned our soaking wet clothes and despite having no coffee still managed to leave a little later than normal.
After we left the road of beach resorts, and joined a busier road, we bumped into an Australian man called Ian. We had a nice chat with him, though the sweat and ‘zinc’ he said he’d put on his face made us fell a bit hot even before climbing the hill. After we’d got a bit sweaty ourselves we found a 7-Eleven where we stopped for an all important coffee. We had to add our own coconut milk, but it was still the best coffee we’d had in a month. They grind beans. Who knew?
We also bought a fast 65w usb-c charger. Somehow we had made do with a standard 5W charger for the last 5 months. But not any longer! It could also charge the laptop if needed. We drank a reduced fruity almond milk, yes it was odd but it had ‘good bacteria’ in it, and finally got out of there. We also tried to buy suncream but you can’t. All the suncream here is for ‘brightening’ your skin. Worse, it’s all major brands like Vaseline and Nivea. How they get away with it we don’t know.
We fortuitously stumbled upon some of the pandan coconut pancakes we like and then headed off the busier roads. It was still a popular locale, but a little less crowded. We were back on the coastal road, a quiet road but with loads of resorts, cafés and restaurants. It was a really beautiful place. When we stopped to pick up yet more food we met a Thai lady who lives in Japan. She spoke excellent English. Her husband is in the US military. We’ve found it’s quite rare for Thai people to speak more than basic English.
The roads got quieter and quieter until we ended up on a gorgeously quiet concrete road that was metres from the extensive golden sands and beautiful water. However, there were hounds everywhere, maybe they put a stop to further development! They were even bathing in the sea.
When the road finally ended we cut slightly inwards onto a hedgerow lined, therefore slightly shaded, perfectly tarmac sealed road. Before long the resorts started again. Yet more disgustingly beautiful beaches and waves crashing into perfect sand. We couldn’t believe how dead it was. If we’d known, we would have stayed here rather than Koh Phayam!
We figured a second coffee was in order. They weren’t the cheapest, 140 baht, but they were ridiculously tasty. We found soy milk in their fridge and asked them to make us iced mochas. While we were waiting a Thai cycle tourist turned up out of the blue. He was astonishingly friendly and it was frustrating that despite his fairly good English we couldn’t converse in more depth.
We carried on past some temples, there was even one on top of a hill. It looked beautiful but we weren’t going to visit. It was obviously additional uphill and it was starting to get hot. It was nearly 11am. We hadn’t covered as many miles as we usually had because of our later start. It was bugging us that anybody covered the insane distances they did. The Thai guy said he covered 120km in a day. The Australian said he covered like 90km a day. We don’t understand how they do it.
Maybe they’re just a lot more powerful. Maybe we’re a lot heavier. Maybe they don’t stop and smell the roses as much. Maybe it’s different when you’re alone.
A quiet road took us a couple of kilometres inland. We were cycling through lots of palm forests on nice rural roads. Occasionally there was a little bit of shade here and there. It was still fairly warm though. We saw more and more people with balaclavas on. The postman looked like a guy off phone jackers.
We stopped for a short while to try and work out what we were gonna do for the night before we were back along the beach side road. It was a really exposed narrow concrete minor road through the palm trees. There were the usual people cutting down the branches using long sticks with knives on the end.
The heat was making us uncomfortable. We’d ended up riding at the hottest part of the day again. The back roads were nice and we like cycling on them, we always do, but it was the third time we had to cross the bloody railway. Each time we had to utilise a steep, U-shaped bypass. We didn’t like them.
We probably hadn’t drunk enough or eaten enough salt. We weren’t sure. Thankfully we were almost at the first resort we’d be happy to stay at was coming up. The only annoying thing was it was right beside the main road. We took a chance with a gravel track. It brought us out right next to the hotel only requiring a minor amount of travelling against the traffic.
After we checked in and found ourselves sufficiently cooler, we headed out to get some food. It was then we met Tim, outside the garage, trying to pump up his bicycle tires. We really just wanted to get food but we couldn’t pass up the chance to say hello to a fellow tourist.
Tim was looking a bit hot and bothered. The garage had just refused to let him pump his tires up. We invited him to come back to our room and fed him some banana. Tim had been travelling for 10 months on his adventure from Germany. It sounded really epic. He’d also come through Iran, where he’d been blown away by the people’s kindness, which is always interesting to hear about.
Tim was quite happy to ‘escape’ the heat and get something to eat with us so we walked back down the highway in the blistering Sun together. Up and down the impossibly large curbs, thundering traffic, it was quite amazing we had the energy to keep up a conversation. The first restaurant we saw promptly said they didn’t do anything vegetarian. The only other place we could see was across the road. There was a lot of construction work going on which made ‘crossing’, walking under the unfinished overpass, slightly more than inconvenient. It’s the same highway 4 that is clearly being improved anywhere it can be.
We had a long lunch but not because we ate a lot. We had three small plates of food. Mostly rice with a peppering of vegetables on top. The entire bill was a paltry 120 baht. We sat chatting for awhile. It was nice to talk to Tim. He was laid-back and it felt like we were getting on well.
After at least an hour and a half we started walking back. On the way we hit a couple of supermarkets to see if they had anything particularly tasty. It was always at least a little tricky to find vegan friendly food. We ended up with some peanut brittle.
When we got back, it almost felt like we were saying goodbye to an old friend. It was sad that we couldn’t spend some time riding with Tim. He was going in the opposite direction. He had just flown in from Kathmandu to Bangkok and was now heading south before he headed back north, his final destination being Tokyo. We don’t quite exactly know why he was doing such a big detour perhaps just because cycling is fun.
We realised that we’d forgotten to get any extra water so we wasted no time in biting the bullet and walking back down the highway. In our excitement we bought some rambutans in syrup and some banana chips we hadn’t seen the first lap of the shop. Then we got to go all the way back all over again.
The room was easily to make cold fortunately. We didn’t have long till bedtime now. We ate some snacks, mainly the savoury protein bites to start with before we ate some banana, pineapple, peanuts and cashews. It was hard to overestimate how far a splash of coconut cream goes.
Surly They Won't Make It 