We braved the Bangkok rush hour and left our city centre Hotel at 08.00 in the morning and by 12.30 we were in another world. By the way, we cleared Bangkok in 45 minutes.
Bangkok was noisy, grubby, ugly for some parts and full of people. We were now 300km further away on the beach in the Gulf of Thailand. Prachuap Khiri Khan, ten miles from the border with Myanmar because Thailand is so thin at this point on the map, became our own beach. Nobody else in view in any direction! There were dogs and cats in Bangkok; here monkeys sit on the road and they have clearly seen hundreds of Harleys in their lives, because they weren't going to move for ours! The rainy season is the low season but although it threatens to rain every day, it doesn't always get round to it. And we would have gone in the sea, rain or not.
We were warmly welcomed at Patima's - one of the two Thai bikers - family hotel. We had a sandy beach right in front of the hotel. We had beach side cafes. We had oyster beds just behind the hotel, but here they grow them on rope, just like we do mussels. We had seafood in abundance. The sand was golden, the limestone karst hills stood out of the sea just in front of us, the water was warm and clean enough to see the crabs scurrying about, fishing boats were in abundance with a couple of fishermen taking their catch from the nets. That night we all ate at a local restaurant where you just pointed at the fish and seafood on the stall and they cooked it and brought it to your table with dipping sauce and rice. We had a very scary looking horse shoe crab which looked like a one thousand fold magnified bed bug or tick. A lady came round on her sidecar selling dried squid which she then lightly toasted and then rolled paper thin on a wringer. Sand, fish, oysters, sidecars, fishing boats, it's just like being at Whitstable... But where were the whelks?
There is quite a bit of gear on the market destined for touring motorbikes. Harley also sell an awful lot of accessories too, mostly chrome plated, and mostly not that useful. So there are a number of things that we have attached to the bike ourselves using velcro as it is strong enough for sunshields, map holders and things like that. What we didn't reckon on however was the heat. The heat melts the glue on the back of the velcro and every so often, you have to play at first slip as the map holder parts company with the petrol tank. Clearly not tested to the right temperature levels. Will be having words with Mr. B&Q when we return. Melted velcro, hadn't thought about that.
We continued to head South but quicker than anticipated due to the roads being smooth, but also due to the fact that we are now running for a boat in Singapore. We have a date for a ship leaving Singapore and it is a bit in advance of what we planned.
Nothing much to say about Surat Thani and we would have said the same about Hat Yai too until it livened up at night time and was actually quite fun. We ate chicken, shrimp and squid and drank coconut juice from street vendors. We both had haircuts in a Thai massage parlour where the owner cut your hair how she wanted it. She was clearly in favour of Bobby Charlton comb-overs and Gentleman-girls. The helmets will sort all that out. And our hotel forbid guests bringing Durian fruit into the rooms!
We know we haven't done Thailand justice and deep down we feel a bit sad as we haven't seen the really super, super beaches or the very North adjacent to Myanmar. But Thailand, like all the places we have been to, is just a step on the way to the next place. If we had stayed longer, we would definitely miss the boat in Singapore which equals late arrival in Australia, which would then mean cold and damp weather on the East Coast of America by the time we got there.
So our over-riding memories of Thailand would be how great the ordinary beach at PKK was and therefore how truly wonderful the really well known ones must be, the tinged disappointment that was Bangkok, the giant size portraits of the King on every corner, the scary Durian fruit with their particular smell and taste, Amazon roadside air-conditioned coffee shops and the fact that two cars in three in Thailand are pick-up trucks. That and it is the land of little wobbly sidecars. And Tesco got here first...
Malaysia beckons.
Paul and Francoise
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