Krabi to Phang Nga: snorkelling forth...

July 7, 2015

Getting out of Krabi was fairly easy: turn right at the hotel, one left turn at your leisure puts you back on the main road out of town. I left early, about 07:30, skipping breakfast (in hindsight not a wise idea) thinking I’d pick something up further down the road. Somehow, I didn’t. After 5 days off the bike, I wanted to ride and was enjoying pedalling out some kms.

I've been caught out several times on this trip, thinking I was getting a lot of friendly toots from passing cars. They were actually honking a 80 kmph can't stop now I'm too busy high speed devotional missive to the local nature dwelling spirit. This one lives right where the road snugs up against the karst cliff face. I ring my bell...

I had a motorcycle lane all the way out of town, so the 4 wheeled vehicle traffic was not a bother. However, the 2 wheeled traffic still keeps coming at you in the opposite direction throughout the day. They usually slow down and move hard into the shoulder, smiling a sheepish grin at you knowing they shouldn’t be there… Taking a minor road got me out of the main hiway traffic and into some spectacular karst scenery and small villages. It was, briefly, turning into one of the prettier rides of the trip.

Those clouds look ominous: the daily wet season downpour is about to commence.

Then the rain set in.

It continued to rain for the remainder of the day. I usually tried to find refuge if it started coming down hard, but just rode on when it let up a bit if the road conditions allowed. Around noon, I picked up a breakfast/lunch at a road side food stall set up at a small village T intersection - freshly fried chicken and sticky rice. The ladies invited me to sit at their table and eat while they continued to prepare food for the Ramadan end of day break fast. The conversation was quite lively at times, though lord knows what we were talking about. People here can be so friendly and we get by nicely in our interactions, even though we don’t share one word in common… no wait, that’s not true: “arroy” is still being deployed regularly, to the delight of both myself and the street food vendors.

I continue to get glimpses of the surrounding Karst hillsides from time to time when the rain abates. It is spectacular. On a sunny day this would be an outstanding ride.

I got temporarily geographically displaced several times. There were several tight turns in close proximity to one another that made navigation quite confusing. It was compounded by the rain and the fact that my mobile phone is not waterproof and I couldn’t take it out and check as often as I should have. On one of these unplanned side trips I ended up at a dead end; a tidal mangrove creek-head fishing village just as the rain started to piss down. For about half an hour I sat down with a mud poor family on their makeshift front porch and watched the rain come down. I spent a lot of time sitting in shelters with the locals just watching the rain fall.

The Umbrella of Uncertainty was deployed several times; once or twice for rain and several times to dissuade packs of mongrel dogs. I take it out and wave it at them angrily and they are off like a shot cannon, tail between their legs. They don’t know it’s a $2 Chinese umbrella – to them it’s a stick. This is obviously a learned response, so I figure the locals must use it frequently.

I had about 30 km of very intense riding on what looking at the map should have been a less frequented minor road. It wasn’t. It was heavily trafficked, narrow, under repair, wet and treacherous. They had removed the motorcycle lane and all but a narrow strip of shoulder, which was often spiked with mud and debris, forcing you out into the traffic. Just to spice things up, there was frequently about a 1 to 2 metre drop just to the left waiting to embrace you if your concentration lapsed or you got blown into it by the heavy traffic.

Staying focused: that's about a 1 metre drop to the left - at times it was at least double that. I sat out the heavy downpours on this section of road - as did most of the two and four wheeled traffic.

I spent about 1.5 hrs waiting out a heavy cloudburst as it was just too wet and too dangerous to be out there pedalling. Most of the vehicle traffic and all of the motorcycle traffic had also pulled off the road to wait it out. I was actually relieved to get out on the main hiway again for the final 15 km into Phang Nga.

I met my first touring cyclists, too. What a shock to see them coming down the road. They were a Dutch couple who had started the day before from Phuket and were headed for Singapore. I surprised myself at how happy I was to finally meet other cyclists. Good to know I'm not the only crazy nutter out here on a bike. There are now officially three of us.

By the time I made it to Phang Nga, the skin on my feet and hands was so wet and shrivelled that it looked like I had been soaking in a hot spring all day. I pulled into town around sunset.

11 hours travelling, 6 of them riding and 95 km covered for the day. I still managed to average a bit over 15 kmph, despite the rain and careful pedalling. Vaselined Sponge Bobs were deployed for the whole day - ok, I'm becoming a convert.

1,333 km total for the journey.

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