Day 78: To Bangkok!

When we woke up, the tide had gone out and we could see the entire shrimp farm stretching off the coast. There were 7km left to ride to the bus stop (in case you're wondering, it's not that we were too lazy to cycle into Bangkok, we just didn't want to die on the notorious roads leading into it!).

We pulled into Bangkok bus station, assembled the bikes for the last time and went to find our hotel. The city was overwhelming, but our hotel was clean, simple and nice. To celebrate our arrival, we went to the cinema! Finished!

Day 77: The Last Long Cycle...Pattaya to Mueang Chon Buri

We were happy to leave Pattaya! The sun beat heavily down upon us as we inevitably got lost in doing so. Eventually, however, we rejoined Route 3 and continued northwards, in search of a more scenic place to end our epic ride. Lunch was in a shopping mall in a town named Thung Sukhla, where we opted for a buffet which unfortunately consisted mainly of extremely spicy food, most of which looked better from a distance. The air-con made up for it. The sweaty pedalling continued along the not-so-pleasant main road, but nevertheless we both felt a triumphant sense of achievement, knowing that our journey was coming to an end. Oh to stop being people who lived out of panniers on two outfits and were constantly dirty.

Our approaching pride soured as we rode through our chosen destination, as it appeared to be completely devoid of any hotels. Our rule of not doing U-turns was called into question, as the further we pedalled, the less likely our chances of success seemed. This was NOT how I wanted it to end. It was also getting dark. But, a few kilometres out of town, we were saved. A rather nice, empty, expensive(ish) hotel with rather nice views presented itself. After umming and aahing for a couple of minutes over price, we realised that we didn't really have much of a choice and decided to enjoy the sunset with a dip in the freezing swimming pool.

It was a special moment, as we sat and reflected on the places we had been and what we had achieved.

Day 76, Rayong to Pattaya

Tonight is the eve of our flight back to England. Indeed the 3rd November 2010 we are leaving Kuala Lumpur for London. We have spent exactly three months cycling in South East Asia and making the most of Katie's family in Singapore. This was a great experience.Our desire to push our limits and to visit not only tourist places has been accomplished. We have had real sporting and human experiences that couldn't be truly related through this blog. This is not the last post, we still have half a dozen to make up, but I just wanted to share our feelings before we start a new kind of adventure in the UK.

Nico

Sattahip

We planned to go to Sattahip, which is an old US naval base. We chose to ride on the easy road, the national 3. It was certainly not the most scenic way but, once again, we were more keen to finish it order to lie on a beach. Don't forget we are in Thailand! 3 hours and around 126 000 revolutions of the crank (considering a cadence of 70 rpm) we had made it to Sattahip and were sitting in the terrace of a restaurant to......eat of course. We were on the West side of the coast and realised that the beach was in the opposite direction to the town. The waiter also told us that there are no hotels in Sattahip and that it would be better to continue  along the coast. Yes sir.

We started our second journey of the day and decided to go to Pattaya. If you don't know about Pattaya and you would like to know more about, please don't Google image it. At least we were getting closer and closer to Bangkok. 10km before what was supposed to be our destination, I had a puncture. It was not too bad considering that this was the first time. Apart from that the national 3 was always a smooth and boring road.

We arrived in Pattaya at 6pm and decided to find a hotel close to the beach road. This place was crowded and lived up to its reputation and at this point we rapidly decided that this would not be our last day of cycling, we didn't want it to stop here! On the other hand, the advantage was that all the tourist commodities are present. We ate in a clean and air-conditioned food centre .

Day 75, Ban Phe to Rayong

Due to a lack of sleep on my part, today we just decided to cycle as far as Rayong, the next major town up the coast. This was only around 30 km. We set off just after 11am, but as we had eaten quite an early breakfast we stopped almost immediately again to have a quick plate of fried rice for the journey :-)

Nico made a new
friend along the way

The ride itself was fairly dull and not very scenic, mostly along a major road. But hey, it wasn't really that long.   We didn't have any information about Rayong, so we just headed for the seafront. After the fiasco of last time we had tried to find a hotel, we took the first one we saw. It was 600 baht (£13) and had a swimming pool! We were the only customers so we took the poolside room and had a quick swim to freshen up. Great decision.

There wasn't really a decent beach, Rayong is an industrial city, but we took a nice walk up the coast. It was the weekend and there were lots of Thai families and groups of friends having picnics and barbeques (they all also seemed to be consuming large quantities of rum in a very civilised fashion). It was a nice atmosphere. We had a quiet afternoon of blog writing and then a very delicious meal in the evening. A good day!

Day 74, Ko Samet island

Offering on t boat's bow
to protect from the sea

Our discussion with the owner of the hotel at breakfast was very instructive:

Us -"What is it worth doing in Ban Phe?"

He - "Apart from a zipline in a tree park nothing. All the tourists prefer to go to Ko Samet island."

As you could imagine, it was easy to make a decision (not the same as all the painful questions we asked ourselves the day before... but as Katie said, we found a budget hotel kids). So, we spent the day on Ko Samet island and we stayed on a diamond beach called Hat Sai Kaew. 

Drizzles on the beach

There are a lot of ferry companies and prices for a return ticket are cheap: 50 baht per person. The thing we didn't know is that most of the island, included the best parts, of course, are a national park. We were charged 200 baht each, that is the price for foreigners. Our other option was to stay all day close to the pier that is crowded with restaurants and hotels. Another decision that was easy to take.

Sunset on the way back

The diamond beach is the closest to the pier, no need to get a taxi or to rent a motorbike. It was the best compromise to stay one day on a beach. What is strange is that this beach is no longer a protected site, tourist places line the beach; jetskis and other motorboats do not seem to respect  any distance rule.

It was raining for most of the afternoon.We appreciated staying on deckchairs under a beach/rain umbrella. The good point is that there is enough space to share the beach with other people and it is not cold here at the moment in South East Asia...

Day 73, Chanthaburi to Ban Phe

One thing should be made clear, we did not intend to repeat cycling over 100 km in one day. Yet somehow we managed to do it. We had planned to cycle along the main road and then descend to the coast, to a beach where we had found a nice-looking, reasonably priced hotel on the internet. This should have been about 80km.

Yes, I love it when pictures are taken
of me and my food

It all started innocuously enough, we had breakfast in the hotel and set off around half eight. After a detour and an argument we found the main road and continued, stopping for the standard mid-morning noodle soup break.

At the town of Klaeng, we asked the way to the coast and only got lost once, finding ourselves in a temple and having to descend a set of steps with the bikes before finding the road again. But we have a policy (which would come back to haunt us): No U-turns.

At the beach, we couldn't find the hotel we were looking for, apparently it had changed its name. There was a long unattractive stretch of hotels and restaurants facing the sea, and they were all exorbitantly priced, there was not a room under $20. We don't take a room for more than $20 unless it has internet, hot water, air-conditioning and preferably breakfast. No such luck. We couldn't work out why everywhere was so expensive, especially as everywhere was empty yet no one wanted to offer us a discount.

At the end of the strip, we sat and had some food, and made the decision to carry on up the coast. There was bound to be something a bit cheaper not too far away. And we don't do U-turns. Well, thanks to the rampant  development of Thailand's coast there were plenty of options as we continued, but none of them were cheap. It was depressing, but the further we cycled, the more determined we got.

And so, 25km and 2 hours later, just as the sun was starting to set and we were trying to convince ourselves that one day we would laugh about this, we pulled into the town of Ban Phe. A waitress in a bar recommended us a guesthouse that had fan rooms for $6. We rose above the fact that it was 1km behind us and headed there. The cheap rooms had no bathroom but the woman offered us a better room at 550 baht (£12). The lesson being kids, don't ever give up on your dreams.

Day 72, Chanthaburi

YUM

After a lazy morning, we ate lunch in our regular spot (seriously, this vegetarian stuff was gooood) and then set off to find a waterfall that was about 7 or 8 km out of Chanthaburi. However, apart from the sign telling us where to turn off the main road, there were no other clues as to where it was. We tried to ask some people, who told us to turn left (but didn't specify where) and then some others, who told us to carry straight on, but luck was not on our side. Unfortunately, despite not being able to find the waterfall, we had experienced substantial amounts of water falling on us in the form of rain and so we eventually gave up and headed back, defeated.

View from our balcony

Chanthaburi as a town is famous for its gem markets, there are many gem shops, gem cutters and some obvious signs of prosperity alongside them, such as some very nice houses and cars. My favourite aspect of the town was visible from our hotel window, the gem bridge which lights up at night.

Day 71, Trat to Chanthaburi

15 seconds after the starter gun,
Katie is in second place

It is time to catch up with the blog. So, the road from Trat was so easy that we had arrived in Chanthaburi by the afternoon, which wasn't our plan. There is a reason, we took the main road that is perfect for cycling thanks to the good concrete and the large cycle lane. The downside is that it's not a particularly interesting route. We felt like cars today : driving on a kind of motor way and stopping in petrol station to fill our fuel tank, aka our stomach.

We passed through a city in the middle of nowhere that seemed to have much more money than previous places, there were huge nonsense art monuments sprinkled on the road. I can bet you that this place has a relation with gems. After having checked with the wonderful GPS camera and my favourite web-search site, yes it is, thanks technology (Another solution was to scratch the name of this town when crossing a road sign).

A temple...

We arrived at Chanthaburi at 1pm and we wanted to find a decent hotel first. We are so bright that we had taken pictures of the pages in a guidebook about Chanthaburi. We had also taken a picture of a map of the city. We spent half an hour cycling in town and turned the camera on all sides to understand where we were. Our "find a hotel" scheme finally lead us to another place, a vegetarian food festival. From the 8 to the 16 of October (the ninth lunar month) there are religious rituals like vegetarian diet and being dressed in white. That is why there were plenty of vegetarian food stalls around shrines (a French bookseller had told us that the day before). We ate very good food but we still hadn't found a hotel. Two hour later and a U-turn on a bridge we were in one of the hotel recommended by the camera, ie a virtual guide.

...and its vegetarian festival

Afterwards, we had a stroll in the city and exercised in a park. The way of life is really different from the country we visited before. We were partly surprised to see people running and doing some stretching. We went to another vegetarian festival place for dinner, what a surprise!

Day 70, Sometimes it's wise to be lazy

We woke up most disinclined to move. Our room was so nice, a rare, cheap guesthouse where someone had actually exercised their own personal taste. I couldn't face the thought of cycling 25km to the pier, getting a boat to the island, finding a hotel etc etc. So we decided to stay another day and just enjoy the sensation of being in a town where there was a supermarket, clean streets and a comfortable place to relax. We spent the morning reading and then went for a walk where I bought a copy of the Bangkok Post. I took a picture of the article that grabbed my attention on page 5...

Well that was a stroke of luck wasn't it?!

In the evening we met the Norwegian who had been asking after us yesterday in the bar downstairs. He was about 50, slightly crazy and claimed to have cycled 154,000 km in the past 20 years. That's more than twice round the world. He also told us that once he had cycled for 36 hours solid, apparently there's nothing like cycling under the night stars in the Australian desert. I'll take his word for it. It did feel good (if slightly surreal) however, to pretend to be a cycling expert, talk about handlebars and wheel sizes and swap crazy anecdotes.

Day 69, Ban Cheun beach to Trat

We knew that today would be rainy. A good indicator was that it was raining before sunrise and grey was the predominant colour when we woke up...  It is the end of the monsoon after all, it’s not a surprise. We had a free continental breakfast that was smaller than expected mainly because we had negotiated for it to be included in the room rate. We never can win all the time.

We left the beach at 8am and we were wet one hour later. We found a shelter on the road and waited for the weather to calm down whilst unsuccessfully hitching a ride. It didn’t make sense that no one stopped because we had probably seen more pick-up trucks staying 20 minutes along the road in Thailand than during our overall trip in Cambodia and Laos. It finally stopped raining and we continued to cycle to Trat. The road became more and more flat, that was a good point.

We arrived in Trat at 1:30pm, it was not a record time for 60km. Once in Trat, it was easy to notice that life conditions are closer to Malaysia than the last countries we have cycled through. We ate in a Western fast-food chain!

Katie happy to be in Trat

Our plan was to stay a night in Trat, where we found a friendly guesthouse that was the meeting place for all the expats of the city (somebody told us that a Norwegian absolutely wanted to meet us...). Tomorrow we are planning to take a ferry to Koh Chang island, which seems to be a paradise with its “White sand beach”.