18. Hot hot hot

We’ve been quite lucky with the weather so far, almost no rain, just the one 10 minute deluge and we’ve generally managed to finish cycling before it got hot hot.

Hot is fine but hot hot is not!  But the last few days it been getting up to the mid 30’s and with the humidity that’s hot hot.

We’ve also arrived at a part of the coast where there are few hotels and no tourists. The beaches are full of washed up debris of palm leaves and plastic and not very nice and the whole area is nice to cycle through but very undeveloped and poor.

The government has spent money trying to improve the area and you come across beaches with large car parks, toilets and showers, benches and paths with palm trees for shade all seemingly overgrown in a state of disrepair storm damaged and abandoned the car parks deserted and the beach full of plastic. 

There’s a lot of this type of thing here. There’s loads of new builds that have just been left half completed, and government builds that are falling to bits. It’s not all like that and the roads put the UK to shame, potholes are generally limited to small sections of road almost like they move them all to one bit! And every few days we’ll cycle on that bit for a hundred meters or so.

Even the gravel roads are great and smooth and there’s usually shoulders on all the roads for cars to park in and us to cycle on.

So we decided to do a big cycle to skip most of this out. We set off at dawn picking up our doggy bag breakfast from the hotel and then put our jackets on as it was a bit chilly at 19C!

As the day warmed up we continued south and by about noon it was hot hot. Our Speedo was showing 35C and when you stopped you just dripped.  Lots of drink stops and hiding in shady spots to cool down, but without air con cafes it’s actually hard to cool down even in the shade.

It was an enjoyable cycle but by the last 5km we were running on fumes. We managed 110km to get to our lovely beach side hotel and then promptly drank and drank to recover. Looking at our Speedo you could see on this long flat cycle that my heart rate gradually crept up as the temperature did and by lunchtime was at 137 for the same speed as in the cool morning where it was 109.  All that just to try to keep me cool.

But the hotel was so worth it with our room right on the beach with the waves a stones throw away. Gorgeous.

We had a shorter ride on to the next main town at Surat Thani the next day stopping at a hot spring to soak our feet – it was so hot but felt lovely on our feet, and had another stop at the Grand Canyon! An old quary that now resembles a mini Grand Canyon, well one side of the canyon at least!

Surat Thani is more a service town but did have a fab vege stall where we could get something other than Pad Thai and fried rice with vegetables for lunch and then popped around the corner to a coffee shop that was the complete opposite dining experience and we enjoyed watching all the Instagram posing in and around the cafe while enjoying our amazing cake and drinks… and we ended our day in a lovely room by the river for another day off!

We ventured back into town for an evening meal by taxi and found Milano’s, where we had a great Pizza and watched them make the dough and fresh pasta to boot, so came back the next night to try the fresh pasta. It was all excellent and strategically positioned so you could watch the dockers load the coasters by hand and the numerous tourists walking past  gazing longily at our pizza! We even got to watch the local Zumba class whilst we stayed and had our beers and listened to Smooth FM from London, which the owner obviously liked. Golden Oldies, very nice. It was also the evening of the Makha Bucha moon festival where there are candlelit  flower processions in the temples and we were so lucky to catch seeing this special Buddhist celebration.

The town is also a starting point for trips out to the western islands of Ko Samui and Ko Pha Ngan. Again, we decided to skip these, people had told us they were heaving and some even said they wished they’d never gone and just stayed and enjoyed the quieter beaches on the mainland. Nice to meet other grumpy old farts like us…

Anyway,  this helped us finally make a decision on our route south! Having chatted to loads of people, we’ve decided to stay on the east coast of Thailand rather than cross over to Krabi, Phuket and Trang and the other islands. They do look lovely but we’ve been really lucky to stumble across quite a few beaches on the way down with no bars, no hotels and no people on, some even without footprints, just us and the sea and this is what we prefer.  We love just sitting having our picnic listening to the waves on our own. Maybe we should start a Miserable old farts club…!

So we left Surat Thani the next morning at dawn and our hotel owner came to check our room (which is normal here) before refunding us our deposit all in her PJ’s. Presumably she was back off to bed again after we’d left…The town is more of a small city – it took us a 17km cycle to actually get to countryside again.  But it was also a great ride – the schools start early here and the streets were lined with immaculately turned out kids all in the standard school uniform and looking fab, and as it was Valentines day, they were all, boys and girls, laden with arms full of flowers and gifts with many buying flowers from vendors at the school gates, the streets transformed to seas of red ….it was all just lovely.

Being an old romantic myself I made Linda get up at 5.30, cycle nearly 70km ending the day in 38C temperatures then rustle up our tea/supper/dinner (depends how posh you are !) on our camping stove while sitting on the bathroom floor… Pink job… 😲… And who says Romance is dead…

My birthday was coming up so we had a shortish but hot cycle to Don Sak, another port town where many backpackers stay before getting the ferry out to the islands and then a really short beautiful cycle on inland tracks to Khanom Beach.  We were completely off the beaten track and weaved our way through palm oil and rubber plantations with mountains poking out around us like someone had dropped ice cream on a flat table.  It’s very strange having these mountains but still cycling on the flat. Not complaining though!

We stopped at Janes for coffee in the middle of nowhere, another lovely little coffee stall attached to someone’s home.  We have no idea how they make any money as we never see anyone in them but we love finding them and having a iced drink.

Khanom Beach is another hidden gem.  A local told us it was largely Thai people who came here and it wasn’t on the backpackers route.  As it was my birthday we had booked a beach front room for 2 nights and it wasn’t for once el cheapo, Linda splashing out from her secret squirrel fund for my birthday treat.

When we arrived though we were told the restaurant, beach area,  pool and room service were closed that day for a wedding, which didn’t go down well.  They didn’t make it any better by saying they were providing free transportation to the night market.. errr.. you don’t check into the Ritz to eat at McDonald’s and the staff quickly realised they didn’t want to see more of Linda in “I’m not happy” mode… The manager was called from the wedding she was overseeing and we explained we had come here to relax for my birthday and not go out to the night market for my special birthday treat..and we also had specifically chosen this hotel for the beach and restaurant as it had an extensive vegetarian menu..

After a bit of negotiation we were offered a upgrade to a private pool villa, with a discount on all our food and drink during our stay and they would bring a table and chairs to our room for us to have dinner in the villa that evening which the chef would cook for us specially.  As the Villa was priced at over £400 a night we decided we’d accept their offer!

When we’d arrived the sea was green. It looked radio active and didn’t make a nice background for the wedding photos especially as the wedding theme colour and  everyone was dressed in sea blue. So we didn’t mind lazing around in our private pool for the afternoon especially as the sea also had a awful smell …we did feel sorry for the wedding party and guests though.. apparently it was algae that had been brought in by a recent storm and only appeared that morning ..how awful for the wedding party.😞

The next day was perfect though, normal sea, fabulous colour and lovely temperature and we just sat in the beach side restaurant all morning drinking coffee and all evening drinking alcohol. Not a bad birthday!