May 6-9 by Eric
Songkhla
is a medium-sized town that sits on a peninsula
between a huge bay and the ocean. Geographically it's very similar to San
Francisco but a mirror image--the ocean is on the east side--and smaller.
A lot of oil sits under the ocean offshore so Songhla has a large population
of British and American expats who work for foreign oil companies. We read
this as a good sign, because it meant we might be able to find French Toast
for breakfast.
We ended up staying in Songkhla for three nights. In the first couple hours we found an internet place and a great restaurant, though finding a a great restaurant in Songkhla is like finding a piece of hay in a hay stack.
We went to the same restaurant for dinner all three nights,
ordering wonderfu things like Spicy Garlic Squid in Chili Paste. Even with
tasty food, the main attraction might have been that the beer was served
so cold the condensation actually froze on the bottle. Thai people know
how to drink as well as eat. This was such a relief after 
Indonesia
where even "chilled" beer is often served just slightly below room temperature.
After dinner the first night we were wandering around the city streets looking for the internet place. First we went to a luxury hotel, where the staff spoke English. They said there was an inet access place, drew us a confusing map, and gave us a business card written entirely in Thai script except for the phone number. We used the map to get close, then showed the business card to a guy on a corner, who asked some teenage boys. They talked a lot between themselves and pointed, mostly in the same direction.
I feared it m
ight
be a long way. Finally the boys excitedly mimed to us to get on the back
of their motorcycles. We were a little dubious but figured what the hell.
They rode us just to the end of the block, to a computer store with Thai
script and the word Internet on the window. (It was only 60 baht an hour
(US$1.50), the cheapest we found in Thailand as of this writing). Motorcycles
are to Thailand what cars are to L.A. I can't imagine Thailand without
them.
The next two days we rested a lot. We found a great place for French Toast (with actual Log Cabin brand maple syrup) and established a pretty good routine: take photos and explore in the morning; check email, nap, or otherwise stay as cool and inactive as possible during the afternoon; then explore again around 5:30 p.m. when it had begun to cool off.
We went on one great sunset hike to the top of a hill where we could see the whole area. We could even see the route we planned to take out of town: north across the entrance to the inalnd sea on a ferry, then up a narrow peninsula between the inland sea and the Gulf of Thailand.
Our
last morning we had fried rice for breakfast at a Chinese coffee shop (all
the places with French Toast don't open until mid-morning and the only
dish we can say in Thai is "fried rice"). We rode casually to the ferry
terminal but we sensed a rush as Joan went to the little booth to buy tickets.
We got the tickets and ran with our bikes about 50 feet to the ferry. The
boat's ramp was actually sliding away from shore as we rolled on. The boat
man turned away the car immediately behind us. That was the last good luck
we had with boats that day.
The ride was short. Cycling north on the narrow peninsula--it's about three miles wide--we saw no hills or water. We had a good shoulder but a surprising amount of truck traffic. Homes and small villages dotted the road for tens of kilometers north.
Three kilometers west of the highway was a bird sanctuary.
The Lonely Planet guide mentioned a "scheduled ferry service" from the
sanctuary across the inland sea. We couldn't find it or any sign of it.
Of couse we couldn't communicate with a soul there either. Several older
men had 
longtail
boats --20-foot long wooden canoes that get their name from the six-foot
long propeller shaft that sticks out behind the boat and makes a tail as
it plows through the water.
At first when we mentioned the name of the town on the other side, we got a quick negative response. As our efforts continued the answers became more positive. I started getting my hopes up. But then the answer became yes to everything. We finally concluded they wanted us to pay for a boat tour of the bird sanctuary. We didn't think they understood that we wanted to cross the inland sea and not come back.
These communication road blocks are really frustrating. It's unfair of us to get mad especially since we're the people who don't speak the language, not them. But it happens. I discovered that in Indonesia and Malaysia, when people are uncomfortable in conversation, they laugh. Here in Thailand, people laugh a lot, but it feels like they're laughing at us. Which makes us more frustrated. (Joan: I vow when we get home to run up to anyone I see who looks like they don't speak the English and invest a lot of effort in trying to help them. We've gotten so much help on our trip, and I really don't remember giving much, to non-English speakers anyway, back home).
At the bird sanctuary we realized that if we got in the boat, we wouldn't know where we were going until we got there, so we decided not to chance it.
This completely changed our plans for the next week. We had planned to ride across to the west coast and visit Krabi and Phuket Island. Without the boat however, we would have to ride back to Songkhla for the night and start out a different way to pursue that route. Joan could not stand the idea of going backwards. I didn't dare suggest it. So we decided to just stay on the east coast.
Next: we head north.
