I kept hoping we would find a boat across the inland sea at one of the towns north of the bird sanctuary. But nothing went well. Perhaps it was our bad moods. But even the scenery got ugly. We passed lots of scrubby ground and then miles of what we now think were prawn farms--huge ugly water-filled pits with little paddle wheels (about three feet in diameter, with about six or eight wheels attached to a single long axle at five-foot intervals) constantly adding air to the water. Some of the pits were empty and had a white color, which made us think they were salt evaporation ponds.

The paddle wheels are driven by put-put engines that sit in huts and are attached to various flywheels and belts. We heard the engines constantly. There was usually other heavy equipment like bulldozers and backhoes sitting around too.

The first pool we saw looked interesting. But after many km's of them they just looked ugly.

We rode four kilometers off the road to a town we thought was on the inland sea. If it was, maybe we could charter a boat to Phattalung, the town we had originally planned to ride to. But we couldn't find any water. We rode around for awhile and then stopped at a police station (Joan: whose sign doubled as a Pepsi ad. Pepsi gives away these really big signs that say Pepsi, and then underneath, the name of your restaurant ... or police station, in this case). We were hoping to find an English speaker.

While we were parking the bikes a 30-ish woman approached and shook hands and introduced herself in English. We were relieved. We told her our problem and she translated our question to a policeman. He said ther was another town 10km down the road where we could hire a boat. The road was too bad for bicycles, however, so we should go ina taxi. A man came to take us to the taxi.

This bummed Joan out. She didn't want to put our bikes in a taxi and drive 10km to some town that's not on our map on the chance that there would be a boat there and on the slimmer chance that we could communicate what we wanted to someone who had the gas and time to do it. I thought it would be quite an advnture, and besides, it wasn't like we had another plan. We had no idea where we would stay that night.

Our frustration was tempered when the woman, who had worked for 10 years on the tourist island of Ko Samui, told us why she was at the police station. Her car had been stolen that morning. The police had found it, but without all the stuff she had loaded inside to sell at the market. She was quite upset. She started crying while telling us this. (Joan: I felt like an idiot for being so bummed out with my own small navigation problem).

We decided not to try for the iffy boat, and instead to ride north for a few hours to the little town of Sai Hua. We hoped to find a place there. But our hopes were low since it's a small town and wasn't in our guide book.

We had a couple of frustrating stops at food stalls. We would park our bikes and sit down and then find out they were closed or out of soda or something. The trouble is, since we don't speak Thai, it can take a few minutes for us to understand.

Fortunately, two kilometers out of Sai Hua we found a resort with bungalows along a pretty good swimming bveach. I was quite relieved. The place was over-priced, and Joan, to my shock, was ready to walk waway. "This is a God-send at any price," I told her. It cost about US$10 per night.

After a short swim in the balmy Gulf of Thailand, we rode the bikes one km down the road to a food stall, unfortunately one that was full of Muslim Scowlers. We had a long communication impasse until I spit out the Thai word for fried rice.

Our over-priced bungalow was great. It was shaped like a hexagon and large and had a good fan and windows well positioned to catch the breeze. We went to sleep to the sound of the surf.

We stopped in Sai Hua the next morning for breakfast. The town was small with no hotels. The beach resort was certainly the only game in town. For breakfast we had some pretty good muffins, wrapped by hand in plastic bags that were stapled closed. About eight kids stared at us while we tried to park our bikes and order some drinks. A man at the food stall gave us some info about the road. The coastal route, he indicated with a map and some numbers, was about three kilometers longer.

We chose the coastal route but except for one good swim in the ocean, it wasn't worth the extra three kilometers. We passed more ugly pools. After about 40km we rode by a big brush fire. So much smoke covered the road that the cars drove with their headlights on. Joan put her bandana over her face. I saw cows standing along the road in the middle of the heaviest smoke, so I figured I wouldn't pass out from smoke inhalation before we emerged on the other side.

Outside our destination town, Nahkon Si Thammarat we stopped at a shopping mall because we spotted a store called "Cybercity." Joan asked how much for inet access. The shop worker laughed and then said 80 baht for half an hour. Joan figured that was too much and was about to leave, so he said 80 baht for a whole hour. Then Joan said it was still too much, so he said, "OK, OK, free." (Joan: I think it was free all along, as a promotion for the computer store, and they were surprised I was willing to pay, so they wanted to see how much they could get). We checked email for about 15 minutes and got a donut and iced coffee next door.

The mall was very much like a mall in America except jam-packed with people and the parking lot was more organized. They had security people directing traffic and telling cars when to move along, or where to park.

We got a hotel in Nahkon Si Thammarat and were checked in before 3pm. It's a pretty busy town with lots of motorcycles and bicycle rickshaws. It's hard to cross the street sometimes, though some intersections actually have red lights. There must be 20 places to develop photos, so we dropped off a roll. The sky was unusually clear that day, much less haze than usual. So we went on a photo safari in the evening light. The streets are narrow and all the buildings are three or four stories tall though, so little of the low, warm, sunlight got to the streets.

We stopped at a coffee house for iced coffee and a snack. then we walked around for about an hour before finding a great littel bakery with small pizzas and of course, iced coffee.

Perhaps it was caffeine poisoning. But after that last bakery we both felt very tired and vaguely ill. We had an unnotable dinner and went back to the hotel. For soem reason we couldn't sleep. (Joan: later, rightly or wrongly, we attributed these bouts of sleeplessness to Lariam, a malaria prophylactic which we had been taking since we went to Borneo).

In the morning we went to a train station to investigate getting a train to get us on the route back to Phuket. (Joan: We wanted a train to Trang, and I had to say the name of the town five times before the ticket taker understood). But the train didn't go to Trang. So we abandoned all hope of going to Phuket and set our sights on a ride up the east coast.

Next: Ko Samui (or Fort Lauderdale?)

Thailand Main Page     World Trip