K2K, Ko Samui to Hua Hin, The Royal Coast Road

24/8/17 – 25/8/17

Vikasa Yoga Retreat on Ko Samui

The next few mornings saw us rise at dawn for a swim in the infinity pool, watching the sunrise. The view was mesmerising, the warmth of the water allowed for total relaxation as we hung over the edge watching the morning sun appear. This time of day was so quiet with no one else around, except us and a few little squirrels playing in the tree tops. Perfect way to commence our day.

7am was a 2 hour Complete Yoga  Class which included meditation, breathing techniques, strength yoga and relaxation. The strength yoga sequences were intense and boy were we sweating but feeling ever so good for it. They were great classes with a different teacher each morning allowing for variety. The yoga sala was a large area with wide timber floor boards, three open sides allowing for a good flow of fresh air, a view of the sea, perfect for morning yoga practice to be facing the rising sun. The back wall with EXHALE written boldly on it upside down of course, so you could read those encouraging words while in a forward bend pose, a painting of an elephants face which gave me strength to complete the class. Our teachers were amazing, giving easy to hard variations for every pose and one teacher walking around the floor ,who with a gentle touch guided you into a deeper connection of the pose. We were always reminded that this was our own personal practice and that you take your practice to your own limits. I loved this reminder as it’s not about keeping up with everyone else, it’s about what you have on the day to give. Both of us for so many reasons have fallen out of our yoga practice. These few days here at Vikasa was an opportunity for us to rekindle our love for the practice.

After our morning yoga practice it was a big climb up the 140 steps to breakfast. Our legs were feeling like jelly after our 2 hours of yoga and then to do that climb, it hurt just a bit. But it was worth every step with the breakfast that was laid on for us. It was a large vegetarian buffet that was full of amazing fresh and organic food. Bircher muesli, homemade yoghurt, fresh fruits, homemade bread, 4 hot dishes that were different every morning, pancakes, salads, fresh juice, coffee, tea, I actually felt I was in heaven.

The remainder of our days were spent swimming, relaxing around the pool, exploring the beach, boulder climbing, listening to music and just chilling out. 4pm came around pretty quickly so it was off to the yoga sala once more for one and a half hours of Yin Yoga. After doing our first Yin Yoga class I realised how much I loved this practice. When we are out on the bikes we draw on a lot of yang energy and with this yin yoga practice we both felt the importance of gentle stretching and letting go. It is so calming, peaceful, healing and allows the body to regain good energy. We both felt amazing after the first class and couldn’t wait until tomorrows class.

Our dinners up at the restaurant were vegetarian buffet style, and as with breakfast was beautiful real food with amazing flavors and great variety. Delicious vegetable dishes, curries, salads, so much variety and yumminess. At 8pm we ventured down to the yoga sala for our final class for the day. One night it was a Gong Meditation. The sound and the energy from the gongs went right through your body as you sat in meditation pose. It is a really deep healing vibration and was performed from the heart of our teacher. Our last night’s sound class was singing bowls and this was a great class too. The group sat in a circle with Ronnie Vee, our teacher who had such a laid back and honest way of connecting with people. We have always loved the vibration and energy that singing bowls create and this class was no exception. It was focussed on the chakras, each bowl had a connecting sound and vibration for each of our chakras that helped to open, cleanse and heal each one. Yep, we felt pretty balanced and uplifted after this class. We really loved Ronnie’s way of communicating and his love and passion for life.

Our time at Vikasa was a very healing and spiritual time. It grounded us both and opened up many areas that we can build on to allow our growth as energy beings to become more peaceful, loving and caring.

26 & 27/8/17

Ko Samui to Ko Pha Ngan

We planned to catch the ferry to Ko Phangan today. A 1pm ferry from the ‘Big Buddha’ terminal.

But first it was a 7am meditation class with our new friend Ronnie Vee. This was pretty cool, and certainly what I needed. Mary kicked on with the full yoga class after that, while I went for a last swim and got our gear ready to go.

Luckily the resort had a baggage pick up service so we didn’t have to lug the bags up the endless steps to road level. So we walked up and enjoyed a leisurely final breakfast before extracting Larry and Priscilla from their hiding place behind the Resort’s Spirit House.

We didn’t want to go, but we had to, so much still to see on this amazing adventure. Sometimes though, you find a cool place with cool people and you get attached, but ‘ya gotta move on man’ ‘a rolling fat bike gathers no moss’, so ride we must, to the Big Buddha and beyond.

It was only about ten k’s to the ferry terminal, but two big hills early on had us sweating, then a few back lanes through the seedier parts of Ko Samui and we popped out right at the terminal. Good navigation.

The ferry terminal was an interesting cross section of travelling humanity.  This is just a passenger ferry, but they would take our bikes, no worries, for a bit extra. So we sat back and watched the goings on. I became convinced that there was a “Who Can Wear The Shortest Denim Cut Off Shorts’ competition on. Mary didn’t notice, but let’s just say that the average fella, just didn’t have anywhere to look without getting himself in trouble. Luckily it was time to board, and once we made sure that the bikes made it on safely, we got my official no seasickness spot and relaxed. (Top deck, outside in the fresh air, looking at the horizon).

Arriving, Ko Phangan gave a good impression, it was obviously going to be a much more chilled out place than Ko Samui.

We had a ten km ride to our accommodation which gave us a good introduction to the island, a few hills, a great coffee bar with a cool guy who roasts his own (best in Thailand so far) and lots of restaurants and yogi hang outs.

Unfortunately, we chose the most uptight place to stay on the island. Don’t get me wrong, it was nice, and friendly, but just something wrong about it. It was owned by a Belgian family with a great Belgian Beer Bar, which was nice, if you wanted to pay 250 baht for a beer when the Thai average is 50. Still, it was attracting a lot of Belgian and French travellers, a taste of home I suppose.

We had a day off here, but the weather wasn’t great for the beach and really, we were just biding our time to go to Ko Tau, we were very excited about our dive course. We found some nice places to eat, candlelight dinners on the beach and a really nice vegetarian yogi place for breaky. We would definitely stay on Phangan again, but just not at the place we stayed.

28/8/17

Ko Pha Ngan to Ko Tao

We seem to be timing things around Ferry Timetables all of a sudden, so we didn’t need to leave early. We walked up the street and had a nice breakfast at a really cool café called the art café.

After that we were keen to get going, but we did stop on the way at the same espresso bar that we found on the way over, truly great coffee.

Once we had bought our ferry tickets to Ko Tau, we had to wait two hours, so we walked the street for a while in the main part of town, some would call it shopping, but we didn’t buy anything really.

Larry and Priscilla Huddling Together On The Deck

Once on board the boat and heading out of the harbour, we couldn’t help but notice the worsening weather, the seas were up a bit, but the wind was becoming very strong, and it looked like rain coming with it. Within about twenty minutes, the storm hit, gale force wind and driving rain had all those on the outside deck moving for shelter, except for the really drunk Aussie footy players who were making a game of it, see who could last out in it the longest. We pretended to be Canadians or Kiwis today, how embarrassing.

At times it felt like the ferry was going to blow right over in the cross wind. But two hours later, we arrived at Ko Tau and hid in a café until the storm blew out, which didn’t take very long. It was only two k’s to the dive school that we had booked into over at Chalok Bay.

We were greeted by Maria, and she set us up with our home work (WTF) and got us to our room right above the café.

We really just got settled, hit the restaurant for dinner and then got some reading done before our first class in the morning, we certainly aren’t used to studying.

Ko Tau was impressing us and would come to be our favorite of the three islands, very chilled out, great dive culture, yes, very westernised unfortunately, but a good break for us, as well as giving us confidence in the professionalism of the “New Heaven” dive school.

29/8/17 to 31/8/17

Open Water Diving on Ko Tao

We woke up feeling very excited for our first day of learning how to dive. We sat down in the cafe next to the dive school and had a lovely breakfast before our theory class which started at 9am. Jessica our teacher was amazing and made us feel very welcome and at ease straight away. Alex was a diver too, who was sitting in on our classes and helping out as she was in the middle of doing her  Dive Master’s Certification. We did about an hour or so on theory and then it was time to get in the boat and be taken out to our first dive spot, a shallow calm bay to learn and practice new skills. We were only down at about 3m in a clear sandy spot where we could kneel down and practice lots of different skills. This session was quite a long dive of 85 minutes. This time allowed us to really get comfortable being under the water. We were picked up by a small boat that then took us to a bigger boat that then took us back to shore to the dive school.
We were so hungry when we got off the boat that we went straight to the café and had a late lunch. Jessica gave us our homework and we headed off to our room. With homework done early and dinner eaten, we crashed out pretty early. Dave was so tired, he said he felt just like a little boy that had been to the beach all day long!!

The next day started off the same as yesterday with a yummy breakfast at the café, followed by a theory session and then it was straight out on the big boat with the big league, the girls and guys who were already certified divers. They all made us feel very welcome and gave us great encouragement. We had two dives today, one at a dive site called 3 Rocks and the second dive at White Rock. The first dive was at 8m and was a 45 minute dive which included more skills practice and a dive around looking at the fish.
We saw Butterfly Fish, Orange Banded Coral Fish, Longfin Banner, Blue Spotted Stingray, Titan Trigger Fish and lots of Parrot Fish. We resurfaced and climbed up onto the boat and had a drink, a snack and a relax before commencing our second dive. This dive took us to 12m and was a 42 minute dive.
With no skills required to be practiced on this dive we just went for a beautiful cruise around under water again looking at all the fishes. We saw a lot of the same fishes as our first dive plus a few other types of fish this time including Blue Ringed Angel Fish, Anemone Fish, Squirrel Fish and Indian Sea Star. It was a great dive and we both felt relaxed and confident being under the water. We ended up having a snack when we got back and then a very early dinner, did our last lot of homework and fell asleep early again.

Our third and final day of diving had us start with a written test. Oh crap!! Well it was all ok, multiple choice and we flew through it and passed. Yippee all the theory now done and all the skills completed left us only with one more task to do and that was an 18 metre dive. How exciting. Our first dive for the day was going to be our 18 metre and that took us out to a dive site called South West. We were meant to be going out to another dive site but this plan had to change, as the Princess of Thailand was diving there that day and no other divers were allowed. Well that was ok the guys had a back up plan and that was fine with us. The dive was 36 minutes and was really beautiful.
It wasn’t hard or scary to go down to 18m, slowly and steadily made for a really fun dive. We saw a few Giant Groupers and Golden Trevally as well as a lot of the same from the previous dives. One of the girls that we met on the boat going to this dive site, Kyara was a ‘Freediver’ and she came down to meet us when we were on this dive. She looked so majestic, so free and so elegant, just like a mermaid and as she left us to resurface, she blew us a kiss and the whole scene just felt so magical. When we resurfaced, we met up in the water with the other divers from our boat and had to bob around in the water for a short bit while waiting for our boat to return from dropping off others at another site. That was all ok. It was very relaxing just bobbing around in the warm deep blue water. Everyone was having a fun and relaxing time and even a few songs broke out. Then it was back on the boat for a rest and a boat trip to Shark Island to do our final dive. Here we went to 15m and was a 38 minute dive. I was struggling to keep up with the normal pace as I only had short finned flippers on and there was a bit of a current to start with. Alex grabbed my arm and I was then able to motor along a bit quicker. This was a really interesting and enjoyable dive. When we resurfaced we had to swim to the boat which took a bit of effort due to the current. Now we are ‘Certified Open Water Divers’ which we both feel is a great achievement. We are now all skilled up for more adventures which can now take us under the deep blue sea.

We really enjoyed our short time on Ko Tao and would jump back on this island at the drop of a hat. It is a really beautiful place and very chilled out. We loved all of the people from the Dive School and the dive community are all so friendly, chilled out and very supportive and encouraging. It was a fantastic experience and we are really excited about going diving again soon.

1/9/17

Ko Tao to Chumphon

It was going to be sad to say goodbye to Ko Tau, new friends and our new experiences. We are glad we took this new adventure on and can’t wait to see how an occasional diving trip will work into our travels.

But leave we must, so we had our last brekky and rode the two k’s to the ferry port. This was a straight forward affair until the ferry boss saw the size of our bikes and made as if we were going to have to disassemble them. Much pointing and drama was required before he/she just said ‘five hundred each’ and stormed off in a huff. That’s what we had already arranged with the non dramatic second in charge lady.

It turned out that there was heaps of room on the rear deck and they just rolled the bikes on and leaned them against the rail before stacking heaps of other stuff around them, no problem. The ferry was a fast cat and the weather was fine and very smooth seas, we saw a lot of flying fish skittering out of the way of the ferry.

One thing we didn’t know was which ferry port we were going to arrive at, just Chumphon, which has several terminals. After docking in a beautiful bay, we programmed our destination into google maps and found that we actually had a twenty five km ride ahead of us.

We got moving quickly as the heat was really building up. But I must say that this was a really pleasant ride, the road was smooth and quiet, and rolled through really picturesque country, we enjoyed every minute of it. We had covered about twenty k’s of it before the convoy of mega buses with all the tourists from the ferry whizzed past us, bikes rule hey. And then there was a café Amazon, score.

The hotel was just in the back blocks of Chumphon, which turned out to be a great choice, and we made good use of the pool in the heat of the late afternoon.

 We met a lovely couple from Argentina who were cycle touring in the opposite direction with their nearly four year old son, so we had dinner together and shared some great stories, which capped off a great day and helped us to get over the feeling of missing Ko Tau.

2/9/17

Chumphon to Paifha Beach Resort

A 7am breakfast saw us up and away in good time, we really weren’t too sure how far we wanted to go today, so we hadn’t booked anything and had a couple of places picked out along the route depending on how we felt as the day progressed. We were still feeling a bit wonky from all our time out on the water. Luckily this feeling wasn’t an issue while riding, just when we sat still. There is no way either of us could look at the laptop screen in order to catch up with the blog.

The riding was nice, and once out of the town we came across a very nice road with a very well marked bike track up either side of it. This road was called the The Royal Coast Road. Very nice indeed.

About thirty five k’s in, we came out onto the southern end of a nice beach and right in front of us was an espresso bar, so we stopped, had a coffee and decided that we didn’t want to go any further today. There were a couple of cheap resorts about a km up the road and assuming they had a room, that would do us. Pretty soft I know, but it was just one of those days.

After another great coffee, we rode a kilometre up the road and stopped in front of the second resort, Paifha Beach Resort. We couldn’t pick one, so a lovely lady came out and convinced us that we were staying at hers and that was that, fair enough, turn the aircon on.

We wandered over to the restaurant that was right on the beach for some lunch and cold drinks. Here we were invited to go for a boat road over to the island that sat right in front of our view and to snorkel if we would like to at no charge. The owner of the resort organised a boat to come pick us and her kids up and take us all out to the island. We had to wait awhile for the boat to arrive so they went and got their jet ski and we had fun with the kids and the toys until the boat arrived.

The snorkelling gear for the 5 of us was placed in the boat along with an eski full of cold drinks. It was just a short trip to the island where there was just one small sandy beach which was used to anchor the boat, and for us all to climb onto the beach. With snorkelling gear on, it was straight in the water for a look around. Two of the kids were teenagers with the third about 12 years old and they were ok for us to leave them and do our own thing. They just showed us the buoys in the water to use as markers and not to go past them so that seemed pretty easy. The water was clear, lots of rocks with a variety of small fish of all types and colours. A little further out from the shore we could see a few larger fish and some coral. We had a great time just cruising along the surface and we didn’t go out as far as the markers, as the water clarity became a bit too murky further out so we were happy to stay closer to the shore.
We snorkelled as far around the beach as we could ,just before the shore line turned into great big boulders and decided that was far enough and made a slow return back to the starting point. It was a lot slower coming back due to a current but not a problem at all.

When we arrived back onto the beach the boat driver who had been watching the kids as he sat on the shore must have lost sight of them at some stage and came running over to us saying “where the babies”? Ok pretty sure here he was meaning the kids and the last sighting we had of them, they were heading out around the great big boulders. He was really worried so ran along the beach, over the rocks but couldn’t see them anywhere.
We could see him talking to someone on his phone which must have been another boat as they came in closer to the island and soon after waved and pointed, indicating that the kids were just around the corner. Our boat driver came back not looking so worried and we just sat waiting for the kids to appear. It seemed to be taking a long time so we were all about to get on our boat and go pick the kids up when they came into view. They weren’t making much headway, and there was a lot of splashing with their kicking and not much movement. It was pretty obvious that they had just swum into the current and were getting very tired. As our driver and his helper spoke no English, we couldn’t communicate that we needed to get our boat out there and pick them up, but we all had the same idea as we all just headed to the boat and went and picked the kids up. They were all ok, just a bit tired and looking very sheepish. A few words in Thai were spoken, probably a discussion of what should we tell mum when we got back. Well that all went out the window, because as soon as the youngest one saw her mum we are pretty sure she blabbed out the whole story.

We were so well looked after here, and had such a great afternoon and were very thankful for everything they did for us to make our stay so enjoyable. We had a lovely dinner in the restaurant to finish off our day and crashed out pretty early after all that fun in the sun.  

3/9/17

Paifha Beach Resort to Bang Saphan

We got “The Full American” for breakfast. It was pretty nice, and it was cool to receive Father’s Day wishes from all the family.

The ride started off with a gentle cruise up the ‘Royal Coast Road’ right alongside the beach. After a while we had no choice but to re­-join Highway 4 and put some k’s in on the fast bitumen, coffee was found a couple of times before we turned off toward the beach once again, to find our quiet little homestay, right on the beach.

There was no-one in attendance, so we just crashed into the restaurant next door and had nice cool drinks and a light lunch while we waited, no stress. Chilled out is definitely the order of the day.

Later when we wondered back over to the homestay/resort, the owner Tam, was quite worried as we had left the bikes there, and he thought we had disappeared on the beach. He showed us to an incredible room, and we immediately wished that we were spending more time here. We had made some dates for next week though, so that meant keep moving.

Mary made friends with a little street dog that took quite a liking to us. A very friendly and young brown dog, who must have had some Thai Ridge Back in her as she had a black tongue. This dog ended up spending all night on our verandah guarding us, pretty cute.

 4/09/17

Bang Saphan to Huai Yang

In room breakfast this morning consisting of peanut butter sandwiches and cold water. With our little dog still outside our room we had a feeling that she may want to follow us on the bikes so we made some sandwiches for her too. to keep her busy while we left. Bugger, that didn’t work. She started to eat the sandwiches but as soon as she realised we were on the move, she left the food and followed us down the road. We were both heart broken seeing her running after us. She started to make some ground, so we had to put down the pedal and ride away fast. Slowly she was losing ground and just stood in the middle of the road watching us leave. We both felt like crying as it felt like we were abandoning her.
We are really careful not to fuss over the local dogs too much so that this doesn’t happen, but this girl attached herself to us. She was by our side from lunch time onwards and we hadn’t even fed her,so food wasn’t the attachment, it was our company. We did give her some of my dinner later that evening down on the beach but this really wasn’t about food she just wanted someone to love her. Oh gosh I really wanted to take her with us.

We had some nice back roads out to the next town where we needed to make a stop at an atm and get cashed up. A coffee stop was required along the way at our fave, Amazon Café ,which had a family of ducks all in a row. Actually, it was life size statues of white Pekin ducks that from a distance looked real. The rest of the ride was mostly on Highway 4, and we got to our little hotel early and continued to nurse our sand fly bites from a few days before.

This area is effectively a Swedish enclave, with many gated communities with people only living in them during the Swedish winter.  The place was like a ghost town at the moment, with a lot of places closed up. This meant that it was quiet though, which suits us quite fine, as long as we can get fed and watered. We liked it here.

5/09/17

Huai Yang to Prachuap Kirri Khan

Our lovely host made us The Full American again, with coffee, which was nice, we didn’t have far to go today, so we lingered a bit. We then followed a lot of dirt roads and tracks today which led us into a National Park which was awesome. We even found an area that was planted out with gum trees, yep Australian eucalypts. Not sure which variety they were, but there was no mistaking them. Now this would not happen in any of our National Parks, planting out foreign trees. While looking up at the leaves and the blue sky it gave us a warm feeling of home. No koalas up in the branches though, and we laughed as we saw a squirrel up a gum tree.

‘Mapsme’ decided to take us on a dirt track that slowly became quite over-grown with the prickliest bushes ever. They had really soft foliage but horrible thorns all over, so we had to make sure we kept our distance from them as well as not being knocked off the bikes with the overhanging branches. Dave had to get off a couple of times and remove fallen trees off the track so we could get through, but as we continued, the track turned into a narrow path that then led to no path, but very high reeds. We struggled through the reeds to a small clearing and then it became quite clear that this was the end, as there was no way we could get through what lay ahead, not even on foot without the bikes. So back we had to go, through all the prickles and rough riding, but it was ok, it made us laugh and it gave us an unexpected adventure.

Back onto the bitumen road in the National Park and past the two guards, who didn’t see us leave as they were too busy looking at their phones. We were back onto the highway for our final k’s into the next town, Prachuap Kirri Khan.

We didn’t manage to find a coffee shop this morning on our short section of highway, so we were pleasantly surprised to find a nice looking one right across the road from the very ornate Royal Monastery. Ordering our usual Espresso and Latte, we were surprised when it came with a very nice small glass of some sort of tea each, and a plate of yummy sliced dragonfruit. All this for 60 baht, about $2.50.

We lingered here for a while, and cooled down under a nice fan. But we had visions of yummy pancakes, as we were booked into a guesthouse called “Pancake B&B”, so we headed off to investigate. When we arrived, we were shown to our very nice room and when I asked the lady her name, she said “Pancake, my name is Pancake”. We were crestfallen, our visions of yummy pancake creations for lunch, flying out the gate and gone forever. We really hope she didn’t notice our disappointment, she really was lovely and so helpful.

After settling in, we went for a walk down to the bay. This was very nice, a wonderful crescent bay with a headland at each end with a very cool temple built on top. There were a few western style hotels, but mostly original local buildings and restaurants along this strip. We came down again later in the evening as the sun set and walked out on the pier. The bay was about four to five kilometres long and one to two kilometres wide. We were astounded that as dark fell, we could count the green lights of fifty two fishing boats crammed in to this small bay. The results showed the next morning with the fish sellers offerings as we rode past. All the squid caught was around two to three inches long. It seems that the management strategy for the collapsing gulf of Thailand fishery is that if you are catching less fish, you need more boats. The End, literally.

6/09/17

Prachuap Kirri Khan to Dolphin Bay Resort

We made an early start as we had 70ish k’s to ride and needed to get the ride done before the heat knocked us around. We said goodbye to Pancake and she waved to us as we rode down the road out of sight. We followed the bike track along the bay out to a main road loosely following the coast and the railway line. There were a couple of short tracks we were able to follow but then, maybe not quite the right one. It was fine for a bit and then suddenly we found ourselves in a large area of fish ponds. Google maps had us going this way this time, and kept telling us to keep going, but it was just pond after pond after pond. So we backtracked knowing we had to go past barking dogs again, this time having to actually ride in the middle of them all. One large pack of very big territorial dogs came out all thinking about snapping at Dave’s back tyre, but pulled out of that little trick just in time. They ignored me coming up from behind until I passed them when they all started barking again. In amongst the pack were a couple of half grown pups that got scared and ran away. Just as we got passed them all under an old table were half a dozen tiny puppies. Puppies, prawns and ponds all locked in behind a bamboo gate. Thankfully the gate was easily dropped so we could make our escape to the bitumen road in front of us.

 A bit more crazy single track happened before we popped out onto Highway four again for about ten k’s before heading back towards the beach, and the entrance to Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park. We had been looking forward to this part of the ride, and the opportunity for a few side trips was there, some cave temples that apparently were pretty special. But I have to say that this park is a major disappointment. There are lots of industrial areas we have been through that felt more natural than this place. The landscape is dominated by several limestone “mountains”, ok cool, geologically it is interesting. But all the flat bits, between said mountains, were just prawn and fish ponds as far as the eye can see. We don’t normally whinge about these things too much, but sorry, this is no National Park.

We rode on, we did see a nice temple in a grand valley that was cool, as long as you didn’t look back the other way. We rode on, and upon leaving the park, the landscape became much better, greener and looked after, just the normal farm lands. The last few k’s into Dolphin Bay were pretty and the bay itself is spectacular with plenty of accommodation and eating options, but very chilled out. We had a pleasant afternoon and a very big lunch after our seventy k’s.

On sunset, we were due for a full moon rising over the bay, so we set out to capture a cool photo, but at the last minute, heavy cloud came in and we saw nothing. Oh well, dinner?

7/09/17

Dolphin Bay to Hua Hin

With only 40+ k’s to do today we weren’t in any hurry and took our time leaving. We had a lovely relaxed breakfast and then on the bikes at around 8.30. We were able to follow the coast for a good long stretch first thing, which was really pleasant. Once we ran out of beach road, it was a few back roads taking us through small villages and off the main highway. Then the last 20 k’s was along a really nice bike bath.

We reached the outer area of Hua Hin and in amongst the heavy traffic now and ‘google maps’ took us to our accommodation. Woops wrong place, it didn’t look like the place we had booked but it was a German Bakery with rooms above. Nobody spoke English, or German, so we rechecked our information and woops, we were definitely at the wrong place. We booked a room at German Bread and Co. ahhhh how silly of us. We said sorry and thank you and waved goodbye to the poor confused ladies and sped off. Just 3 k’s down the road, we had a turn to the left and then another turn to the left leaving the main road behind us and entering a nice quiet street we found our rightful accommodation. Yep this time it was exactly how it was meant to be, nice quiet place, someone who knew we were coming, nice spacious room, just perfect.

We cleaned up, organised our washing to be taken away, sat down to some lunch and a coffee and messaged our beautiful friend Gon, who lives in Hua Hin and organised to meet her. We knew she worked close to our accommodation, but didn’t realise she was only 5 minutes walk away and with a blink she was there. With big welcome hugs we sat down and didn’t stop talking for ages. We had actually ridden past Gon and she had seen us, but by the time she got to the road to yell out to us we were way down the road.

Gon was able to take the afternoon off work, so we decided to go for a lovely walk down to the beach. It was a really lovely beach, not very many people there, lots of ponies available for horse riding. They looked ok but were all being ridden by men who were all too big for most of them. They were the owners and rode them up and down the beach all day long until a customer showed interest. The poor buggers all looked tired by the end of the afternoon. We went for a really decent walk along the beach and stopped for a nice cool drink before our long return back, we didn’t realise how far we had walked until we went to walk back.

That evening Gon showed us around the night market and the streets of Hua Hin. So many options for dinner. So finally we decided on a restaurant that sat out on the end of a pier. What a lovely place sitting outside in the clean fresh air right on the edge of the pier ,with water splashing underneath us. Our meals were delicious, and we had a nice walk back through the streets to our hotel, which made for a wonderful end to a great day seeing our friend Gon again.

8/9/17

Rest Day in Hua Hin

 We actually had a sleep in, well 8am anyway. We had a nice simple included breakfast at the homestay before meeting Gon at 9:30. She had arranged a friend with a taxi to take us for a day tour, which started with a trip up to the lookout over Hua Hin, then we were back in the back of the taxi truck and barrelling down the highway south.
Gon said that we were going to a cave with a temple in it where the sun comes in from the opening in the roof of the cave. It then dawned on us, that we knew where she meant. We had ridden past here two days earlier, but hadn’t gone in as it was a punishing walk in and it was quite a big riding day. We were very pleased we were going to visit this cave, as we were disappointed that we had missed this, cool.

It took a solid hour to get to the park entrance from Hua Hin, the heat of the day was building too. We paid the entrance fee and grabbed a bottle of water, passing up the opportunity for a boat ride to the half way point. Harden up.

It was a tough walk, lots of steps, and what concerned us most, lots of sweat, and we had just had our clothes laundered for the first time in weeks, bugger. Oh well, back to rinsing them out in the shower.

Finally we arrived at the cave entrance, it was a bit cooler inside. There are three main chambers, the first has some interesting formations, but the second two have collapsed roofs. Probably about sixty to seventy metres deep from the surface, around midday brilliant light pours into the caverns, illuminating some cool plants growing from the cave floor. We thought they looked like giant terrariums. But on the mound created by the collapsed roof in the third cavern, Phra Nakhon Cave stands a very cute, but small, Pagoda. This was creating an interesting but challenging photo opportunity, I hope they came out all right.

We spent some good time in here, and then faced the walk back, luckily the national park office had icecreams and cool drinks on the beach half way back.

We visited a couple of other sites on the way back, including a park with massive statues of the more prominent Kings from Thai history.

A shower was in order, so we freshened up and then met to go out for dinner again down at the pier. There was a wonderful, cool breeze, sitting at our table right on the end of the pier, so we ate some good food and chatted for quite a while, as we knew that we were going to have to say goodbye when we got back to the hotel. We meandered back through the streets and yes, we said our goodbyes to Gon, with lots of promises for more visits. We sure hope so.