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The crazy adventures continue – a motorcycle escort, the green lung, the helpful monk, weird fish, monkey business, giant lilies, my first night under canvas and all wrapped up in a salty affair.  It could only happen to a cyclist.

After spending a fantastic couple of nights with David in Bangkok it was time to get on with the small matter of cycling round the world and so it was an early start to try and get across the city before the traffic got too hectic. The place that I had been staying was near On Nut MRT station and although it was near the center of the city it was on the east side which was the direction that I had cycled from the Cambodian border.  Leaving the city meant that I had to cycle straight across metropolitan Bangkok.

David had spoken with a friend who owned a cycle tour company – bicyclethailand – and he had sent me a route which should keep me off the major highways, but I was still not looking forward to the first 3 hours of cycling that day.  As I reached On Nut MRT station on Sukhamvit, the main thoroughfare road in the centre of Bangkok, I stopped for breakfast from one of the roadside stalls before setting off towards where I could catch a ferry across the Chao Phryer River.

This was my ‘choke’ point in getting out of the city as I had to cross it at some point.  There is an area of Bangkok known as the ‘Green Lung’ – it is not an island as such but the Chao Phryer River encompasses 3 sides of the land as it loops round in a meander.  The plan was that I would catch a ferry to here and then use this as my route out of Bangkok.

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As I was setting off after breakfast I stopped at a red light and got talking to a guy on a motorbike who asked where I was going.  I told him and he said that he would show me a quiet route out of the city. So, off we went with my new friend Bee riding his motorbike about 50 yards in front of me and I cycled behind.

Instead of cycling on the busy highways and roads we literally went under them.  For those of you who have never been to Bangkok all of the ‘busy’ roads are elevated which means that there are no intersections or traffic lights to slow down the flow of traffic.  The disadvantage for the cyclist is that these are more like motorways and not cycle friendly.  Cycling under them though makes for stunning photos:

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Whenever I got stuck in traffic he would stop and wait for me and when I got close he would set off again.

My guy Bee  guy stayed with me as my escort out of the city for nearly an hour and at the end just waved me goodbye and off he went on his merry way.  It really is the small things which make such a difference when cycling.  I have no idea where he was going but at the time but the hour he gave up made a huge difference to my day.

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I had cycled down the highway to the coast for a couple of hours when I was getting a bit bored and fancied a distraction.  Like a magpie something shiny caught my eye as I was crossing a railway bridge and so off I went to have a look at the beautiful Wat that I had seen from the bridge. (11 minutes)

Once again no language was needed and I was privileged to get to visit such a beautiful Wat. If you skipped the video here are a couple of pictures from the inside.  The al fresco paintings (not sure this is the correct term but you should get the idea) that adorn the walls and ceilings inside of one of the shrines was simply stunning. Many of the murals on the walls portray the life of Buddha.

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I had now left the city behind and on the map there was a side road that I could take towards the coast.  This would add a good hour to my cycle that day but I really do hate riding down main roads; not only are they dangerous but they are so boring.  The other thing that I have found in Thailand is that all of the houses and businesses along the main roads own dogs and at least every kilometer a dog will come screaming out from behind a bush and chase you up the road.

The way to deal with dogs is really counter intuitive – your brain is telling you to speed up and get the hell out of dodge, while the thing to do is to just stop. This confuses the dog and they tend to run off fairly quickly.  Those that don’t get whatever is on the ground thrown at them and off they trot to await the next cyclist.  I really don’t know what it is about bikes because I swear a motorbike going past is completely ignored (even if it is going slower than me). Maybe my legs pedaling trigger something in the dogs brain. I still haven’t been bit by one though, the nearest being when I was walking around a chilli sauce factory that I had just walked into in Cambodia but that is another story.

Once I was off the highway and got near to the coast the landscape changed to a more brackish environment as the sea water obviously came a fair distance in land.  I was starting to sea fishing boats in all of the many water channels that I was now crossing.

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For those of you who have never been to Asia then you will have missed a weird site everynight – out on the horizon over the sea you see the blinking green lights of fishing boats.  The reason they fish at night is due to the method they use to catch the fish – the boats have lights fixed to wooden ‘arms’ which extend from the boat to attract the fish and squid to the surface.  The picture below of Bangkok was taken by NASA from space; the bright green area shows how bright and numerous the fishing boats are:

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On the rivers I was crossing I was starting to see activity on the boats as they were preparing to catch the tide and head out to the fishing grounds.  For me though, this was the signal to find somewhere to sleep.  I pulled into a roadside shop to buy water and did my usual thing of putting my hands to my head and feigning sleep.  The boy I was signing to ran off and came back with a lad in his teens who spoke a little English.  I explained what I wanted but used the word hotel.  He told me, in broken English, that I would need to cycle onto Cha Am which was about another 50km. I pointed at my watch and the setting sun setting to try to get across the idea that I didn’t have the time.  He was adamant that there was no hotel to stay at in the area than at Cha Am.  I then I happened to say the word resort to which he smiled and pointed to a sign in Thai about 100 metres down the road.

Apparently, accommodation in this part of the world that Thais use are called resorts which are not like you would imagine – they are more like roadside guesthouses that local Thais use.  Hotels are more for foreigners, and have prices to match.  Once again, a brilliant demonstration that you have to find the specific word that they use in an area to get what you are looking for. My plan that day had been to get to the coast and the beaches but that would need to wait until tomorrow as I had spent too much time at the Wat today.

If you have read my ‘Sawadee Kap (Hello) Thailand’ post (if not click here) you will already know that I have a bit of a morning breakfast/pot noodle routine which firstly entails packing up and getting on the road.  I then find somewhere with a nice view to sit and get a brew on and make a pot noodle which keeps the wolf from the door. Then I get back on the road and stop after about an hour of cycling for some carbs to feed the legs, which is normally rice and veggies at a road side shack. This is washed down with an iced coffee.  Now that I was out of the city it was much easier to find a ‘pot noodle’ stop with a view:

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Just after my pot noodle breakfast I had stopped at a 7-11 to replenish my supplies – milk, tea and pot noodles; these are the only supplies I currently need to carry with me as food is so cheap, tasty and plentiful in this part of the world.  It was here that I encountered my first wildlife of the day – Wat monkeys who seemed to be having a territorial spat with their neighbours.

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I think that the locals are used to it as they didn’t seem to bat an eyelid – it was just the farang cyclist who thought it was a great spectacle.

The landscape that I was now cycling through had once again completely changed; the padi fields of Vietnam and Cambodia (click here to see the videos I made when cycling in these countries) were replaced by the salt fields that I was now cycling past.  I just had to stop and investigate.

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I just had to stop and investigate. (9 minutes)

The roads in this area were very quiet and they had even put in a bike lane on both sides of the road:

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For those of you who know me then you will know that I have been into triathlon for the last few years and even set myself a crazy challenge of completing each of the 4 major triathlon distances in the 12 months prior to this trip (read about how I got on here) and despite the bike lanes being in place I still cycled on the road because the surface was much better and the rolling resistance less.  When you are pedaling +100kg around then every little helps and as with many things that I am finding on this trip the mental side is a big factor.

The amount of fish being dried now that I was at the coast provided not only the backdrop but the smell for the day’s cycling.  Although I could recognize some of the fish on the drying racks:

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there were others which I had no idea what they were:

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The vegetation in the area also seemed to be literally on steroids.  I was used to passing picturesque lily ponds, although I had given up trying to photograph them as the photos never quite captured their charm, the ones here were enormous and easily the size of a wheel on a car – a pretty spectacular sight.

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The wildlife was also getting bigger and I came across this giant lizard that had just crawled out of the ditch.  By the time I managed to get my camera out he had turned and sprinted back into the grasses of the verge.  I promise that you can still the lizard in this photo hidden and there is a free ice cream to those who can spot it.  (just remind if I see you on my cycle ride).

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I still hadn’t managed to find a beach as all I had seen were mudflats and salt fields.  The map showed that there definitely was one about 20km ahead of me but the wind today was once again in my face. Now that I was cycling next to the coastline it was hitting me straight off the ocean and was really killing me.  I decided that enough was enough and that the beach could wait as I changed course to head more inland so that the trees and landscape gave me a bit of a windbreak.

In the distance there was a hill and so headed towards that with the intention of getting round behind it, and continuing my way south in the lee of the hill.  When I got there I found that there was a Wat on top of it and, for the second time today, I came across a troop of monkeys; these ones seemed much happier with life and freely frolicked in the trees and chilled out while I watched them.

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That night I had arranged to stay with a couple who lived just outside of Cha Am – Paul and Natt.  There is a website called Warmshowers which puts like minded tour cyclists in touch with each other.  When I lived in Vietnam I would get cyclists come and stay every couple of weeks.  The cyclists generally stay for a couple of days and just need to get their washing done and have time to catch up on their blogs;  I don’t even think that any of the cyclists who stayed with us went into the city center.

The official blurb is that the Warm Showers Community is a free worldwide hospitality exchange for touring cyclists. People who are willing to host touring cyclists sign up and provide their contact information, and may occasionally have someone stay with them and share great stories and a drink. All members agree to host others either now or in the future, but for some members hosting may be in years or even decades in their future. Check out the website here, and you may even sign up to offer a cyclist a bed for the night. (let me know if you do)

The great thing about staying with cyclists is the route tips that they can give you and advice on finding those hidden gems.  For their honeymoon Paul and Natt had cycled nearly 8000 km through Thailand and visited every province en-route.  If these guys didn’t know the best roads to take then nobody would.  Over dinner that night I picked their brains and now have a much clearer idea of the places I will visit in the remaining 1000km or so that I have left to cycle through Thailand.

As Paul and Natt are building their own slice of paradise on the land that they have bought there was not yet any room at the inn for me to sleep which meant that this would be my first night under canvas.

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There are 4 dogs living on the property – the original strays which turned up, and now a couple of their pups.  One of them is a bit like a sausage dog and has a thing for feet.  It would come waddling over and just sit and lick my feet.  There is one area of land that is fenced off from the dogs and the grass here has been planted so is a bit like an English lawn – fairly thick and bouncy and this was where I pitched my tent.

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The  grass underneath me was surprisingly soft, and after a long couple of days in the saddle I was soon sound asleep.

To be honest, I was really looking forward to sleeping under canvas but the only slight concern was that it had rained heavily the past few nights, and as you have seen if you have watched some of my previous Vietnam videos, when it rains here it really rains.

To keep me from roasting inside it before going to bed I took the fly sheet off and just slept with the inner, which is very similar to just sleeping under a mosquito net, just not waterproof so you can probably guess what happened next….

At about 1 am I was woken by rainfall on my head and flew out of the tent to put on the fly sheet before the torrential rain hit.  About 15 minutes later I was still waiting for the heavy rain, and even the winds which normally preclude the rain had gone.  I decided to get back up and once again remove the rain sheet otherwise in the morning I would roast.  I now knew that it literally took 2 minutes to get the fly sheet on so was not too bothered if the threatened rains hit later in the night.  Whilst staring at the sky trying to get back to sleep I saw an amazing thing – about a dozen fire flies were dancing above my tent which was truly amazing.

The next morning I was awoken by the builders delivering a load of bricks.  They wanted to know where to put them as Paul and Natt had gone out.  When I checked my watch it was after 9am and I had slept for nearly 12 hours.  A fantastic nights sleep under canvas.  This cycling lark really does mean that I am getting a fantastic night’s sleep.  I phoned Paul to see where he was and it turns out that they had been waiting for the truck at a crossroads nearby as they thought it would have difficulty finding their field, but the builders had come a different way.

By the time that I had got my tent packed away, had breakfast (you guessed it – a cup of tea and a pot noodle) and a chat it was already early afternoon and so my plan for the day to reach the national park by nightfall was now not going to happen.  Instead, I decided to head just 50 km down the coast as far as Dolphin Bay and hit the waves at the beach.

And that is all I have time for today as I need to get on the road and do some cycling but I hope that you have enjoyed reading and watching about my adventures as I ventured out of Bangkok.  If so then drop me a line to say hi every now and again.

Cheers

Stewart

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Bangkok to the beach (nearly….)
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2 thoughts on “Bangkok to the beach (nearly….)

  • July 28, 2016 at 3:55 pm
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    Hi Stuart, really enjoying your posts. A quickie (dumb probably) question. I’m planning on getting a gopro mainly for use with my cycling and am a complete newbie. Do you mount your camera on your handlebars for your footage taken while you’re moving or are you holding it on a selfie stick? I seet that you seem to freely point it in all directions so am guessing it’s hand-held….but that means you must be riding with one hand. Whatever you’re doing, it looks good ?Cheers for now, Rob.

    Reply
    • July 28, 2016 at 11:46 pm
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      Hi Rob,
      I have the camera mounted onto a Gorilla Tripod (google it) and just hold one of the legs when filming. I keep it in my bar bag for easy access. Using a Gorilla Tripod also means that I can mount it on trees and fences etc to get shots of me cycling too.
      Hope this helps.
      Stewart

      Reply

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