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This section of my cycle starts and ends with a few days camping in the beautiful Thai National Parks.  In Thailand there are 127 National Parks with tigers, elephants, leopards, gaurs, and bears roaming free.  Luckily, I did not come across any of these but I did encounter some wildlife along the way which I will discuss later.

On the advice of Paul and Natt, who I had stayed with a couple of nights previous, my first stop along the coastline was the beautiful Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park.  The park is located in Prachuap Khiri Khan Province, and its name means “The mountain with three hundred peaks”.  This refers to the series of limestone hills along the Gulf of Thailand.  It is the same limestone range that runs through Phuket to the west and Halong Bay to the North in Vietnam.

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The locals use the limestone hills as shade on the beach and have an ingenious way of seeing if they are about to fall down on top of them:

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If the sticks start breaking it is time to run.

This park encompassed some amazing beaches where I pitched my tent for a couple of nights.  There are official campsites within the national parks, but there are so many deserted beaches that you can camp anywhere if you are self sufficient and have a tent and cooker with you.

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Apparently, the campsite next to the park Head Quarters was closed recently due to long-tailed macaques tearing apart tent doors, getting in and damaging personal belonging of campers in search for food.

It is amazing falling asleep on the beach to sound of waves and I really did nothing for a couple of days – just beach hopping enjoying life.

Many people live within the boundaries of the National Parks and for food I would find a ‘mom and pop’ food stand along the road.  You do not have to go far in Asia to find food and the bonus is that it is so tasty. I think that my new favourite breakfast, apart from pot noodle obviously, is a rice soup that they call porridge and the best I have found near to schools.  It is obvious in a morning which place is the most popular in a village as all the school children go there to get their breakfast to start the day.  You get a bowl of thick soup, rice and veggies – no idea what it is called but it tastes really good.  Another reason to get out on the road in a morning as if you miss the school run then these places tend to close down and at around 30 pence (UK) it is so cheap.

There really is no reason to carry food with you when cycling through Asia.  Most of the food that I have eaten so far I have no idea what it is called.  Each roadside place tends to specialize in one dish and the routine is that I park my bike, sit down and within 30 seconds I have a bowl of something steaming in front of me.  I know that I should really ask the price before eating, but I have had no surprises so far and a dish tends to be around 40 pence (UK).

If I arrive at a place where there is a choice or even a menu then I just tend to look at what people are eating and point to one of their dishes; if nobody is eating and the menu does not have pictures then it is chicken fried rice.  It always amazes me that you can be in the back of beyond and the only english people know is fried rice chicken.

The Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park was my first real encounter with wildlife in Thailand and for the first I had pulled into one of the many beaches that the park encompasses to stop for a swim.  This particular beach was also a ranger station which meant that there was a restaurant, toilets and a seating area.  After my swim I sat down to update my blog and was typing away on my laptop when a snake crawled on to the table that I was sat at.

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It definitely gave me a fright let me tell you but the real issue was what to do about it.  Unsure whether it was poisonous I called one of the park rangers over who chased it away with a broom, and boy could that snake move:

My next encounter was far cuddlier.  I had set my tent up in a coconut plantation next to a beach which was beautiful.  There was nobody around for miles except for a few fishermen who I heard at night time as they took their boats out on the tide:

That evening, just as the sun was going down a troop of monkeys came swinging through the tree tops.  There must have been around 20 of them and they stayed with me for about 15 minutes before moving on.  I am not sure what type of monkey they are but I think that they were a type of Leaf Monkey.

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After a couple of nights in the National Park it was time to get back on the road and it felt good to be back on the bike and seeing new sites.  As soon as I left the national park the ‘industry’ of the area was obvious to all of my senses – fish farms.  Some of the villages that I cycled through really did honk.  What I did for the next couple of days was to hop from beach to beach and when the sun went down I would find somewhere to sleep.  The only plan that I had was to head south.

I stopped at some amazing beaches along the way.  The coastline here is not the white sand of the Andaman Coast (west coast of Thailand) but these are more natural and wild in nature which I think is more beautiful.  I’m not sure if it because of the rainy season but there really is nobody here.  The other night I stayed at a resort in Bang Sapong Noi and the place must have had more than 50 rooms and I was the only person there.  I don’t think that I have been on a beach with more than 3 people which is totally amazing – wild, wild beaches just for me.  Cycling this part of the coastline was one of the highlights of the trip so far.

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Here is a video that I put together to show you some of the amazing beaches that I have visited along the way.  The title of the video is ‘Just Sand and Tea’ which sums up what I did during my cycle along this coast.

The end of this video pays reference to dogs – something that was about to become the bane of my life for about 60km.  It all started as I cycled through Khu Bua Forest which I just south of Thap Sakae.  I saw a few dogs by the roadside  but had no idea where they had come from as there was no sign of life anywhere – no shacks and no tracks going off the mainroad. The number of dogs soon multiplied and I must of passed at least 100 dogs within a couple of kilometres, some were solitary whilst others were in ‘packs’ with pups.  Not one of the dogs barked at me and a fair few were limping having, I presume, been hit by motorbikes or cars.  A very surreal experience.

For the next 60km though I was chased by every dog that I passed on the road.  When I entered a village it was like tip toeing through them, not wanting to wake a soul because once the first dog spotted me, and started barking, it was like sending up a flair – there was a farang cycling through the area.  Every bloody dog would then chase me for a good 5o metres.  This is the only point that I seriously thought about getting on a bus.  Then, for no reason whatsoever, the dogs stopped chasing me and became passive again, not even giving me a second thought as I pedaled 2 feet from where they lay.  Definitely something that I will always remember, and I have no idea what was going on with the dogs in this area.

Soon after leaving the forest it was getting dark and I needed to find somewhere to sleep and the first place I came across was Rocky Point Resort.  Even cycling along the track that lead to the hotel I could tell that the place was outside of my budget but ever the chancer I thought that I would have a go.  I asked at the reception/restaurant about the price to be told a figure well outside of what I was willing to pay.  The guys at the desk didn’t speak much english so I asked to speak to the owner.

The lady who turned up was just on her way out for a run and I thought a sure signal that I would get a good discount. I have a bit of a reputation for getting an upgrade at hotels.  Each year I must have 5 birthdays, harder in countries where you need to hand over your passport at check-in but still you can normally get away with a few weeks either side of the actual date, my wife’s birthday, which combined gives us 2 months of the year, and then there are wedding anniversaries and other ‘special’ occasions.

There are also the pre-stay requests which include high floor, away from the lifts, sea view, double bed etc.  Again, if some/all of these are not met then it is more reason to angle for the upgrade.  The other ‘mantra’ that I have is never accept the first room you are given as there is always a ‘better’ room unless of course you can just afford the presidential suite every time.  Honestly, it drives my wife mad but I have never heard her complain about some of the amazing upgrade rooms that we have been given.

For the next 20 minutes we discussed the managers efforts at getting fit, my triathlon exploits and cycle ride from Vietnam.  At the end of which she not only gave me a huge discount but gave me a villa room to boot.

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Don’t get me wrong, I have met some of the nicest people and my favourite night’s sleep on this trip have been in $5 rooms.   The only time that I am a bit ‘cheeky’ is when I am paying what I would call excessive amounts of money for what is just a night’s accommodation.

I had now spent over a week just beach hopping down the coast and I think that the largest distance that I had covered in a day was 50km.  Before I hit my manic phase (see my post – Tour Cycling – my schizophrenic friend if you have no idea what I am talking about) there was just time to visit one more National Park.  This time I headed to Mu Ko Chumphon National Park.  This park is very different to the other National Park that I camped in as rather than beaches most of the coastline is mangrove swamp which is home to hundreds of monkeys.  I really have been astounded by the amount and varieties of monkeys that I have seen on my cycle through Thailand.  This monkey below was just sat chewing leaves in the mangrove swamp and was not bothered by me at all.

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Once again as darkness fell I found a place next to the mangrove swamp to pitch my tent.  As it gets dark there is always about a 30 minute window where the mosquitos are out but here they were rampant and I nearly upped sticks and left as they really were vicious.  Even 40% DEET had no affect on them and I had to retreat to my tent for a while.  Once the sun had set though they seemed to disappear; not sure if it was because I was camping next to a mangrove swamp but there really were hundreds of them, seemingly, all with a thirst for my blood.

The video below shows you where I camped but may be a little dark in places as it was shot at night.  Now that I was south of the Khu Bua Forest area the dogs were once again friendly and that night I was even joined by a couple of them who would run off into the swamp every so often if the monkeys got too close which I have added to the end of the video below.

Looking back on my night in the park it was a slightly weird experience with so many monkeys around but the dogs did a good job of keeping them away and I woke up with nothing missing.

With this round the world cycle there is always a clock ticking in the back of my mind and it was now time to get my manic phase on.  That morning when I broke camp it signaled the start of a few days of cycling +140km per day as I headed south to Malaysia and crossed from The Gulf of Thailand on the east coast to the Andaman Sea on the west but more about that in my next post.

Hope you have enjoyed keeping up with my adventures.

Cheers

Stewart

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Cycling the Gulf of Thailand Coastline
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