Another week of rolling through rubber tree and palm oil plantations. During this third week of our trip, I realized that we hardly traveled through any non-agriculture land in Thailand and that makes the riding, well, kind of boring. Our original plan for this tour had been to ride in the north where there are hills and even mountains, but we had to nix that plan when we learned about the pollution due to burning the fields at the beginning of each year.
On the positive side Thai people are friendly, and of course the food is good.
Back in Cabana Beach this family helped us order dinner one evening. We stopped at their shop to buy dried durian chips and durian paste on our way out of Chumphon.
The next day a fellow bicycle tourist invited us to her house to eat fresh durian, papaya, and bananas. In addition to bicycling in neighboring Myanmar and Malaysia, this woman had also visited Greece, Italy, Norway, Finland, and Sweden.
Southwest of Sawi we found a kind of secluded temple and a fun, narrow bridge to cross the คลองสวี River.
Much of our riding looked like this,
but as we got closer to Krabi, there are more limestone cliffs, a welcome change to the scenery.
In my notes I keep writing about confusion when ordering food. In the amusing more than the confusing category, we were surprised that the chicken in our chicken curry breakfast one morning was chicken feet. A couple hours later at lunch Jack ordered chicken soup and once again it was chicken feet! Twice in one day and the only chicken feet of the whole tour. I believe this is khao kha moo, a common lunch option:
If you’re not picky, a good strategy is just to go with whatever the server recommends. That’s how I ended up with this excellent, unusual salad with fried lime leaves, tortilla chips (?), cashews, seafood, and chilies in a sweet sauce.
One morning we had a fun stop in Chaiya where we found this tasty, airy restaurant;
a 500-year-old brick structure from the Ayuthaya Period;
and a well-maintained temple, วัดพระบรมธาตุไชยาราชวรวิหาร.
I was interested to come across a number of small operations where farmers bring their palm oil crop. The harvest gets weighed, the farmers get paid, and later a larger truck comes to take the product to a factory where the milling/pressing is done. These collection areas always had sprinklers to, I guess, keep the kernels from drying out.
The highlight of this week was the day we spent in Khao Sok National Park, touring the large reservoir by boat.
Thais liken the scenery to Guilin, but I remember bicycling there. Maybe Raja Ampat is a better comparison?
They took us on a short walk and pointed out rattan palms and corkscrew-shaped liana growth.
Then we had a short cave visit.
And here’s the instagram shot that contributes to the popularity of this excursion.
We spent a rest day in Ban Chiao Lan, the gateway community to Khao Sok National Park. We ate some good meals there and even had the friendly cooks make a massaman curry (not pictured) with the jackfruit seeds that we had been collecting.
What’s Ferda trying to tell us with this photo?
Our detour to Than Thong Waterfall took us on some of the quietest roads of the trip.
One wrong turn and we ended up pushing for a bit.
But we had that sorted before long.
We noticed the weather getting hotter — both from moving south and getting later in February (March and April are the hottest months). I also noted that the heat is easily manageable since we had air conditioning every night — no matter how hot we got during the day, we knew we’d cool off and sleep well at night.
Lunch in Khao Phanom with a young woman excited to practice her good English:
and dinner in the same town at a busy restaurant full of Thais enjoying Friday evening:
Getting close to Krabi…
