Escaping Paradise

The weather got progressively worse while we were in Railay until, on the last day, we were basically hiding in our room while it poured down outside. Of course, to leave the peninsula we had to go outside and in the few minutes it took us to get down to the waterfront we were pretty wet. We had assumed that we would be able to get a boat pretty quick after arriving at the beach; boats had been coming and going all the day over the course of the week. Unfortunately, the weather was bad enough that the fellow at the boating office, gesturing towards the turbulent ocean, said that there might not be any more boats for the day (it was about 11am at this point). A couple of other people were standing around waiting for boats as well and they had all been told different times for boats arriving so we figured there was still hope. So we stood around pretty wet and a little cold and stared at the gray ocean, willing a boat to arrive through the waves.

And it worked. It was less than an hour before a boat arrived and we were able to throw our bags on and jump in. The only downside of this was of course that the reason the boats might not be running was that there were some fairly considerable waves outside our little bay. I am not too big a fan of being out in big waves on small boats so I found the experience a little stressful. While we were in a trough of a wave we couldn't see past the crest of the next to see land (or anything else for that matter). I wanted to get a video of this with our camera, but I was a little too nervous to let go of the boat. Our captain turned out to be pretty adept though, working at diagonals to our intended direction in order to ride the crests of waves and the ride was fairly smooth. This compared favorably to some of the other boats we saw that were being tossed all over the place as their drivers rammed straight on.

It wasn't too long a ride and soon we were, happily, back on land. The adventure of travelling in Asia began anew. Thinking we were too smart for the fairly expensive taxi racket that was organized at the boat dock, we started walking towards what appeared to be a main road. We were rewarded fairly quickly when a covered pickup came over and grabbed us and for a reasonable price we were on our way into town. It turns out though we were going in the wrong direction. After a few minutes we were confusedly transferred into a different truck and were heading back the way we had come, the correct way to Krabi. After arriving in Krabi we took the first reasonably priced room we could get and did our best to set up some of our clothes to dry. We then headed back out to eat and explore a bit before settling in for the night.

The view from the covered pickup as we made our way into Krabi. We thought it was just crazy how much water there was. It only got worse though.

Trying to dry off in our hotel room.

We were up early the next morning, I think around 5:30 or so, in order to catch the 8am bus from Krabi into Bangkok. It was still raining. We initially assumed that we would be able to flag down a pickup or taxi on one of the main roads, but maybe due to the rain, no one was around. We ended up popping into a hotel to ask them to call us a cab and the enterprising fellow woke up his son and made him take us to the bus station. About then things started going a little wrong for us. It turned out that all the basses were sold out going back to Bangkok, everyone was trying to escape the rain. Meg was able to figure out that we could get a bus to a more central hub town instead and get a bus north from there. "There are many many buses from this city to Bangkok" we were told. Fortunately a bus left for the town at 9:30 and we were back on our way. Unfortunately, as was pretty common, the bus had its air conditioning cranked all the way so the bus was freezing cold. Being soaking wet made this experience even worse and we ended up in the fetal position on our seats trying to avoid hypothermia on the three hour trip. To top it off, it seemed that there was some serious leakage problems on the bus so there was cold water pouring from the roof all over the seats and on to peoples heads.

That wasn't too pleasant but after a few hours the bus ticket collector came by to ask us where we wanted to go, as we were nearing the end of the trip. Meg told him we were hoping to go to the main bus station to go to Bangkok. The guy nodded and we were soon dropped off at a bus station. Hindsight being what it is we should have been a little alarmed at this point. For one thing there were no proper bus company stalls at the station, and for another there were only two buses available heading up to Bangkok and they weren't leaving until the evening. We decided instead to take a more expensive route and take a minivan up to Bangkok. We just wanted to get there and have a proper sleep. The minivan wouldn't be around for a few hours so we went for a walk to explore a bit and grab a lunch.

The view from the bus station where we spent several hours one day in the spring of 2011.

We came back after lunch to find that the roads were so flooded heading up north that the minibus couldn't make it through. The trains had also been cancelled as the tracks were flooded. We decided to take a big bus instead and as it wasn't scheduled to leave for a few hours went out walking again. This time on our return our bus vendor seemed quiet agitated as it turns out our bus had been cancelled. At this point, we hopped into a friend of his' pickup and he drove us to what ended up being the REAL bus station. There had been buses leaving hourly going north all day long and we had missed them all. It was possible that all of the rest of the buses were full now as well. Fortunately the vendor was pretty good to us in the end and was able to get us two seats to Bangkok. It was pretty frustrating realizing that we had wasted the whole day, but it was nice that the guy put the effort in to get us out of the city in the end. I think he still made a profit on us.

Relieved to be on the big bus and getting out of Dodge, we had a few minutes before it got completely dark to take in the craziness of the flooding. Water was up to peoples thighs on the side of the road, cars and motorbikes were pulled over and abandoned while boats powered along picking stranded people up. On the lighter side, we saw a few kids fishing the river/street from the sidewalk in front of their house.

After all of the chaos from the previous day the rest of the trip to London went really smoothly. The owners of the Bangkok hotel we had reserved a room for the night were understanding and didn't require that we pay for the night, and they shuttled us and our bikes to the airport. Our plane trip was on schedule and we were able to take the tube to within a block of our hostel downtown. Which was good news as we were dragging our boxed bikes everywhere at that point.

Railay

From Koh Sukorn we made our way uneventfully to Railay for the second half of the relaxing in Thailand phase of our trip. Railay is famous for it's beautiful beaches set amidst a landscape of steep karsts and jungle. It is also really popular with rock climbers, the limestone cliffs seem to be their ideal playground.

It really was beautiful. The beaches were great to run on and though we didn't do any climbing ourselves it was fun to see other people up there hanging around. The only unfortunate thing was the rain. Throughout the week the rain got progressively worse until, at the end, we were holed up in our room reading all day while rain pounded down around us. To go outside was to be instantly soaked, and there was no sun to dry our clothes. Anyway, more about the good times.

Meghan and Andrea, in the rain, with the beautiful karsts.

A lovely stroll, on a lovely beach

A happy couple

Aside from going for runs along the beach (which was surprisingly fun, considering we were just going back and forth, back and forth over and over again), we drank wonderful coffee, had good chats, went for a few swims, and had a couple day trips.

Run, run, run

The water was so nice and blue!

The gang of five spent a day snorkelling on an island tour which took us to four or five nearby islands. We managed to have reasonably good weather for the entirety of our adventure with the downpours holding off until we were (nearly) home to our hotel rooms. The snorkelling was good and we saw lots of fun fish. It was a sad farewell to Pamela and Dave, who left us behind for a few remaining days on Railay...the gang was now down to three. We went to Koh Phi Phi for the day and soaked up glorious sun, ate yummy curries, and enjoyed the mass amounts of people that were here--a little more lively than Railay.

Finally, it was our turn to leave, leaving Andrea behind on her own for one extra day...more sad goodbyes! Little did we know that it would be such an adventure to get to Bangkok...

Off to the Beaches

We arrived in Bangkok and eagerly awaited Andrea's arrival (Meghan's old roomie from university) and filled out time with a trip to McDonald's, escapades to get bike boxes while the boys dismantled and packed up all 4 bikes, and an evening of random karaoke and dinner. This felt like a perfect addition to our time in SE Asia as karaoke is raging popular and we had not yet taken part. Pamela and I wailed away (and I think the boys will attest that wailing is a good description) to Backstreet Boys and a couple other ditties that I can't recall. We had fun, the audience was...amused...and we even got a gift handed to us onstage...

A 20 Baht note and tissue flower given to Pam and I from an admirer in the audience

Andrea arrived in record time having just brought carry on luggage and we flew out the next morning from Bangkok to Trang City. From there, we had a mix of minivan and boat to get us to our final destination, Sukorn Beach Bungalows on Koh Sukorn. Andrea's mad Lonely Planet research skills landed us in a piece of paradise for 5 days--a tiny island with only four other resorts on it we had the beach to ourselves.

Pam and Andrea chillin' and relaxin' on our way to Sukorn. Fortunately this photo is taken before the sunburn that came as a result of this boat trip.

We had a most relaxing time--with cute little bungalows, a nice restaurant, and the beach about 50 steps from our door it was hard to do anything else! The days were sunny and warm, with a thunder shower in the afternoon for a couple hours (at which juncture we took advantage of moving indoors and napped, had a beer and a snack, and read our books) that would clear away by dinner time. With the warm weather abounding, and feeling like he was back to civilization Cameron decided it was time to rid himself of his beard.

Is this actually the same man in all three pictures?

Cameron, in his own piece of paradise...water, sun, a good book, and no one else around!

When we all felt full of relaxation we decided to get up and on the move a little bit. A day of fishing on the ocean was just what was needed and so off we went...the five of us, Tom our fearless guide, and Tom's father, a well-seasoned fisherman. We spent the day on the water using plastic pop bottles with fishing wire wrapped around them as our lines, squid as our bait. It was fun and we had just enough being caught to keep things exciting. A few bottom feeders, a little bit of coral (whoops!), and finally something we could eat.

Dave, with Tom and his Dad, getting our lines sorted

Red snapper caught by moi...I feeling like I'm born to be a fisherwoman (please refer to earlier Ontario posts)

The girls went out the next day on a snorkelling trip while the boys held back for an adventure day. This meant they were going to run around the whole island, climb the highest mountain, scale a cliff and drink beer...they did accomplish about half of this I believe. Us girlies had a great trip and saw some beautiful fish, really colourful coral, and nice limestone cliffs.

Celebrating (sadly) our last night in paradise..little did we know what was to come

No words needed

The End of the Bike Trip

Meg "the Grinder" Muhle climbing yet another hill.

Leaving Oudamxai we were heading south-west, down a valley, to meet back up with our old friend the Mekong. We rode two days through the valley and quite honestly it wasn't pretty. The hills surrounding the road had been deforested and the crops planted in their place harvested and burned for the season. The riding was good though as the road was in fairly good shape and there was not alot of traffic. Also, the road had not really caught on with tourists yet, a fairly rare event during our Laos travels, and the towns we visited gave us a better feeling for Laos life, not to mention Laos weddings (every big sized town seemed to have one or two going on). Along the route were also some of the poorest villages we have seen on our travels, with children with obvious signs of malnutrition watching us as we passed by.

Where our highway met the Mekong was the town of Pak Beng. A funny little town that works on two shifts. Early morning and 6pm onwards; this is the schedule for the river boat departures and arrivals respectively. People arrive in the evening on the boats from/to Thailand and then depart early the next morning to/from Vientienne (capital city of Laos). We arrived early afternoon so the town was pretty quiet and many of the restaurants were closed. Our plan on arrival was to catch a boat the next morning to go 30 minutes upriver to a drop off point at a highway heading into Thailand. After speaking with a restaurant owner over a few excellent (and expensive as it turns out) curries we learned that we could actually bike up to the highway and cross the river on a ferry, cutting out the boat ride. We had about 40km on the other side of the river before getting to the Laos/Thai border and we weighed the option of biking all the way to the border that afternoon, but decided against it. The map indicated that the terrain was hilly and the restaurant owner confirmed it. Instead, we settled into a relaxing afternoon of playing cards and having beer. For awhile Meg and Pam tried to convince the crowd of offloading boat tourists to exchange our Laos Lonely Planet for a Thai one. Everyone seemed pretty tout weary though and wouldn't bite. The next day started with a short 10km ride on a ridiculously nice highway. It turns out that Thailand was helping build up the highway from northeastern Thailand into Northern Laos. This seemed to coincide with another big project coming from Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam into Oudamxai, so maybe there was an effort to improve highway transportation from Thailand into Vietnam. The nice thing for us was that they had built the highway, but the trucks hadn't come (yet). Likely this was because they had not yet build a bridge across the Mekong and the ferry seemed capable of only taking one big truck at a time.

After crossing the Mekong we started the "hilly" section of the day. It turns out that we were back in the land of the super-grade where the only thing dictating how steep the highway is, is whether the highway equipment flips over backwards when trying to build it. We spent the better part of the day climbing, with steep descents not lasting long enough to give our legs a break. On a few of the uphills we almost hit our breaking points and thought of flagging a truck down to get us the hell out of there, but luckily trucks weren't very frequent and we were able to persevere. The surroundings during the biking were pretty nice, though, honestly, I spent much of my time looking at my front tire. The highlight of the day was when Meg flagged down a watermelon truck and we spent 15 minutes eating watermelon with the truck driver and his family. The low light was that we didn't have a GPS device with us to show just how hardcore we were.

Everyone loves watermelon, even the people who grow them, and babies.

Our last encounter with the Mekong, a ferry crossing.

We arrived in the Laos border community early in the afternoon, and really, it wasn't that great. We had a well deserved, though undesirable lunch and after much deliberation (we were tired after all the hills, but weren't digging the town) we decided to research the option of leaving Laos immediately rather than the next day. The only thing holding us back from crossing the line was that we didn't know where the first guesthouse would be. We were far enough off main stream tourist routes (the border we were crossing only opened to foreigners six months previously) that the Lonely Planet Thailand we had ended up purchasing in Pak Beng only indicated that there was a guesthouse about 130km across the border. After asking four different people and getting four different answers as to how far the nearest guesthouse was across the border (ranging from 2km to 19 or 90km) we decided to take the plunge and go for it. I didn't mention this before, but standard Laos restaurant food is not that good in large quantities. There is only so much rice with fried vegetables or noodles with fried chicken that a person can take. I had hit my threshold about eight days before reaching the border and was having a hard time getting food into my stomach. Everyone else was to varying degrees suffering the same. Visions of pad thai, red curry and hot and sour soup overrode our fear of sleeping on the side of the road in Thailand.

See how Dave has pushed me out into traffic? He did that alot.

After we crossed the border we only travelled a few kilometres before we found a "resort" to stay at. It was a relatively expensive hotel, even with all four of us staying in the same room. The story we heard from a Finnish expat who was hanging out in the town (avoiding immigration police it seemed) was that the only people who stayed in the town were professionals working at the local hospital. These folks had their rooms paid for by the government so didn't really care how much they cost. We definitely weren't in Laos anymore! Unfortunately we still ended up having fried noodles for our first meal, though it was accompanied with some fried beef that was quiet nice.

The next day of riding started extremely well. The roads were new and wonderful, the best we had seen on our bike trip. We were rolling so smoothly it felt like we had lost weight over night. The hilliness of the previous night continued though, only more so. It seems the Thai had the developed some technology to build even steeper roads, perhaps trucks with lower centers of gravity. There were a few points where, if I tried to remain sitting in my seat, I would pop-a-wheelie (to use a term I haven't since I was twelve years old) and lose control of my steering. It was pretty fun. As we settled into a river valley the hills got progressively easier. As the mountains gave way, the riding got nicer and nicer until it was some of the most enjoyable we had had on our whole trip. The road was winding with gentle hills, and surrounded by pretty forests. For awhile we road along a ridge that gave us nice views of the mountains on either side. Eventually the hills disappeared completely and we were riding flat. The trees gave way to towns and homes and the riding became more mundane. Then Dave got a flat tire. Then it started it to rain lightly. Then Dave got another flat tire. Then another. (Broken pieces of glass were starting to get through his tires and pop the tube. It turns out his tires were starting to fall apart a bit under the stress of the kilometers, they weren't really meant for touring evidently.) At that point it really started to rain and our plans to put in a huge day to cycle all the way to Nan (140km from our starting point) fell apart. Instead we settled on a bustling little town called Pua which not only had a guest house, but also a 7-11! Civilization! Relieved to get out of the rain we hung up our wet clothes, had a hot shower and Meg and I went out to look into our options for getting out of there. The extreme hills of the previous few days had ruined our plans to get down to Bangkok. We had been intending to bike down and intersect with the rail system and then train south. We were now about 180km and a mountain range away from the train, and needed to be on board the next day at 5pm. Riding was no longer an option. Sadly, it seemed nor was busing. The really nice bus lines wouldn't take bikes and the lesser bus services were completely full for the next day and a half. We decided that we would have to bike the 60km or so the larger town of Nan the next day and try to get a bus from there. After getting ourselves sorted we settled in and had an extremely good Thai meal.

"The Day of Flats", but everyone is still smiling. Except me, because Dave's high flat count made us lose the gender based flat count contest.

Pam and Meg, cruising the ridge line. To take a line from our friends at McDonalds, they're lovin' it.

The next morning we woke at 5:30 (with plans to be on the road by 6, we had alot of unknowns ahead and had to be in Bangkok the next day) and it was raining really hard. After getting ready to go I stepped outside to watch the rain fall and think angry thoughts. I wasn't very keen to ride in the rain again. At that moment a songthaew (covered pickup) passed and I flagged it down. He pulled a mildly illegal manoeuvre, parked in the hotel parking lot, and agreed at a really low price to get us and our bikes down to Nan. We weren't all ready to go yet so there was a flurry of activity while the driver helped himself to the hotel's instant coffee. We were then packed on the pickup with our bikes and on our way to Nan. We arrived in Nan at 8am, a little dazed by the speed at which everything had come together and Meg was able to find us a day bus going all the way to Bangkok. We could have gotten a bus to the train as well, but it would have cost more and taken longer, not a great combination. I think it was around 11am that we stuffed our bikes and gear on the bus and scrambled on board, it was 9pm when we arrived in Bangkok. Dave bargained a truck for us and we got to the hotel around 11:3opm. That was it. The end of our bike trip.

Crazy, three months of cycling are over. Meg is saddened.