Thursday 3rd March, 2011
Distance: 61km (Total: 10,801)
We had a great nights sleep thanks to the air-con in our bungalow. We stopped at the market for breakfast of coffee with condensed milk and the deep-fried doughnuts that everyone here eats. These markets are great in the morning with lots of friendly, talkative people, and it seems like most places have separate day and night markets.
Back on the number 4 we had to take a short section of a dual carriageway to get out of Ranong. After that the road was great again and as this is supposedly the most uninhabited area of Thailand we didn’t see anything much for the next 60km other than jungle and hills. Just before Kapoe we saw a sign for the beach and decided to go and check it out. This part of Thailand is a Muslim area and the number of women wearing head-scarves has slowly increased and we’ve started seeing a few more mosques. It’s also the area that was badly damaged during the 2004 tsunami and as we cycled through mangroves towards the beach we saw lots of warning signs directing people to higher ground in case of emergency.
We stopped at this buddhist retreat in the morning where we were chased by about 6 six dogs. What is it with dogs and bicycles?!
Typical roads for today.
These signs start appearing as you approach the coast.
We hit the jackpot and found a lovely little place called Wasana Resort run by a Dutch man and his Thai wife. They told us this west coast is a popular route for Dutch cyclists and many of them stop here on the way. We spent the afternoon just chilling out in their peaceful garden before taking a walk down to the beach to find an amazing 14km of sand with not a single other person on it. After what we’ve seen we didn’t expect to see that in Thailand! We had a great dinner and sat up all night drinking beer, playing connect 4 and chatting with the resort owners. They told us about a long walk around the coast and as it’s so nice here we decided to stay tomorrow and check it out.
The deserted beach at Hat Bang Ben.
