Wednesday was a rest day in Ao Nang
It's a hard life.
I got talking to Ya, a cookery teacher in Ao Nang, who told me something of her life growing up in a rural village near the Laos border in North Eastern Thailand. She says that shrimp paste occurs in so many Thai dishes because for many villagers, like her, it was about the only protein they could afford. They had no money at all when she was a child, but then what is there to buy in a village in the jungle? She saw a Farang (foreigner) for the first time when a helicopter crashed near her village when she was six, but then no more until she left the village when she was ten. Now, she sees them every day, she says, still sounding surprised at how things turned out. She even went as far as marrying one, moving to Europe with him and ending up as a cook in and eventually chef de cuisine for a hotel in Luxembourg, before coming back to Thailand to found her own cookery school.
Today I'm back on the road, but with a change in plan. There's still at least 1000km to go to Chiang Mai, my original vague destination, but that's two or three days highway riding there and the same back again (if there are any Malay bikers listening that's two or three hours, one-handed, and I'll have six whiskies at the end and head back South doing a perpetual wheelie) and I won't get to see much of the intervening country. So instead I'm off onto the local roads, heading east into Surat Thani province, then will potter more slowly down the East coast of Thailand and Malaysia.
The roads, again, are luscious green winding affairs...
...usually lined with flowering and fruiting trees...
...(is that Jackfruit?) and roadside stalls selling everything you might want...
...as long as you might want dried fish.
I pass hundreds of scooters laden with all sorts of cargos - vegetable, mineral, animal and human - some of whom are even wearing helmets. Most smile and wave, though the two long-distance cyclists I saw baking in the midday sun, in the middle of nowhere, didn't but then I'd be surprised if they had energy to spare to wave.
Finally on to Hat Piti, a beach south of Surat Thani, and I'm getting the feeling that not many Farang head out this way. All but the major road signs are in Thai script, people look surprised to see me, and when I road over a small wooden bridge over a tiny stream in which some kids were swimming, one was so shocked he ran off yelling. I haven't seen a Starbucks for quite a while now. But as I was wandering down the side roads near Hat Piti, looking for a hotel I'd heard about, I paused at a street junction trying to figure out if I could recognise ANY of the road signs as the one I wanted, and a street vendor looked up at me then pointed emphatically down the road to her left. She was right as well, though I have no idea how she knew where I was going.
I guess most of the Farang just head through for the Ferry terminal for the world-class resort islands of Koh Samui, Koh Pha Ngan and Ko Tao, just offshore. Everyone I speak to certainly assumes that's where I'm headed, but although Koh Samui is great I'm deliberately avoiding it. I had my honeymoon on Koh Samui and it was the perfect time in the perfect place with the perfect woman. Nearly ten years on she's still perfect, so I don't want to go back to Koh Samui and find out that it isn't - I'd rather remember it the way it was then.
Hat Piti is almost deserted...
...though Muy, the hotel owner, proudly tells me she's expecting a group of 800 bikers from Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia next month, en route to the nearby small coconut-farming town of Sichon. I'm not sure why.
A walk along the beach shows more evidence of animal life than of human...
Now it's off to the restaurant to find out whether Muy is a Buddhist or Muslim - i.e. can I get a beer with my dinner?
Edit: Buddhist. Lovely.
0 comments:
Post a Comment