I saw another Farang! There was a white guy down by the swimming pool at today's hotel - I'm not the only foreigner in Songkhla province after all. He's definitely the first white guy I've seen in a couple of days now.
I'm in Songkhla today, after a ride down the east coast. This is my last night in Thailand; tomorrow I'll ride down to Malaysia and either go down the east coast there or go down through the middle and try to spend some time in Taman Nagara national park - the oldest surviving rainforest in the world (the ice age didn't get this far down). Not sure how practical it would be to go offroading there - we'll see!
I had a work call to do this morning and it was a strange feeling to be talking to someone in an office block in Tokyo while I had my feet up gazing out over the waves. Quite hard to stay focused on work, too.
One little mystery solved: every day while riding in Thailand I've seen quite a few scooter riders carrying a large cloth-covered cube in one hand. I haven't been able to work out what it was - my best guess was a birdcage, but that made little sense - so today I flagged one down and asked him.
It was a birdcage! I have no idea why so many Thais ride around carrying songbirds with them, and I couldn't ask him as he spoke not a word of English and I speak neither Thai nor Bahasa Malaya. There's been quite a big language barrier over the last couple of days, but it's amazing how far you can get with a smile and some inventive sign language. Try as I might, though, I couldn't make "what time in the morning will my laundry come back?" understood with sign language, so I could be riding back into Malaysia in my underpants tomorrow.
Most of today's ride was spent in an area called Ko Yo (I think) - a long strip of land separating the Gulf of Thailand from a massive inland lagoon. Kind of hard to describe - have a look on Google Maps to see what I mean. This is big sky country - the land is a lot more open than the usual rampant press of jungle plants...
...and the whole area is very rural. The promontary seems to consist of one immense beach, backed by an endless line of beach shacks, then the road, then an expanse of prawn farms. I stop for lunch at Pak Trae, a tiny hamlet, and the six-year-old girl who's been pressed into service as a waitress for her dad's food stall gingerly approaches me, quickly puts down the menu (in Thai only) in front of me, leaves her order pad and pencil next to it, then smartly steps back a few feet and watches me warily. Either that or she just thought I smelled a bit, which I probably did.
A few local boys who speak some English strike up a conversation, very eager to practice their English. We talk about this and that, and Maa tells me how he rode his 100cc scooter to Chiang Mai. Hang on - yes, we're near the southern border; yes, his skin is darker than the average in Thailand - yup, the Malay bikers strike again!
Fishing round here hasn't yet been mechanised and rolled out on a vast scale - traditional fishing boats moor in a small estuary...
...and another is filled with old wooden fishing... fishing... *things*, I believe is the correct term.
On down the coast, passing estuary after estuary...
...until finally I reach Songkhla. Songkhla appears to be an oil town, hence the sight of another Farang by the swimming pool, and it's surprising to see the clear distinction between the rural, ramshackle peninsula on one side of a bridge, and a bustling, rich city on the other side.
In rural southern Thailand the roads seem to be exclusively populated with three types of vehicles: the ubiquitious scooters, pickup trucks (Toyota Hi-Lux or Isuzu only), or large trucks. But here in Songkhla I actually saw an old VW Beetle and a new Merc - ah, these cosmopolitan city folk.
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