A long and sometimes winding road...

Recognizing that Thailand by bicycle gives a new and different perspective of the country, Beth ignored her newness to and nervousness about bike riding and we booked a countryside tour..

Picked up by Yo and our very helpful driver, Mr. Tin, we drove about an hour drive south of Hua Hin to Dolphin Bay.  After a quick fitting and bike test where Beth and Yo negotiated and compromised about the height of Beth's bike seat (being just high enough to prevent serious back injuries but just low enough to be bad for her posture), we headed off along the coastal drive.

The first hour was a beautiful seafront ride, paired with a surprising number of stops to drink water and eat fresh pineapple from the local fields. Along the way, we stumbled on:

• Several young men playing obscure childish games and rolling around on the beach in what turned out to be a local university hazing ritual 

• Women sitting at the ocean's edge grinding fish paste out of the catch brought in from the huge nets cast by the fishermen 

• A charming fishing village with boats galore and men readying themsevles to go and catch shrimp, squid, grouper and the like. Many of the fishermen sell their catch to the local restaurants and sell more widely to the community if there are left overs.  

• A local wat/temple where we learned all about the evolution of Buddhism from Hinduism, complete with the back-story of how Ganesha became half man/half elephant, the 3-month ritual that men undertake to practice as a monk, and some general rituals of Buddhism in the local community.

• A seaside village famous for its dried squid that had dozens of racks of hanging squid drying in the sunshine.  Although many people from Bangkok make special trips to this town to purchase dried squid by the bagful, the smell was not the most appealing for our vegetarian tastes! 

• Enormous artificial bird houses (the size of small apartment buildings) with entrance holes and chirping bird music to attract birds to come and make nests in the building that can then be collected and sold to the Chinese to make bird's nest soup.

After a few winding kilometres through a local town, we bumped along a dirt road to hit the seafront of Khao Kalok Bay, another beautiful Thailand beach. Upon reaching the village of Khao Kalok, we parked our bikes, ate more fresh pineapple and then started our hike up a rocky nature trail towards a scenic lookout point of Hua Hin area.  It was quickly apparent that Thailand has some fairly different safety standards than North America, letting people trek on very rocky and treacherous terrain without any sort of protections or supports along the way.  At one point, we were literally crawling on hands and knees in and out of rock caves to get to the lookout point.  Thank goodness we didn't have an issue with claustrophobia!


Reaching the lookout point provided as much enjoyment from actually making it up there safely as it did from seeing the wide expanse below, which once again confirmed just how lush and green this beautiful country is.

Our lunch in Pranburi Beach offered one of the best meals we have had yet in Thailand.  A rundown little shack, the food was creative, tasty and fresh and even though we weren't sure exactly what we were eating, we ate platefuls of it!

Having accomplished the 22-km ride, we opted to go a few extra kilometres to see more of the towns and countryside.  This took us onto one of the busier stretches of road as we navigated through traffic and j-walking pedestrians who seemed to take unnecessary risks when crossing the street.  It was during this time that we realized how protective and effective our guide was.  As we headed up onto a narrow bridge, our safety van had to go ahead because it was too narrow for him to trail behind.  Instead, our guide moved to the back and basically rode in the middle of this busy bridge crossing to prevent any cars from passing or coming at all near to us.  As Beth is not the fastest bicycle rider (and definitely not the best at hilly bridges!), this was a slow process and he fought of traffic for what felt like several minutes.  Needless to say, we continue to be overwhelmed by the kind and thoughtful nature of all of the Thais that we have met.

We made it to 30km before deciding to call it a day.  As we hopped in the van and headed back to our hotel, we chose to ignore the fact that a recent group of Nordic bicyclists had completed our full ride and more in just over two hours (versus our almost full day trip!) and instead closed our eyes in tired satisfaction.