Unwanted off-roading...

Since Beth really enjoyed the bicycle ride we took when we were in Hua Hin, we decided to book another bike tour to explore Phuket.

Unfortunately, this one did not turn out quite so well...

We were picked up the next morning for our "easy" ride to learn that the three other people on the tour with us were expert riders, far more advanced than the "beginner" classification that was promoted on the website.  One of the men had gone for a 24 hour bike ride around the island just two days prior and another one went mountain biking twice a week in Germany and often raced competitively.

Beth shook off this concern, confident that her bike ride in Hua Hin prepared her for the "simple and flat" trails that has been described.  But things quickly took a turn for the worse as the tour, within minutes of starting our ride, veered dramatically off the main road and into the forest.

Beth had never bicycled off-road before.

To make matters worse, Phuket had suffered a torrential downpour the night before.  It had stormed for about 6 hours throughout the night, making the terrain very soft and very muddy.  It was too wet for even the locals to work the rubber trees that day!   As we wove in and out of the rubber trees, Beth fell further and further behind the group, growing increasingly frustrated with every bump and turn.  What she lacked in speed, however, she made up for in messiness, somehow getting much more filthy with mud than everyone else.

She didn't take in much of the educational part of the tour, learning only that the workers tap rubber trees in much the same way that people tap maple syrup trees, and that the rubbery substance is very stretchy and very durable and has yet to be duplicated by a man made alternative that is a durable.

Relief came when we ended up at the Gibbons Project, a charitable organization that works to save the endangered gibbons.  These monkeys are often stolen for the tourism industry and, even though "monkey tourism" is outlawed, you can often find these small monkeys in bars performing tricks for the patrons such as drinking beer and smoking and posing for photo ops.  As gibbons are very protective, when kidnappers steal a baby gibbon they will actually kill the rest of its family (often 10 or 15 at a time) to make sure that they can take the baby without any consequence.  Between this and people who steal them to keep them as pets, the gibbon population has shrunk dramatically and is now on the verge of extinction.

We were impressed to learn that the centre does its best to both save these animals and actually help them to integrate back into the wild.

After an informative tour of the Project and a quick walk to a nearby waterfall, we were back on our bikes and back into the forest to make our way through some more rubber trees and some pineapple plantations.  Beth learned the hard way that pineapple bushes have very prickly leaves!

As we finally made it to the harbor dock where we ended the ride, Beth couldn't wait to get off her bike and poor Geoff (who had taken on the role of Beth's babysitter when even the "following" guide found her too slow to ride behind) was probably just happy that this painful experience had finally come to an end.

On our ride back to the hotel we decided resolutely that next time we would only do private bike tours where we could help pick the bike route...and the bike pace!