From Trailguru
Overview
| Trip Title: | Southern Thailand Bike Touring - Narathiwat to Pattani |
| Date: | Feburary 20th, 2007 |
| Trip Members: | Tpark |
| Points of Interest: | Thailand, Narathiwat, Pattani |
Map
Trip Report
Riding in the Revolution
We were off to a much faster start this morning, getting onto the road by 8am and headed out of town, using the airport and Saiburi as our first waypoint. This highway stretch was decent -- not too busy but again, as it was 400m or so off of the ocean, not particularly scenic either. So like the previous day, we tried an offshoot of hardpack road from the highway to try to find an unimproved road parallel to the highway. However, after following it for about a kilometer, it dwindled into nothing and we had to turn around.
Shannon flatted about 20 seconds after we got back to the highway from a thorn that had gone through her tire. It was about then that we acknowledged that perhaps it was a bit high risky to be straying off paved roads on Shannon's touring bike. I realize this is pretty obvious but it can be so tempting to go look for these coastal tracks when you know that the ocean is no more than a half kilometer away!
Her tire fixed (and a slime inner tube installed to hopefully at least decrease the chance of this happening again) we rode away and rode a very nice stretch between Ban Thop and La Leweng. In La Leweng we discovered how those dried Sardines in the Tom Yam soup that I love so much in Singapore get dried out (well, at least in Thailand). Literally, they just lay then out on a tarp on the scorching asphalt to dry. This would be a scene that we would see throughout the rest of our trip when we were near the ocean.
A little farther up the road, we decided to stop in and have a look at a set of buildings set back from the beach that looked royal (or at least a long way nicer than the village lean-tos and other rudimentary buildings in the area).
We were immediately greeted by very friendly Thai soldiers who were apparently guarding this landmark -- none of them spoke any English -- but somehow we still learned a lot from them. Somewhat unfornunately, they brought us water on a platter, which is a mixed blessing -- I was thirst but I didn't want to drink unfiltered water and get sick on the trip. But I drank it out of good manners and then they took us on a tour of the place. It was set on an inland lagoon and had seats that projected out onto the water where you could fish (which we learned through pantomime). It had what looked like royal insignias over much of the structure so I am guessing it was a palace for some sort of Thai royal.
Of course, the soldiers refused to just let us get on our bikes and leave, and despite me worrying that it was only day 2 and we were already falling behind in keeping up to our 100km a day target, we hung out a bit longer to "chat." So we tromped over to their picnic area and had freshly cut coconut juice as well. And then another water (which I had to drink again to be polite -- but I noticed Shannon was cheating by just sipping -- which was probably the smarter approach).
We finally extricated ourselves and headed back the direction we had come as the soldiers had indicated to us on the map that the road it showed that we were planning to take didn't actually exist. We turned towards the main highway 42 and rode through some very beautiful rice fields at harvest time. I didn't realize it but rice is actually a lot like wheat -- about 50 grains to the plant approximately. Like the fish, this was out on tarps along the side of the road drying.
On the main highway, we stopped in Saiburi and had an awesome lunch at a roadside stall. I must have put down close to 1500 calories and had three drinks and it still cost both of us less than $3.50.
After lunch, we had a look at the Hat Wasuki beach, which again Lonely Planet had raved about and again, seemed to be nothing more than a fishing port. So we backtracked and headend north along a coastal road on the map.
This stretch was fantastic -- it was about 100m off the water with a continuous view of the fishing activity on- and offshore. We watched one crew take a net full of fish onboard and passed probably 15km of drying fish along the side of the road.
As we were enjoying this, a man excited yelled at us from the side of the road, asking "Where are you going?" and somewhat excitedly tried to flag us down to stop at his house. To which, I yelled back my stock answer of "Don Sak" (which was the town with the ferry to Ko Samui that was our target). Shannon seemed concerned by his tone but I didn't want to stop. I have had other encounters like that in Southeast Asia and they have ended up in me drinking some vile homemade moonshine and singing pop songs, which is entertaining in its own right, but only when there is only 5km to go for the day that you could wobbly wheel home and not another 60-70km or more like we still had in front of us today.
About 2km down the road, however, we ominously saw perhaps the biggest military vehicle I had ever seen actually moving. It was some sort of amphibious armored troop carrier that had an enormous machine gun on a motorized turret -- which they actually turned and trained on me for a split second before the gunner recognized that we were just stupid crazy tourists and not Martians or bandits -- but enough for me to wonder. We knew that there were a small set of insurgents in this part of Thailand so we chalked it up to a "show of force" patrol.
We enjoyed more sea views until just short of Hat Khae Khae when a man who had stopped his pickup truck on the side of the road flagged us down urgently to talk to us. The Thais had been so friendly that I thought this was just a case of curiosity where they wanted to figure out what we were doing and going because tourists in southeastern Thailand are very rare and bicycle tourist even more rare still. But when he handed Shannon a telephone to talk to someone that could speak English, it was quickly clear that this was a serious situation. The phone alternated between the driver of the pickup and Shannon with the driver's sister on the other end of the phone interpreting.
It turns out that the insurgents had chosen the lunar new year to launch their own form of a Tet offensive and had blown up 23 buildings and shot one Thai dead in a drive by shooting in the last 24 hours in this province. We were completely oblivious to this, of course, because the news was all in Thai. They advised us to let them take us up the road to a town called Pattani. We agreed that it was better to be safe than sorry and accepted the ride and he zipped us the rest of the way to Pattani. On the way there he pointed out to us a large gang of Thai youth that he suspected as possibly being part of this. It did seem suspect -- they had pulled cars off the road in such a way that it seemed like it would be very easy for them to block a target car at short notice -- but with these things it seems you never know -- are you being paranoid and without this background would have suspected anything or is this real?
There we stayed in a very nice hotel here -- $45 a night, which in southern Thailand earns you a 5 star business class hotel (and also a swarm of military people guarding it). We met the owner of the hotel as we were trying to figure out what to do with our bikes and he explained a bit about the insurgents as we stood there completely out of place in our lycra. The owner, who also happened to be a deposed senator in the previous Thai government (that is, the government before the king authorized a coup by the military to replace the prime minister -- ahem) that was now responsible for drafting the new Thai constitution. He explained that, in fact, the insurgency is referred to in Thai as something like the word "bandits" and generally it was his opinion that it was the work of gangs of young kids that were just misguided and that the violence was without any real aims or coordination. Our hotel owner of the previous night had corroborated this story to some extent, saying that the "bandits" largely acted at night and when they acted directly they acted against Chinese owned businesses or businesses that they considered immoral, like massage parlors (prostitution) and Karaoke joints (alcohol... and bad singing?). One of the bandits favorite tactics was to throw what looked like large jumping jacks with sharp points out onto the road in order to flatten tires of passing cars.
It is up to the reader to decide if we were reckless in planning a trip through this region with the unrest that was going on. However, what I can tell you is that these two days were the friendliest receptions I have ever had on a bike touring trip. It was hard to go more than 200m without someone yelling "Hello!" from deep inside a hut at the side of the road and nearly everyone smiled and waved as we went past.
We decided to make the best of our short riding day with a two hour massage -- which was the best I have ever had... for $7.50 each. I usually dump on massages as for the weak but I will admit that my legs were much better than expected the next morning.
Next Day: Day 3: Southern Thailand Bike Touring - Pattani to Songkhla
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Photos
Submitted by: Tpark |
Submitted by: Tpark |
Submitted by: Tpark |
Submitted by: Tpark |
Submitted by: Tpark |
Submitted by: Tpark |