I arrive well in Ranong, get my stamp for another 30 days and stay in a cheap guesthouse for the first night. Thailand is very familiar to me now and everything is pretty easy and a bit boring already compared to Myanmar. I don’t plan to stay that long this time and ride some fast long days on my way to Malaysia.
There are ‘hipster’ cafés again, where I sometimes have a break of course.
It would be good advertisement for the company, I guess.
After all I leave the second hand spare tire in a bicycle shop somewhere, and even get 200 Baht (about 5 €) for it.
Beside some cheap hotels I stay one night in a temple and get offered a nice pavilion for sleeping.
I get rainy days and some hours of cycling in the rain, if possible I try to wait, but sometimes I just cycle in the rain, it’s warm enough anyway.
In one place the road leads through a nice bottleneck.
In Krabi, BokBokBike from Bangkok organized a 24 teeth chainring for me, which I can fetch at a nice bike shop, called Mars Touring. It’s a wedding shop at the same time.
Now I only need to find a middle chainring with 36 teeth, which is not easy, everywhere I ask, they only have 32 teeth ones.
Eventually I cycle through a big pineapple area. They sell them in huge numbers at the roadside. I eat two of them.
In Trang I am hosted by a nice couple from warmshowers and take a rest day. Breakfast (cheese omlette on rice) in a friendly café. And a big scorpion hiding in a street sewer grate.
Every day I see beautiful thunderstorm clouds.
In one café I order cappuccino and that’s what I get. 😉 Wasn’t bad at all.
My two small devices, cycle computer and altimeter, don’t like rain and water. In Myanmar they almost gave up, but I could dry them and make them continue working. Now finally the altimeter breaks down. Luckily I can repair it, whilst I dismember, dry and clean it.
The last night in Thailand I stay in a new but cheap hotel, the village is so small, they don’t have a restaurant. I ask the boy, who works for the hotel, where I can eat. He doesn’t speak any English, but he is very willing to help me. By scooter he brings me to a small supermarket just 500 meters away. I say thank you, tell him that I will walk back, and buy something I want to cook in the hotel. On the way back I hear loud music, sure I have a look what’s going on there. It’s a small party for a 9 year old son. Immediately I am invited and get food. As I want to go home, the boy from the hotel appears with his scooter. The people translate me, that dinner is waiting for me in the hotel! Oh, what a misunderstanding. But doesn’t matter, I often eat twice.
Actually I thought, I stay one more night in a small guesthouse just 3 km before the Malaysia border. But when I arrive, no one is there. It is 4 pm, as I don’t know how long I would have to wait, I decide to cross the border just now and leave the safe place with doubtful prospects about where to stay the first night in Malaysia…