Travel Blogging Archives - Page 7 of 40

Visiting Phi Phi

Posted on March 19, 2014

Today I was in tourist mode again off out on a day long boat trip around and on Phi Phi from Lanta including lunch on The Beach with a thousand others.

We started on a regular boat (good experience for the next few days of island hopping) which transferred a load of folks onto the big boat to Phuket, whilst still out of the harbour at Phi Phi (praying this is not going to happen to me when carting my bike around). We docked at Phi Phi then transferred to a ‘long tail’ the distinctive boats that have a regular car engine hooked up to a long shaft with a prop at one end. Very noisy & smelly 🙁

First stop was a very pretty lagoon the east side of Ko Phi Phi Le where we all leapt in and had a swim, no fishes here but a sandy bottom & of course loads of other boats.

We then moved to the south of the island where we could snorkel with shoals of fishes, pretty impressive a bit like swimming in an aquarium, the current was quite strong so a bit of effort needed to get back to the boat.

Then it was round to the west and the cove & beach made famous in the film. Blackpool eat your heart out, the place was rammed with boats & folks even so it is still very impressive scenery and the water is surprisingly very clean.

After lunch it was a quick stop at monkey beach but the monkeys were monkeying about and no where to be seen! so back to the main island of Phi Phi, no evidence of the mass destruction from the Tsunami on Boxing Day 2004, just loads of shops and thankfully no cars or motorbikes allowed, If the weather was cooler it would make a great place to explore.

So a good day out and pretty good value at £22 or so. Didn’t bother lugging the big camera around so only a few pics with the iPhone here

Lazing on Lanta Island

Posted on March 18, 2014

In fact to be more precise; a lazy day on and by the magnificent beach of Klong Dao near Saladan Town. I took a barefoot walk to the far end of the beach where I had a fresh coconut 🙂 then it was back to the Bee Garden for a two hour massage by the beach the first hour devoted to my feet the next hour to be massaged with coconut oil. I guess I will soon be a coconut.

I’ve now found there is a ferry from this island to Koh Lipe where I can stay the night then a ferry to Langkawi Island which is in Malaysia followed by a ferry to Penang which is connected to the Malay mainland. According to bikemap.net from there to Singapore is 760km so about 10 days at a relaxed pace.

Given the pressure is now off ,since I still have 20 days before my flight I’ve booked myself in for a day of snorkeling around Phi Phi island tomorrow

A long day from Phrasaeng to Khlong Dao on Geoff’s SE Asia tour

Posted on March 17, 2014June 8, 2014

I thought today was going to be a ton up day. However, it turned into an only 97 mile day 🙂 but given the heat & weight still a good day.

It’s still totally amazing to me the sharp contrast between tourist & non tourist areas both in pricing, availability of stuff in shops & getting understood. It would be really interesting to see how the transition works & what is the catalyst that flips the switch.

The roads today were filled with huge trucks carting the fruit of palm trees to be rendered into palm oil, the road was strewn with the bunches that had fallen of the trucks, fortunately non hit me..

The hottest part of the day is awful and I just felt like giving up as it’s impossible to stay hydrated & motivated. However, after 4pm I had managed to buy yet another, about the 4th I think, smart new Lightning connector for the iPhone so I managed to talk to Sally on Facetime for close on half an hour (82MB of data) & then Nick for 7 minutes (22MB of data) both with unbroken connections whilst pedalling along at 15 mph. Truly amazing really to have live video conferencing on a push bike essentially for free whilst mobile & with a 7 hour time difference. Very James Bond 🙂

I managed to make both the small ferries to get on Koh Lanta with no waiting, a great advantage of bike touring! You just bike past the big queue and jump on board 🙂

The Bee Garden, although it should be called The Beer Garden given all the German accents here, Had a room for me and a great view of the setting sun with a beer in my hand.

So i did the 97 miles between sunrise and sunset ! The Strava is here:

Todays pictures are here

Geoff’s SE Asia tour – Don Sak to Phrasaeng

Posted on March 16, 2014

With a cock crowing away outside my door it was obviously time to be on the move! so after dutifully doing my emails etc I was back on the road at 6.45am ready to cross from the East coast of Thailand to the West coast.

The wind was behind me and with smooth roads I made good time stopping for a Thai breakfast followed by a Amazon smoothie. I was pounding along quite merrily when suddenly I was bumping along with a flat rear tyre. 🙁 So after taking the luggage off and upending the bike I discovered a 2 inch nail had embedded itself in my brand new tyre & innertube :-(( I quickly extracted the nail, changed the tube and was on my way again.

On the way I met a Scottish guy who had made a contraption to fix his road bike onto his moped. I guess in Vietnam they would just have strapped it on with some bungees 🙂 In Puang Promkhon I found a shop where they expertly fixed the punctures caused by the nail going right through the tube 🙁 So I now have a spare again. It’s amazing that I did the 3000 miles to The Black Sea with no punctures whereas in the 1800 miles cycled so far I have had 4 punctures 🙁

After 80 miles I called it a day in the city that has a bulldozer on a pedestal in the central square, Phrasaeng. I really struggled finding the hotel which everyone was sure in the town. At one point a guy had me following him on his motorbike, only to take me to his house! I turned tail & escaped. Eventually someone in a smart car showed me where it was – I would never had found it as the sign was totally in Thai.

So by the time I stopped cycling it was 83.9miles when I arrived at โรงแรมพรทิพย์. (Hotel Porntip according to Google translate). Here is the Strava:

Todays pictures are here