Day 23 Ranong to Chumphon to meet friends
We left Ranong at the usual time of 5:30am, it was a nice morning and the resort owner Noyi got herself out of bed just to say goodbye to us, which was very lovely of her. As we rode off Natt and I discussed how we had not gotten a great photo of us with her, so we decided that the next time that we visit Ranong we’ll have to remember to get some. Neither of us are quite sure when that will be exactly. Our recommendation – If you’re looking for a nice place with nice people in Ranong try the Thansila Hotspring Resort, it’s about 3kms from the centre of town and around 500 metres from the hot springs.
Today’s riding was nice. We knew we had around 140kms ahead of us for the day and lots of hills, but that did not stop us. As we headed north out of town we encountered some slow, long hills, probably the biggest we’d seen so far, but nothing that we could not manage. We were happy with the fact that so far on our trip we had to push the bicycle up a hill only once, back in Trang province.
We made it to the top of the big hill, the one we were told was the longest of the trip, and we came down the other side. It was a lovely downhill with great views of the Ranong dam (my best guess of what we were seeing). A few minutes after we reaching the bottom of the big hill we had a guy on a motorcycle come up alongside and start talking to us. It took us a few moments to realize that it was Sittapong from Viriya Bicycle shop. Evidently he had come out to make sure we had made it up the hill and that our damaged tire was still holding.
He rode with us for a little way, inquired about our front tire, and then wished us well. I think he also mentioned that we should call him if we had any a serious issues arise, it was great to have this final send off, the combination of a fellow cyclist and Thai friendliness makes for some really generous and amazing offers of help and support.
We finally turned East after 60kms of northbound travel, it was great to finally be crossing over to the East coast of the Thai peninsula. We crossed the thinnest water-to-water section of Thailand, some 40 kms of land between the tidal river on the Burmese side to the Chumphon coastline. This area has seen various plans to cut a canal, similar to the Panama Canal, over the years, but all such plans have been determined to be economically unfeasible.
At a few locations you can look across the small river at it’s narrowest points into Burma. Burma looks pretty much the same as Thailand without any noticeable riverside development. It feels similar to when you look out over the Mekong into Laos.
Finally leaving Ranong province we crossed into Chumphon. It was not a very welcome sight as it was just checkpoints and warning signs along our route. I’m guessing all of this was to make sure that any Burmese traveling in Thailand have the correct papers and are not in Thailand illegally.
As we got closer to Chumphon the traffic increased. It was a little sad after all the amazing lightly trafficked roads we had been on previously. I don’t know when we will be riding on such good roads like that again. Thai drivers generally give you a wide berth and toot their horns to make sure you know they are there, but unfortunately larger truck drivers think they own the roads and take crazy risks with the lives of many with their driving style.
We arrived in Chumphon proper, headed directly for an iced-coffee stand, and then rode off to the local TAT Office. The manager of this office was very friendly and signed our log book and gave us each a t-shirt. He took time out of his day’s meetings to give us some feedback about the area before we were on our way. The girls from the TAT Office pointed out all the bicycle shop locations in town to us, as we had explained that we were on a mission to find a new front tire before the current one exploded.
We spotted our friend John Graham of BicycleThailand.com sitting at a roadside Cafe across from the first bicycle shop we visited in Chumphon, he was enjoying a beer and having lunch. We had planned to meet him sometime today but we didn’t expect it to be so soon. We pulled up and chatted a quick chat, then told him we’d be heading over to the bicycle shop for a quick look at new tires and that we’d be back for lunch, as I had noticed pizza on the menu. The shop had a couple of tires but nothing really designed for touring.
John suggested we visit the other shops in town. He knew where they all were and suggested that we might find a better tire at one of them. We actually did find a good tire at one of the shops, something that had a tread pattern and PSI rating more suited to the road. It was not a high grade tire, but it would do until we found something better. We were still hopeful that Fausto from BikeZone in Bangkok had some luck finding what we needed.
The final stage of the ride was with John to the beach, about 18kms from Chumphon town. It was slow riding as Natt and I had already done 128km by this point. We rolled along slowly towards the Nana Beach Resort (900 Baht) and it’s swimming pool. We arrived, checked in to a decent and new room, and then jumped straight into the pool to relax our legs and relish in our 145km day.
John took us to a restaurant called ‘Pirate’s of the Terrace’, a place that dished up western food and a good Pirate’s Burger (whatever that was), but it was definitely yummy. Looking back I wish I had ordered two in preparation for the 115km day of cycling ahead of us tomorrow. We drank a couple of beers and headed for bed. I was happy to see it.
Overall – Good day with 145kms and 834 metres of climbing!
