Wat Khlong Nam Khem > Phraphut Kiti Sirichai (52km)

Today we cycled mostly along the coast. The beaches are much more clean than what we have seen previously. The presence of many resorts explains largely and easily why. Today, we took a new resolution for 2016, we will try to take more pictures of ourselves and the bicycles. I used to do that in New Zealand but I think it faded away, a bit. I want to improve that cycling feeling when reading or watching these pictures. We finished the end of this day by visiting a huge Buddhist temple. So nice that we came back at night to get some special shots. Except that my camera did not catch much what we have seen and enjoyed tonight. That’s frustrating!

Map.

Hey, you see? First picture, Stephane :-) How is that? I kept my promise ;-)

A nice big bay with palm trees.

Same same but different.

Wow! What’s happening here?

Thai flags paired with the Buddhist religion flags.

There is the portrait of the King and the Queen. This must be a government building like a city hall, something like this.

Fishing boats.

A lot of fishing boats!

This old fisherman must be checking and repairing his nets.

On the other side of the bridge there is some other fish farm, I guess. There is lots a prawn farms in this region too so it could be one or the other.

Hop! another one :-) I’m not here but my bike is. Nearly the same :-)

Yesterday, I thought we would have the time and the energy to arrive here by night time but we didn’t. There is a temple just next to the sea. It would have been the perfect spot for the night.

Wouch! Nice :-)

The other beach.

A close up on the sculpture’s temple.

Again, those nice little wooden shelter.

The place is actually touristy. Finally it’s better that we did not make it yesterday.

And we keep cycling along the sea. What is that? These are fishing traps I guess. A couple of guys are working on them. They must sell them or be very hungry to produce that amount.

We walk around that local village. Straight away, the dogs are barking at us. Since few days now, we noticed that dogs here are becoming more and more aggressive. More we go north, more they are and worse they behave.

This is a bamboo house for sure.

They must be not very rich people but they have good taste. Look at this view on the ocean.

Everywhere we walk we see big rock and fishing cages.

That’s a nice little village.

More and more cages.

Let’s have a look to the sea view.

Few! That’s blue :-)

A fishing boat? Doesn’t look very stable but it’s very colourful.

Back on the road :-)

A bit further along the way, we finally understand what those long blue mesh table are used for.

They dry fish, a lot of them.

Should I keep eating them?

The beach here is super clean!

As we were looking for a place where to eat, we found this shop. Fried banana and potatoes! How to resist? 10 baht of each please? Kapunkaaap :-) That woman is very friendly, she speaks a tiny bit of english and laughs the whole time haha.

The Chef is cooking more banana. Hmmm, so much fat! ;-)

Still cycling along the beach. What going on here?

This is a call! That means: you must have a nap here.

Pwaaah, wonderful white sand under palm trees with hammocks.

Such a hard like to be homeless ;-)

The beach belongs to a resort which is on the opposite side of the road. No one came to us to say: “Hey, move your a** from here please!”. Okay, let’s have a nap :-)

I dragged my bike on the beach because there is not much space on the side of the road. Before having a little nap, I must repair one of the leather handle I bought in Singapore about 3-4 months ago now, something like this?

With the perspiration and the shortness of this handle (due to the Rohloff shift wheel width), the leather completely lost its original shape. It’s now too wide. The glue underneath doesn’t maintain anything anymore. Plus, the way I’m riding makes the handle sliding constantly to the left which is very annoying. I must find the way to fix that. I’ll explain in the next post. This is not complicated. It just needs a bit of patience and the right tool.

Finally I did not have anytime to sleep. 4pm came by and we got on wheels again. Looks like there is a huge temple over there. Let’s have a look :-)

Yes, that’s a good one apparently. I’m afroad we will have to climb this hill.

We are getting close but for now, no hill yet. It must be steep…

Arf, that was hard but short.

Before the temple, there is this nice huge Buddha to see. Very nice.

Still the same two flags :-)

The view down the hill and far away.

Let’s walk to that temple “Phra Mahathat Chedi Phakdi Prakat” on Google maps. It’s called “Wat Thang Sai” too apparently.

The guardians of the temple.

Few! very nice, very impressive!!

Lucky us the weather is fantastic today.

Seriously, this temple impresses by its size, decorations, symetrie and gold!

I understand why Thailand buy so much gold per year ;-)

Nice smile ;-)

Gif!

We can even have a look inside.

Wow…

Few! What to say…

The view towards the north from the terrace.

The “Gong” tower.

Finally we came back down, around the huge Buddha. The sunset is on the way.

A monk statue with golden leaves sticked on it.

Monk and sunset.

The visit being finished for now, we came down the hill to find a place where to eat. That time, I could get the fried noodles I like very much :-) Not Like last time. I like when they give us chilli and sugar. If we put too much chilli, we can add some sugar too lower the effect. Thanks Robin for the lesson ;-)

This tiny cat seems to be interested in something. The food? Naaan… ;-)

That’s where everything starts. After dinner, we got in a temple across the road and found a good spot to sleep. We explained to the Monks that we would leave our stuff, visit the big temple again and come here later to sleep. They seemed to understand and agreed. So we came back cycling the same hill again but with a much lighter bike. It was nearly too easy then ;-)

Up there, we let the bike front of the entrance and walked towards the temple again. Stephane wants to get a night shot of the temple with the stars behind it. I’m not sure if I could do the same without any tripod and my tiny camera. At least, I would try my best and push the camera to its limits, which is not very far… The picture above is the result. You can see what I’ve done and compare with Stephane with his camera and photoshop here at the end of his page. This is annoying to travel with a photographer! Mine looks so bad… Even photoshop did not help much haha. The worse is that even himself complains about his camera saying it’s not good enough. Wow! So what is mine then? haha.

Finally, after few hours waiting for the stars, the moon and the clouds to move around we cycled down the hill, again, and reached our campsite at the temple. Lots of dogs were staying and sleeping around the place. They started barking without interruption. Everytime we moved, at least one of them would break the silence. To get to the shower and toilets, we had to pass front of them. Of course, they barked against us even more. When we went to sleep, they kept barking and barking for maybe 30 minutes before getting quiet. At that time, the clock showed 11pm. Suddenly, as we started falling asleep, finally, one of them got close to Stephane’s tent and barked again, very loudly. Come on, shut up! This one never stopped. This last far away beyond Stephane’s patience who got out of his tent and pursuited the bloody dog who run away very quickly but never stop barking.

That did not help at all. More dog start barking and barking. Why do they never stop?!!!. Shut up!

We had to give up… At nearly midnight, we packed everything, furious and half asleep and left the place towards the big temple. Stephane planned to shot the temple from 5am tomorrow morning. The only positive thing is, a part we are going to sleep only 4 hours tonight, is that we will be very close to it. Fortunately, before we cycled down the road early this evening, I’ve seen a kind of roof next to a shop. We came back there and found a nice a quiet place where we enjoyed (if I can say that) the rest of our short night. See you tomorrow morning at 5am!