Category Archives: Thailand

Day 156 – The last plane?

5:30 am is very early. But even Klaus and Silvia made it to give us a very warm farewell. Another if….if things go well, we will meet them again in July…in Germany, shortly before hitting Frankfurt. The next thing, we got carried away into the pre-dawn gloom the same way we came, on the back of an old pickup truck.

Checking what to do next ...

Checking what to do next …

To wake up after checking in, we waddled over to the nearest coffee shop at the terminal, just to have our most expensive meal of the entire stay in Thailand. A danish, a croissant, a coffee and a tea for the price of 7 Pad Thai …

The flight was pleasantly uneventful, except for yet another small child within arm’s reach. This one was better behaved but unfortunately kept on absent-mindedly kicking Nina for half of the flight.

I am still pleasantly surprised how smooth everything works in Kuala Lumpur. After picking up a new SIM card, we were good to go on the fancy airport shuttle train. We arrived back at Sonja’s place just to be invited to join for lunch right away. The food at the Ministry of Coffee was great. The place reminded me a lot of good New Zealand Cafes.

The rest of the day was very low key. I finally got to do the Indonesian summary post and we made a long list of To do’s while having such a great hub to work from. Speaking of which, we also got invited to home cooked dinner that night.

Day 155 – Hellos and good-byes

Our last day in Thailand had come. Well, the last day on this special holiday trip to visit Flo’s dad. And it had a bit of a surprise for us: We got to see Celia and Tigg, our lovely hosts from Darwin!

Lunch with Tigg and Celia

Lunch with Tigg and Celia

Those two had started their own trip in December and we missed them in Kuala Lumpur by a day! By now, they had ridden through Malaysia already and stayed in Ao Nang for a couple of days which is close enough to the Discovery Resort to take the scooter out for a visit. So we made a lunch date with a meeting point at the beach and all was well. Not quite. After having driven to Ao Nang on the scooter for about 45min, we couldn’t make any sense of Celia’s description of the location. Searching back and forth at the beach for them, we were about to go home and be very frustrated when Flo suddenly realized that Ao Nang has two beaches. And if you go to the right one, the description actually made sense and we found them!

Reunion photo

Reunion photo

It was really good to catch up with them on their own trip. For now, they are taking it slowly as Celia sprained her ankle on the second day of riding and needs some time to heal before riding a bike again. So we had some yummy lunch and then took some “reunion” photos at the beach. If all goes well, we will meet up again in Thailand to cross Myanmar in a couple of months.

After the short beach walk, Flo and I headed back to the Discovery Resort as it was also our last day with Flo’s dad. Arriving at 4pm, our little lunch date had actually taken us 5 hours: About 1 hour of riding each way and hour of looking at the wrong beach had left us with two hours to catch up. Not such a good quota.

Last dinner with Flo's family also known as the Hubis :)

Last dinner with Flo’s family also known as the Hubis 🙂

Dinner was lovely and I had vegetables with cashew nuts for the last time. Luckily, packing was very quick as we hadn’t taken a lot of things to Thailand. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 8.20am tomorrow from Krabi airport so we needed to get on our airport transport at 6am in the morning…

 

 

 

Day 154 – Action time! (5th Month-i-versary)

Carrying your own paddle

Carrying your own paddle

Two more days in Thailand. When we realized this, we actually got our lazy bums to do some of the activities that are offered here. Klaus and Silvia had already been kayaking and recommended it. Flo was very keen and I was persuaded to actually do some physical activity.

Because of the tide, we started at 2pm which is right in the afternoon heat. Our group consisted of four two-men kayaks and a guide. So in the end, it was a proper tour.

From the Discovery Resort, we walked the 50m to the pier where we all hopped onto our kayaks. The tour would be 6km long and take about 2 1/2 hours. Despite my initial reluctance, I enjoyed it very much and Flo started teasing me about being way too keen to paddle. :p

Passing through there was very cool

Passing through there was very cool

We moved along the limestone coast for a bit before turning into a small passageway which lead us thorough channels into the mangroves. Here, we realized why the tide was important as some of the spots we went through were so shallow that we scrapped over the ground.

On the way back to the pier, one had to move back out into the open on a wide river which has the most beautiful backdrop. One of the other couples was nice enough to take some pictures of us and send them. 🙂

Arriving back at the resort, we hopped into the pool to cool off. Since we still had Klaus’ waterproof camera with us, you also get some pool pictures.

 

Day 153 – Stats 104 Indonesia

That's right, we survived Indonesia :)

That’s right, we survived Indonesia 🙂

By now, we’ve gotten a holiday “rhythm” with a nice long breakfast, some light reading before lunch, lunch and then an afternoon nap to relax from the exhaustion. 😉

Also, there is always the pool if you really need a distraction. We are coming to the end of our special trip to Thailand in a couple of days so Nina, at least, maximized here time with a book.

Which leaves time and space for me to get to the mildly overdue Indonesia summary post.

Country data #4: Indonesia

Full screen version of the map

  • 7324 km traveled (7201 km of GPS tracked)
  • 46 travel days, 55 days total
  • $19.94 Average cost per night (48x room, 1x camping, 6x invitation)
  • 401.99l of standard fuel for $  348.98 (5.4 l / 100km)
  • ~$18.11 for food every day, always eating out with some invitations
  • ~$4.780 in total

All $ values are converted to NZD.

Day 152 – Reflections

Almost five months since we left. It does not feel like that at all. Maybe it is the nature of the Australasia section of this trip, or just our way of doing things. Regardless, we never fell into a mid-term rhythm resembling anything like the baseline “being at home, working”. Don’t get me wrong, we are creatures of habit, and Nina and I in particular are very quick to adopt a particular daily regiment. What defines this trip for me though is that the rhythm we adopt is constantly changed. Three weeks of “doing the same” is pretty much the longest period we had on this trip. Then the music stops, and it starts again with an entirely different beat, sometimes almost a different “genre”.

Does this not look like the perfect place for some deep musings?

Does this not look like the perfect place for some deep musings?

So right now, we are in another one of these slow sections. 11 days of “rest”. We get up, have a shared breakfast around 9, then either an activity or slow time until the afternoon. A coffee break, and dinner at 7.30 pm, pretty much every day. I must say, as exhausting as travelling is, for some reason these times away from the bike are in a way the hardest for us. After a hard three week push through Sumatra, we needed that change of pace. But in every rest period so far, we have gotten restless again, maybe 5 days into it.

So what is it we take away from that? Well, first there is no real feeling for what “the trip” as a whole is at its core. It is in some ways the opposite of a single thing; it is the constant presence and pressure of change. There is a underlying theme, that red line on the map on our pannier. Every section is linked back to this, and they are sometimes linked to each other. But the route is nothing tangible, it is only a remote pressure, an idea beyond the horizon.

On a more tangible level, we have learned something about how we can structure the sections better. The right mix of travel and rest days seems to be 6 to 1 (what an interesting coincidence), at least for us. And three weeks of traveling is really pushing it. If we had full control over it, I would try to aim for no longer than 2 weeks of travel with breaks of 2-3 days in between.

About the initial question, what is the trip about? What is the overarching “feel” of it? The tag line? It might be the wrong question. It might be that it is nothing more than an expression of wanderlust and curiosity, and the question to what it was about is also the answer. To find an answer, to have something to impart with meaning, to chew on, even in the years to come. Finding a good answer to “why do we go?” is a big reason to go in the first place …

Day 151 – New day, new year

Happy 2016 everybody! I hope you all had fun and a good start into the new year. For us, it was a bit weird: We crossed over into the year in which we will arrive in Germany. I vividly remember last New Year’s when we started “the year we will leave”. And now, we’re already in “the year we will arrive”. *shakes head* Time flies…

Having stayed up until midnight and longer, I was quite tired today. So after a nice breakfast (always with orange juice), we took it slow and I had an afternoon nap of two hours. 🙂

Looking through things  to watch, we stumbled upon Jamie Oliver’s “Comfort food” which really consists entirely of food porn. If you have a kitchen and you need some comfort food right now, try the toasted cheese sandwich with a crunchy cheese crown and tell me if it is as delicious as it looks like. There is no cheese in Indonesia and t doesn’t look much better in Thailand so Flo and I are craving some good old cheese.

We didn’t really do much. So this would have been the perfect day to post a summary of our Indonesian part. Unfortunately, we won’t do it as we left our GPS device in KL and have no access to the trip data…

Day 150 – New Year’s Eve

In retrospect, this was probably the quietest New Year’s Eve we ever had. Close contender might be last year, where it was just Nina and I, but back then we had to ride there that day and had fireworks at midnight. This time around it was super calm. Well, except the almost 100 km on a scooter, but that does not count, does it?

So in spirit of this whole week-and-a-half break from our trip, we were planning on a really chilled day. One item on the list, though: Shopping for the night. Sweets, nibbles and drinks to keep us up till midnight, at least. For some reason, my dad got seriously restless when we were about to go and decided to go and look at some caves they had missed before. Thinking of a bunch we saw before not far beyond the big supermarket we thought we would join them.

Found the Hubis and made it all to the first cave

Found the Hubis and made it all to the first cave

We had to do the shopping first, since the shop closed early on NYE. We send the hubies ahead this time. They are usually slower than us, so we thought we would catch up with them anyway. So after shopping, I headed to the first cave signposted and … found no one. Hm … maybe they meant the second one then. So back on the road we went, another 5 km further … still nothing. Where could they be? Ok, there is one more cave … almost all the way to the national park / waterfalls. Another 10 km. But sure as, there they were 🙂 Was that not supposed a short trip? Now, again, we were 45 km from our hotel. But alas, let’s check the cave.

Such a pity that we were swarmed with mosquitoes

Such a pity that we were swarmed with mosquitoes

The infrastructure looked pretty abandoned and the path was almost entirely overgrown. We walked a bit through the bush until we came to a larger cave, but nothing too exciting. Instead, we were eaten alive by an army of mosquitoes. We were a bit defeated by this, but there were two more caves to check out, and from our visits earlier we knew that one was pretty much right on the road back.

This one then was way more exciting. The signs told us that they were the site of an archaeological dig excavating signs of human habitation 37,000 to 45,000 years old. The caves themselves were also pretty cool, although I got kicked in the face once when a henceforth unnamed participant tried to imitate me in climbing around on the more than dodgy constructs to get to the higher caves.

Trying to get a picture while riding on a scooter is hard

Trying to get a picture while riding on a scooter is hard

Back home we filled the time with eating our treats and playing a cool round of Trivial Pursuit. Everyone did pretty well, actually! Thus the hours flew by. We briefly checked out the hotel restaurant, for there was previous mention of a “party”, but no one was there. It was a bit odd, but I don’t think we have missed much here.

So as we have sent and received wishes from our New Zealand friends a couple of hours earlier, after a brief round of hugs at midnight and the merest echo of distant fireworks in Ao Nang we grabbed our devices and called friends and family in Germany.

What a year … it started on the road and it ended on the road. Will we settle for real in 2016 now?

Day 149 – Market Day

Awesome two-finger-typing technique =P

Awesome two-finger-typing technique =P

Since we had so much activity yesterday, we took it slowly today. After breakfast, I spent some time blogging. This is also the only picture we took today.

In the afternoon, we took the scooters to a local market. The market takes place every Wednesday and Saturday with the Wednesday market being the smaller one. I was very excited for donuts which I wanted to buy for New Year’s tomorrow but the stall was not there. Probably one of the things you can only get on Saturdays. 🙁

Flo, Silvia and Klaus then proceeded to have Pad Thai with shrimps while I had some deep fried sesame potato balls.

Day 148 – Falling, water

We will be so lost in any without translation from the Thai script

We will be so lost in any without translation from the Thai script

Right – today was day trip time. There has been talk of waterfalls for a while and we felt like some light hiking. The hubies (New phrase we invented for my dad and his partner Silvia) promised that we would get that at the Khao Phanombencha National Park.

Getting there got much easier once we took over navigation entirely – but we shall not talk about these things. The park entrance is about 40 km away from our hotel. It took us less than an hour on the scooters to get there. There were some complaints about my Indonesia inspired driving afterwards …

Did not look too bad in the beginning

Did not look too bad in the beginning

At the park we got on a path to a set of 7 cascading watefalls. About 500m in we came upon a turn of to what was labeled “Back to the nature trail”. It looked so harmless, and was supposed to be only 1700m long, so we got going. The first half was true to the expectations: A narrow path through the flat jungle. But then the track started to climb. A pretty hefty climb, actually. Last time Nina and I did a track like this was on Rarotonga, but this time we had my dad and his partner with us. Let’s say we operate on slightly different fitness levels 😉 – and so it took us two hours to ascend the remaining 800m. To be fair, we also went up almost 500m in the process.

the 2nd and 3rd level waterfalls

the 2nd and 3rd level waterfalls

We reaped the reward after another climb, this time down another 200m to the top one of the 7 waterfalls. We cooled down in the pool before making our descent back to the normal path.

Completely knackered we arrived back at the car around 3 pm. We were starving, too, so we dropped down at the first place in sight. Surprisingly, the food was neither bad nor expensive.

After getting home, the rest of the day was set aside for laying low and recovering (for the most of us). Nina and I tackled another movie. Good times.

 

Day 147 – walk to the pier

The bungalow for the first three nights

The bungalow for the first three nights

One more day that started like a real holiday. Good and long breakfast, chilling and lounging around and a cheap lunch that Flo went and bought at a roadside eatery while I was watching a movie.

In the afternoon, we were at a point where walking 50 meters to the pier to watch the monkeys didn’t sound outrageously exhausting anymore. We all got out our sunhats and off we went.

It might have still been a bit early and thus too hot for the whole gang of monkeys but looking out from the pier was lovely anyway. Enough monkeys showed up so that we managed to get some good shots while Flo even found someone with a motorbike to talk to.

In the late afternoon, we played two rounds of kniffel. Klaus won the first one with two totally undeserved kniffel while I won the last round…totally deserved that victory. :p