Thailand Part 2

A funky young monk

I decided I needed to do a bit of bike maintenence before leaving Kra Buri and found a bit of space at a garage where I could do an oil change. Again, it was hard work explaining to the staff what I wanted to do but they ultimately got the idea and brought over a plastic carton I could drain the oil into. Unfortunately I don't yet have all the tools i need and had to remove the entire bash plate assembly to get at the drain screw and that was fun in the heat and humidity.

I stuck to the main road north on the east coast until I hit Prachaub Khiri Khan which immediately looked like somewhere to stay for a couple of nights. It wasn't touristy and was actually hard to spot any hotels. I found a place called Yuttichai which had secure parking and was cheap at 170Bt (about 3GBPs) for a room with fan and shared bathroom. The wasn't much on the esplanade but I found a nice little restaurant and got some bloody good Pad Thai noodles. The following morning over breakfast, I was reading the Bangkok Post and enjoyed a story about the deposed King of Nepal. It was about how the government was now chasing the former king to give back the crown, jewels and property. The article stated that "some people just find it hard to accept change" which I quite liked.

I walked up to the temple at the top of Mirr Mount to the north of the town where the place was completely overrun by monkeys, hundreds of them. Some people at the bottom were selling food so you could feed them which I didn't entirely agree with but despite this, some European tourists were busy throwing corn at the monkeys and jumping back every time one snarled at them. About halfway up the stairs to the temple, I had to go through a narrow sheltered constuction which was itself teeming with the fun creatures. There were mums, dads and young 'uns all over it and squezzing through the middle of this lot was kind of scary. Further up, one was sitting on the handrail looking at me and I went up to it to say hello when it bared its teeth and snarled at me. Sweet.

Erm, so I just need to walk through that lot now...

I also rode to the land border with Burma to the west of PKK, taking in a lot of dirt roads on the way just for fun (I wasn't actually lost, I was just erm, 'exploring'...). I was told there was a nice temple there but never saw it, only the markets set up around the border post where the Burmese can come and sell goods.

Irritatingly, a Burma border that I'm not actually allowed through